The Ballymurphy Precedent: ‘An ongoing injustice’

Chai Brady speaks to director Callum Macrae about the killing of 11 innocent people by British paratroopers in 1971

“Revenge or punishment” are not on the agenda for families of people killed by British troops in Belfast  just months before Derry’s Bloody Sunday, a priest who served in the area at the time has said.

The ‘Ballymurphy Massacre’ took place over August  9-11, 1971, with 11 civilians being killed, most being shot in the back. Among those who were killed were a teenager, a priest and a mother of eight children.

An inquest is due to open into the events on Monday, September 10.

“It is my firm belief, it was then and it is now, that this was a carefully managed series of events which were meant to put terror into the hearts of people…” Fr Des Wilson (93), who was based in Ballymurphy in 1971, told The Irish Catholic.

“It doesn’t matter how much technology you have, if you’re facing a people who want the truth, then the people are going to win,” he said.

Commenting on The Ballymurphy Precedent, a film being broadcast on Channel 4 this weekend, which aims to accurately portray the events that occurred using first-hand accounts, official depositions and autopsy reports, he said it would “bring light” to the reality of peoples’ lives at the time and not a “propaganda version”.

The film’s broadcast comes ahead of the beginning of the inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre.

“The proceedings of an inquest may become well-known or not, but now we’ve got the interest of filmmakers and publicists who are doing their own thing… they’re able to take a look at it after all these years, which they wouldn’t  have been able to some years ago,” Fr Wilson added.

However the naming of thousands of former British soldiers to the coroner days before the inquest is due to begin was dubbed a “dirty trick” to slow down the process, according to Ballymurphy PP Fr Patrick McCafferty.

“It’s almost as if every step going forward is being thwarted or attempted to be thwarted, but the families are determined and they will not be thwarted,” he said.

“They are intent on the vindication of their innocent loved ones who were murdered by the British army.”

Fr McCafferty saw The Ballymurphy Precedent in the cinema with a group of his parishioners on August 30, saying it was “very powerful and moving”.

“And I believe that if you understand what happened in Ballymurphy, you have to reconsider what happened on Bloody Sunday, you have to ask questions about whether or not there was a pattern.”

The Ballymurphy Precident, a film that premiered in the UK and Ireland last week, aims to shed light on the horrors that happened in Ballymurphy, West Belfast, from August 9-11 in 1971.

Director Callum Macrae told The Irish Catholic that in order to understand Bloody Sunday, the events that occurred during the Ballymurphy Massacre less than six months before must be investigated.

“We are told that Bloody Sunday was an isolated incident,” said Mr Macrae.

“Saville correctly said that the victims were innocent, but effectively blamed all on one rogue commander and said that the British government, Stormont and the MOD (Ministry of Defence) could not have predicted and certainly did not plan what happened on Bloody Sunday.”

Sending the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment (1 Para) to Derry, he said, went against the advice of police in Derry and army commanders who warned of the dangers.

In the opening sequence of the new film, a priest tells families their loved ones were “murdered in cold blood” in a memorial Mass – setting the tone for the harrowing depictions of events pieced together by first-hand accounts, official depositions and autopsy reports.

Altogether 11 people were killed, several were shot in the back as they ran from gunshots and one man died of a heart attack after being confronted by members of 1 Para.

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It began with the introduction of internment in Northern Ireland – the imprisonment of individuals without trial or due process – by then prime minister Brian Faulkner under the auspices of the Special Powers Act. After the RUC supplied a list of suspects, British troops began raids in several predominantly Catholic areas, and one of these was Ballymurphy.

Speaking in the film, Patsy Mullan, the sibling of a priest who was killed on August 9, said he was supposed to visit him in Belfast that day, but his brother told him not to come because there was “trouble”.

Eyewitnesses say that after loyalist attacks in the neighbourhood people were fleeing across an area of wasteland in front of Springfield Park where Fr Hugh Mullan (38) lived. That year 7,000 refugees are said to have fled Northern Ireland to the Republic in search of safety. Soldiers from Para 1 were stationed in newly-constructed flats in Springmartin overlooking the park.

The priest, then curate of the Corpus Christi chapel, is believed to have died of blood loss 20 minutes after being shot in a field. He was going to the aid of Bobby Clarke – who said he was helping children get across the field – who had already suffered a gunshot wound.

Waving a white hand-kerchief, the priest entered the area of land. He anointed and administered last rites to Mr Clarke. He was shot twice in the back while attempting to leave the area according to witnesses. It has been recorded that he called army officials in Ballymurphy to let them know he was going out to help and injured man.

At that time another man ran out to help, Francis Quinn (19), and was shot in the back of the head and died.

Mr Macrae said: “Fr Hugh Mullen, like several other of the victims, was behaving out of an entirely selfless desire to help. He was a man who was going out to help out of a sense of humanity.

“And he went out, into an area which had been fired on by British forces, he went to help a man who had been shot, he went out waving a white flag and he had been shot not just once, but twice.

“I think absolutely he was heroic, as were a number of people who died, the second person who died had also gone out to help an injured man.”

There had also been tensions rising on the Springfield Road not far away, earlier that day.

Many of the internees had been taken to a building commandeered by the army known as the Henry Teggart Memorial Hall, which was under attack supposedly from people looking for their friends and family members who had been taken in raids.

Loyalists arrived from Springmartin and clashes began.

At that time in an area called Manse Field near the barracks, Daniel Teggart (44) was shot 14 times and Noel Phillips (20) was also killed by military who opened fire in the area.

A third man, Joseph Murphy (41) was shot and brought into army custody. He said in hospital he had been beaten and shot again by army personnel while in custody – he later died in hospital. His body was exhumed in 2015 and a second bullet was found in his body, which activists say corroborate his story.

20-year-old Noel was said to be screaming for help, and Briege Voyle, the daughter of Joan Connelly (50) – who was the only woman to be killed – said her mother went out to help him.

Joan was shot in the face and several other places and later died of her wounds. Her body was left in the field for much longer than the others who were shot.

“When Joan Connelly, the only women who died, the mother of eight, went out she was going out to help someone who had died. These were not just innocent people these were brave, decent, honourable people,” said Callum Macrae.

Not
 filmed

Making the film was not easy, according to the director, as unlike Bloody Sunday in Derry, none of the events were filmed.

“And indeed, that’s one of the reasons that nobody outside Ireland knows about it, people in Belfast know the story very well, but in mainland Britain nobody knows about it at all. The problem is how do you show that?” he said.

“I wanted to show exactly what happened, I needed to show what the locations looked like at the time, I needed to be accurate about exactly what happened, and I didn’t want to sanitise the horror of it but equally I didn’t want it to be gratuitous and disrespectful to those who died.”

In the end Mr Macrae decided to reflect what happened as if it had been filmed through a drone, or UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), which is often used in modern warfare to kill enemy targets.

Depicting the events as if seen from a drone in 1971 creates a “dispassionate but chilling and quite disturbing” atmosphere, he said.

By using actual drone footage of how the area looks like today, then looking at old town planning maps and using CGI to recreate the areas as they would have looked at the time in each of the locations, the film attempts to depict how each of the events occurred including where people ran and where they fell.

The killing resumed on August 10 when Edward Doherty (28) was shot once in the back while standing close to a barricade in the Whiterock Road area.

Later that day John Laverty (20) was also shot in the back in the Whiterock Road area.

Joseph Corr (43) was shot and killed during the same incident and died on August 27.

On August 11 it was also documented that youth worker Paddy McCarthy (44) was challenged by soldiers and died from a heart attack after allegedly being put through the ordeal of a mock execution.

He was said to be bringing bread and milk to families in the area.

On the same day, father-of-two John McKerr (49) was shot in the head close to Corpus Christi Church and died on August 20.

An official inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre is due to begin on September 10.

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Speaking of the timing of the film’s release Mr Macrae said: “It’s an extremely important time and it’s important for a number of reasons. It’s important simply because it’s an ongoing injustice, the criticism of the victims, the blaming of the victims, and attempting to attribute to them the responsibility for their own deaths is an ongoing offence against decency and an ongoing offence against progress towards peace and reconciliation.

“Secondly, it’s important because we are seeing calls from senior levels of the army for restrictions and an end to investigations into these past events.

“My argument is that the senior commanders of the British army should be welcoming investigations and welcoming efforts to establish the truth, I would say not only should they be welcoming them but it is their professional duty to energetically pursue the truth and get to the bottom of what happened in these events, and if the army did wrong, confront what the army did and admit what the army did, because if they don’t do that then the climate of impunity and the apparent lack of command and control at the very least appears to be a contributory factor – and may well be – what led to the tragedy at Ballymurphy and the tragedy at Bloody Sunday and if that is the case then it is their professional duty to investigate that to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

He continued saying that if you “allow that climate to continue” and don’t rectify the mistakes made during those events you allow the possibility that they will happen again and that the “relatives are entitled to have the truth acknowledged, they are entitled to truth”.

Mr Macrae added that they have all been “brave, determined and dignified” in their pursuit of that truth.

Sectarianism

Personally, Mr Macrae grew up in Edinburgh, in Scotland, as the son of a Presbyterian minister – in a family who had five generations of Presbyterian ministers – and was exposed to the sectarianism that existed in the country. This gave him an interest in the political situation in Ireland.

After hearing about Ballymurphy he said: “The more I looked into the story, and the more I heard relatives tell me what happened and then the more I checked out the evidence, the more I began to realise just how significant and important this was.

“The fact that it was important not just because it was a terrible tragedy of what happened to these families, not just because these were innocent people who were killed and then had their names maligned – which remains an ongoing injustice, this isn’t just an historical issue – this is an ongoing injustice and it remains an ongoing block on the road to the peace and reconciliation in the North of Ireland.”

“This is incredibly important on that level, but it’s also incredibly important in terms of understanding – and I began to realise it tells us an awful lot about how the war developed.”

Details of film screenings can be found at http://theballymurphyprecedent.com/ and a shorter version of the film will be screened on Saturday, September 8, on Channel 4 at 9 pm.