About 12 hours before the Seeing Red deadline; I got advance word that the Blair government was going to announce a new investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday, and that political spokesmen of the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the Ulster Volunteer Force (the Fascist terror gangs that having been carrying out random sectarian attacks, in spite of a nominal cease fire) were about to be heaved out of the talks. It seemed that my article had been supreseded by that "Old Mole", history...

These kinds of dramatic devlopments needed to be awaited and studied, before submitting an article Amongst other things, the results of the protests, this weekend, have to be studied. Context: There were about 13000 protestors at the march 26 years ago, they were demanding an end to imprisonment without trial and democratic rights, equality, within the UK. Last year about 46000 protestors marched on the 25th. anniversary of the slaughter, they were marching for an independent inquiry into the events of 25 years before and for the reunification of Ireland as a 32-county socialist republic... I hope even greater numbers assemble this year, lending greater leverage to the Sinn Fein delegates at the talks. I will get the "word, the sceal"on the republican list, Sunday morning and will exchange email with a couple pals in Derry.

On a personal level, I was dissatisfied with my article...too theoretical.

I want to be able to take readers up to Creggan in the early dawn, stand in front the little row of shops and point east... That football field, that is where the demo. began 26 years ago, that is where we will rally, in 7 hours. That church, on the other side of the field, that is where the 13 dead were brought and laid in front of the altar rail. That Celtic Cross, next to Mahomed's Tandori take out, that is the memorial to the dead of Bloody Sunday. Next to construction trailer, that serves as the public library, that black marble slab, with the picket fence, heaped with flowers, that is the memorial to the 57 young men and women of this neighborhood who have died as soldiers of the Republican Army.

If we go down to the foot of the hill, to Free Derry Corner, that mural on Rossville Flats, you see it: stark black and white, two hulking RUC cops beat a naked girl, the slogan, "1967 - 1997, nothing has changed, disband the RUC!" I think of it as Seamus & Digger's mural, I watched them paint it back in '96, we stood one another pints, down there in the Bogside Inn (favorite rebel watering hole)and talked of politics and art...their teacher Geroid, painted on the Pathfinder Mural [famous Pathfinder Press mural in New York City-ed.]. Small world.

They use black & white, 'cause the lads are house painters and nick the paint from the contractors' vans. The work looks like a Mexican mural because Geroid brought back a book on Diego Rivera from New York....

Oh, and I would like to tell of farm famlies who have been in the movement for five generations, a son doing life in the Kesh [Long Kesh, an infamous jail-ed.], a daughter the Sinn Fein district councilor, the father crippled from wounds, another son on the run with the battalion ASU... I guess I would like to include the smell of peat smoke and the taste of "the black stuff", drawn slow and proper by the bar man at the Donah Pub....

Ah well, I probably should just stick with the Marxism, after all, I'm no Sean O'Flaherty.

Sorry for the delay.
Roger Collins

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