Home Blog Ballymurphy Massacre Inquest Day 4
Ballymurphy Massacre Inquest Day 4
By Andrée Murphy
Justice Keegan began the day by addressing issues from the previous day. Alan Barry runs a campaign Justice For Northern Ireland Veterans which seeks to perpetuate impunity for British veterans. Yesterday he issued a tweet which stated: “WARNING ! If you are subpoenaed by the Ballymurphy inquest then suffer from a total loss of memory. Tell them you can barely remember what you did yesterday let alone 40plus years ago , I’m sorry I can’t remember, I’m Sorry I can’t remember”.
Justice Keegan told the court that this man had previously advised soldiers to put letters of subpoena in the bin. She reminded the court that only on Tuesday she had reminded all concerned that she has the power to subpoena those who refuse to cooperate, that she can draw adverse inference from any refusal to cooperate and most importantly that it is not permissbale to discourage cooperation. She said that Mr Barry’s tweet yesterday had flown in the face of her comments. She wants no attempt to undermine the inquest. Therefore she has referred the matter to the Attorney General for investigation for contempt of court.
She also strongly pointed out that the position of Mr Barry is at variance with the stated position of the Ministry of Defence.
The hearing then moved to hear the personal testimony of Alice Harper, the eldest daughter of Danny Teggert.
In what was the longest testimony to be heard thus far Alice sat beside her younger brother John for an hour as she spoke. John has been the most prominent spokesperson of the campaign. Today he sat beside his big sister, his second mummy, as she spoke for him, their mummy, their brothers and sisters and herself. Alice’s unique experience of loss really is worth your time to read in full. Delivered in simple, dignified tone Alice brought us on her life’s journey. How her mummy and daddy met. How her daddy was so hard working while raising their family of 13 children. How they had lived in extreme poverty that Danny dedicated his life to alleviating. How they got a proper house at last, a house that Danny was only to live in for 1 year and 1 month.
Then the devastation. It began with Alice telling us of the day her daddy was killed. She told him that she was pregnant that day. She had one little son, she had lost a baby girl that lived only for one day a year before. He was delighted. She cut “Blessed Martin’s” hair that morning. He was called Blessed martin because he was swarthy and had dark curly hair like St Martin. She put his curls in an ornament.
Alice found her daddy, she identified his naked body following taunts and abuse from a British army that said they “had no time for arresting only for killing”. They had his torn bloodied clothes kept like a trophy in their barracks, so ripped and filled with blood they could not even take his shoes home.
Alice described a family torn apart. Displaced. And she described the killing of her brother Bernard by the IRA. One of the twins that her daddy was so proud of. When they were born he got Alice to buy his wife a new dress for coming home from the hospital “buy her something red, she is lovely in red”. Both of the twins were tortured. One was released with bus fare. While standing at the bus stop he saw his twin waving at him from the car that drove him away to be executed and dumped.
Alice told us how the baby she was expecting also died after two days.
But still Alice cared for the whole family. Trying to keep them together. Despite mental breakdowns, utter poverty, and devastation.
She shared the moment she needed to seek support for herself nearly forty years after she began her dedicated vocation to her family, walking down the Falls Road, after her mummy had died. A slap in the face of grief let her know she needed support.
The court reeled with Alice as she quietly devastatingly and so powerfully delivered a lifetime’s, a family’s story of horror to the Coroner. To put on the record what had been ignored and covered up before now. I cannot do justice – please read it below and also bear witness.
After ten minutes all of the families regrouped. Kathleen McCarry took the stand. Beside her was Patrick, her brother Eddie Doherty’s son. She began, like all of the families have done, by giving us a picture of the man that Eddie was, the role he played in their home. Again Kathleen delivered a dignified account of the baby who survived the blitz. Buried under rubble after a bomb he had survived. He was described as a pioneer, a member of the confraternity and a blood donor. He lived to provide for his family. To make things better. Trying hard to earn money to buy a house for his childhood sweetheart Marie. He joined the British army for a time to earn extra money.
Kathleen described with affection “he lived just an ordinary family life. Work, home, confraternity, fishing and clay pigeon shooting”. A life with his wife and four children. Three boys and 1 girl. He brought his pay packet home unopened every week.
Kathleen described a strict daddy who idolised his children. Particularly his little girl who he sang Scarlet Ribbons to at night. Those of us who were in St Mary’s at the first public event the campaign held heaved as we remembered Jim Reeves’ being played that day and us weeping together as he sang “Through the night my heart was aching
And just before the dawn was breaking
I peeked in and on her bed
In gay profusion lying there
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair”.
Then Kathleen described the devastation after Eddie was killed. The word harrowing is used often. I think today it is appropriate. A mother’s loss when her child is taken is hard to explain. When Kathleen described her mother’s decline and death within 7 years we got a snapshot. Her mother’s words: “Why did got let me have him so long that I got to know him”. How her daddy was grieving for he=is son and watching his wife fall to pieces. How she pleaded with her mummy, “Eddie is gone but Mummy we need you”. Words so simply put and so complex and penetrating in meaning. Once again the assembled families shook and moved together with assembled grief. A grief that only those who had been through this could understand as they recognised what was being said.
And then his children. How Marie couldn’t speak the unspeakable and didn’t tell her children their daddy was dead. How the children had thought he was away in England until a soldier stopped Patrick when he was five years old and sang “Where’s your Papa Gone” to him and told him that his father was shot dead.
Marie fell into ill health, and died nine years after Eddie was killed. The children were raised by Marie’s parents.
Kathleen spoke directly to the Coroner when she said “people say Eddie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was not. Our Eddie was on his own road and not in the wrong place”.
She finished with speaking about how she needs to have acknowledgement and to have his name cleared. “Once it is cleared I feel I can walk away happy”. Kathleen rose with Patrick and stepped down having put the official record straight. Eddie Doherty was a humble husband, father, son and brother and a threat to no one.
Eileen Corr then took the stand. Eileen a few weeks ago took to the stage in the Europa Hotel to make the acceptance speech on behalf of the Ballymurphy Massacre families when awarded the People of the year Award at the Aisling Awards. This morning Eileen spoke for her family and especially her mummy.
Joseph Corr
Joe Corr her daddy was a hard working man with his wife and seven children. Eileen painted a picture of a man who was the heart of his home. Running a tight knit loving family, well disciplined with high standards and ambitions. They were planning to emigrate to Australia. Because he had a trade that was possible for this big family.
The killing of Joe Corr, with that of John Laverty, raises the most unanswered questions of all of the killings. They have the most gaps in what actually happened and how they met their deaths. Families affected by disappearances are by and large given the respect due to families who live decades with such devastating questions. The Corrs and Lavertys have not to date.
When Eileen spoke of the impact of the killing of Joe her honesty and matter of fact tone as she told us how all of her brothers are now dead, directly as a result of the trauma they suffered as a result of their father’s killing. “Our lives changed completely” just begins to describe how their family was affected. The forced move from a spacious modern home with three bedrooms and an inside toilet to a two-bedroom terraced house with an outside toilet. They lost all friends and neighbours.
She particularly emphasised how difficult life was for her mother who received no compensation, and nothing from her husband’s workplace. It was at that moment that she raised a letter her mother received from the people who had worked with Joe stating “May your sub-human husband and pals rot in hell”. A piece of paper scrawled in marker in capital letters sent to a grieving young woman with seven children. Eileen stated clearly – they told lies about her father being a gunman and that was why they sent hatemail that deeply hurt her mother for the rest of her days.
She spoke about the silence in her home regarding her daddy’s killing. How it was never spoken about, to protect the children.
Alcohol dependency, drug dependency, chronic ill health, missing out on education, missing out on the family they could have had and was taken from them. It was a searingly honest account of trauma that demanded acknowledgment and remedy. It also gives permission for all of the other families throughout our community with the hidden silent experiences, the lives needing to be spoken of truthfully and then addressed. These honest, penetrating words cannot be merely records they must be the foundations for recovery.
The statements below are shared with kind permission of the Ballymurphy Massacre Campaign and photographs from Ciaran Cahill.
Personal Statement of Alice Harper daughter of Daniel Teggart
My name is Alice Harper I am the daughter of Danny Teggart.
My father was born on the 10th of October 1926, he was the eldest of 13 children. His parents were Daniel and Alice Teggart. They lived in the Whiterock area and after that the family moved down to Abercorn Street North, until my grandmother died in 1963 afterwards my grandfather moved down to Divis Flats. My father went to St Peters school in Raglan street and left school at the age of fourteen to start work which was common then.
His first job was in Browns butchers in Donegal Pass he was a trainee butcher. He left there and he started in Ross’s Mill on the Falls Road where he was an oiler. After a lot of years working in the Mill he went on to work in McHugh and Dicks which was a timber yard in the docks area.
In the meantime, he met my mother Belle Clarke she was a protestant from the Village area on the Donegal Road, Belfast and was born in Lisburn Church Street. He met my mother in the Clonard Picture House on the Falls Road.
They courted for the next two years going to the pictures and taking long walks. Sometimes in the summer evenings they would take a walk up the Black Mountain to the Hatchet Field where there was a wonderful view of the city all the way down to Belfast Lough.
Two years later at the age of nineteen & twenty they married in Saint John’s church on the Falls Road at 7:30am morning mass on 17th January 1947.
My mother converted to Catholicism and moved out of her Parents house, initially they weren’t too keen on my daddy but they ended up loving him
My mother and father soon got a place to live , a wee room of their own down at the market area of Belfast, that was 53 Annetta Street . Myself and my sister Margaret were both born in Annetta Street , it was above the fish market. My daddy’s aunt Kitty who had never married but lived in Market Street so we moved round to my aunt Kitty’s. We had a bedroom there and a wee kitchen that we shared with another family, the Quinn’s .
It ended up there was 10 children and my mother and father in that one bedroom.
My mother was in constant touch with the local MP, Gerry Fitt, to get better accommodation. So when I was 13 my mother and father got their very first home and that was 29 Westrock Drive the Whiterock Bungalows. It was great because there were three bedrooms and a bathroom in it, before that we were bathed in a big tin bath in front of the fire and me being the eldest I always got first so I had the clean water everybody else came after. Whiterock Bungalows was a great place to live, really spacious . we had many happy memories there.
In the Whiterock my mother and father had another 3 children bringing the total children to 13.
Alice, Margaret, Bernie, Kathleen, Jim, Danny, Isobel, Gerard, Bernard, John, Anthony, Peter and David.
There was a set of twins Gerard and Bernard. The twins were born in the city hospital, then the Jubilee, one was 7lb, 8oz and the other one was 7lb, 12oz . My daddy was so proud he asked my aunt Kitty to go with me and pick my mother an outfit for getting out of the hospital, but he said get her red because she looks lovely in red so that’s what we got her.
The Bungalow in the Whiterock had 3 bedrooms so the girls got one room and the boys got another and my mummy and the daddy and whoever the baby was then was in the other room. It was a really happy and loving home. We made friends with different people in the Whiterock and we had great neighbours.
We lived in the Bungalows for 9 years from 1961 on up to 1970. My father got us a house in 86 New Barnsley Crescent. That was in 1970 but the house was wrecked and my uncle Malachy and daddy fixed it up, then my mummy and the rest of the children moved in. My father only got a year and a month in that house before he died.
There wasn’t much money about in them days but it was great growing up in a big family.
I was the eldest and when I was 11 or 12 I started in a hairdressers and I helped the women, brushed the floors and made teas. I got 8 shillings a week for that was a lot of money then but I used to run home on a Saturday and give my mummy the money, I was so delighted that I could help.
We had our lovely childhood memories growing up.
My father put us all to bed at 6 o’clock at night because we would have been up at 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning. We always said our prayers as a family and my mother and father always told us they loved us. Every Sunday morning, we all had to be at 10 o’clock mass your teacher went then ,they would have set at the end of phew where we all were.
It might seem impossible to care for 13 children AND work but my father did his stint around the house caring for us. He and I shared doing the laundry between us.
My father would also cook if my mother’s work shift meant she could not be there. It was a case of share and share about. My parents marriage was a true partnership.
Things were hard then , there wasn’t much money about so daddy worked all the jobs he could to bring in extra money. He left McHugh and Dicks timber yard and went on to work at loading and unloading containers on the Grosvenor Road, he was there for years and years. In-between my father used to break up sticks and he would have went around the doors pushing a pram full of them selling them to who ever wanted them. He would have done anything to provide for all of us.
He was also done Rag and bone man, he worked for Annie Kane, my father was her first Rag and bone man. I remember on school holidays I went out to help him collect old clothes. My father and my uncle Davy also cleaned windows in the town it was Robinson and Cleavers all the big stores they cleaned the windows, anything to bring in extra money.
I never heard my mummy and daddy fighting ever, I’m not saying they were perfect they probably had arguments but not in front of us we didn’t hear nothing. My mother never smoked or drank she never went out she just lived for her family. Daddy smoked and enjoyed going out on a Friday night for a pint or two and no doubt a laugh with friends.
Daddy used to bring us to the Colosseum its was down at the bottom of the Grosvenor Road. My daddy would have brought us to the pictures and he would have got us all seated and he then he would have said now you’re not allowed to move even if you need to go to the toilet do not move I will be straight back. We didn’t know for years that there was a bar in it and that’s where my daddy was – he went into get a pint and my mummy thought he was great bringing us to the pictures but he was getting his enjoyment as well. They were just all lovely times with us.
Three of the girls got married and moved out of the family home, Bernie, Margaret and myself, that left ten kids in the house but we continued to help out when we could. I moved to Canada and married John Harper there, but I knew things were difficult at home financially so I would send money home every week. It was hard for me to move, I knew how difficult it was for them with 10 kids and I felt I was leaving them, but mammy and daddy gave me their blessing to go. We stayed in Canada for a year and retuned home when my father in law died, I never went back after that.
I remember when I got the news that I was pregnant with my first child, it was a big deal because I was told that I couldn’t have children. I told my daddy and mammy and of course he was slagging me, he said Alice come off it now I’m in my early 40s and I’m too young to be a grandfather, don’t be doing this to me people will be saying I’m going to be an aul granda. He was slagging but my mummy and daddy were delighted.
When Charlie, my first child, was born, my daddy was just over the moon he loved him every chance he got he called over to my house to see him and he would have taken him out, he spent a lot of time with him. Charlie has good memories too of his grandda, he remembers being out with him and a neighbour shouted here comes Blessed Martin, that’s what they called my daddy because he has dark curly hair and swarthy skin, they thought he looked like St Martin.
When the troubles started in 68/69 there was lots of things happening, daddy was worried about us and would have come over to our house and said ‘now Alice watch when you’re going to work he checked every day with us all’, that we were alright.
My father also gave each and every one of us a pet name from the eldest to the youngest the whole lot of us, he called me the lady, till the day he died. If I was coming up the street if he was out at the front door and he spied me coming up the street he would have said Belle here is the Lady coming.
My daddy was always a terrible slagger he would have done anything you know slagging but everybody knew him and knew what he was like. He was a real joker.
For example, one dark night he took the bulb out of the hallway light in our house when he had seen my cousin Gerard Steeson about to call in. Then he waited hidden in the hallway in the dark and tapped Gerard on the arm and shoulder as he came in.
Gerard was terrified and ran out of the house.
Even at the start of the troubles when houses were being burnt in lower Falls road my father’s brothers and sisters stayed in my uncle Jimmy’s home in Turflodge his sister Bridget recalls him making stew for everyone in a large pot then starting the fun with the adults and children telling stories all night long and then 6am the next morning going round the whole place with the same large pot and a ladle waking everyone up again for another round criac ,even in time when everyone was displaced Bridget recalls this as one of her fondest times in life. He was always fun to be with. you could tell many stories like that but we could be here a week telling them.
On the morning of internment 9th August 1971, myself and Fr Pat Coyle went up to the top of Turf Lodge on the main road and all the Saracens and soldiers were everywhere. I saw a man in chains, they were trailing him on the back of the Saracen, it was like something you would have seen in a cowboy film. Fr Pat left me home and made sure that I was ok and away he went. Later that morning about half 9 or 10 o’clock my daddy came over to see if we were alright. He stayed for a while and when he was there I told him that I was expecting my second baby, he was all delighted. The year before I had a wee girl and she lived 2 minutes and she died but I had already had my son Charlie and my daddy was delighted. We had a cup of tea and he said ‘give me Charlie and I will take him over with me and you get some rest’, so off he went, him and Charlie. He came back later and asked me if I could give my uncle Gerard and family a room to stay as they lived very close to the Henry Taggart army barrack and I agreed.
Before he left he asked me if I would cut his hair. I cut his tiny black curls and brushed the hair up and put it into a wee horse and cart ornament, little did I know that I would later identify him in the morgue by those same black curls. He left my house that day and that was the last time I seen my father alive.
He had gone over home and forgot to tell my mummy I was pregnant and he fell asleep and when he woke up he went down to my uncle Gerard’s to tell him to stay in my house and he never returned home.
That evening Father Erskin asked local to gather and pray for anyone that was hurt or injured during the early morning interment swoop . We were all standing in the street praying when we heard shots ring out, it was a beautiful bright sunny evening. After the shooting we continued on praying and then we all just went home to our own houses.
My mother came to my house at 6 o’clock the next morning and told me that daddy went to Gerard’s house and didn’t come home. She thought he might have been arrested or something happened to him because he wouldn’t stay out he never did.
I went with my mummy to her house asking people along the way if they had seen my daddy, but nobody seen or heard anything.
We waited a while in my mothers and then phoned the hospitals from a neighbours house to see if they had daddy but nobody knew anything. I checked with my uncle Gerard he told me he had left my daddy at the corner of Springfield Park and that was the last he seen of him. I then went to the Henry Taggart army post for the first time it must have been round 11am. I asked ‘did you arrest my father?’ I was just asking different questions and they just said no we hadn’t time for arrests we only had time for killing and that was their words.
I was shocked and started walking away they started singing that song chorus “Where’s your Papa gone, Where’s your papa gone”. I returned to mummy’s house but there still wasn’t any word.
I went to the army posts two more times that day, we started hearing stories of local people being shot.
I went back up to the Henry Taggart and they told me “there is a fucking unidentified body in the Lagan Bank morgue why don’t you try there, I said my daddy wouldn’t be unidentified because he was wearing a suit ,the actual suit you see in the picture , that’s the way he dressed and he carried identification in his pocket i.e his family allowance book
I met my uncle Gerard outside and told him what they had said, I was in a terrible state by this stage, Gerard asked reporters who had a car if they would drive us over to the morgue and they did.
Before walking in I just had a feeling. So myself and my uncle Gerard went into identified my father. It was terrible and thank god he was with me, I wasn’t on my own. They took the sheet down as far as his shoulders so that we could identify him, his face was all puffy and it didn’t look like him, but the only way I could recognised him was his tight curly hair. They went to take the sheet down further, because they were asking me about the bruising on his body and I said no don’t do that, let my father have his dignity. I wasn’t worth tuppence I really wasn’t.
I was 23 at the time and had to go back to tell my mammy that daddy was dead, but neighbours had heard and had already told my mammy so I didn’t have to break the awful news to her.
It was easier for me my mummy knowing already, she was crying and in a bad state. I told her where I had been and that it was daddy.
When he died he was wearing his suit and his shirt, he was always well turned out, he was spotless, but when I identified his body he was naked, what did they do with his clothes.
I went back to the Henry Taggart to get his belongings. When I went in they were making fun of me and they said if I wanted his belongings that there was a big wooden tea chest it was a big massive wooden box that I would get them there. When I went over you couldn’t have gone near it there was blood all over it and the clothed were cut to pieces even the shoes were cut the whole lot, we got nothing..
I wanted to get my mummy and brothers and sisters out of that house so I asked them to come to my house in Turflodge and I would wake daddy there. I ended up I had to get the doctor for my mummy because she was in a really bad way.
The day after my daddy was killed the children were taken away to refugee camps, we felt it would be better to get all the children to safer place. So my 4 younger brothers aged 5-11 went to Ballycastle and the girls, aged 14 and upwards, went down to Kildare army camp. My older brother Jim stayed with me. My mother in-law took my son Charlie down with her.
The next few days everything was just awful; we couldn’t get my daddies body home right away. We kept phoning up to see when his body would be released. My daddy died on Monday night and we didn’t get his body home until Thursday night about half 6. The troubles being so bad my daddy got buried on the Friday at after 2 o’clock mass, the younger children were still away and missed the funeral, I’ll never forget that day, the whole week the weather had been beautiful but that day the heavens opened, we were soaked to the skin, we got so mucky at the grave yard. I’ll never forget it. The younger children did not get the opportunity to go to their Daddy’s funeral.
After that all of our lives changed completely and it affected our family in a big way.
The children came back from the refugee camps and they were all asking all different questions and I just told them daddy was dead and he wouldn’t be back. They were hugging and kissing my mummy just glad to see her. They all went back to school and tried to get on with things. I remember Peter came home from school one day saying somebody in school told him that my daddy was shot and he came home asking questions about it, he wanted to know what happened, we knew he was shot but didn’t know the details. Because of the troubles and the way things were then nobody was asking questions, you just got on with your life. I think people were living in fear. Two of my immediate family had breakdowns after my father was killed. Our lives were a hard struggle. It was unbelievable to us all that it had happened, especially for my mother who found it very hard to cope at all.
My mummy was never the same after my daddy’s death, It affected her big time, she was lost because my daddy was very fussy about things. My daddy had the dinner for that night prepared in the morning, he was away a head of himself. She was really lost without him she never really seemed to be at herself and I knew myself looking at her she wasn’t coping.
We tried to help out, I took my brother Anthony and Margaret took John, the twins were in St Pats. But mammy was looking after the rest of the family. I was there every day I always went over just to make sure everything was ok and helping her out. My sisters Bernie and Margaret they lived facing mummy and I had been saying to them to keep an eye her because she wasn’t really coping.
I had a baby boy on the 24th March 1972 and he lived 2 days, things were really bad for me personally, I was looking after my own house and looking after my mummy’s and my brothers and sisters so that all took a toll on me. I took alopecia and lost my hair after the shock of identifying my daddy .
Then on 13th November 1973 one of the twins Bernard was killed by the IRA. My mummy said “it was bad enough losing your daddy he was my partner my best friend my husband but she said losing your son that was part of me I carried him for 9 months”. It was all too much for mammy, she wasn’t coping it was just unbearable for her.
After Bernard’s death two family members took another breakdown, it was like it was happening all over again, they were worse than the first time even up to present day they are still mentally scarred they never fully recovered
I took the other twin after Bernard’s death, He was really badly affected by it, he had been taken away with Bernard and he had heard him crying they were brought to 4 different houses, but 2 women took Gerard out of the house he is still haunted by Bernard’s screams as he was leaving , they put a coat on him, give him the money for the bus fare home, they drove him to the bus stop and told him not to look back just to go home. The twin said while he was standing now at the bus stop he turned round and saw a car coming out of the street and in the back of the car he saw Bernard waving at him and to this day he will tell you he still sees it.
He was so traumatised he couldn’t sleep at night I had to get him help. I went to the doctors and said about him not sleeping, I told him it’s affecting me too because I sit up with him.
Our family was never the same after losing both my father and brother.
As for myself I also lost my son as well, he only lived 2 days and died. It wasn’t until my mammy died that I myself broke down, I was going down the Falls road and it was as if someone had walked over and slapped me in the face and I just busted out crying on the Falls Road. When my daddy died I took over looking after everybody else, I still had my mammy and family to look after but after my mammy’s death I had nobody now. This is when I started asking questions and started finding out what had happened to my daddy.
My daddy also missed out on a lot too, he missed the rest of my brothers and sisters getting married he missed out on his 45 grandchildren and great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren and there is so many in the Teggart family so many of them and his grandchildren missed out on him.
Just not having my father there was really difficult. For a good while after it if I heard anybody saying daddy, for a split second I always imagine it was my daddy. He was always very protective of us and of his own brothers and sisters. He done so much for us all and suddenly that was gone.
I remember the very first Christmas my daddy was dead I went over to mammy’s house and put everything out for my brothers and sister for Christmas morning. I had said to mummy; I know my daddy is not here but he would want us to put a tree up for the wee ones. I put it up on Christmas Eve when they were in bed and got all their bits and pieces out and everything else and when I was leaving my mummy I was breaking my heart. I left the house and was walking down the street when I seen my uncle Malachy walking towards me and I thought for a split second that it was my daddy, I burst out crying. All those times are really difficult, birthdays, Christmas and father’s day.
Our family never got any support we were just left to get on with things. My mummy never got compensation she never got nothing at all. When she was in court the judge said “well Mrs Teggart you were getting 19 pound a week when your husband was alive now you are getting 24 pound a week widows pension and you don’t have him to keep, you are getting extra money and you have one less mouth to feed”. That always stuck in my head I remember coming out and thinking how cruel can they be, it’s as if my daddy didn’t exist and that’s just the way it was put. In fact, I think it was 6 to 8 weeks before my mummy got any money at all after my daddy died. The first time in her life my mummy actually put in for welfare to get help. My mummy borrowed money from her mother, my granny Clarke, to feed the children and when the welfare inspector came out they said well the children are eating they have food what do you need welfare for, she got nothing. She never got any help at all from anybody just from the family it was really hard on her. It brought us closer together it really did. We were always a very close knit family, we depended on each other and if anybody needed anything we had one and other. If any of us was sick again we rallied round, we helped out. Thank god we got through it, god was good, but it was hard more so for my mother than us.
It has taken us a long time before we started to ask questions about what happened to my daddy and the others that were killed in Ballymurphy, We grew up , 47 years now but it should never have taken this length of time never.
Our campaign was to find out the truth about our loved ones and why they were killed. That has helped all the families it has helped us find out more about what happened. We were not told anything of the circumstances of his death . We the families had to find out ourselves , No-one came to our door to inform us or even investigate my father’s death we were burdened with doing that ourselves also. What we want is the truth that is it and to know why they were killed.
They said he was a gunman not just my father all the ones that were killed that night including the priest Fr Mullan, It was very hurtful, they branded them gunmen and a gun woman, they took their good names and blackened them. I want my father’s name cleared and I hope that I will still be here to see the results but defiantly to get all their names cleared.
It took us a long time but we got our Bernard’s name cleared. Now we need to get our daddy’s name cleared, he was innocent just like Bernard was.
Personal Statement of Eileen McKeown
My name is Eileen McKeown I am the daughter of Joseph Corr.
My daddy was born in 1928, his parents were James and Elizabeth Corr they lived in Belgrave street, they were market traders, my daddy had two brother John and Gerard and two sisters Masie and Lizzy.
Daddy attended St Comgalls school in the lower falls and had many friends that he made from an early age.
When he left school he had a few jobs before getting a job in Shorts as a machinists, the job he had until he died.
He met my mammy Eileen Monaghan she was from English Street. We have a lovely picture of the two of them when they were courting, it’s something we will cherish forever because we don’t have many pictures of daddy. After a couple of years’ mammy and daddy got married and began their married life in the Loney area before moving to Ballymurphy.
They had seven children Joe, Theresa, Redmond, Kieran myself Geraldine and Sean.
My parents were very hard workers, we were put to bed every evening at 6pm. Daddy worked nights, so he came in every morning and made us our porridge and put us out to school while mummy was away on to work. She worked full time in the Royal Maternity as a domestic. My sister Theresa remembers my daddy doing all the housework, he done all the washing and cleaning while my mammy was out working.
My daddy was a family man, he lived for his family, he even took on part-time jobs window cleaning and that to bring in a bit of extra money. He loved us with a passion but he had us well disciplined, he would have chastised you he wouldn’t have lifted his hand to you or anything like that but he made sure we were well mannered, we weren’t allowed to speak back to our elders.
Because of our parents circumstances we weren’t afforded that luxury of not getting to stay out late or play in the streets, we were always either in school or getting ready for bed. I remember someone saying to my mummy that she never knew she had kids only for the washing on the line.
My daddy was always very thoughtful, at Christmas and Easter he would hide presents and send you off looking for them, at Christmas if you didn’t get the toy you wanted my daddy would comfort us and promise we would get it next time, ours was a very happy home. We were actually in the process of moving to Australia. My daddy’s brother lived there and because my daddy had a trade he was able to go over to work. I remember the excitement in the family and I remember my mammy going to a place in Castle Street to find out more information about what you had to go through to get there, but the plans were put in place and we were going to Australia.
Then my daddy was killed.
I remember the bin lids over the first couple of days of internment it was scary. We were brought in at the first sign of any trouble, but mammy and daddy were out somewhere that day, I think at a wedding or family event. When they came home mammy went to a neighbour’s house. Then all I remember is my daddy being missing, you know not seeing him again.
I remember playing up at the Shepard’s path when somebody came and got us and brought us home and that’s when we were told he was in the hospital. Daddy was shot on the 11th August and was in hospital for sixteen days before he died, at the beginning he was missing, we didn’t know where he was, whether he was alive or dead before he was found in Musgrave military hospital, I remember thinking why did they take him there when the Royal Victoria Hospital is closer?
We were never allowed to visit him in hospital, I can’t remember ever being brought down to the hospital, I just remember my mammy saying something about the military wing of Musgrave.
That’s when we were sent away, when my daddy was in hospital, we were taken to a refugee camp somewhere in Dublin to a convent I think, mammy must have thought we would be safer there.
The next memory I have is my uncle Paddy telling us that my daddy was dead, I screamed and shouted and remember seeing my daddy in the coffin in the back room.
I later discovered people had seen my daddy and Joe together going up the street, they got to the top of the street and the crowd was over at the bottom of Dermott hill. They crossed over heading towards what they thought was loyalists coming down. The neighbours had said the Loyalists were coming over to attack the area and there was crowds and crowds. That’s when the soldiers started shooting.
My brother Joe told me they heard shooting and everybody scattered running everywhere, my daddy didn’t get a chance to run when he was shot. Joe returned home unaware of what had happened to daddy.
My daddy was taken to Musgrave Military hospital before being transferred to the Royal Victoria hospital by helicopter a few days later where he died from his injuries. We didn’t even get to the funeral, my sister Geraldine remembers me shouting at my mummy and my uncle Paddy about not being allowed to go to the funeral, I still resent the fact that we weren’t allowed to go to the funeral, there was no closure for us.
Our lives changed completely, we went from a family with two working parents to only having one parent left behind with seven kids who still had to work to make ends meet.
We moved from a lovely three-bedroom house in Ballymurphy, with a bathroom, living room, kitchen scullery, we even had a coal shed out the back where we used to go and play, we also had a front and back garden to a two-bedroom house in Oakman Street with an outdoor toilet at the end of the yard and no garden so it was a big change. I think we moved because daddy’s sister lived there and she would be able to help out with us, we lost all our friends and all our neighbours, we had to start all over again.
Mummy had to go back to work after daddy died, she didn’t get any financial help whatsoever, she didn’t get a widow’s pension. She didn’t get free school uniforms or school dinners for us, I’ve no idea how she did it, it was so hard for her.
My mammy had a hard life, I was only nine and there were two kids below me as well as all the older ones. There was no compensation paid. She didn’t even get anything from his workplace, other than a letter we believed came from some Shorts workers not long after my daddy died which said ‘May your sub human husband and his pals roast in hell.’
The army told the media and the media put it out that he was an IRA gunman and that’s why she got the hate mail from his workmates.
When the media said he was a gunman they blackened his name and blackened our families name. If your daddy dies he dies, but ours was taken away from us, they took that, they took our lives, they took my mammy’s husband, they took our daddy and then they portrayed him as a IRA gunman to try and justify their reason for killing him. They tried to say there was a riot, there was no riot, my daddy wouldn’t have let us riot, my daddy wouldn’t have let us speak back. My daddy brought the soldiers tea when they first came, my daddy knew my sister was going out with a soldier. If he had have been involved in anything there is no way, he would have let my sister go out with a soldier. There wasn’t a bad bone in my daddy’s body and we were all brought up the same way. So our resentment grew as we found out what happened and why they were putting rubbish in the papers to say that he was an IRA gunman to try and justify it.
In 2015 Terry Laverty, whose brother John was killed the same night my daddy was shot, won a 44-year-long legal battle to clear his name. Terry was charged with riotous behaviour and sentenced to six months in prison, based on the evidence of a soldier. When Terry’s conviction was quashed we were delighted, because the soldiers excuse for shooting my daddy and John Laverty that morning was that there was a riot. But when Terry’s case was overturned and the soldier said there was no riot then that proved our loved ones were innocent. The soldier actually said my daddy was the commandant of the riot, so if there was no riot how could he be a commandant?
Mammy never spoke about daddy’s death, she never told us anything about it, I think it was her way of protecting us. We were brought up in an environment that you didn’t speak in front of children you were either put out of the room, children should been seen and not heard was my mammy’s saying.
After the funeral I don’t remember immediately what it was like in the house it was just that my daddy was gone and the reason why I didn’t know. What they did to my daddy stole our memories away as well as leaving us without a daddy and my mummy without a husband. At least for us older ones we remembered who our daddy was, we had a lot of years with him, but for our Sean he was only a baby and didn’t know his daddy whatsoever and that really got to him he just had this big chip on his shoulder that he grew up with no daddy. He questioned why he was left with no daddy and that really ripped in to him like.
My Daddies death had a real impact on us all, we didn’t get any counselling, we got no help you were just left to deal with it and you were left to get on with your life. I think maybe because I was so busy helping my mammy with the younger ones, that it affected me differently. We have no memories, they have robbed us of our memories, we have no childhood memories, I don’t even remember going to school, can’t remember teachers, teacher would speak to me, people would speak to me and I can’t remember them, I don’t know them. It’s as if the trauma of losing our daddy has not only blocked out memories of that night but also memories of our childhood before it.
The soldiers who did this, they don’t realise the after-effects. I mean, I used to have four brothers and now I’ve none. In 1999 Redmond was murdered in Edinburgh. As a child he was knocked down and left with what the doctors called a split personality, we were told that we would just have to learn to live with it. He went off the rails and turned to drink when he got older, he then ended up living on the streets in Scotland. He eventually got a flat, but shortly after that he was murdered. He was only 43, the same age my daddy was when he was killed. Redmond drank himself into oblivion, he was an alcoholic, He couldn’t function without a drink, morning noon and night.
Our younger brother, Seán, married and had two children, but he wasn’t able to cope with daddy’s death and turned to drink and drugs. He died ten days after his 34th birthday of brain cancer. Sean was a Scottish boxing champion, he boxed for the school and he boxed for the club, but he wasn’t doing well mentally, as he grew up he was asking why was my daddy killed and mammy didn’t know the answers, but she didn’t like to talk about it, it was too hurtful for her.
Then Kieran died of cancer, he died two years after Sean in the same hospice in Edinburgh. Kieran also turned to alcohol as he grew up and learned more about what happened to daddy and about how he was killed that made him worse.
My brother Joe (Jnr) was in poor health from the very day our daddy was shot. Joe was worst affected, he stepped over somebody who was lying on the ground that night, he tried to help someone else who was hurt. He discovered later that it was his daddy he had stepped over which then made him even worse. He had this thing in his head that if he had let the other person go that he could’ve helped his daddy and he lived with that for 45 years, he had survivor’s guilt. It haunted him for the rest of his life.
Joe turned to alcohol too he felt guilty about leaving his daddy and blamed himself. Joe has four good sons, but if you’re talking to Joes kids they would tell you he didn’t do fatherly things with them, they missed out a lot too. Their mammy Mary raised them as Joe wasn’t around much, the kids missed out in a lot too because of what their daddy went through. Joe died on the 3rd of June 2016 of cancer.
With all the boys they resented the fact that they lost their daddy and they never had a father figure around. Their dependence on alcohol and early deaths are as a direct result of losing my daddy.
Our schooldays were also affected, with no father figure there and mammy out working every day we would miss a lot of school.
Teresa moved away and married Dave, they have two girls and her girls are fine. But it had a big impact on her as well, she moved away and she was left on her own. She didn’t talk about my daddy’s death, she would have known more and remembered more than we did but I think with her being married to the soldier she didn’t talk about her daddy being innocent and what way he was killed.
My resentment is more at the fact that my mammy was left with her seven children and didn’t get any financial help and didn’t get any kind of help whatsoever from any of the statutory bodies that were out there to help people, she got no help whatsoever. I didn’t start researching this or looking into it until my mammy died because I don’t think my mammy would have wanted us to do it. The way she thought ways you have your life to live. But I am still searching, I have gone to numerous mediums just to ask my daddy what happened. It’s like I am searching for the truth wishing my daddy would come through and say this is what happened, just trying to get answers to questions. Just come and tell me what happened daddy
I resented what we missed out on by not moving to Australia, even to try it out for the year, because that’s what the talk was, at least we can go and try it and see what it’s like for a year. My mammy regretted not doing it sooner because if she had of went sooner my daddy could still be here, our lives would have been completely different, with both parents, I think that’s why she didn’t talk about things, she was probably thinking this is what we have missed out on and as much as you know fate is fate and it was meant to be happen, and people tell you, you don’t go until your times up, how was his time up, people say about him being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time, he was in his own area, he was at the top of his street, so he wasn’t in the wrong place, he was in the right place, the ones that shot him were in the wrong place and they weren’t in their own area and they had no right to be there.
I think we would have had completely different lives had we moved to Australia, my daddy would probably still be alive and my brothers would probably still be alive.
My daddy missed out on lots, he missed out on us growing up he missed out on Sean, his baby boy’s whole life, he missed out on the rest of our lives, he missed us all getting married, I had no daddy to walk me down the aisle, Geraldine had no daddy to walk her down the aisle and Teresa who only got married a year later had no daddy to walk her down the aisle. We missed out dancing with our daddy at our wedding. He has missed out on his grandkids, great grandkids and they missed out on him, they never got to meet him, so he missed out on all that, he missed out on our whole family life, he was a young man with everything in front of him and all that was taken away at the drop of a hat.
I want my daddy’s name cleared, I want the true facts in the history books. “And I don’t want an apology like the one the Bloody Sunday families got, they should have got more than what David Cameron said, He could have been talking about anybody, he didn’t even say the victims names when he said Bloody Sunday was “unjustified and unjustifiable”. No, I want my daddy’s name read out, I want ‘Joseph Corr was an innocent man’ read out for everyone to hear.
Because of what the media put out his work mates all think that he was and IRA gunman and I want them to know that he wasn’t and I want them to regret what they did and what they put my mammy through because of getting that letter it really did nearly kill her, because this is what his work mates thought of him.
I always said that as soon as our Joe died I would stop campaigning, but I didn’t. I’m carrying on now for Joe, I promised him I wouldn’t stop until we got justice.
Personal Statement of Kathleen McCarry sister of Eddie Doherty
My name is Kathleen McCarry, I am the younger sister of Eddie Doherty, I want to tell the court about my brother and how his death has affected our family.
I am doing this for Eddie, his children and my mammy.
Eddie was born in Grove Street on February 24, 1941 to Edward and Elizabeth Doherty. He was the fourth of six children (Theresa, Thomas, Anna, Eddie, Kathleen, John). My brother Thomas (Tommy) was born in 1937. I was born in 1946. John and I are the only surviving siblings.
My father was in the Army, the Royal Engineers, when we were young. He was away in England a lot. He later joined the Territorial Army, as did my brother Tommy. They were both away with the Army in Port Said, Egypt, during the Suez crisis. I remember that we all went to Mass and Holy Communion every morning while they were away to pray for their safe return. I also remember the presents I got when they came home.
Eddie was six months old when the blitz happened and people had to evacuate because the bombs were falling on the mills and on the houses around them. Mammy and daddy had to evacuate one night and left the house. Daddy thought mummy had Eddie and vice versa but when they got to St Patrick’s chapel where they went for protection they discovered that neither of them had Eddie. They went back to the house and there was Eddie, buried under all the rubble and he had to be rushed to the Mater Hospital to get cleaned and get his airways cleared. He survived obviously but it was trauma for my parents and him.
After that mammy moved to 69 Little Patrick Street where I was born and then 6 months later she moved to a bungalow in Beechmount, that’s where we were reared and spent our childhood.
Eddie went to St Paul’s Primary School in Cavendish Street off the Falls Road. He got on well at school there was never any complaint. If there had been complaints everybody would have heard them, nothing was kept a secret.
Like all children of that age, Eddie was a bit of a messer, he was full of mischief and he was always up to something. I remember my mother complaining he was always hard on his footwear because he never stopped kicking a ball.
He had plenty of friends in and around Beechmount and the small area within Beechmount known as the Bungalows.
He was a popular child. He was good hearted. He was very giving and would have done anything for you. There was always a smile on his face. I never saw Eddie in a bad mood and he always had time for you. He was very aware of your feelings he wouldn’t have hurt you by words or anything and we never got into fights with each other as kids. He was very loyal.
Eddie was always getting himself into a bit of trouble at home. I remember when daddy and my older brother, Tommy, were away in Port Said Tommy left all his records at home and when he came back he was looking for his records and he couldn’t find them. We were all put in a line and my mummy asked did you see Tommy’s records, we all said no mummy we didn’t I wouldn’t even know where they were and this went on for a half an hour. Then Eddie owned up and said I took the records and my mummy said what did you do with them Eddie and he said I played cards with them that’s what I done with them where as everybody was playing cards for tuppence and thrupence and he was playing with the records and our Tommy stood and looked at him, I have never forgotten the expression on Tommy’ s face. Eddie was about 15 or 16 then.
When Eddie left school he successfully applied for a job in the Belfast City Council and I remember everybody being very proud because it was difficult to get a job with the Council back then. My mummy came in one day and said I was talking to the foreman about our Eddie and he said he’s a great worker, my mummy was very proud of him. He used to land in for his lunch to my mummy with all the other binmen, she would have to feed them all.
He stayed there until 1968 when he began working at boarding up buildings that had been damaged in the Troubles. As a way to earn an extra bit of money for the family he also worked nights as a barman.
When Eddie got older he was always very particular about his appearance, he always wore a suit, sometimes with shirt or tee shirt, he was always very spick and span. Eddie smoked but he wasn’t a drinker. That’s not to say that he didn’t try it at the beginning but it wasn’t for him, he became a lifelong pioneer and a blood donor. He was also in the Confraternity (which was a sort of prayer group for men) at Clonard Monastery and he loved it; that was his wee place to get away to. He had strong faith.
When Eddie was sixteen he met and fell in love with his future wife Marie. Marie was the love of his life and they courted for six years before getting married in 1962. Five years later their first child was born, quickly followed by three more. Eddie and Marie had three sons – Eamon, Patrick and Ciaran, and one daughter – Brenda.
When they got married they went to live with Marie’s grandmother in Fort Street. But he wanted his own house for himself and Marie and the only way that was going to happen was to get the money together to buy one. My daddy said to him. “look if you’re looking extra money to buy a house go and join the TA its only 2 months a year”. So he went and joined the Territorial Army and the money he was getting he sent it home to Marie. He wasn’t in the TA for very long and had left by the time his first child was born.
When Eddie came home things didn’t work out the way he wanted about the house and things got too much for him, he ended up with a bit of a breakdown. Eventually they got the money for a house in Iveagh Street it was in a bad state of repair but Eddie and Marie fixed it up and made it their home. He suffered with mental health difficulties a couple of times in the early-mid 1960s but that was well behind him by the time of his death.
Eddie just lived for Marie and their kids, he took on a couple of extra jobs, working as a bar man and doing a bit of painting and decorating. He was always ready and willing to drop everything and do something for you. It was just an ordinary family life and he just loved Marie, he idolised her and she could do no wrong in his eyes. All he had time for was work, home and the confraternity. When he did have free time he liked fishing and clay pigeon shooting.
He was content with what he had and he was in his own wee orbit that he owned his house, and provided for his kids he was just happy to be a husband and a daddy. On payday he would give Marie his unopened pay packet, she would then buy him his cigarettes for the week. Not too many men did that in those days.
Eddie was strict in a way too with the kids, I remember Eddie coming to visit me with Ciaran, I had a rocking horse in the living room and Ciaran wanted on it and Eddie said no you’re not going over it doesn’t belong to you, and I looked at Eddie and said let the child go over and get on to the horse I said catch yourself on there is nobody even on it and he went over but he was holding him on it because he maybe would of toppled. He was strict in that way they had to know their Ps and Qs they had to be able to sit in somebody’s house and not get up and make a scene.
He idolised his children, when he was putting his wee girl to bed at night he would sing the song “Scarlet Ribbons” to her, and the words were:
I peeked in to say goodnight
When I heard my child in prayer
And for me some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for your hair
Coming up to internment there were rumours that something was going to happen. There was unrest and barricades went up. Eddie wanted Marie and the kids out of the road for their own safety and so he arranged for them to go and stay in Ardglass, Marie’s granny had a house there.
The first day of internment was bad, my husband’s father had sent word down from Turf Lodge for us to get up and stay with him on the ninth night, which we did. The next morning we headed home to get fresh clothes for the kids, we saw our Eddie just beside Kelly’s Bar. Eddie was in an awful state about Father Mullan and Mrs Connolly and the others being shot.
I asked him to come and get a cup of tea, but he wanted to get to a phone and ring Marie and the kids to check if they were alright.
We walked to Ardmonagh Gardens and I left him, Eddie went on to my daddy’s. About two hours later, around half three, I saw Eddie again at my daddy’s, I told him to watch himself going down the road and he said he would. He left my daddy’s and went on to our sister Theresa’s where he had a cup of tea, he left Theresa’s at 4.35pm.
The next thing we knew Eddie was dead.
It happened around 5pm. I was sitting feeding my daughter Linda at 10pm when the news came on, they were talking about the riots in Belfast, next thing the newsreader said news had just come in of a gunman who had been operating in Ardoyne the night before and his body had been dumped in Whiterock. He said he had been named as Eamon Doherty.
My father-in-law came in and tried to offer me a whiskey, I wouldn’t touch anything like that, then it dawned on me that there was something wrong. I ran over to my daddy’s and there was pandemonium in the house. No soldier, no police came to tell us about Eddie, it was a fella he went to school with, Jim Parks, he came up on his motorbike much later and told us.
My mother was in England with my sister. My sister had married a soldier and they went to live in England.
Marie never told the kids that Eddie died and she put Eddie into O’Kanes funeral parlour rather than have a wake for him. I think it was to spare their heartache or maybe it was for her to try and get over things. When my mummy came home from England she went straight to O’Kanes to see Eddie, she looked at him in the coffin and the next thing she was on the floor, it was his poor face, it was all marked and bruised.
My mummy went to pieces, we all went to pieces, it was like a nightmare you were never wakening from, we just found it so hard to cope. She was walking about in a daze. There were times we couldn’t find her and would have to go out looking for her, we would find her at the grave washing it down. When Eddie died it just finished her, she used to say, “why did god let me rear him till he was 31 and he had 4 wee children and then he just took him why didn’t he take at the time of the Blitz we knew him but we wouldn’t have got to know his personality” She eventually had a nervous breakdown and spent some time in Purdysburn hospital.
My mummy died of a broken heart seven years after Eddie and for seven years we just watched her deteriorate. She went from this strong woman who washed the dead, delivered babies, did amazing things, to a woman who was lost.
My daddy “big Eddie” he took it bad too , he lost his son and he was watching his wife fall to pieces, so his poor mind must have been away.
After Eddie’s death our family and his was torn apart with grief.
Eddies death affected Marie in a big way, she just found it very hard to cope. Everybody reacts differently, but I know not only did we lose Eddie we lost Marie too. I remember Eddie’s son, Patrick saying “life can be very unfair. When I think of all my cousins, they’ve all got on with their lives. If my daddy had been alive our lives would have been so different and that really hurts me.” God love those poor kids. They were so young when their daddy died, they are lovely kids but they had a very hard life.
Patrick told me that when he was around five years old he was playing in Iveagh Street and there were two Saracens in the street. He said a soldier called him over and said ‘We shot your da.’ Patrick said ‘No you didn’t, my daddy is in England’ the soldier said it again ‘We shot your da’ and they started to sing ‘Where’s your papa gone?’ Patrick ran into the house and said ‘Mammy that soldier is after telling me they shot my daddy.’ Marie went to the barracks and complained but there was nothing done about it.
Can you just imagine how that would affect an innocent child playing in the street to suddenly find out that your Daddy wasn’t in England but he was dead.
Nine years after Eddie died, Marie died of a heart attack. She was only forty. It was terrible, those poor kids were left without their parents. We all loved the kids so much. Marie’s family took them, they were a lovely family who did their best by the kids.
People have said to me that our Eddie was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but no he wasn’t, he was on his own road, going from his own house to my mummy’s and then back home again. So no he wasn’t in the wrong place, he was exactly in the right place, where he belonged.
I want Eddie’s name cleared for Eddie and his children, for Marie, for my mummy and daddy and for the rest of the family. They said he was a petrol bomber, they blackened his name. Eddie was never in trouble with the police or authorities. Once I get his named cleared and proved innocent I feel I can walk away happy I feel I can just walk away happy.
I have found it an awful hard journey in many ways because all the people that I could have talked to about it are away, there is nobody to talk to about it and I don’t want to burden my kids with it because they have all their own lives. I’m delighted with the friends that I have met along the way but I have found it very hard and tiring and I think we lost out by not getting counselling in all this.
It just takes over your life. When you think it’s 47 years and that’s a lifetime.
When you think about that one shot that killed Eddie and look at all those lives it affected, the ripple effect 47 years later and it will go on to their children and their children’s children until there is some kind of acknowledgement, somebody holding their hands up and saying we are sorry.
If Eddie had of died of natural causes we wouldn’t be the way we are, the fact is there is an injustice and Eddie was labelled what he was labelled, and we have had to fight for all of our lives and we’re not going to rest until we have achieved his innocence.
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