February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Stephen McKinley
On Jan. 30, 1972, Michael Kelly bought a chocolate bar and then handed it to his mother as he was leaving to go to a civil rights march in Derry.
“I’ll eat it when I get back,” he told her.
He never came back. The civil rights march became Bloody Sunday, and Michael Kelly became one of that day’s 13 victims, killed as he was seeking cover from the gunfire in Glenfada Park.
His chocolate bar, preserved by his family since the fateful day, is now one of the most wrenching sights at a Bloody Sunday 30th anniversary exhibition, “Hidden Truths: Bloody Sunday 1972,” that is currently taking place at the International Center for Photography in Manhattan.
It is still just a chocolate bar, but like the other photographs and artifacts that make up the exhibition, they have been transformed, first by their association with Bloody Sunday, and by the intervening years. As the exhibition’s curator, Trisha Ziff has written, they “have undergone a remarkable transformation from news, to evidence, to icons.”
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There is Kelly’s chocolate bar, and the T.Rex album belonging to another victim, Kevin McElhinney.
There is also a telegram, sent from Jerusalem to Drumcliffe Avenue, Derry City, from the girlfriend of Jim Wray, another of the 13 dead. It reads: “Am greiving with you Im shocked and broken that James my love is gone for me he will always live letter follows with strong love Miriam.”
It is impossible to ever fully calculate the impact of Sunday, Jan. 30, when British Paras fired apparently indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed Catholic civil rights protestors. There was, of course, the final collapse of Catholic-Nationalist faith in the Northern Ireland state, and the massive surge in support for the Provisional IRA, sending the Troubles off in a new direction.
There are also the memories of the friends and relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims, whose lives were changed forever that day. One such is John McKinney, the younger brother of Michael McKinney, who was killed on Bloody Sunday, aged 17.
“I have vivid memories of that day,” said McKinney, in New York for the opening night of the Bloody Sunday exhibition last Thursday evening. “I remember my brother was going to the march and I wanted to go along with him, you know, being the wee brother.” McKinney, then 8 years old, is now 38. Yet his memories are as clear as the photographs, as real as the objects belonging to the dead.
“There were rumors that a McKinney had been injured. My father had to go to the hospital and he identified his body. . . . We were brought up to respect the law and the state and we were always told to obey the law. When Bloody Sunday happened, we had no more faith in the Unionists and the government of the North.”
Two public inquiries later, and McKinney faith has not returned. He still feels that the truth about Bloody Sunday is being suppressed. Only when that comes out, he said, will Derry’s day of pain be laid to rest.
“[Bloody Sunday] changed my mother’s life forever,” he said. “Willy was her oldest son and it was very hard. We have seen our mother mourn over the years. Maybe I’ll be able to come back and tell her one day that justice has been done.”
He noted, however, that there are still strong forces at work that do not want the truth to come out. He had just heard news from home that the British tabloid The Daily Mail was condemning the new Bloody Sunday movie as “Bloody Fantasy.” On Monday, the London Evening Standard attacked the lawyers’ fees at the Saville Inquiry, which are being paid by the UK government. Some attorneys at the inquiry are receiving over $2,000 per day.
“The response of the Unionists in the last few years has been that they don’t want to know about it,” McKinney said. “Two years ago we had a chance to go to the Waterside [Derry’s largely Protestant neighborhood], and we were threatened. It was a chance to tell the Unionist community about Bloody Sunday. Maybe one of these days Gregory Campbell [DUP MP for East Londonderry) will sit down and talk to us. People actually saw more in common with the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP), because there are the same stresses on our communities, ordinary working-class people.”
Asked what, if anything would bring closure to the people of Derry for Bloody Sunday, and McKinney has a ready answer. He does not want reparations, or to see the soldiers who did the shooting put in jail for murder. Instead, he said: “I just want an admission of remorse. I know that a Para pulled a trigger and killed my brother. He was merely obeying his orders. I don’t blame him personally, but I want the British government to admit to it. They’re going to have to say they’re sorry.”
Thirty years after he lost his older brother, McKinney shrugged his shoulders and said simply, “It’s going to take a long time.”
Hidden Truths
The exhibition “Hidden Truths: Bloody Sunday 1972” is on view through March 17. The International Center for Photography is at 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at West 43rd Street, NYC. Open Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Details, (212) 857-0045, www.icp.org.