State Violence (19 page)

On the day it happened I saw no rioting at all. There were two ways home from school. There was no advantage in either of them and what way you took was a matter of chance. In fact I never saw rioting at that post any day. It was of no significance at all. I never went that way on a regular basis. It was just a way home from school. The army later claimed there was rioting. They spoke about twenty hooligans after the incident. I was one of the oldest in my group – ten years old – so they could hardly talk about the primary school children rioting. They tried to insinuate that older boys from the secondary school were already out. But I was already on the table shot at 3.40pm when the secondary school got out.

A point that I find amazing was that I was supposed to block the army's view into Creggan and the danger was, it was claimed, there could be shooting from there at the post. They cleared the view by shooting me with a rubber bullet.

I was two days in Altnagelvin Hospital and was then sent for convalescence to St Columba's Hospital, Derry. There is an eye department there. My right eye was removed. I got fifty-four stitches in the face. My face was badly swollen. My brother Martin described it as looking like a blown-up tube. He said he couldn't see my ears and my face was a mass of blood. The bandages were changed on the hour. At one time they spoke of removing the left eye. It had been closed over with four plastic stitches, the ones that dissolve. However, the sight did not return to my left eye. I also lost my sense of smell.

After two weeks, I was let out home. I travelled to specialists in Dublin, several times to Belfast, partly to do with my case. In January 1973, I went to Worcester, near Boston, with my mother and my brother Kevin. We were guests of Daniel Herlihy, chairman of the Worcester Area Committee for Justice in Northern Ireland. Mr Herlihy had been contacted by Dr Raymond McClean. Donations had been raised by them and people at home. Ulick O'Connor had written a story and there was a response to that. People in the south were very kind. They also ran a big do for me in Worcester. I was examined by Dr Charles D. J. Regan at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston. There was nothing he could do for me. He would not take any fee. He said I would not see again.

For a while I thought it was the pads on my eyes kept me from seeing. After I came out of hospital, my brother Noel took me out for a walk and told me I wouldn't be able to see. My father and mother were in despair. My brother knew the news had to be broken. Looking back, there were a number of things helped me to accept. Number one – my family. They took me out, runs and walks. My father and mother went to the chapel every morning. We went to a holy well in Dublin. My mother had my breast pinned over with holy medals. My father and mother had great faith. My father used to take an odd drink, but he even give that up to offer up for me. Number two – also the way I was treated in the area, neighbours coming to meet me and see me. A lot of mates. People were very kind to me. Even to this day, my mother still writes to people who helped me and wrote to her. An army captain in England, for example, is a person who was very kind to me.

So I got over the worst stage. Music then too gave me an outlet. At Martin's wedding, Lorny Deane, Marty's brother-in-law, was playing the guitar. This was in July after I was shot. I mind going up to Lorny and he sat the guitar on my knee. I wanted to learn to play. My family was afraid that, if I failed at the guitar, it would be a great disappointment to me. My mother was naturally protective. I remember waking up at night and hearing my mother crying aloud as she was praying. She used to pray long into the morning. She used to watch out the bay window and thought I was lonely. The real thing I missed was football! It seems strange to say that. I missed football!

I eventually learned the guitar and the mandolin and I now run the Chapel Folk Group in the Long Tower church along with my girl friend, Rita Page. That played a big part. I was able to make my own friends and so grow more independent of the family. Once I was Richard Moore blinded by a rubber bullet, then I was Richard Moore the musician.

One of my aims was to remain normal. I did my CSE, five subjects, and then my ‘A' levels. I was under extreme pressure to go to a school for the blind. I just continued going to the same school. Mr Armstrong, head-teacher, and the teachers accepted me and made allowances for me. Sometimes I taped the class. Teachers recorded textbooks for me. Miss Maguire taught me Braille. Mrs Donnelly taught me typing. Kevin McCallion taught me general knowledge, more private tuition. All went out of their way.

Now I am at Coleraine University and studying social administration. Again I find the lecturers especially helpful. At the Galway Mass I met Pope John Paul II and took part in the Offertory Procession.

We took a civilian action case. It lasted five years, until 28 February 1977. It was settled out of court and I was awarded a substantial sum. Trouble is my father lost allowances and this was awkward because I wasn't to receive it until I was eighteen years. My father was on the ‘bureau' at this time and was penalised. I too was penalised, only receiving a minimum grant at the university when we fought the case, and receiving no blind allowance during holidays.

My father died in 1978. My mother's brother, Gerald McKinney, a good family man and good to our family, was shot dead on Bloody Sunday in Derry with his hands up. That was very hard on my mother – two incidents in the one year. My parents were brilliant.

It was on 4 November 1971 and the British army was in the district raiding houses. It was in the early hours of the morning, which was the normal time when they raided houses. All my children had to be taken from their beds. I am the mother of eleven children; the youngest at the time was five years of age. It was very annoying and upsetting for the children to sit and watch the British army ransack their home and pull everything apart. They had been arresting some men in the street and one of those arrested was a neighbour of mine. He was the father of four young children and his wife was in a very distressed state. I left my house and went to comfort her. I made some tea, got the children dressed and gave her a tablet to try and settle her down. I tried to assure her that her husband would only be held a few hours. As it turned out, he was held for several years. I heard someone shout that the paratroopers were coming into the district, so I returned to my home.

Everyone in the area was put under house arrest, which meant a soldier was put in every doorway and no one was allowed in or out. The paratroopers were in a very aggressive mood and were pulling young men and boys from their homes, some in just their bare feet, some with just their shirts and trousers on.

I had pulled up my venetian blind and was looking out the window. What I saw was very frustrating. I didn't know whether to scream or cry. The very last thing I ever saw was a young man having his head banged off a saracen. I told my teenage daughter, ‘For God's sake, put on a record to boost our morale.' She put on ‘Four Green Fields' and, it had only been playing a few minutes when a paratrooper stepped in front of my window and fired directly into my face. This happened in front of my children who were by this time in hysterics. I was told later my face was in a terrible state and the blood was everywhere. My husband threw a towel over my face and tried to get me out to the car to get me to hospital. One of my neighbours from across the street ran out to help and the soldiers threatened to shoot him. He told them to go ahead but he was going to help me no matter what. They at first refused to let us leave the district but my husband pulled the towel away to show the terrible injuries and they finally let us go.

At the hospital, my eyes were so badly damaged they had to be removed. I now wear artificial eyes and had to receive plastic surgery to build up the bridge of my nose. After my eyes were removed, my family couldn't bring themselves to tell me I would never see again. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was in Belfast at that time and it was she who came to my bedside and told me my eyes had been removed. I went into very deep depression and just wanted to die. When you are the mother of eleven children and a very active person, it was very hard to accept.

I was taken home and remained in my bedroom for a very long time. My eldest daughter was taken out of school and had to be mother and housekeeper to the rest of the family. Eventually, after a lot of help and prayers, I realised that I would have to come to terms with my blindness. It was very hard. I missed seeing the children's faces and the colour of the trees and flowers, and going out for walks, doing the shopping.

The rubber bullet that had shot me was then replaced with the plastic bullet. Many children were being killed and injured. I decided I would have to get involved in trying to have these lethal weapons banned, so I joined The United Campaign against Plastic Bullets. With other members I have travelled the world to tell people my story and enlist their support in our campaign.

I received compensation for my injuries but to this day I couldn't tell you the name of the soldier who shot me. He was never prosecuted. I never received the justice I desperately wanted, for him to appear in court and tell me why he shattered my life that day.

To date seventeen people have been killed with rubber and plastic bullets, eight of them school-children, and hundreds more have been severely injured. Over a million pounds has been paid out in compensation, but only one member of the security forces has ever been charged in connection with the deaths and injuries, and he was acquitted.

Plastic bullets are still being used in Northern Ireland and have been fired on several occasions since the ceasefire.

Many people have been seriously injured by rubber and plastic bullets. Some of the early injuries were described in the British Journal of Surgeons, Vol. 62 (480–486). The above are the personal recollections of two people blinded by rubber bullets.

On 30 June 1981 Richard Moore of Derry and his brother Martin visited me in Armagh. The above story Richard told me. It was first published in Denis Faul & Raymond Murray, Rubber & Plastic Bullets Kill & Maim.

Mrs Emma Groves, Belfast, active in the United Campaign against Plastic Bullets, gave this account at the Forum for Peace and Justice, Dublin Castle, 11 April 1995.

In 1982, the late Pat Canavan and Larry Burns founded the Organisation of Concerned Teachers after reading a letter I had written calling on all responsible adults to make public their opposition to the use of plastic bullets. On 13 May 1982 the European parliament voted for the banning of plastic bullets in all ten Common Market countries. Three hundred teachers signed a declaration against their use which was published in various languages in European countries, North and South America, Japan and the Arab world. On 24 June 1982 I gave the following lecture to the Organisation of Concerned Teachers in Belfast. It was written with the assistance of Mgr Denis Faul.

All human life is sacred. This statement must be analysed. Does it mean only that the processes of reproduction and birth must be sacred, or does it mean that the killing of a person draws attention to the fact that this life is sacred?

Must we not assert that every phase, indeed every moment, of a human life is sacred? The human person has the continual potential to love God. That is why human life is sacred. A person is holy to God. But a person can only exercise love of God from an environment where human rights are respected as absolute. If the human person is degraded by racism or religious bigotry or an unequal application of the law, or by being subjected to material wealth such as money, oil or gold, then the sacredness of human life is being destroyed.

In the Republic of Ireland, when a child goes to school, he is registered in a new name. Patrick Sweeney, he learns, is also Pádraig Mac Suibhne. He gets a new identity symbolised by a change of name. It is as if the state took on a propriety right to provide for his education, introduce him to human rights and develop his potential.

Teachers have a particular important part to play, not only in fostering in the young mind the sense of the uniqueness and sacredness of his own life, and the respect and reverence due to the life of others, but also the teachers must defend the lives of the children entrusted to their care. Parents will feed and protect their children out of love in most cases, out of maternal instinct in the rest. I think, however, that the child's first contact with the outside world is with the ‘state', the ‘government', the ‘civil power', the ‘law', when he goes to school. In an ideal situation the child should see all these powers as benign and protective of his existence in human rights. What a tragedy if the schoolchild sees them as hostile, as murderers and deceivers who blow off the heads of his tiny companions with plastic bullets and cover up the crime? Surely the child, in his own way, perplexed by the hatred and hostility from public life and the authorised agents of the government, will turn to his teachers and say, ‘Make it right! Make it right!' Most of the injuries from plastic bullets have been children. In the words of the International Tribunal in Belfast last year, ‘Their injuries approach in severity those that would occur in war'. I will never forget the fourteen-year old boy who moved like a crab across the floor to testify at that tribunal. Surely the message of the deaths and injuries of these children by plastic bullets is, ‘Destroy the iniquity and the evil. Restore publicly the love and protection of family life'.

The teachers of Belfast and Derry have seen ten of their children killed by the state in a hostile and brutal fashion. No explanation is forthcoming. In each case the crime has been covered up. Some people give the impression that a child is expendable – ‘only a child' they say, as if the children of the city streets do not count, as if their lives were less valuable. To teachers this is doubly hurtful because they realise the potential that is there. This is the great fulfilment and satisfaction in the world of teachers – their nearness to potential and the springs of life in children. Despite last year's International Tribunal, despite the fact that the European parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of plastic bullets in all ten European Common Market countries, the Secretary of State, Mr Prior, Lord Gowrie and Sir John Hermon insist on retaining them for use against Irish children. They will be brought out again. More children will die. People said the plastic bullet was used in vengeance in the hunger strike period and that it would not be used after that. People with power and influence in church and state withdrew. Then Stephen McConomy, aged eleven years, was killed.