Trade unionists urge people to join Bloody Sunday march for justice

Chair Niall McCarroll said: “We should keep in mind that more than half the Bloody Sunday victims were members of trade unions.

“Calling for the full truth about Bloody Sunday is exactly in line with the long trade union struggle against abuses of power, whether locally or in the wider world.

“Without the truth about State crimes there cannot be justice for ordinary citizens.”

Mr. McCarroll said the DTUC will be marching, not just in solidarity with the Bloody Sunday families, but also ‘in defiance of the rotten capitalist system which can’t afford to tell the truth about its own role whether in relation to Bloody Sunday or to any other injustice’.

He said: “Today’s struggles are no different to the struggles of half a century ago. The political classes try to silence resistance through anti-trade union laws and other measures - up to and including mass murder - designed to prevent us challenging their cosy way of life.”

He said it is the role of unions to stand up for working-class people and anyone else ‘ground down by the State’.

“We are not neutral when it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or religious hatred. We cannot be neutral when unarmed people are shot down in the street by forces of the State. For our own sake, we have to know which side we are on.

“As we march, we will remember also the other victims of the same Parachute Regiment, in Ballymurphy five months before Bloody Sunday and on the Shankill Road eight months afterwards.”