Bloody Sunday 50: Bernadette McAliskey tells rally the events of January 30, 1972 will 'never be forgotten'

Bernadette McAliskey told a massive attendance that had turned out for the Bloody Sunday March Committee anniversary march on Sunday that the events of January 30, 1972 will 'never be forgotten’.
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“I’d like to say to everybody who has turned out today - thank you very much. This has to be one of the biggest crowds, after 50 years, that have attended this march which has gone on every year,” she observed after the commemoration reached Free Derry corner.

“I see young people here. I’m so glad to see so many young female faces here. There is one thing that is certain - that Bloody Sunday will never be forgotten and that the lessons learned from Bloody Sunday will never be forgotten," she said.

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Delivering one of the main orations Ms. McAliskey painfully recalled the minutes and hours after she was forced to interrupt her speech on the day of Bloody Sunday.

Bernadette McAliskey vowed that ‘Bloody Sunday will never be forgotten’ addressing a massive attendance that had turned out for the Bloody Sunday March Committee 50th anniversary march on Sunday.Bernadette McAliskey vowed that ‘Bloody Sunday will never be forgotten’ addressing a massive attendance that had turned out for the Bloody Sunday March Committee 50th anniversary march on Sunday.
Bernadette McAliskey vowed that ‘Bloody Sunday will never be forgotten’ addressing a massive attendance that had turned out for the Bloody Sunday March Committee 50th anniversary march on Sunday.

“I remember Nell McCafferty’s house. I was an MP so I was pulling a bit of rank on the phone and saying - for all the value that it was - that I’m a public representative and I demand to know [the names of the casualties].

“I’d been ringing the morgue at the hospital and people were saying that three or four people had definitely been shot. I remember at that time saying, ‘I need to know. Families need to be made aware.

"You can’t just be sending people to go to the morgue and them not knowing what to expect’. The person on the other end of the phone started to read out names and I started to write them down - one, two, three. I’ll never forget it. Four, five...and he kept going.

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“I didn’t get to thirteen but I got to seven or eight just writing them down and everybody crammed into Nell’s mother’s hall and standing out around the door in total shock.

“I was afraid to say the names out loud because I didn’t know if any of the people standing there belonged to the people whose names were being written down.

“I don’t know how any of us kept our head at that time.”

Speaking with a black flag billowing above Free Derry corner behind her, she said: “Bloody Sunday wasn’t just about the people who were killed. It wasn’t just about this city and it wasn’t just the first of many, many heart-breaking, multiple deaths and killings that broke our hearts over 50 years.

“This was different. This was a day on which nobody went berserk. Nobody lost the run of themselves in the British army. This was the day when the change of British government policy, which had started weeks, if not months, before came to fruition on these streets.

“Internment had been introduced to try and break the people. They had responded with more marches.”