McCartney takes part in the civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972, an event widely known as Bloody Sunday. One of his cousins, James Wray, is one of fourteen men shot and killed by the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army on that march. As a result of this incident, he joins the Provisional IRA several months later. In 1974, Martin McGuinness, who commands the IRA in Derry, instructs him to beat up an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) man, Patsy O’Hara, who McGuinness calls a “scumbag” and a “hood.” On January 12, 1979, at Belfast‘s Crown Court, he and another man, Eamonn MacDermott, are convicted of the murder of Detective Constable Patrick McNulty of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who was shot several times outside a garage in Derry on January 27, 1977. He is also convicted of IRA membership and the murder of businessman Jeffery Agate in February 1977 and is sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder convictions are overturned in 2007.
McCartney spends 53 days on hunger strike, from October 27 to December 18. From 1989–91 he is Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks and is released in 1994.
Following his release, McCartney is active with ex-prisoners’ groups Tar Abhaile and Coiste na n-Íarchimí, and is the first member of Sinn Féin to hear his own voice heard on television after the lifting of the British broadcasting ban in 1994. He is arrested on April 4, 2002, following a breach of security at Belfast’s police headquarters, but is released without charge the following day. Later that year, on September 5, he is the first former IRA member to appear before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and encourages anyone with information, including paramilitaries, to come forward. He is a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from July 15, 2004, until February 3, 2020.
On February 15, 2007, McCartney and MacDermott have their murder convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, following an investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in 2002. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland declines to compensate McCartney and MacDermott on the grounds that they have not proven themselves innocent. The decision is appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, in May 2011, finds in favour of the applicants, opening the way for a substantial compensation claim from both for their prison terms of 15 and 17 years.
Father Des Wilson, Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern IrelandTroubles embraces ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology, dies in his native Belfast on November 5, 2019. He believes the Word of God can never be silent in the face of oppression, injustice and suffering. He seeks to apply the ideas of liberation theology to the North, supporting and empowering marginalised communities, and acting as a voice for the voiceless.
Wilson is born in Belfast on July 8, 1925, the youngest of five sons to William Wilson, a publican and native of County Cavan, and his wife Emma (née McAvoy), a native of south County Down. He spends his earliest years above his father’s pub in Belfast, before the family moves to a house in the suburbs.
Wilson attends primary school locally, then receives secondary education at St. Malachy’s College. During his time there Belfast is blitzed in April and May 1941. Almost 1,000 are killed. The carnage he sees is a factor in his deciding on the priesthood.
After ordination Wilson serves as chaplain in Belfast’s Mater Infirmorum Hospital, then spends 15 years in St. Malachy’s as spiritual director. Former pupils remember him as fair, and able to play jazz excellently on the organ.
Wilson lives out his beliefs, spending half a century in Belfast’s Ballymurphy estate, among the North’s most deprived, and one of the areas which suffers worst from the Troubles. There he plays a role in community development, establishing projects to provide employment in the area. He suffers, finding himself for years outside the official Catholic Church.
Wilson plays a significant role in providing adult education. He wants an education that does not just provide qualifications and open career paths but is psychologically liberating.
Life changes in 1966 when Wilson is moved to St. John’s Parish in West Belfast as a curate. Having come from a comfortable background in Ballymurphy, he is shocked by the poverty, the poor housing and the treatment of women. Unusual for a priest at the time, he moves into a terraced house in the estate. He finds the Catholic Church unable to respond to the multiple problems people are facing. That inability worsens as the Troubles erupt.
Wilson’s personal probity is so recognised that he is accepted as a mediator in feuds between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Official Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and is able to broker permanent peace. He also helps bring about the ceasefires in the 1990s.
Wilson does not shirk unpopular stances. In the 1970s he refuses to condemn the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Later he says the conviction of former Real Irish Republican Army leader Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism is unsafe. He also publicly visits and supports a Ballymurphy couple which has a very bitter falling out with Sinn Féin, leading to a picket on their home.
By 1975 relations with his bishop has broken down and Wilson resigns but continues ministering in Ballymurphy. Forbidden to say Mass in a church, his pay cut off, he says Mass in his house. He suffers hardship, living from savings, some earnings from writing, broadcasting and lecturing, and help from Quaker and Presbyterian friends. By the early 1980s his Ballymurphy home becomes too small for the many classes he organises. His classes are rehoused and expanded as the Conway Education Centre in a vacant mill. He is able to offer a range of vocational and non-vocational courses with almost 1,000 students. In the mid-1980s his relationship with the Dioceses of Down and Connor is re-established, and he is allowed to continue his ministry.
Personally, Wilson has great gifts of head and heart and is incapable of rancour. A strong belief is that it is important to share food to talk, as happened in Biblical times. Thus, a lunch would last an afternoon.
Wilson dies on November 5, 2019, in Belfast. Instead of wreaths, he asks mourners to donate to the Ballymurphy Massacre Memorial Garden. The garden is dedicated to the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971, which saw the killing in the district of eleven civilians by soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The victims include Fr. Hugh Mullan, who had been a student of Wilson’s at St. Malachy’s. He was shot while going to the aid of a wounded man.
On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1971, the security forces launch Operation Demetrius, the main focus of which is to arrest and intern suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Parachute Regiment is selected to carry out the operation. The operation is chaotic and informed by poor intelligence, resulting in a number of innocent people being interned. By focusing solely on republicans, it excludes violence carried out by loyalistparamilitaries. Some nationalist neighbourhoods attempt to disrupt the army with barricades, petrol bombs and gunfire. In the Catholic district of Ballymurphy, ten civilians are shot and killed between the evening of August 9 and the morning of August 11, while another dies of heart failure.
Members of the Parachute Regiment state that they were shot at by republicans as they entered the Ballymurphy area and returned fire. The press officer for the British Army stationed in Belfast, Mike Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, includes a disputed account of the shootings in his autobiography, stating that those killed in the shootings were republican gunmen. This claim is strongly denied by the families of those killed in the shootings, including in interviews conducted during the documentary film The Ballymurphy Precedent. The claim is found to be without basis by a later coroner’s inquest, which establishes that those killed were “entirely innocent.”
The six civilians killed on August 9 are Francis Quinn (19), shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, Father Hugh Mullan (38), a Catholic priest, shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, reputedly while waving a white cloth to indicate his intentions, Joan Connolly (44), shot by three soldiers as she stands opposite the army base, Daniel Teggart (44), shot fourteen times mostly in the back as he lay injured on the ground, Noel Phillips (20) and Joseph Murphy (41), shot as they stand opposite the army base. Murphy is subsequently taken into army custody and after his release, as he is dying in hospital, he claims that he had been beaten and shot again while in custody. When his body is exhumed in October 2015, a second bullet is discovered in his body, which activists say corroborates his claim.
Edward Doherty (28), is shot and killed on August 10 while walking along Whiterock Road.
Another three civilians are shot on 11 August: John Laverty (20) and Joseph Corr (43) are shot at separate points at the top of the Whiterock Road. Laverty is shot twice, once in the back and once in the back of the leg. Corr is shot several times and dies of his injuries on August 27. John McKerr (49), is shot in the head by an unknown sniper while standing outside a Catholic church and dies of his injuries on August 20. While a number of eyewitnesses state that soldiers were seen shooting toward the area, the 2021 inquest cannot establish who had killed him. The coroner notes that a more specific finding is not possible, in large part, due to an “abject failing by the authorities to properly inquire into the death of [McKerr at the time].”
Paddy McCarthy (44), an eleventh civilian, dies on August 11 following an altercation with a group of soldiers. His family allege that an empty gun is put in his mouth and the trigger pulled, he suffers a heart attack and dies shortly after the alleged confrontation.
In February 2015, the conviction of Terry Laverty, younger brother of John Laverty, one of those killed, is quashed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He had been convicted of riotous behaviour and sentenced to six months on the eyewitness evidence of a private in the Parachute Regiment. The case is referred to court because the sole witness retracts his evidence.
In 2016, Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, recommends an inquest into the killings as one of a series of “legacy inquests” covering 56 cases related to the Troubles. These inquests are delayed, as funding has not been approved by the Northern Ireland Executive. The Stormont first minister, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), defers a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a decision condemned by the human rights group Amnesty International. Foster confirms she has used her influence in the devolved power-sharing executive to hold back finance for a backlog of inquests connected to the conflict. The High Court says her decision to refuse to put a funding paper on the Executive basis is “unlawful and procedurally flawed.”
In January 2018, the coroner’s office announces that the inquest will begin in September 2018. On May 11, 2021, this coroner’s inquest finds that the ten civilians killed were innocent and that the use of lethal force by the British Army was “not justified.” The circumstances of the 11th death are not part of the inquest since Paddy McCarthy died from a heart attack, allegedly after being threatened by a soldier. Following the inquest verdict, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, apologises for the deaths at Ballymurphy in a phone call to Foster and deputy First MinisterMichelle O’Neill. The lack of public apology is criticised by some relatives of the victims and Northern Irish politicians.
In May 2021, families of those shot dead by British soldiers in Ballymurphy urge the Irish government to oppose any attempt to prevent the prosecution of British soldiers alleged to have committed crimes during the Troubles.
The killings are the subject of the August 2018 documentaryThe Ballymurphy Precedent, directed by Callum Macrae and made in association with Channel 4.
Two years into The Troubles and Belfast is particularly affected by political and sectarian violence. The British Army had been deployed in Northern Ireland in 1969, as events had grown beyond the control of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1971, the security forces launch Operation Demetrius. The plan is to arrest and intern anyone suspected of being a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The unit selected for this operation is the Parachute Regiment. Members of the Parachute Regiment state that, as they enter the Ballymurphy area, they are shot at by republicans and return fire.
Mike Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, includes a disputed account of the shootings in his autobiography and his then role as press officer for the British Army stationed in Belfast while the incidents happened. This account states that those killed in the shootings were Republican gunmen. This claim has been strongly denied by the Catholic families of those killed in the shootings, in interviews conducted during the documentary film The Ballymurphy Precedent.
These inquests are delayed, as funding had not been approved by the Northern Ireland Executive. The former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) defers a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a decision condemned by the human rights group Amnesty International. Foster confirms she had used her influence in the devolved power-sharing executive to hold back finance for a backlog of inquests connected to the conflict. The High Court says her decision to refuse to put a funding paper on the Executive basis was “unlawful and procedurally flawed.”
Fresh inquests into the deaths open at Belfast Coroner’s Court in November 2018 under Presiding Coroner Mrs. Justice Siobhan Keegan. The final scheduled witnesses give evidence on March 2-3, 2020, around the fatal shootings of Father Hugh Mullan and Frank Quinn on waste ground close to an army barracks at Vere Foster school in Springmartin on the evening of August 9. Justice Keegan sets a date of March 20 for final written submissions from legal representatives. A decision is still pending.
The killings are the subject of the August 2018 documentary The Ballymurphy Precedent, directed by Callum Macrae and made in association with Channel 4.
(Pictured: A mural in Belfast commemorating the victims of the Ballymurphy Massacre)
Widgery receives promotion to the Court of Appeal in 1968. He has barely gotten used to his new position when Lord Parker of Waddington, who had been Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales since 1958, announces his retirement. There is no obvious successor and Widgery is the most junior of the possible appointees. The Lord Chancellor, Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St. Marylebone, chooses Widgery largely on the basis of his administrative abilities. On April 20, 1971, he is created a life peer taking the title Baron Widgery, of South Molton in the County of Devon.
Shortly after taking over, Widgery is handed the politically sensitive job of conducting an inquiry into the events of January 30, 1972, in Derry, where troops from 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment had murdered 13 civil rights marchers, commonly referred to as Bloody Sunday. A 14th person dies shortly after Widgery’s appointment. He hears testimony from the paratroopers, who claim they had been shot at, while the marchers insist that no one from the march was armed. Widgery produces a report that takes the British Army‘s side. He placed the main blame for the deaths on the march organisers for creating a dangerous situation where a confrontation was inevitable. His strongest criticism of the Army is that the “firing bordered on the reckless.”
The Widgery Report is accepted by the British government and Northern Ireland‘s unionists but is immediately denounced by Irish nationalist politicians, and people in the Bogside and Creggan areas are disgusted by his findings. The British Government had acquired some goodwill because of its suspension of the Stormont Parliament, but that disappears when Widgery’s conclusions are published. The grievance with Widgery’s findings lingers and the issue remains live as the Northern Ireland peace process advances in the 1990s.
In January 1998, on the eve of the 26th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Prime MinisterTony Blair announces a new inquiry, criticising the rushed process in which Widgery failed to take evidence from those wounded and did not personally read eyewitness accounts. The resulting Bloody Sunday Inquiry lasts 12 years before the Saville Report is published on June 15, 2010. It demolishes the Widgery Report, finding that soldiers lied about their actions and falsely claimed to have been attacked.
Prime Minister David Cameron, on behalf of the United Kingdom, formally apologises for the “unjustified and unjustifiable” events of Bloody Sunday. As a result of the Saville Report, even observers who are natural supporters of the British Army now regard Widgery as discredited. The conservative historian and commentator Max Hastings describes the Widgery report as “a shameless cover-up.”
seamus dubhghaill 