2019

Jail Jackson

The main focus of the 2019 Bloody Sunday march is on our demand for “Sir” Michael Jackson to be jailed.

Yes, the paratroopers who fired the shots must be brought to book. But the greater guilt lies with the top brass.

Jackson, in the Bogside as second-in-command on the day, should be charged with murder and with perverting the law by procuring the cover-up.

By the time he appeared before the second Bloody Sunday Inquiry, under Lord Saville in 2003, Jackson had risen through the ranks to become Chief of the General Staff, Britain’s top soldier. Following the publication of the inquiry’s report in June 2010, Tory prime minister David Cameron couldn’t have described the Derry massacre as “unjustified and unjustifiable” if the finger of blame had been pointed at Jackson.

Saville damned rank-and-file paratroopers and let the upper echelons off scot-free. The same old story.  We owe it to the victims not to let this stand.

We place Bloody Sunday in the context of Ballymurphy, the Shankill, Loughinisland, McGurk’s Bar etc. And we relate it, too, to State assaults on citizens elsewhere: the collusion by cover-up in the killing of Liverpool fans at Hillsborough; the relentless massacre of young black people by police in the US; the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli state; the persecution of the Rohingya in Myannmar; and the drowning in the Mediterranean of refugees fleeing poverty and war.

The world is awash with blood. We march for the cleansing of war and injustice from the earth.

The Bloody Sunday March is not party-political. Everyone is entitled to their own perspective. We urge people of all persuasions to join with us once again on Sunday, January 27th to signal that we won’t stop campaigning until the families of all who have lost their lives to State violence have truth and justice.

We want Jackson jailed, not for revenge or retaliation but because when the State kills its citizens it must be held to account.

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Events 2019