Nine citizens of Belfast murdered and the council could not even name the organisation responsible, the IRA

Just when you thought Belfast City Council couldn’t sink any lower they have.

Nine of its citizens murdered and over 100 injured 50 years ago but at a low key ‘memorial’ event organised by the council they could not bring themselves to name the organisation responsible for the atrocity.

The council cite that they didn’t wish to cause further hurt to the families.

The families of who? The victims or the perpetrators? Council didn’t even bother to gauge the feeling of the victims organisation who had originally pressed for a memorial event.

I would suggest they didn’t because they well knew that their opinion would not be a positive one. Instead they sought the advice of the NI Victims Commission a quango who can’t or won’t differentiate between victims and victim makers.

Would the city councils of Dublin, Birmingham, Manchester or any other city in the UK or the Republic of Ireland have behaved in such a way? Of course not, decency and respect for the families of the victims would have prevailed but not in Belfast.

As usual the media silence around this is episode is deafening apart from Ben Lowry and the News Letter, read his article in the paper on Saturday past (June 23, see link below). He shines the spotlight on this disgraceful event far, far better that I ever could.

Harry Patterson, Castlecaulfield

Ben Lowry: Imagine a Bloody Sunday memorial that didn’t mention the Paras