Tag Archives: Bloody Sunday

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 …

WHILE the eyes of the nation were on Croke Park this weekend, both for sporting action and commemoration events, ceremonies were also held in this county to mark the centenary of Bloody Sunday. The events of November 21, 1920, are etched deep in the history of the War of Independence. Newspaper accounts of the time used words like “massacre” and “slaughter” to describe the killing of 14 civilians, including three children, and the injuring of up to 80, at the football match between Tipperary and Dublin. The killings were a reprisal for the assassination of 12 British Army intelligence officers and two auxillaries, and were followed, that night, by the torture and murder of Peadar Clancy, Dick McKee and Conor Clune at Dublin Castle. The three had been arrested on suspicion of being part of Michael Collins’s notorious Squad, or of having information about the unit, and are understood to have endured hours of brutal torture. Both Clancy and Clune …

  In this weeks Champion Report we discuss the sad passing of HPV vaccine campaigner Laura Brennan, the stepping down of Shannon Group CEO Matthew Thomas, an unusual confession practice which had been operating in Cratloe, and our special guest this week is Shannon resident but Derry native, Charlie Morrison who discusses Bloody Sunday. https://soundcloud.com/clarechampion/championreport8

SHANNON resident and Derry man Charlie Morrison was a friend to two of the Bloody Sunday dead and this week he said he is “absolutely disgusted” that just one British soldier will be prosecuted for their role in the atrocity. Charlie has lived in Shannon since 1970 but has always maintained close ties to home and had been there just a few days before the ill-fated march, at which his two friends were killed. “I was in Derry the week before on business and I knew the march was taking place but I had no intention of joining it. I thought it would happen and that would be the end of it. Two of my very good friends were Barney McGuigan and Gerry McKinney. There is a famous photo of Barney lying on the ground with a big pool of blood around his head. I met Barney and he had just started a new job because the factory we had …