The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Owen Ryan speaks to Derry native and Shannon resident Charlie Morrison about the horrors of Bloody Sunday
ON a wall in Charlie Morrison’s back garden the slogan ‘You Are Now Entering Free Derry’ is daubed on a wall, while a tricolour flies from a flagpole.
His kitchen table had the latest copy of The Derry Journal upon it last Friday morning, while all around are pictures of both family members and republican iconography.
Still very much a Derry man although he has spent most of his life in Shannon, Charlie was chosen to speak at last Sunday’s Bloody Sunday commemoration in Ennis.
He was actually supposed to be in Derry on the day of the massacre, and was a friend to two of those killed.
“I was supposed to travel up there on Bloody Sunday itself but I couldn’t get away. I’d come down in 1970 to set up a factory in Newcastle West. I’d had to go up to Derry on business the week before and when I was there the Sunday before it I met Barney McGuigan who was killed and I met Gerry McKinney two of them who were killed, I’d met them the Sunday before.”
Through a job he had held prior to coming south he had some connection to almost all of the dead.
“I worked in a factory in Derry called BSR and there were 1,500 people working there. So really, a member of every one of those families would have worked in that factory at one time or another and I’d have got to know most of them.”
His two friends were murdered very callously and cruelly, he says.
“Barney would have been jovial, a big character who would have helped everyone. And that’s really what killed him.
“On the day of Bloody Sunday he was in cover, decided to go out and took a hanky out and waved it, but the minute he walked out he was shot through the head.
“Gerry was setting up an engineering company of his own. The week before, he said to me that he’d come down to Shannon and asked would I introduce him to some of the engineering companies in Shannon to get work off of. I said, yeah, surely.
“He was in cover as well, he walked out with his hands up, which was proven as the bullet went in one side and out the other. His hands were up and he said to the soldier don’t shoot, and the soldier went down on one knee and shot him.”
“They shouldn’t have been shot at all, there was no reason for them to be shot at all, they were trying to save someone else.”
The Battle of Bogside in 1969 saw chaos in Derry, as long simmering tensions between the Catholic majority and the RUC exploded, and in the aftermath of it several people came down from Derry and spent time at Charlie’s home in Shannon.
Among them was young Seosamh Mahon, who was shot by the British Army on Bloody Sunday, but survived.
“He was shot in the stomach but wasn’t killed. He was lying on the ground, and I think it was Jim Wray lying beside him. He saw a soldier’s boots coming over towards him, stopped at Jim Wray, say he wasn’t dead, and shot him in the back.
“He was moving towards Seosamh only his wife came running out with the Knights of Malta uniform and said I’m looking after him, that saved his life.”
Such were the fine margins between living and dying, on that winter’s afternoon with the British army rampaging through the Bogside.
With an unspeakable tragedy having hit his home town and killed his friends, Charlie decided to go back home that evening.
“I decided to go up on Bloody Sunday. When I joined the company in Newcastle West I was supposed to get a company car, but they gave me a minibus instead, because they wanted me to pick up people in Limerick on the way there. The mini bus was required the next day, so I didn’t have it to go to Derry.
“My wife drew Derry on a lump of cardboard and she made me sandwiches and a flask, and I was going to hitch up. I was ready to go and a fella from Mayo pulled up and said are you going to Derry. I said yeah, and he said get in, I’m going myself. Myself and Aelish got into the car, drove to Derry and got there at two in the morning. We decided to go and visit most of the families.”
In the tight-knit community, he came across many familiar faces among the bereaved families.
“I knew somebody in every one of the families, even if I didn’t know the person themselves.”
He attended the funerals with a large floral tribute, paid for by neighbours in Shannon.
“Before we left here I had collected money for a wreath and I got so much money that the wreath was enormous. When we got to the church there was so many people there I thought we wouldn’t get near it.
“Maybe it was because of the size of the wreath, but they let me and Aelish in, we were sitting beside Joseph Locke, the singer.”
The people in Derry on Bloody Sunday knew the truth, but the subsequent Widgery report was a whitewash and the families of the bereaved had to wait until 2010 for the Saville inquiry for an acknowledgement of the injustice done.
While the UK prime minister subsequently apologised, incredibly no one has ever been successfully prosecuted, and, following the halting of the proceedings against Soldier F last year, it seems very likely that none of the killers will ever see any consequences.
Charlie is bemused that Derek Wilford, who commanded the Paratroopers on the day, is still claiming they were fired upon, but he says he is not surprised that those who committed the murders were protected, as that was standard practice from India to Aden to Derry.
“It’s happened not only here, but all over the world.”
In his youth a unionist minority were able to control Derry City, often working against the interests of its Catholic majority, but he says it has long changed now and the city is prospering.
“Derry when I was there was controlled by the unionists. The Guildhall, which is the main civic building in Derry, I was kind of embarrassed going in there, you’d know you’re not wanted there, that’s the way they looked at you.
“Derry has now come on a lot further than ever. Because of the gerrymandering it was getting nowhere, now it’s doing very, very well.”
Shannon has always had a large Northern influence, with so many people from there having come south as the town was being built and the Troubles were beginning.
In Charlie’s view there was once a negative view of them, but that too has changed.
“A lot of the people here in Shannon didn’t realise what was happening in the north of Ireland and we were kind of looked down on. That’s changed now because a lot of northern people are in good positions.”
“That factory I set up in Newcastle West, myself and three other guys, that’s still going yet. I set up one in Smithstown as well, so I’ve done very well down here and got on very well with everyone.”
His two friends are still in his thoughts, and he finds it hard to comprehend so much time has passed since their murders.
“Barney was standing at his own front door and as the march came past his house the guys were shouting at him ‘Come on and join the march’, he was saying ‘no, no’, but he was embarrassed into joining the march. He got his coat and went out and was killed.
“Gerry McKinney was setting up an engineering company, two very respectable men, the people who murdered them were scumbags.
“It’s just terrible to think that these guys came over from England to kill people in our town. And of course they were sent over by the Establishment, by the British Government.
“Fifty years have passed but it doesn’t seem like 50 years to me. That Gerry and Barney were murdered 50 years ago, it’s just hard to believe that time has passed.”
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
