Cairde Na hÉireann

The Bloody Sunday families would like to thank you all for coming on the march today and for your continuing support over the last 36 years. We greatly appreciate the fact that even through all the years of harassment and intimidation, when it was neither popular nor fashionable to highlight the injustice of Bloody Sunday, you continued to show solidarity with us in our quest for truth and justice.

Thank you.

We hope that the year that lies ahead will see the end of our campaign.

We expect to receive the report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry quite soon, within the next few months.

We expect Saville to deliver the truth, not a watered down version of it, but the full truth as we, and all of you, know it.

We did not accept the lies of Widgery in 1972 and we will not accept any lies now. Saville must deliver the truth. It is plain and simple – nothing but the truth will be acceptable to us.

And the truth is that all who were on the march, the 14 murdered and the 14 wounded, are innocent. Those who planned and carried out the massacre are guilty.

We do not need this report to tell us this truth, we already know it. We need it to tell the British state the truth, because it is the British state that continues to deny the truth.

When the Bloody Sunday Inquiry completes its report it will be presented to Shaun Woodward, the British secretary of state for the north. This may become one more part of our long struggle.

Shaun Woodward is a representative of the British government, and we ask why the British government, or anyone else, should get to see this report before we do?

If the British government have this report, we do not believe that the Ministry of Defence, who represent the soldiers and officers involved in murder here on Bloody Sunday, will not have it also.

Why should they get to see this report before us, and get time to prepare their spin and lies for their tame journalists, while we may only have a few hours to see the report before we have to respond?

We are not asking for any special favours here, or special treatment, just for what we and others have been asking for for years, equality and justice. We have a right to see the report at the same time as everyone else, and have the same amount of time to study it and decide for ourselves if it is acceptable, if it can be regarded as fair and final.

We demand that all interested parties get to see this report at the same time, that there should be no advantage for any interested party just because they are the British government.

When Tony Blair announced the Saville Inquiry on 29 January 1998, no one expected that 10 years on we would still not have seen the end of our journey. We hope we do not have much further to go.

But we know that there are others who still have a long journey ahead of them. Events in Ballymurphy in August 1971, where the same battalion of the parachute regiment murdered 11 people in three days, will be highlighted during the commemoration this week. The experiences of many other families will also be discussed. They, and many, many others, are suffering the same as us. We hope that you give all of them the same support that you have given to us. We will give them all the support that we can, and we know that you will too.

The British state is responsible for many injustices in the north of Ireland. They must all be resolved.

Cairde Na hEireann, 260 Gallowgate, Glasgow. Tel 0141 552 8554