Vow to help families of victims of 1971 Northern Ireland violence

THE UK government yesterday promised to help families of 10 innocent civilians killed in Northern Ireland almost 50 years ago, amid demands for a police inquiry into the deaths.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis acknowledged families’ “terrible hurt” about the unrest in Ballymurphy, west Belfast, as sectarian violence escalated in August 1971.

“We’re determined to address it in a way that enables victims and survivors to get to the truth which they deserve,” he told parliament.

On Tuesday, a coroner concluded at an inquest that British soldiers used “clearly disproportionate” force against protesters in the nationalist area.

She said the victims, including a priest and a mother of eight, were “entirely innocent of wrongdoing”, clearing their names after decades of smears that they were paramilitaries.

Nine of the 10 were killed by British soldiers and the use of lethal force was not justified, she concluded.

Lewis asked for family members’ “patience”, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday “apologised unreservedly on behalf of the UK government” for the incident.

But the victims’ families rejected what they called a “third party apology” from Johnson, as it was made to Northern Ireland’s leaders and not to them directly.

Briege Voyle, whose mother was shot dead, said: “We need the police now to take on this investigation, but we also need the MoD (Ministry of Defence) to hand over the information that they have.”

Johnson has since written to the families, saying he was “truly sorry”, and that the events “should never have happened”.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Wednesday urged the British government “to respond in a comprehensive and fulsome way” to the inquest’s findings.

He said the UK government needed to acknowledge that families’ grief and pain were made worse “by the untruths told about their loved ones”.

Some 3 500 people were killed during more than 30 years of “The Troubles” over British rule in Northern Ireland, before the signing of the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998.