Over the course of forty eight hours, following the introduction of Internment without Trial, the British Parachute Regiment gunned down eleven people, including a Catholic priest, on the streets of Ballymurphy. These wouldn’t be the only fatalities in the city over those two days.
A year later the same regiment was deployed to Derry City, where they murdered fourteen civilians on an anti-Internment march, the day became known as “Bloody Sunday”.
Also a year on from the slaughter in Ballymurphy, it’s neighboring area of Springhill would have a similar horror inflicted upon it after British troops shot a further five people, another Catholic priest among the dead.
Last Friday I joined survivors of the Ballymurphy Massacre and the families of those killed at Belfast’s High Court for a short hearing.
The families have been campaigning for inquests into the murders of the their loved ones for many years now. The story of their relatives deaths, its impact on them and indeed on the broader community, is finally coming to light, thanks to the strength, determination and dignity of these campaigning families, their legal representatives and that small band of investigative journalists pursuing the truth behind the headlines.
It was clear that Friday, with a commitment from Justice Keegan to start the process of laying out a clear timescale for the opening of the inquest, was an emotional experience for the families.
As I sat behind the families and their legal team the atmosphere was palpable; their overarching loss, their dogged focus on getting to the truth, their steadfastness is facing down attempts by the British MOD to, in all too typical fashion, obstruct, delay and potentially try and thwart the families mission all electrified the room. 
Just a few months earlier, while also sitting in Belfast’s High Court, only this time with the equally determined and inspiring families of those killed in Loughinisland, I first heard the term “slow waltz”, used to describe the tactics employed by the British in relation to legacy cases; the deliberately slow, drip-feeding of sketchy and at times totally irrelevant information. I sensed this familiar obfuscation had been deployed in regards to this process.
On Friday I also go the sense that Judge Siobhán Keegan was all too alert to this particular British Government dance.
In the midst of the atmosphere, emotion, tension and expectation of Friday, what I found a strange but surprisingly positive contribution, was a Judge engaging directly with families, she wore her own clothes, not the familiar garb of the British Judiciary, she took questions from people who, although taking on the might of Britain’s military and political apparatus for years, aren’t lawyers themselves. It was a different experience.
I found Judge Keegan scathing in her criticism of the MOD’s familiar choreography, while inquests could not begin on the day, as hoped for by the families, Keegan was laying a marker in what I felt were absolutely no uncertain terms, they would be happening sooner rather than later and that the curtain was beginning to descend on the MOD’s latest dance.
That is the hope anyway, it remains to be seen.
The Ballymurphy Families will head back to the now familiar surroundings of the High Court later today for another preliminary hearing with Justice Keegan. They are hopeful more details about process and timelines for the inquests will emerge.
As we left the court on Friday the families were preparing for the screening of “Massacre at Ballymurphy” on Channel 4 that same weekend. A detailed investigation into the murder of their loved ones and a documentary that goes some way in exposing the British Army policy of victim blaming, facilitated by an all too compliant and partisan media. I have invited the makers of this film and the relatives to a host a dedicated screening for Deputies and Senators at Leinster House.
You should watch this film.
Just like with the Loughinisland case, the Ballymurphy Families know the tricks, they know the experiences of their own and other families campaigns, they are hopeful for a new light to be shone, not just on the past and the story of the Ballymurphy Massacre, but on the future, towards truth and justice for them and their loved ones and for the families they’ve inspired by their courageous and unwavering stand.
At 2:30pm today the families will walk from City Hall to Court.
You should walk with them.
Seanad Scéal 