Sir, – Forty years ago the Stormont government banned the Civil Rights march scheduled to take place in Derry on January 30th, 1972. The ban was unsuccessful, but the British Tory government followed through its counter-insurgency strategy, which began with the introduction of internment in 1971, by shooting down peaceful marchers who came out on the streets in defiance of state terror. Today, another Tory government and its middle-management in Stormont denies human and civil rights by upholding internment while also trying, by some rather desperate means, to prevent people from marching again in defence of these rights.
On January 29th, we, as former Long Kesh internees, will join the march that will mark the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry. We will march under a banner calling for an end to internment in 2012, and our numbers will include survivors of the “hooded treatment”, who were tortured in August 1971. We call on every ex-internee and ex-prisoner to join us and help carry our banner. People are now being held without trial in the six counties at the whim of an English Secretary of State. This present-day internment is the same in all but name as that introduced in August 1971, and is the same type of repression that people marched against so bravely in January 1972. We oppose internment no matter how the British decide to implement it – whether via the “suspension of licence”, the denial of pardons, the use of non-jury courts and the gamut of other repressive legislation at their disposal.
We will march in defence of human rights, in protest against present-day internment and in opposition to the torture that continues to be practised by the British state in Ireland and abroad. In doing so, we will salute the memory of the brave men, women and children who once marched for our freedom and who were murdered, wounded and brutalised by the British army on the streets of Derry 40 years ago. We will also remember our friends who died prematurely as a result of the torture – Pat Shivers from Toomebridge, Mickey Montgomery from Derry and Seán McKenna from Newry. – Yours, etc,