Bloody Sunday 50: ‘Hearing my father cry brought the horror fully home’

Mickey McKinney looks back to 1972, the killing of his brother, Willie, and the long-lasting impact it had on his family.
Mickey McKinney.Mickey McKinney.
Mickey McKinney.

One of Mickey McKinney’s enduring memories of Bloody Sunday is hearing his father cry for the first time, writes Sean McLaughlin.

“It’s a sound I’ll never forget,” he remembers. “I can still hear it to this day. I’ve never heard someone cry so hard. It was terrible. Awful.”

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It was the morning after the 1972 Bogside massacre and Mickey was upstairs in the family home at Westway in Creggan, struggling himself to come to terms with the gut-wrenching reality that his older brother, Willie (27), had been gunned down alongside other innocent men in the killing ground of Glenfada Park.

1970... Willie at work in the printing department of the Derry Journal.1970... Willie at work in the printing department of the Derry Journal.
1970... Willie at work in the printing department of the Derry Journal.

“I think it was hearing my father’s sobs that really brought home the enormity of what had happened. Willie’s death wrecked my parents. They were never the same. I mean, how could they be? A son, who they idolised, who we all loved, had suddenly been stolen from them in the cruellest of ways. It was never the same again.”

Over the past half century, Mickey McKinney has become one of the figureheads of the Bloody Sunday families’ campaign for truth and justice. What happened in the Bogside on January 30, 1972 - and the impact it had on Derry and its people - has, he readily admits, “become a way of life” for him.

“It’s been there all the time,” he says. “24/7, as they say. It’s been part of my life for so long.”

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Mickey’s memories of that fateful day fifty years ago remain clear to this day - albeit he has better recall of some incidents more than others.

Mickey McKinney has been a stalwart of the campaign for truth and justice. He’s pictured here with other relatives and Foyle MP John Hume at Downing Street in 1997.Mickey McKinney has been a stalwart of the campaign for truth and justice. He’s pictured here with other relatives and Foyle MP John Hume at Downing Street in 1997.
Mickey McKinney has been a stalwart of the campaign for truth and justice. He’s pictured here with other relatives and Foyle MP John Hume at Downing Street in 1997.

He was on the march himself with friends.

Before leaving the house to join up with anti-internment marchers at Bishop’s Field, Mickey can recall Willie - always interested in music - playing his record collection.

“He particularly loved Irish music as well as Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash. Strangely enough, and I’ve never talked about this publicly before, one of the records he played that afternoon was ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’, by Johnny Cash. To this day, I still can’t hear that song without feeling goosebumps.”

Mickey remembers that Willie took his cine camera with him on the march and actually recalls seeing him, in a tree by the side of the road, filming the march as it made its way down Southway out of Creggan. It was the last time Mickey was to see his brother alive.

Willie McKinney.Willie McKinney.
Willie McKinney.
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Mickey’s recollections of subsequent events in the Bogside chime with the accounts of so many others on the march that day - rioting at an army barricade across William Street, rumours of gunfire, speculation that people had been shot, the firing of gas and, then, suddenly, out of nowhere, the arrival of army vehicles in the Bogside. It was then that, for the first time, panic set in.

A short time later, Mickey found himself in an aunt’s house in St Columb’s Wells.

“People were seeking shelter in any houses where the doors were open,” he says. “Everyone was running scared. I was standing in the hallway, my view of events framed by the doorway. My aunt’s house was jam packed with people taking cover. The word was that five or six people were dead by the ‘phone box at the high flats. I remember my brother, George, arriving on the scene. He was in a panic and urging us not to let anyone else into the house. He was obviously frightened.”

Unaware of the gravity of the situation, Mickey then went to evening Mass in St Mary’s Church where a friend told him that at least six people had been killed.

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“Pat Clarke [a former work colleague of Willie’s] later told me he saw me at Mass and knew by looking at me that I was unaware that Willie had been killed. He hadn’t the heart to tell me. He was the one who brought the news of Willie’s death to my family. When I arrived home after Mass, Father McLaughlin’s car was parked in the street. I didn’t think it had anything to do with my family. When I went inside, my father told me that Willie was dead. I fell to my knees and broke down crying.”

Willie’s death, says Mickey, “completely wrecked” his parents - to such an extent that there was never any conversation about his brother in the family home. “It was just too painful,” he says. “Too much heartache, particularly for my mother and father.”

Turning to the legacy of Bloody Sunday and the subsequent long campaign for truth and justice, Mickey is in no doubt that the determination and commitment of the families - “just a small group of ordinary people” - forced the British government to not only set up the Saville Inquiry but to issue an apology for what its troops did in Derry in January 1972.

Mickey remembers June 10, 2010 - the day Lord Saville’s report was published - as an “important milestone” in the campaign for truth and justice.

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“Just a group of ordinary people took on the might of the British government and were vindicated. I didn’t need a report to tell me that my brother was innocent - I always knew that - but what we achieved cannot be underestimated. Our determination to achieve our demands - which, let’s remember, continues - sends out a message that people with a just cause can succeed.”