Say what others won’t: that Bloody Friday was a massacre carried out by the IRA

The BBC Radio Ulster news at 9am, 10am and 11am bulletins yesterday led off their reports on the Bloody Friday anniversary with powerful accounts of the horror of that IRA atrocity.

By the midday and 1pm news, however, the key line on the radio reports of the 50th anniversary was an IRA apology for Bloody Friday on the 30th anniversary.

Rev Harold Good was reported as saying that while the apology did not satisfy everyone, it was an important event.

It is hard to imagine a report on the Bloody Sunday 50th anniversary that led off on military contrition for their killings, or on David Cameron’s apology. Can anyone point to a bulletin that took such a line in the extensive BBC coverage of Bloody Sunday at 50 earlier this year? There would have been uproar at lead reports that did not focus the horror of that day, when the Parachute Regiment disgracefully shot civilians.

Some victims might have been satisfied by the IRA apology, as Rev Good reports. But we must not lose sight of a (probably much larger) reaction among IRA victims to such cynicism.

Their actions on Bloody Friday were shamefully reckless, and sowed confusion with the partial and contradictory information they gave about the blasts. It is fortunate that more people were not slaughtered by their barbarism.

Yet, on yesterday’s 50th anniversary, Belfast City Council held a memorial event which was accompanied by an order of service that had this wording on its cover ‘The 50th anniversary of the events which took place in Belfast on 21 July 1972’.

In our front page story you can see how the council justifies this extraordinary language, which could be describing some awkward accident or maybe a natural disaster. The order of service inside doesn’t use the words IRA or Bloody Friday.

Again, imagine similar on Bloody Sunday, as if those dreadful killings had no connection at all to the Parachute Regiment?

So let the rest of us say what must be said. A heinous massacre happened in Belfast city centre in July 1972 and whatever mealy mouthed apology its blood-soaked IRA terrorist culprits later issued, they massacred plenty more civilians in the 25 years afterwards, and have lied about it all ever since.