Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein brands Legacy Bill 'disgraceful amnesty legislation'

Delivering the annual Bloody Sunday Lecture in the city’s Guildhall, Ms McDonald said the new legislation was an attempt by the government to “evade justice”.

She said: “How the powerful try to steal experiences, and steal memory from those who have suffered.

“That’s what successive British governments tried to do for decades.

“That’s what the current Tory government intends with its disgraceful legacy and amnesty legislation.

“The British government’s attempt to substitute the truth for a so-called official narrative, to whitewash Britain’s dirty war, and to evade justice has no support in Ireland.

“Prime Minister Sunak should remember that the powerful have never stopped the Bloody Sunday families remembering the truth.”

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill was most recently debated in Parliament at the Lords on Tuesday (24 January).

Referring to January 30, 1972 – when 14 people were shot and fatally wounded by members of the Parachute Regiment – Ms McDonald said it was a “chapter of profound trauma and searing injustice in the story of our nation,” and added: “It’s aftermath, is the story of the ferocity of the British state brought down upon ordinary families who had suffered unimaginable loss at the hands of the Parachute Regiment.

“Ultimately, it has become the story of those families enduring, refusing to let the massacre of their fourteen loved ones be justified with lies or swept under the carpet by cover-up, black propaganda, and whitewash.”

Commenting on how the events on Bloody Sunday had impacted on her own family, Ms McDonald said: “Sometimes without us even knowing. Sometimes when we least expect it. My daughter, Iseult is aged four.

"She runs into the kitchen. She sobs in distress. She drags me by the hand and points to the television.

"The source of her fear – an episode of ‘Reeling in the Years’ covering 1972.

“My child fully believing the events of Bloody Sunday were unfolding, there and then. Her little mind experiencing the horror, in real time. Blue eyes, wide-eyed, inconsolable.

"It takes time to calm her down”.