Sunday Bloody Sunday

The Jazz Bus: England v. Ireland
Ah, the World Cup? No, this time it’s the world’s stage. Recently, after many years and $280 million in investigative costs plus over 3000 deaths and too numerous to guess injuries in retaliation , the British Prime Minister apologized to Northern Ireland and the world for what is known as “Bloody Sunday”, 30, January,1972 . Almost 40 years later it is now acknowledged that a British Parachute Regiment open fire on unarmed Irish, and then lied and mislead about the circumstances, with a full British governmental cover-up. Fourteen killed of which 7 were mere teenagers, who were fleeing the troops or assisting their wounded friends.
Irish I am and proud of it. Both sides, maternal and paternal, Irish. The Shea’, Moran’s, O’Flanagan’s Rigney’s, all date back to Ireland, most proudly Northern Ireland, aka The Six Counties. At one time on my cubicle wall space I had a bumper sticker which simple stated in mathematical formula: 26+1=Ireland. After numerous questions about what the sticker represented, I removed it, too tired to explain the modern day history of my ancestral land. In short, there were 32 traditional counties in Ireland, until the Government Act of Ireland, 1920, Home Rule. The six Northern Counties opted out of British Rule, trying to remain Ireland. The rest is history, or as we say, The Troubles.
The point my rant today is the rhetoric supplied in the Prime Minister’s apology. While the apology is appreciated and elegantly stated it would not have been appreciated by my ancestors.
Many years ago, in my grandmother’s home in Brooklyn, I heard a discussion amongst family members regarding Irish geography. The points were revolving around why my ancestors moved from one county to the next, circa The Famine (another falsehood by the British) of 1847. During this pleasant Sunday discourse the word “Londonderry” was used. As a little kid, I knew it must be a bad word or worse, a profanity, because my maternal great grandmother, “Big Grandma”, as she was known, a Democratic leader in her ward, a widow not shy of anything or anyone yelled something to the effect,”We’ll not have any of that King’s stuff (she used a different word I am sure) in here. It’s Derry, not Londonderry, and you better remember that.” I did and still do.
So what’s my point? The Prime Minister still refers to the site of the murders as Londonderry, a name given to the town of Derry by “the crown”. as a reminder to those opposed to the king. Reading the local Irish papers on the Internet one will see that most Northern Irish Republicans lovingly refer to it simply as Derry. My great grandmother who died many years before Bloody Sunday would have been enraged in not only in 1972, but today she would have washed Mr. Cameron’s mouth out with soap.
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