Colum Eastwood

Fifty years ago this month, Columba McVeigh was taken away by the IRA. He was murdered and his body was disappeared. His family are still searching for his remains. Two years later, the same happened to Captain Robert Nairac. Before that, there was Jean McConville, who we know about—a widowed mother of 10, disappeared by the IRA. Eventually, many years later, her family were reunited with her remains. The people who carried out those tragic murders—those despicable war crimes—would, if the Conservative party had its way, be free from any concern and from prosecution. Majella O’Hare was 12 years old when she was shot by a British soldier on her way to chapel in Armagh. The same goes for Majella. Patsy Gillespie was chained to a van by an IRA unit and made to drive the van with a bomb into an army base on the Buncrana Road in Derry. Patsy was killed along with five other soldiers, and the people who murdered them would be free from prosecution if it were up to the Members on the Opposition Benches. I have to say that as I sat with the families of Bloody Sunday in a court last month and looked at their devastated faces after 53 years of searching for justice, I expected better from some of our leaders and politicians. I did not expect tweets with the Parachute Regiment insignia being put out by some senior Members of this House and I did not expect fulsome support for Soldier F from others. Let me just put this on the record, because it is important. It seems to me that lots of people who talk about Bloody Sunday never actually bothered to read the Saville inquiry—an inquiry that was, of course, set up by a British Government, led by a British judge and supported by subsequent British Prime Ministers. Soldier F, by his own admission, killed five people on Bloody Sunday. He killed Michael Kelly and William McKinney. He shot James Wray in the back and while Wray was lying face down on the floor in Glenfada Park, Soldier G came over and finished him off, standing on top of him and shooting him in the back. Soldier F then shot Paddy Doherty, who was crying out that he did not want to die alone, so Bernard McGuigan crawled to him waving a white handkerchief. What did Soldier F do to Bernard McGuigan?