Originally Posted by
SWv2
Harsh, in the extreme.
It is an incident for which your so called Great Britain should forever hang it's metaphorical head in shame.
"The civil rights march on Bloody Sunday was not, in fact, illegal and the British armed forces had no legal power to arrest anyone on the march, the inquiry has been told.
In a lengthy written submission to the Saville tribunal, the organisers of the march, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), allege that the then Stormont administration failed to give proper consideration to the legal situation.
NICRA has asked the inquiry to invite the former attorney general to the Stormont government of 1972, Sir Basil Kelly, to make a statement about whether he was, at any time, consulted on the legal aspects of the march and, if so, what advice he gave.
The march held on January 30th, 1972, was organised primarily as a protest against internment, which had been introduced the previous August. The submission now made on behalf of those who were executive committee members of NICRA in 1972 says it has invariably, but wrongly, been assumed that the march was the subject of an order banning all processions and marches.
However, no copy of any relevant ministerial order has been uncovered, it points out, and no order was promulgated at the time.
In the absence of any formal instrument under the hand of the relevant minister (then the unionist politician, Mr John Taylor), no order was legally in force, NICRA argues. "The march . . . was not, in fact, banned, even if the citizenry of Derry thought that it was defying a ministerial order in joining the march."
The submission notes the inquiry's solicitors have acknowledged that every effort has been made to discover a copy of the order, without success. Although it was an executive act of the Stormont government, there is no record of it in the Public Records Office in Belfast.
There is also nothing in the archives of the Widgery tribunal to indicate that a ministerial order was produced to show that the march was illegal."