NationStates Jolt Archive

It has been called the 'forgotten massacre'. But the names of the bereaved and injured are no secret. On a warm and sunny Sunday evening in July, 27 years ago, five people were shot dead in cold blood close to their homes in Springhill, west Belfast. They included three teenagers, a father of six and a Catholic priest. Inquests revealed that British soldiers shot all of them. Nobody was ever charged, much less convicted of murder.

The priest was shot dead as he administered last rites to the dead and dying. One boy was shot dead as he went to the assistance of a badly injured neighbour, another as he knelt beside the priests body.

The bullets which killed the five - and injured many more - were fired from sandbagged British army sniper nests on top of a wall around a local timber yard. Not even the names of those responsible are known. The relatives of the dead and injured refer to them as 'Soldier A' and 'Soldier B' etc. Even the Nazi's in concentration camps had names. These killers were so protected from justice - and from their victims - that their names have never been published.

The Springhill and Ballymurphy area later became one of the staunchest redoubts of the IRA - feared by soldiers who patrolled it for 25 years. If they ever asked themselves why the people who lived there supported and joined the IRA in their hundreds, maybe they need look no further than the events of July 9, 1972.

The victims were -

Paddy Butler 38

John Dougal 16

Margaret Gargan 13

David McCafferty 15

Father Noel Fitzpatrick

A Disgusting Tragedy! But this isn't the only massacre that the British have covered up during the Troubles. Innocent civilians for decades were shot by British soldiers and never given justice and they are only the ones we have found out about.

The British Government gave their troops immunity from being jailed and allowed them to cause some of the greatest war crimes ever seen.

They murdered and murdered and covered up everything. While the Irish Government in the South couldn't do anything because the British bullied them to keep quiet and destroyed all evidence of most of these atrocities.

It angers me when the British lecture other countries about human rights! Maybe they should look at their own dark past before opening their mouths!

... in July, 27 years ago...

...the events of July 9, 1972.


You could have at least updated in when you did your cut and paste.

The British Government gave their troops immunity from being jailed and allowed them to cause some of the greatest war crimes ever seen.

Isn't that a bit of an overstatement compared to say, the Holocaust? Or the genocide in Rwanda?

so there was an investigation and the names of the soldiers involved were known to the investigators but they are only referred to as soldier A and soldier B to the public.

so the government has admitted that their soldiers shot these people.

did they have some kind of story as to why it happened? any sort of justification that let the soldiers off?

surely they didnt just say "yeah the soldiers killed them but they were just northern ireland ratbastards so we dont care much about it" they must have had some REASON no matter how weak or potentially false it was.

so what was it?

so what was it?

An inquest into Margaret death and the four others killed that evening was held in July 1973.

Most of the soldiers involved in the shootings did not attend the hearing. A military representative read out all their statements, the soldiers being identified only by a letter of the alphabet. It was revealed that seven soldiers had been involved in the shootings, all claimed they fired on gunmen, however despite it being a clear bright evening not one of the soldiers could identify any other feature about the gunmen other than they were carrying a weapons. All the soldiers emphasised in their statements they had not seen nor shot at any priest.

Over a dozen civilian witnesses also give evidence at the hearing disputing the soldiers’ version of events. All stated it was the British soldiers situated on the roof of the a timber yard over looking Westrock Drive who had opened fire without warning, and that there had been no shooting in area beforehand.

Although civilian witnesses attended the inquest and refuted the soldiers’ statements, several important witnesses, including some of those wounded, were not called to give evidence.

Forensic evidence revealed that none of those killed had been in contact with firearms.

An RUC detective admitted to the hearing that there had been no investigations into the killing, citing the area as too dangerous to carry this out.

The jury returned an Open Verdict.

...from the Families For Justice website.

Not to excuse the shooting, but there has been a £150m UK government inquiry into it, due to report some time this year(?). With, if memory serves, Sinn Fein et al cooperating. Hardly forgotten, or even ignored.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/northern_ireland/2000/bloody_sunday_inquiry/default.stm

Not to excuse the shooting, but there has been a £150m UK government inquiry into it, due to report some time this year(?). With, if memory serves, Sinn Fein et al cooperating. Hardly forgotten, or even ignored.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/northern_ireland/2000/bloody_sunday_inquiry/default.stm


January 30, 1972 != July 9, 1972.

did they have some kind of story as to why it happened? any sort of justification that let the soldiers off?

surely they didnt just say "yeah the soldiers killed them but they were just northern ireland ratbastards so we dont care much about it" they must have had some REASON no matter how weak or potentially false it was.

so what was it?

Here's what the soldiers said in their statements:

Soldier ‘A’ in his statement said he had been a member of a ‘Quick Reaction Section’ consisting of seven men that had been deployed in fortified posts in Corry’s Timber Yard ‘to observe and return fire at any target identified as a gunman.’ He said it was a bright clear evening and visibility was good. Around 8.30pm he claimed he was fired on by a number of gunmen from various positions in Springhill. Soldier ‘E’ said he fired on these gunmen wounding one of them. Soldiers ‘B’ ‘C’ ‘D’ and ‘F’ in their statements all spoke of observing gunmen running from one position to another and firing on them. Some they claimed to have hit, while others they said fled. However, despite it being such a clear bright night none of the soldiers could identify any other feature about the gunmen other than they were carrying a weapon. All were adamant they had not seen nor shot at any priest.

Some aspects of it, like being unable to describe the appearance of the alleged gunmen, seem a little suspicious.

January 30, 1972 != July 9, 1972.
Oops. Thanks for the correction.

thank you, that is what i was wanting to know

No it isn't my father works for the Irish Government, the horrific thing they got away with were sick. Agreed it wasn't as bad as the Holocaust but it wasn't far off. Thousands upon Thousands. My family lost members as did many.

I am in Dublin near Croke Park, a stadium where irish sports were played. One day in the fourties a match was on with around 40,000 in the stadium. During the match the British brought a tank and a battalion of troops onto the pitch and opened fire on civilian crowd. The tank fired at the stands with the troops. This killed many, families, children. They didn't do anything wrong, their only crime was that they were irish. Their were no terrorists in the stadium, just innocent civilians. No one was arrested for that atrocity, they troops and their tank slaughtered the crowds and then casually walked out.

Bodies littered the stands and children were crushed in the panic. Many couldn't escape because the steps were to slippery with blood and had to stay in their seats while they were murdered by soldiers. The British Government never apologised for that unbelievable crime and don't even recognise that it ever happened. But it did, and it was only one of many massacres.

I am in Dublin near Croke Park, a stadium where irish sports were played. One day in the fourties a match was on with around 40,000 in the stadium. During the match the British brought a tank and a battalion of troops onto the pitch and opened fire on civilian crowd..

During the forties? After Ireland's independence? Nope. 1920.


...and it was an armoured car, not a tank.

You also seem to suggest that the death toll was much greater than it actually was - 14.

During the forties? After Ireland's independence? Nope. 1920.


...and it was an armoured car, not a tank.

You also seem to suggest that the death toll was much greater than it actually was - 14.

13, actually. "The dead included 11 spectators and 2 players, Jim Egan and Michael Hogan."

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/C/Cr/Croke_Park.htm

This massacre was entirely unjustified, but I'm not impressed with your massive overstatement, Cianland.

13, actually. "The dead included 11 spectators and 2 players, Jim Egan and Michael Hogan."

EDIT: "In addition to the main inquiry there was also a separate one, again ‘in lieu of an inquest’ (under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act), into the deaths of fourteen civilians at Croke Park—John Scott, James Matthews, Jeremiah O’Leary, Patrick O’Dowd, Jane Boyle, William Robinson, Thomas Hogan, James Burke, Michael Feery, James Teehan, Joseph Traynor, Thomas Ryan, Michael Hogan and Daniel Carroll."

http://www.historyireland.com/magazine/features/11.2Feat.html


http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/en.../Croke_Park.htm

You might as well at least go to Wikipedia, rather than one of the sites that leaches content from it: they maintain all the disadvantages of Wiki, but few of the advantages.

The tank fired at the stands with the troops.

The armoured car is believed to have only fired into the air above the crowd: certainly none of the casualties were a result of its fire.

This also wasn't the only massacre by the British/unionists. On Bloody Sunday British troops fired into a fleeing crowd of civil rights marchers, often shooting from the hip.

yes, because the IRA is entirely blameless in all of this, and it was only one side that commited atrocities

the IRA killed 1700 people, most of them innocent, the British Army killed 297,
most of them not.

another Belfast story would be Bloody Friday.

"Since this was the most devastating day of violence in Belfast up to that time, and many of the injured suffered serious mutilation, the impact on public opinion was enormous, and many observers regarded it as a point at which PIRA [Provisional Irish Republican Army] put itself outside the pale of political negotiation.

Flackes and Elliott (1994) Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-1993

Many watching the television news reports were reduced to tears by horrifying pictures of firemen and rescue workers ... scraping up the remains of human beings into plastic bags ...

Bardon (1992) A History of Ulster

'Bloody Friday' is the name given to the events that occurred in Belfast on Friday 21 July 1972. During the afternoon of 'Bloody Friday' the Irish Republican Army (IRA) planted and exploded 22 bombs which, in the space of 75 minutes, killed 9 people and seriously injured approximately 130 others. In addition to the bombs there were numerous hoax warnings about other explosive devices which added to the chaos in the streets that afternoon. Many people believe these hoax warnings were deliberately used to reduce the effectiveness of the security forces in dealing with the real bombs.

As the quotes above make clear, the killing and maiming had a profound impact on most people in Northern Ireland. 'Bloody Friday' also led to the decision by the British Government to implement 'Operation Motorman' when, in the biggest British military operation since the 1956 Suez crisis, the British Army entered and ended the 'no-go' areas of Belfast and Derry. "

source (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bfriday/sum.htm)

you cant declare war and then complain when civilians get accidently killed by the other side - especially if your strategy involves bombing civilian targets.

and its certainly not good to go trawling over the mistakes of the past.

The 1920 Bloody Sunday (it was called Bloody Sunday as well... we are original aren't we? There was one in the 1913 Lockout, one in the War of Independence and one during the Troubles...) was in response to the execution of British intelligence agents. Three prisoners were also executed in reprisals.
Nothing the British did in the North compares to Rwanda, the Holocaust, Vietnam... Hell, nothing anyone did during the Troubles is. But that doesn't excuse it. Nadkor, here's some stats (from the Conflict Archive on the Internet: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/). The British Army killed 297 people. 152 were civilians and 125 Republican paramilitaries. The IRA killed 1706 people. 1011 were British security forces and 516 civilians. So most of the people the British Army killed were innocent, most the IRA killed were not (well, they were members of the security forces). Same goes for the rest of the British security forces - in all cases (apart from the British police) civilians were the most likely victims. Not saying that the IRA are the good guys, by the way.

EDIT: Nadkor, you edited your post while I was writing mine. Bloody Friday? How about the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, where loyalist terrorists, with the collusion of British security forces (yes, I know the enquiry did not prove that, but the judge did say that collusion was almost certain) planted four bombs in Ireland, killing thirty-three, including a pregnant woman?
And to show you I'm not biased, how about the Bessbrook murders, where the IRA killed ten Protestants just because they were Protestants?

Large numbers of people were killed on both sides and most of them were innocent...its not fair to blame just one side for all the troubles.

please don't forget to count the numbers killed by the UDA, UFF etc. The IRA weren't the only ones with bombs

The 1920 Bloody Sunday (it was called Bloody Sunday as well... we are original aren't we? There was one in the 1913 Lockout, one in the War of Independence and one during the Troubles...) was in response to the execution of British intelligence agents. Three prisoners were also executed in reprisals.
Nothing the British did in the North compares to Rwanda, the Holocaust, Vietnam... Hell, nothing anyone did during the Troubles is. But that doesn't excuse it. Nadkor, here's some stats (from the Conflict Archive on the Internet: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/). The British Army killed 297 people. 152 were civilians and 125 Republican paramilitaries. The IRA killed 1706 people. 1011 were British security forces and 516 civilians. So most of the people the British Army killed were innocent, most the IRA killed were not (well, they were members of the security forces). Same goes for the rest of the British security forces - in all cases (apart from the British police) civilians were the most likely victims. Not saying that the IRA are the good guys, by the way.
i know about CAIN, thats where i got the stats and quote from

according to CAIN, the IRA killed 737 civilians and 1078 British Security forces (RUC/Brit. Army)

Because i am more bored right now than you can possibly imagine, heres the table CAIN threw up:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.cobbe/summary.JPG

the loyalist paramilitary total for civilians is nothing less than disgusting.

the difference between the Brits and the IRA was that the British primary objective was stopping the IRA, whereas the IRAs primary objective was, to all intents and purposes, causing mayhem.

but like i said, trawling over the history is not a particularly good idea for anyone of any pursuasion to be doing, we need to be looking forward. agreed?

The table you showed is ALL Republican paramilitaries, including the INLA, Direct Action Against Drugs, etc. If you go to CAIN, pick the option for two-variable comparisons and go status summary vs. organisation, you'll get a group by group breakdown of who killed who. That's where I got my figures.
And the IRA's primary intent was the establishment of a 32-county socialist republic, and getting the British security forces out. And, originally, protecting Catholics because the British Army wasn't doing it.
But yes, we should look forward. What do you think the prospects are of a settlement? After all, you're a lot closer than I am (Cavan)...

The table you showed is ALL Republican paramilitaries, including the INLA, Direct Action Against Drugs, etc. If you go to CAIN, pick the option for two-variable comparisons and go status summary vs. organisation, you'll get a group by group breakdown of who killed who. That's where I got my figures.
yea, and it also includes all British forces mixed as one. I did the other table, but it stretched wider than the page, and had a big list of explanatory notes at the bottom, i wasnt posting all that.

edit: and that table still says the IRA killed more civilians than British forces :p (providing im reading the table right :rolleyes: )

And the IRA's primary intent was the establishment of a 32-county socialist republic, and getting the British security forces out. And, originally, protecting Catholics because the British Army wasn't doing it.
yea, but it tried to achieve that through death and destruction.
But yes, we should look forward. What do you think the prospects are of a settlement? After all, you're a lot closer than I am (Cavan)...
right now, a settlement that pleases everyone is about as likely as Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister. meh...theyll work something out i suppose, but itll be less than perfect, theyll try and sell it to their respective communities as being the perfect deal, the people will tentavely accept it, and then when they realise it wasnt all its meant to be, theyll reject it.

just like the Good Friday Agreement. :rolleyes:

Isn't that a bit of an overstatement compared to say, the Holocaust? Or the genocide in Rwanda?

or the prison camps in South Africa that the English put Boer and Xhosa/Zulu (later to be called "Bantu") women and children in, like Chrissiesmeer. Thousands starved to death or died of diseases like dysentery and scarlet fever.

I'm cautiously optimistic... which means I'm gonna be disappointed again... I was dancing on the inside when it looked like the IRA were gonna give up the guns, and then BAM - the whole photos dealie, and no more deal.
Maybe the internal consulting process about the end of the IRA will turn out good - I read in the Village that republican sources think it's gonna happen. We might end up with another IRA splinter group, the I Can't Believe it's not the IRA or something, but, if we're lucky, things could turn out good. Chances of me being disappointed and it falling through: high.
I don't agree with you about the IRA's primary intent, or rather the way you're putting it, but I think I'll agree to disagree.

EDIT: Correct, they did kill more civilians. But we don't know how many of them were caught up in attacks on soldiers, which is what armies call collateral damage... Whereas, the army is less likely to have planted a bomb to kil an IRA man and accidentally taken out five civilians at the same time...

Because i am more bored right now than you can possibly imagine, heres the table CAIN threw up:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.cobbe/summary.JPG


Am I reading this correctly: the British security forces killed twleve of their own, yes?

Am I reading this correctly: the British security forces killed twleve of their own, yes?
That's what the chart says... I don't know the story, but they were there for thirty years, the chances of fratricide are quite high. CAIN says the British Army killed five Army, 2 Ulster Defence Regiment and 2 Royal Ulster Constabulary. The RUC killed 2 Army and one RUC man. The magic of statistics.
Probably what happened is that they thought off-duty soldiers/police were terrorists and opened fire, or they got caught in the crossfire during a shoot-out with paramilitaries.

That's what the chart says... I don't know the story, but they were there for thirty years, the chances of fratricide are quite high.

...

Probably what happened is that they thought off-duty soldiers/police were terrorists and opened fire, or they got caught in the crossfire during a shoot-out with paramilitaries.

Indeed: I have vague recollections of incidents such as these, but can't call to mind any particular instance of it happening.

I'm not arguing with the figures, rather just trying to remember...

"certainly none of the casualties were a result of its fire."

I dont agree, if you fire guns near people they will obviously panic, the gunfire caused people to be crushed, agreed they didn't shot the people but they did do near as bad. :(

"certainly none of the casualties were a result of its fire."

I dont agree, if you fire guns near people they will obviously panic, the gunfire caused people to be crushed, agreed they didn't shot the people but they did do near as bad. :(

Okay 'direct' result of its fire, then?

So with your fast and lose description of the events at Croke Park, were you just making slips, or did you believe them to be the true story of the events there?

Indeed: I have vague recollections of incidents such as these, but can't call to mind any particular instance of it happening.

I'm not arguing with the figures, rather just trying to remember...

Probably winged a few guys who were serving with 14th Intelligence Co.