New edition of ‘Sunday’ book that helped spark Saville Inquiry

Thirteen people were killed on Bloody Sunday. Another man died later.

Based on ignored eyewitness testimonies of events in Derry’s Bogside on January 30, 1972, Don Mullan’s ‘Eyewitness Bloody Sunday’ helped spark what became the longest-running and most expensive public inquiry in British legal history.

The new 25th anniversary edition of the book includes contributions from Michael Mansfield QC and local solicitor, Des Doherty, who represented some of the families at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

It also features discussions on the making of the movie, ‘Bloody Sunday’, and the mystery of what Mullan refers to as Derry’s ‘grassy knoll’ – provocatively questioning if the Inquiry actually resolved the suspicion that three of the Bloody Sunday victims were shot by a British Army sniper.

The author - who hails from Derry’s Creggan and was himself an eyewitness to the terrible events in the Bogside half a century ago - says the power of ‘Eyewitness Bloody Sunday’ is that it is “a community testimony”.

“Its power is amplified by the consistency of the testimonies - one hundred published in the book - some four hundred others, equally consistent, which are part of the Bloody Sunday archive,” adds the Derry native. “Testimonies that were deliberately ignored by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Widgery, in 1972, but which proved critical in forcing an historic second public inquiry in 1998.”

Don Mullan believes the testimonies featured in the book are so powerful for two very compelling reasons.

“They record the traumatic events within hours of their happening, leaving a fingerprint of factual truth that even the most resistant establishment, well versed and practicsed in the cunning of cover-up, could no longer ignore.

'Eyewitness Bloody Sunday', by Don Mullan.

“The second reason is because it is simply not possible to get a whole community to agree on a collective lie.”

The book, he believes, is testament to a “fierce and unbreakable” community spirit that grew through adversity.

“At the heart of hard-won victories are the Bloody Sunday families and wounded. They never gave up on their singular focus of having the dead and wounded declared, as they most certainly were, entirely innocent.”

In the foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of ‘Eyewitness Bloody Sunday’, Michael Mansfield QC says Don Mullan’s book “rests squarely in the annals of history as one of the principal catalysts for a fresh public inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday.”

Mullan’s chronicle of eyewitness testimony, says the barrister, makes a major and timely contribution to understanding and remembering the lessons of the past rather than having to relive them.

He adds: “The magnitude of the judicial blot [Widgery] and now the thought of immunity demonstrate both the relevance and the genesis of this work.

“A community overlooked then and disregarded now. Thirteen unarmed innocents were shot dead on the day and a further fourteen were wounded. There were roughly 500 eyewitness accounts, of which only 15 were called before the Widgery Inquiry. These figures alone tell you all you need to know about the sham exercise carried out with undue haste in the weeks that followed the killings in 1972.”

Michael Mansfield writes that he had the privilege of being amongst the first to see the product of Don Mullan’s endeavours to set the record straight when the Saville Report was published in June 2010.

“We were inside the Guildhall,” he recalls. “The tension was tangible. There were audible nervous crowds outside in the square. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was due to address the House of Commons around lunchtime. The report was voluminous but had to be distilled in double-quick time. No-one could afford to make a mistaken assessment or draw an erroneous conclusion.

“Slowly, as the minutes ticked by, each reader was discovering the same finding - unjustified murder. It could not be communicated at that point to the outside world until the public announcement. Instead, a quivering hand was squeezed through a tiny window aperture, enough to signal a thumbs-up to a tumult of cheers.”

Don Mullan concludes that, while the 1st Battallion Parachute Regiment may have succeeded in traumatising the Derry community, “they failed to break us”.

“Instead, they succeeded only in strengthening our resolve to hold them and their government accountable. And that we did, despite their attempts to obfuscate and weasel.”

○ ‘Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: 25th anniversary edition’, by Don Mullan, is available now from bookshops and online at www.redstripepress.com