Bloody Sunday 50th anniversary: ‘We didn’t just lose a wee brother, we lost a generation’

Jackie, a keen boxer who had dreams of joining the Merchant Navy, was just 17-years-old when, unarmed and running away from soldiers, he was shot dead.

He is believed to be the first person killed on Bloody Sunday and a photograph of the dying young man being carried behind Fr (later Bishop) Edward Daly as he waved a white flag, is one of the enduring images of the atrocity.

Jackie’s family joined with the many others in seeking justice for their ‘wain’, and his sister, Kay, told the ‘Journal’ how time has not eased their devastation and she has felt ‘every one’ of the 50 years.

“I am 75 years old now and it would be my dear wish that, somewhere, the person that gunned our wain down - I mean, he was a 17 year old boy who was doing nothing wrong and I’d say the boy who shot him might not be much older than himself - why cant he hold his hands up and say: ‘Look, I did this, I shouldn’t have done this?’ and that’s all it would take. But, I’m afraid they buried the lie that long they believe their own lies.”

She continued: “The way it is, our wee Jackie was buried 50 years ago - it would help us to lay him to rest. As of now, we’ve never been able to lay him to rest, and with this outstanding, will we ever be able to? Without individualising any one person, the atrocity that day was horrendous, with the killings and the injured, it was just unbelievable and to think they’re going to walk away from all that is just a hard pill to swallow. It’s our dear prayer every day and my daddy always said that, as these boys gets older, their consciences will get to them and they will feel the need to unburden themselves. I just hope and pray for a miracle that it possibly might happen. But, 50 years down the line, I think if you’ve buried a sin you’ve committed, it’s going to be very hard to put your hands up and say: ‘It was wrong and I did it, I admit it’ and that’s all it would take.”

What does give Kay and her family, as well as other families, some peace as they reach the 50th anniversary, is the knowledge that they ensured everyone knew their loved ones were completely innocent.

“With the 50th anniversary, I’m devastated, to be honest, but the way I’m feeling is this; it took us 38 years, the Widgery Tribunal was binned and we got a new inquiry and that was so important because they had sullied all their good names at the time and their lies were spread immediately. How dare they sully our loved ones’ names? And it took us 38 years to prove they were 100% innocent. Believe me, it was a very hard pill to swallow and it was so important that their names were restored.”

Jackie’s death and the years that followed, were ‘really, really hard’ and Kay told how ‘it doesn’t get any easier with the passage of time’.

“We achieved what we set out to do with the campaigning and we got Widgery threw in the bin and that’s the way it should have been from the word go.

“We got the new inquiry, which was tremendous in itself. It’s an achievement for Derry people, who started off sitting around a table in a cold room, to achieve that eventually. It took so long, but it was important to have their names cleared and it proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that everyone was innocent and were not doing anything at the time they were shot. That was very, very important.

“And, you’d imagine that after that being proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, that prosecutions would have followed automatically.

“But, as we now know, that wasn’t to happen. If someone does something wrong, they stand up and apologise. It has been proven beyond a doubt they were innocent. If someone is innocent of doing something while they were gunned down in the street,then someone is guilty and someone has to answer for it. It’s really hard.”

‘We didn’t just lose a wee brother, we lost a generation’

When Kay Duddy thinks of her brother, Jackie, she sees a ‘typical teen,’ who went out that day ‘for a bit of craic’.

But she also thinks of a Jackie she’ll never know - a man in his 30s, 40s and older, who may have married and had children and who had his whole, unmapped life ahead.

“We didn’t just lose a wee brother, we lost a generation. I might have had another sister-in-law, I might have had more nieces and nephews. Jackie might have got into the Olympics, turned professional. There are so many unanswered questions out there. Not only one life did we lose, or lives, we lost a full generation that awful day.”

Bloody Sunday not only took lives but also changed the course of the years ahead for those who lost loved ones, who were injured or who saw the horrific events unfold.

“It’s amazing how something like that can devastate your whole life. Without individualising Jackie’s death, he, because of Bishop Daly, God love him, and the white hankie, became nearly like the ‘icon’ of Bloody Sunday. And you’d see it nearly daily, him getting carried and people trying to get to safety.

“Bishop Daly (who, at the time, was Father Daly) witnessed him being gunned down that day and said that, from the word go, he (Jackie) was doing absolutely nothing. He went out to help him, with the other people and was able to give him the Last Rites. Apparently, Jackie said: ‘Don’t tell my mammy,’ which was surprising as mammy had died of Leukaemia in 1968, which was strange. Maybe she was waiting for him with open arms.”

Bishop Daly became a close friend of the Duddys and Kay told how it was also ‘so important’ to him to ‘address the injustice’. “That day, on the Guildhall steps, on June 15, 2010, only then did he realise we still had the hankie, as it had been returned with Jackie’s clothes and he shed a wee tear. He was so relieved that what he had been saying all along, that they were totally innocent, had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Kay said sun shone that day as they left the Guildhall, after the Saville report was published, “and all I could think was of was that it was like a big, black cloud had been lifted. I remember saying: ‘they’re shining down on us today’.”