....the Army, using minimum force is obliged to stop them. Inevitably, there are those present who will defy the more prudent counsel of their leaders and start a fight. The resulting chaos supplies perfect conditions for IRA snipers, but what the vie wing public and the visiting sentimentroops quelling a peaceful demonstration. ...... Where then is the moral difference between the IRA murderers and the civil rights movement? Ostensibly these marches are directed against internment; they have nothing whatever to do with the proposition, embodied in law, that Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland should enjoy equal citizenship. In fact, the movement aims, just like the IRA, at imposing on the people of Northern Ireland a revolution repugnant to most of them. It does not murder; it simply creates conditions favourable to the murders attempted by others and leaves the Army in the last resort with no alternative but to fire Its courage may be less than that of the IRA, its guilt is not. The IRA has promised to avenge the dead. Their blood is on its own hands." " British bullets will be found in most of the bodies, but the blood is on the consciences oi irresponsible political leaders and the fanatica! IRA.
It was a scenario for slaughter from the minute it was planned and only a fool or a cynic would attempt to arque otherwise.
For what other end but death could there be to a massive and ullegal demonstration through the streets or Londonderry? Ofcourse, the IRA men would be there. Ofcourse they would carry guns. Ofcourse they would Couldn't the Bernadette Devlins and the Ivan Coopers have foreseen that?
Didn't they know enougn to try to get the march called off? Didn't they care?
This was berry, remember the nearest thing to an armed terrorist encampment in the United Kingdom.
When British troops stopped the marchers they were met with to bombs and a tustilade of sniper fire. THey returned tire Those who died were not martyrs to civil rights (though already last night they were being promoted as such). They were terrorists or fodder for terrorists. They died that anti-British propaçanda mont douran The Unfree Press DAILY EXPRESS THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OPINION "The ill-named Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland creates a tragic riot in Londonderry.
Many members of this organisation are neither civil nor right. They simply THE GUAR