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30 January 1972, the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, is
remembered as one of the darkest and bloodiest events of The
Troubles in Northern Ireland. Thirteen people were killed when
members of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment opened fire on
civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside, a predominantly Catholic
part of Londonderry. The ongoing fight for justice has driven the
long process towards prosecutions culminating in the murder charges
brought against the paratrooper known as Soldier F. Author Ian
Hernon, who worked as a reporter during The Troubles, draws upon
eye-witness accounts and his own recollections from the period to
create a compelling account of how the tragedy unfolded. He
describes how, in the run-up to the massacre, passions were already
boiling over, with the atrocities on both sides, and looks at the
activities of 1 Para along with the tactics employed by the IRA.
Fifty years after the events of Bloody Sunday, this important book
considers the immediate aftermath, including the Widgery
‘whitewash’, the protests and internments, the bombings and
tit-for-tat violence, and the long decades of social unrest before
an imperfect reconciliation.
The scene was set for a classic Western showdown. On a dusty main
street, a sheriff backed by townspeople faced down a gang of
heavily armed hired gunslingers. Tension rose, hard words were
exchanged, and someone drew first. A few minutes later 10 men were
dead or dying, and several more suffered gunshot wounds. The hired
guns, those that remained on their feet that is, fled. But this was
not a shoot-out in the Wild West of Wyoming or Montana or South
Dakota in the 1880s, or a Hollywood re-imagining of such an event.
This was not Dodge City or Abilene. This was the West Virginia
mining town of Matewan in 1920. By contrast the more celebrated
gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone lasted 30 seconds and left
three dead. And Matewan was not an aberration. In the era of the
post-Civil War Wild West, it can be argued that the most dangerous
place to be was in the East. It was the inevitably violent outcome
of massive social upheaval - race wars with lynchings and
massacres, heavily armed confrontation between infant trade
unionism and the forces of capitalism, murderous feuds between
corrupt lawmen and the early Mafia. These were confrontations in
which the US government bombed and marginalised their own citizens,
the law was twisted for private ends, and 'fake news' became the
norm.
30 January 1972, the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, is
remembered as one of the darkest and bloodiest events of The
Troubles in Northern Ireland. Thirteen people were killed when
members of the British Army's Parachute Regiment opened fire on
civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside, a predominantly Catholic
part of Londonderry. The ongoing fight for justice has driven the
long process towards prosecutions culminating in the murder charges
brought against the paratrooper known as Soldier F. Author Ian
Hernon, who worked as a reporter during The Troubles, draws upon
eye-witness accounts and his own recollections from the period to
create a compelling account of how the tragedy unfolded. He
describes how, in the run-up to the massacre, passions were already
boiling over, with the atrocities on both sides, and looks at the
activities of 1 Para along with the tactics employed by the IRA.
Fifty years after the events of Bloody Sunday, this important book
considers the immediate aftermath, including the Widgery
'whitewash', the protests and internments, the bombings and
tit-for-tat violence, and the long decades of social unrest before
an imperfect reconciliation.
'Under Corbyn, the true Left of radical campaigning and genuine
anti-racism has been bastardised into a hate cult distinguished by
repellent self-righteousness. Corbyn's cronies, more than willing
to act with venality when it suits them, have told themselves that
if you say you are on the side of the poor and the downtrodden,
anything goes. Anyone who disagrees is obviously on the side of the
imperialist, the fat cat bankers and hedge fund managers, the
exploiters driven by greed alone to make their billions.' Charges
that anti-Semitism was widespread in the Labour Party did much to
undermine Jeremy Corbyn's chances of entering No. 10 Downing Street
in the 2019 general election. This book, by a veteran political
correspondent, examines whether such charges were justified and to
what extent they were facilitated by a lack of leadership. It also
traces the roots of anti-Semitism on the Left which can make
uncomfortable reading for adherents of such socialist icons as Karl
Marx, Keir Hardie, Ernest Bevin, John Burns and George Bernard
Shaw. The strand of anti-Semitism that has existed on the Left
since the birth of socialism as an effective movement is hard to
fathom - especially as Jews played an integral part in the creation
of both the British trade union movement and the Labour Party. No
one with a single brain cell can doubt the persecution and death
camps of the twentieth century. In addition, Zionism - opposition
to which is now used as a dodgy excuse for anti-Semitism - was for
decades embraced by the Left as a template for a socialist
paradise. Ian Hernon writes: 'The most virulent anti-Semitism has
over the last century or so come from the Far Right, the British
Establishment, the aristocracy and home-grown bigots of all
classes. But that does not excuse the Left for its, in some
instances, overlapping racism due to populist pursuit of power,
bigotry, ignorance or a twisted understanding of history and
socialist ideals.'
The scene was set for a classic Western showdown. On a dusty main
street, a sheriff backed by townspeople faced down a gang of
heavily armed hired gunslingers. Tension rose, hard words were
exchanged, and someone drew first. A few minutes later 10 men were
dead or dying, and several more suffered gunshot wounds. The hired
guns, those that remained on their feet that is, fled. But this was
not a shoot-out in the Wild West of Wyoming or Montana or South
Dakota in the 1880s, or a Hollywood re-imagining of such an event.
This was not Dodge City or Abilene. This was the West Virginia
mining town of Matewan in 1920. By contrast the more celebrated
gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone lasted 30 seconds and left
three dead. And Matewan was not an aberration. In the era of the
post-Civil War Wild West, it can be argued that the most dangerous
place to be was in the East. It was the inevitably violent outcome
of massive social upheaval - race wars with lynchings and
massacres, heavily armed confrontation between infant trade
unionism and the forces of capitalism, murderous feuds between
corrupt lawmen and the early Mafia. These were confrontations in
which the US government bombed and marginalised their own citizens,
the law was twisted for private ends, and 'fake news' became the
norm.
Americans know about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the
world wars, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan but the many
inbetween conflicts have been erased from public memory. And, as
there was for the British Empire, there were a lot of them. Many
have a particular resonance for Trump's America. The Texas-Mexico
border conflict (1917) for example saw Hispanic farmers murdered as
America prepared to invade south of the border - no Trump Wall
then. The US kept 150 men as official prisoners of war for
thirty-six years after a conflict that ended in 1873 - which one?
America's Forgotten Wars is full of surprises, many of them
coloured by irony and often tragedy: the Barbary Wars (1801-03), as
a supremely ironic instance, were fought to end the North African
slave trade. The Philippines War of 1899 is one of the the worst
stains on US military and political history in that it caused the
deaths of over 200,000 civilians. A companion volume to Ian
Hernon's best-selling Britain's Forgotten Wars, this book puts US
history in a whole new different light.
As Stuart Laycock's book All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: and
the Few We Never got Round to shows, the British have not been
backward in coming forward when it comes to aggressive forays
abroad. But it hasn't all been one way. In 1193 for example, the
Danes teamed up serial offenders, the French, for a full-scale
invasion. The French Prince Louis the Lion came close to success
exactly 150 years after the Battle of Hastings. The 100 Years War
saw multiple raids on British towns and ports by the Spanish and
French. Following the Armada, there was the bloodless invasion of
1688, Bonnie Prince Charlie's march south, the remarkable American
John Paul Jones' attack on Whitehaven during the American War of
Independence, the German occupation of the Channel Islands and -
the great what if of British, perhaps world history - the threat of
Operation Sealion. Ian Hernon brings his journalistic flair to bear
in this dramatic narrative of the survival of an island race over
900 years - sometimes, surprisingly, against the odds. Whilst such
a history (one leaving out the boring bits) is bound to entertain,
it also cannot fail to inform: where were shots last exchanged with
an enemy on the mainland? At Graveney Marsh in Kent.
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