18th June 2010

Black for Bloody Sunday

There is much that is old-fashioned about the House of Commons: customs, clothes, the way people address each other.  As I have mentioned before, we new MPs are beginning – bit by bit – to learn why these traditions exist.  Often there is a good explanation for some bizarre ritual, like the fact that in the Chamber all MPs must address the Speaker and not each other, ensuring that things never get too personal even during the most heated debates.

But there are some things that appear now to be obsolete.  For instance, in the House of Commons Library there is a desk with black bordered headed letter paper.  It has been many decades since people wrote letters of condolence on black bordered paper and I’ve certainly never seen it in the shops.  But here it is, no doubt left over from a bulk purchase made many years ago and never since used up.  When I saw it, I wondered how long the pile of paper would remain there before someone removed it, deciding that it was never likely to be touched.

There is something faintly antique about the whole atmosphere of this new Parliament.  The last time there were Liberals in the cabinet and a true coalition formed the government was during the War.  The Chamber is regularly full of MPs, something not seen for an age, and the big discussions we are having differ little from the debates of a century ago: foreign campaigns, poverty, public debt.  These are old challenges – it’s just the people who are new.

Yet much as the buildings, the customs and this Coalition might conjure up a former time, none of can have been prepared for how immediate the events of Bloody Sunday, 30^th January 1972, felt on this Tuesday afternoon, when the prime minister revealed the contents of Lord Saville’s report.  Although the Chamber was packed, Mr Cameron was heard in complete – almost fearful – silence: every single death, he said starkly, was completely unjustified.

With all doubt removed, it is possible to understand the full horror that unfolded in Derry that day.  For us it is something we might more easily understand, as Ipswich is a similar size to Derry.

Imagine a march, roughly the size of an average Portman Road crowd, making its way through the town.  The people are protesting against discrimination, against imprisonment without trial, against a political system that favours one religious community over another.  Imagine the march going up Princes Street to the Cornhill but being stopped at Giles Circus: stopped by barricades manned by soldiers.  As the crowd is diverted there are scuffles.  Stones are thrown.  The fighting turns into a small riot.  Soldiers go over the barricades.  Rioters flee.  A soldier takes aim at one of them and fires.  The youth falls.  He is seventeen.  The shooting does not stop.  A man, my age, is shot in the back as he crawls to safety.  Someone waving a white handkerchief goes to help him.  He is shot too, in the head.  And so it goes on, until ten others lie dead.

It is easy to understand why Mark Durkan, Derry’s MP, very nearly broke down as he listed the names of those who had fallen that day.  Not only had his community lost thirteen young men, their horrific story had for thirty-eight years been branded a lie by the British state.

No wonder Mark Durkan’s hands shook terribly, revealing the notes from which he spoke.  He had written them on House of Commons paper, bordered in black.