To mark the first anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry, Bernadette Devlin has issued the following appeal for international solidarity actions in support of the irish struggle on the weekend of 27-28 January.
Sunday, 28th January 1973 will be the anniversary of Derry's Bloody Sunday.
On January 30th last, British paracommandos murdered thirteen peaceful demonstrators during an attack on a mass civil rights procession in Derry.
The murder of this thirteen, and all those victims of the British Crown Forces who have died before or since then, is part of a calculated policy of the British government to destroy the combativity and confidence of the nationalist population in the North of Ireland. Specifically, it was a last desperate attempt to shore up the corrupt Tory-Unionist regime at Stormont.
It failed. Stormont has been suspended.
But British aggression in Ireland continues. Since the abolition of Stormont, the British propaganda service has attempted to give the impression to the world that Britain is playing the role of arbitrator between two warring Irish tribes. Whitelaw, the British Gauleiter, is depicted as a gentle and impartial referee.
The reality is very different.
The essential conflict in Ireland is between the Irish people and British imperialism, supported by native reaction. The specific form it takes is an attempt by Britain to suppress the struggle of the nationalist-Catholic population, and to crush its vanguard, the Irish Republican Army.
What this means is the continuation of concentration camps, the imprisonment and torture of thousands of political prisoners, daily harassment and mass intimidation of the total Catholic population -highlighted by the situation in West Belfast, where over half of the total male population has been arrested, questioned, or had their homes raided by the British Army. When people in this area talk of the British Army of Occupation, it is no idle slogan. It is the literal truth. Andersonstown today is as brutally and effectively occupied as Warsaw was under the Nazis But the people have not been cowed. By demonstrations, by armed struggle, by rent and rate strikes, they display their continued combativity.
They must not fight alone. The international anti-imperialist movement must rally to the defence of the heroic people of Ireland.
The week-end of 27th-28th January 1973 provides an opportunity for a worldwide week-end of activity to focus world attention on this struggle, and I appeal to all revolutionary groups, to the student movement, and to the movement throughout the world to organise on that week-end, in every major city in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa, demonstrations, protest meetings, pickets and other activities, to demand the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, self-determination for the Irish people, the ending of internment and release of all Irish political prisoners, to show their solidarity with those socialist and republican forces struggling against British imperialism in Ireland.
Just before Christmas, the Government finally gave its blessing to the closure and development plans of the British Steel Co
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15. 3.55pm. Derry, Bloody Sunday