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Date Posted: 19:46:13 09/03/02 Tue
Author: Part 1
Subject: Sunday,Bloody Sunday

Chapter Two [From MS of planned e-book]

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY


JANUARY 30th 1972 in Derry witnessed a premediated slaughter of peaceful civilian demonstrators at the hands of the British army's First Parachute Regiment. When the imperialist guns fell silent, thirteen marchers lay dead or dying, while seventeen others were seriously wounded. The British media told an unsuspecting worlf that their troopers had been fired upon, yet as the coffin lids were being nailed down amid a nation stopped by general strike and stunned by grief, not one British soldier had been treated for any injury received on that date.

Slowly the world began to realise that the truth will always out. That something very different from the version beamed across the globe by British radio and television transmitters, or the crude versions adopted by the lie machines of Fleet Street, had occured on that historic date in the working class area known as the Bogside. Unlike our dead, the truth could not be buried under the clay but rather, like the blossoms on their graves, it burst forth from the soil to expose its reality to the full view of civilised humanity in the four corners of the earth.

The British, under the guise of an 'impartial inquiry' led by a former high-ranking imperialist army officer, and current Territorial Army officer, Lord Widgery, vainly endeavoured to pluck the flower of truth by all manner of distortion, omission and calumny. At all costs the British establishment and its lackeys within this artificial statelet, conscious of an international audience, adopted the stance of Pontius Pilate. As with this biblical figure, history will condemn in spite of public ablution.


Butcher's Apron

The sun shone that day as over 25,000 peaceful demonstrators marched under the civil rights banner to protest against the arrests, torture and imprisonment os suspected opponents of the Stormont junta, without so much as a charge or a trail. This was the only way that working class people could express their abhorrence of government policy. The streets became their paraliament and their political desires were expressed in chants, the carrying of placards, or the singing of 'We Shall Overcome'. The power of the masses, which existed between the kerbstones of our streets and the ditches of our country roads, was a force that the British government was determined to crush. Like on so many other occasions, the British ruling elite could only respond to passive resistance on the part of a colonised people by the use of brutal state terror in the form of its standing army. On January 30th 1972, the city of Derry witnbessed the latest organised massacre in the long and bloody history of the British Empire, which in previous times committed similar atrocities in Asia, Africa, the Americas, the sub-continent of Indiam and many other lands which were colonised, and over which its Butcher's Apron once triumphantly flew.

Before Widgery and the world, two sets of witnesses appeared. On theone hand, the 'soldiers' who had performed this dastardly deed, every one conflicting every other soldier's account. On the other, civilian witnesses who told a different story. They were unanimous and quite explicit that the British army opened fire without provocation.

Any event in history cannot be fully understood unless we seek out the root cause - the chain of events leading up to such happenings. Our blood stained thepavements and barrricades of Free Derry because of the fact that the minority within this artificial statelet had been denied their basic human rioghts since the inception of Stormont. Its establishment also had its roots planted in eight hundred years of British military, cultural and economic interference in our country. It was but a few years before Bloody Sunday that this minority began to demand equality in relation to votes, housing and employment, and had been met by frequent baton charges to drive the protest movement off the streets, the first such charge being in Derry on Octoiber 5th 1968. In the months that followed, serious rioting broke out all over this imposed statelet, as members of the RUCendeavoured to invade nationalist ghettoes, as in April and August 1969, with the murder of Sammy Devenny at the hands of thepolice, the battles of the Bogside and of the Falls Road in Belfast. The nationalist communities took on a defensive role, and after the police force were driven back in a state of extreme physical and mental exhaustion, the British government sent in their troops "to aid the civilian authority", viz, the police and the Stormontnjunta. 'A House Divided', written by former British P.M., Jim Callaghan, reveals that the Six County administrtation feared that after the defeat of their police force on the streets of Derry, the nationalist people would come out of their ghetto and take over the city. This was how he endeavoured to 'justify' his sending in their troops, which in reality had never left the six north-eastern counties - four of which, like Derry City, have nationalist majorities.

Derry Killings

Since 1968 sporadic rioting was not uncommon on Derry's streets. Yet, by the early summer of 1971 the British authorities were content at the 'progress' being made. The RUC were once again patrolling almost all areas on foot, and the British army was little in evidence.

By the beginning of July, however, a number of incidents had changed the local political scene very dramatically. The youth were once again on the streets resisting the powers-that-be, and a formerly quiescent Irish Republican Army were now in open armed conflict, and were steadily growing numerically and in terms of political influence.

The prime reason for the new upsurge of militancy within the national community was the unwarranted murders on July 8th of Seamus Cusack and Desmond Beattie in Derry by the British Crown forces. Such was the abhorrence of the working-class communities at large that even the moderate middle-class leadership within the Social Democratic and Labour Party were forced by massive popular opinion to withdraw from Stormont. Many veteran observers believed that if they had remained at this juncture, while still being able to attract mainly Catholic middle-class support, their political demise would have been certain, as grass-roots support in the working-class areas would have vanished. Total rejection of the party would most certainly have been the verdict of the risen communities, who would have viewed any clinging to power as based solely on purely fiscal considerations.

Doubtful Deterrent

By August 1971 the Stormont junta reverted to its age-old arsenal with the view to introducing its most repressive of weapons, so often used in the past with varying degrees of 'success', i.e. internment without charge or trial. It had been used in the Twenties, in the Thirties, in the Forties, in the Fifties and into the early Sixties. It was once again being contemplated in the Seventies rather than concede the limited and popular reformist demands of the nationalist communities.

Unlike other more subtle regimes, Stormont had not learnt that the old methods used in former times do not always have the same results in new and changing situations. That a previously doubtful deterrent can in a different situation become a political catalyst for opponents, which in turn can produce a cataclysm - thereby having a boomerang effect.



On the morning of August 9th 1971, at approximately 4.30 a.m., young men from all over the Six Counties were kidnapped from their beds by armed men, taken away and held as hostages, without charge or trial. Some were not so young, but all could broadly be described as nationalists. Among the professed socialists 'rounded-up' was one Protestant radical, John Mc Guffin. Captured some months later by a TV camera-crew he was heard to shout back at those guarding the gates of the internment camp, "I'm going to write about you lot and the whole world will soon know what goes on in places like this."

Literary Bombshell

McGuffin was a man of his word. He knew the pattern was not new as explained in his work, 'Internment' (published by Anvil Books, Co. Kerry in July 1973):

"At 6.45 am on 14th August 1969, 28 republicans were arrested and taken from their homes. As usual, no 'loyalist' extremists or gunmen were arrested. When the English Special Branch men arrived next month to sort out the RUC they asked for the files on all the "terrorists". They were handed records, mostly out-of-date, on the IRA."What about the UVF ?" they asked. "It doesn't exist", was the reply. "We have no records on loyalists." (p.84)

The Stormont Prime Minister at the time was Brian Arthur Deane Faulkner (now deceased). One could say that he was an old hand at internment, having been responsible for its implementation in the late Fifties, when Minister of Home Affairs. McGuffin relates:

"The Sunday Times 'Insight' team claim that "when he took over, the issue was not whether internment was to come, but when and on what scale." It is not surprising therefore, that on becoming the last PM of N.Ireland, he was to order the RUC Special Branch "to work with the Director of Military Intelligence at Lisburn in drawing up a list of those Catholics (sic) who should be interned".

McGuffin's research argues:

"The [British] army were unhappy. General Tuzo, the GOC in Northern Ireland since February 1971, consistently opposed internment, believing, rightly, as it turned out, that they could not get the right people. But as the violence escalated, Faulkner became more and more insistent. On July 9th he telephoned Heath [British Tory PM]. "I must be able to intern now", he demanded. Accordingly, with some reluctance, a 'dry run' was agreed upon. At dawn on 23rd July, 1,800 troops and RUC raided republican houses throughout the province, searching for documents. They got enough to encourage them. The decision to intern was only a matter of time, despite army objections." (p.85)


Spin-Doctors

Chapter 8 of McGuffin's work deals with those actually interned:

"The initial internment sweep on 9th August 1971 was, militarily, a complete failure. The IRA had known of it for some time and as a result virtually every senior IRA officer was billeted away from home. Of the 342 men arrested (the British army tried for 450), 116 men were released within 48 hours. 226 men were detailed: 86 from Belfast, 60 from Co. Derry, 20 from the Newry area, 20 from Armagh and 40 from Fermanagh and Tyrone. Initially, 124 men were held in C wing of Crumlin (the number was to rise to 160 within five weeks) while the remainder were held on the Maidstone (prison ship).

Within days Unionist ministers were claiming a fantastic success - a lie which subsequently caused them great embarrassment. Faulkner claimed 80 IRA officers arrested; the British GOC claimed 70% of terrorists on the wanted list. The claims could not have been further from the truth. Of the 160 men in Crumlin, no more than 80 had anything to do with the IRA, and of these only four were senior officers (none of them the top men). The rest of the internees were political opponents of the Unionists - like the People's Democracy and Civil Rights Association members, old retired IRA ex-internees, militant trade unionists, public speakers, and, in some cases, people held on mistaken identity. A blind man came under the latter category.

Faulkner was determined to silence any street opposition to his Draconian measures, as he envisaged the sweeps would continue for at least six months. During that time 2,357 were arrested under the Special Powers Act, 589 interned, 159 detained, and 1,600 completely innocent men (even by the government's standards) released after 'interrogation' - nearly 67 per cent.


INTERNMENT 1971 - REVOLTING NATIVES


BRIAN FAULKNER thought he could simply declare a ban on all public demonstrations for a period of twelve months in the likely hope that 'moderate' figures and churchmen within the nationalist community would help him dampen mass agitation, thereby assisting his repressive strategy. The introduction of internment, yet again, had a unifying effect on the nationalist community. Serious disorders marked the occasion, with his ban on marches being defied in broad daylight. During the hours of darkness the nationalist ghettoes had their night-shifts of protesters. Women clattered bin-lids at the approach of the British and police raiding parties. Youths repainted slogans or murals obliterated by the Crown Forces, removed street signs, door numbers and selected street lighting to bother, confuse and disorientate them as well.

Many Deaths

The first weeks after August 9th showed that, rather than end political violence, internment actually exacerbated the situation, with 35 people having been killed as a result. A widespread rent and rates strike followed, which had the support of tens of thousands of households. Posters to this effect appeared in windows all over the occupied area - as well as the more contemptuously militant slogan, 'Rent Spent'.

By October the effectiveness of the strike became apparent. In Newry there was 95 per cent non-payment, with its Urban Council losing 150,000 pounds in ten weeks. In Lurgan the decline was 10,000 pounds per week. In Derry, the Creggan estate alone had 15,000 refuseniks with a 98 per cent success rate for the strike, whereas the Bogside and Brandywell had 90 per cent; Coalisland (Tyrone) 95 per cent; Andersontown (Belfast) had 80 per cent refusing to pay. Gas and electricity bills, car tax, ground rent, TV licences and fines in courts were quickly added to the non-payment campaign. Soon even the dogs in the street would bark at the Brits without a licence. Local government virtually ground to a halt.

The Civil Rights Association in the Six-Counties (NICRA), however, refused to take to the streets. Their logic was simple - you couldn't march because it was illegal and they might put you in jail if you did ! Other bodies like the Civil Resistance Committees and the Northern Resistance Movement began to grow out of the resentment and frustration which was keenly feel at the time. Finally, with the full support of the internees in Long Kesh, a group of trade-unionists in Tyrone (in co-operation with Belfast and Armagh militants including the PD) called a march for Christmas Day. It assembled at Beechmont in Belfast, and despite atrocious weather conditions moved off in heavy snow for the new concentration camp some ten miles away. An estimated 4,000 people participated. The British army's attempts to stop the demonstration failed. The march was a great morale-booster. The British laws had been flouted and the floodgates were opened. NICRA shamefacedly had to call their own march - straight up the Falls to the heart of the ghetto. But the marching season was on. Marches at Magilligan internment camp, more protests at the Long Kesh camp and finally the march in Derry which was to be remembered as 'Bloody Sunday'.

Torture Reports

Within days of the internment swoops, stories began to filter out of the concentration camps, Crumlin jail and the prison ship Maidstone indicating that severe torture had been used against numerous internees. As time progressed the extent of such tortures was fully realised and confirmed. By mid-October the British newspapers, particularly the Sunday Times, had taken up the story and reported on "third degree tortures and interrogation". The majority of the British media ignored the allegations, and like an ostrich when being pursued, buried their head in the sand. The Sunday Times had, however, only published something which had been known in Ireland for two months previously.

In fact the Association for Legal Justice (ALJ) had collected and distributed statements to the press as far back as August 20th. In the first week of September the British press was circulated with a ten page dossier compiled by the London Anti-Internment League, based largely on ALJ research, but the British public only got a glimpse of what was happening some five weeks later.

This was due to a number of factors, but in the main journalists adopted a policy of self-censorship. What they did not wish to believe, they did not write about. The most outstanding journalists of this period were; the staff of Private Eye; Jonathan Dimbleby of the BBC's 'World at One' programme who had the courage to declare, "Its got to the stage where we're being repressed"; Roy Bull of The Scotsman who framed a declaration for the Free Communications Group which read: "We deplore the intensification of censorship on TV, radio and the press coverage of events in N. Ireland and pledge ourselves to oppose it"; and Keith Kyle who attacked those who claimed censorship was ' in the national interest ' by retorting, " there is no higher national interest than avoiding self-deception on Northern Ireland."

Exposing the Facts

This was the background to the protests which occurred between August 9th 1971 and January 30th 1972. The reasons for the marches etc, were not merely to protest against internment, but to expose to the world the terrible and foul tortures endured by helpless detainees. The attitude of the British media was a factor that made many thinking people within the expanding protest movements realise that the facts associated with internment could only be conveyed to the world via mass street agitation. If they obeyed Faulkner's ban, the world might never know, and the tortures might increase. By physically and intellectually opposing the ban and the Special Powers Act it was hoped to not only smash internment but to make censorship itself prove worthless. By so doing the world beyond our shores slowly began to realise what was happening in this antiquated, British-controlled statelet.

The dreaded knock on the door at dawn, or the splintering of locks from door frames and the physical removal of fellow citizens from their homes amid great family distress, were images that united entire communities. Those who lived through those days hardly need to refresh their memories as each anniversary of internment and Bloody Sunday falls due. The torture of the prisoners, besides the brutal circumstances of their immediate arrest, will forever remain facts of history, yet the detail is important to recall and record. It was such detail that drove the people onto the streets so that others too might be made aware of the situation. Several were to forfeit their lives for so doing.

The following is one case of torture, which is by no means exceptional, as others taken in the first rounds-ups suffered similarly. The case appeared as a report in a small circulation publication, Socialist Voice, written jointly by Londoners Sean Hallahan and Chris Dolan. Under the heading: 'Strasbourg Horror Tale of Army Terror in Ulster', it begins:

The case of the Hooded Men of Strasbourg is not some undiscovered manuscript by Arthur Conan Doyle or the title of a new film by Hammer. There is plenty of horror in the story but it is all too real, owing nothing to the special effects department of any film company. The 'Hooded Men' are a group of Irishmen who were lifted by the British army on August 9th 1971 and subjected to systematic torture by the forces of 'law and order'. Their cases are currently being discussed at the European Court in Strasbourg and it is the British government that is on trial. This is the story of what happened to one of those men, Michael Montgomery of Derry, who was active in the civil rights movement and later became the first Republican councillor in Derry City since the 1920s. He is a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. On August 9th 1971, Michael was dragged from his bed by British soldiers and thrown into a Saracen armoured car while his wife and children were left crying helplessly. Mick, as he likes to be called, was driven to a nearby army barracks where he recognised members of the RUC Special Branch. He was taken from there by furniture van to Magilligan camp (later to be an internment centre) and left with others who had been lifted to stand two hours in the rain. His requests to see a solicitor were refused. He was questioned twice in six hours and refused to answer questions other than his name and address.

A hood was then placed over his head by members of the RUC and he was put into a helicopter which rose from the ground several feet. Mick was then thrown out ! He was returned to the 'copter and flown to another place and told to lean against the wall on his fingertips. After examination by a British army doctor he was placed in a room where there was a continuous noise like that of escaping steam. He was told to lie on the ground and his legs were forced apart until it felt "like my back passage was splitting". He passed out. While awake his testicles were massaged with the sole of a rubber boot until they were swollen. Mick was again forced to stand against a wall resting on his fingertips. Throughout this ordeal he was being repeatedly beaten, often to the point of unconsciousness. At some time a tube was inserted in his anus and he passed out again. His requests for water were granted - but instead of being allowed to drink it the security forces threw it over the hood - making breathing more difficult. Another factor that made breathing difficult was that while being beaten Mick had vomited and the vomit accumulated inside the hood.

During much of this period no words were spoken by the torturers and Mick had the idea that this was to confuse him, so that he could not say whether he was being tortured by the RUC or the British army. By this time he had lost all track of time. At certain periods he was taken for interrogation and asked about the IRA and left-wing groups. At one point he heard the click of a revolver and was told that his wife and children had been shot. During some of the time Mick was hallucinating. At intervals he was allowed to sleep and was 'fed' when bread was forced down his throat, from under the hood. He was told he was in the Channel Isles, and then another time that he was going home. He was taken by helicopter (after being shaved and deodorised) not home, but to Belfast's Crumlin Road jail. In jail he was examined by a doctor and Mick asked him what day it was. The doctor replied that it was a Tuesday and Mick expressed disbelief. August 9th was a Monday and Mick knew he had been held for more than 24 hours. He had - it was the Tuesday of the following week and the ordeal had taken over eight days !

John McGuffin's hard-hitting work spares no punches. He wrote:

Torture and brutality are emotive words. They are words used frequently by propagandists. Nonetheless, in the Northern Ireland context, in the year 1971-72, they are more honest words than the emasculated semantics of Sir Edmund Compton or the bland lies of Brian Faulkner and General Tuzo. For the simple fact is that brutality by the British army became so usual as to be commonplace, while torture was systematically - and generally ineffectively - carried out by both army intelligence and the RUC Special Branch on an increasing scale (p116).


KITSON-STYLE TORTURE CENTRES



TORTURE took place at several locations, but the two main centres were the compounds of Palace Barracks, Hollywood, and at Girdwood Park Camp which adjoins Crumlin Jail, Belfast. A distance of a mere five miles separated the two. Palace Barracks was the HQ of the 1st. Parachute Regiment, which had billeted three members of the undercover 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, commonly known as SAS. The torture compound consisted of four huts surrounded by a corrugated iron perimeter wall. It was deliberately located well to the rear of the camp and could not be seen from the road.

Professional Sadists

Girdwood contained many armed military policemen, the majority of whom took turns at beating, threatening and sadistically maltreating these uncharged civilians, supposedly in their care. Barefoot detainees were forced to run over broken glass, and at this location the 'helicopter treatment' proved a popular terror tactic. Prisoners were to relate that Ballykinlar and Magilligan had even worse treatment on offer. These tortures went on for months, and covered four distinct phases. As late as November 1971 authenticated reports of electric shock treatment were coming out of the interrogation centres and were common knowledge. Between October and 24th January over 20 men had been subjected to this form of interrogation. This was eventually confirmed several weeks later, again, in London by the Sunday Times, on March 5th 1972, while the rest of the British press were still engaged in self-censorship.

It was the factual reports, however, released in Ireland, often within days of the actual tortures, that drove the nationalist population onto the streets to cry for justice. Each distinct phase was being carefully recorded for local and international agencies by the non-political ALJ and figures such as Fr. Dennis Faul and Fr. Raymond Murray, both Catholic priests well-known as hostile to the republican struggle. By late November 'the drugs phase' had been introduced, with two types clearly identified which were being used on selected detainees. This was confirmed by urine samples medically tested at the request of solicitors on the release of several detainees.

London's Plans

The British establishment were not content with torturing captive Irishman and women. Few of those on the outside, who were about to march in Derry, would have believed what was being planned for them behind the scenes, along the corridors of power. Both the Unionist and Tory leadership were mutually engaged in moves which would in effect amount to imposing the death penalty, again without the trappings of a trial, upon all those who would dare to march against state repression through their own city streets. On January 28th a special meeting of the British Cabinet's Defence and Overseas Committee attracted the top brass of the British ruling-elite, including William Whitelaw, the new Northern overseer, as well as other Cabinet ministers. Such an august gathering of British establishment figures were hardly discussing a mere snatch squad operation, and it would seem clear that two major factors were on their minds.

The first was how best to maintain Brian Faulkner in power and preserve the puppet parliament at Stormont; and the second was how best to bring to an end the Free Derry no-go area which had been securely barricaded and refused to accept the British occupation forces and their uniformed Orange allies since 1969. The latter reality was a continuing affront to establishment ideas of what passes for 'good order'.

No doubt listening to the advocates of General Frank Kitson (who developed the British army strategy of phycological warfare and counter-subversion), on the second issue it was hoped that they could separate the fish (both wings of the IRA) from the water in which they swam (the working-class people). The aim was to force these guerrilla forces out into the open by making them defend the people and the popularly declared liberated zone, Free Derry.

Banning the demonstration could provide a smoke-screen or excuse for military intervention, for as far as high ranking strategists like Kitson were concerned, to use his own phrase, "the law is just another weapon in the government's arsenal...little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public."

Kitson had served in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus before commanding the 39th Infantry Brigade in the Six-Counties, 1970-72, and his work, 'Low Intensity Operations', clearly reveals just how far the 'democratic' state can be manipulated by its own elites. Some comments made at the time, particularly those of none other than Lord Balneil, give a great deal of credit to this hypothesis. It may take a few more years, (the '30-year rule' for disclosures has been imposed) for the full story to see the light of day, but one thing is sure, British strategy must surely have misfired yet again. Not only did Faulkner fall, certainly as a result of internment, its aftermath, and the events of Bloody Sunday, but his puppet parliament also fell by the end of March 1972. This took almost everyone by surprise, and had seemed impossible only a few short months before.

Danger Signs

Whitehall watchers include many from the North and there were signs of 'something big' on the cards. The leaderships of both the Official and Provisional wings of the IRA were certainly numbered among the observers and both may well have smelt a rat with the drafting in of the Paras, the so-called 'crack regiment', to handle a routinely planned peaceful civil rights demonstration. The combined republican forces would never have been so foolish as to oblige the British Cabinet and its generals by coming out openly on the streets in the fashion the latter would obviously have desired. Guerrilla armies rarely take on a conventional-style offensive. Another fact worthy of mention: civil rights demonstrators never allowed any display of militarism at marches, would be physically hostile to such displays and genuinely embraced the ideology of non-violent protest. Amid great danger since Duke Street, and even immediately after Bloody Sunday, people clung to the need to remain on the streets with their bodies and voices as their only weapons of struggle. This is a heroism based on the justice of one's case, that has no need for militarist trappings as inner strength expressed by whole communities has often overcome entire armies.

In retrospect, it is easy to pin-point some ominous signs which appeared prior to January 30th. A meeting organised by the Rev. Ian Kyle Paisley was suddenly called off, and this was coupled with a warning to 'all loyalists' to steer clear of the city centre. On Tuesday January 25th, the Guardian, in a front-page headline, gave a clue as to the type of troops and their likely conduct in Derry on the following Sunday afternoon. The report bore the heading, 'CO's want Paras restrained', and written by Simon Hoggart, a journalist of some note then in Belfast, informed readers that:

At least two British army units in Belfast made informal requests to brigade headquarters for the Parachute Regiment to be kept out of their areas. Senior officers in these units regard the paratroop's tactics as too rough and on occasion, brutal. One officer in a troubled area, whose commanding officer made such a request, said: "The Paras undid in 10 minutes community relations which it has taken us four weeks to build up". News of the requests, which to say the least are extraordinary within the British army, came after the Parachute Regiment had completed its own investigations of the weekend's events at Magilligan internment camp, when reporters saw paratroopers club demonstrators and fire rubber bullets at point blank range. Since the requests were made paratroopers have not been used in these sensitive areas of Belfast which are thought to be beginning to calm down. This is because the army believes the absolute minimum of force must be used to prevent the local community from becoming more disaffected with the army. Undoubtedly the regiment is the one most hated by Catholics in troubled areas, where it has, among local people at least, a reputation for brutality. A Captain in one regiment whose CO has not made a request said: "They are frankly disliked by many officers here, who regard some of their men as little more than thugs in uniform. I have seen them arrive on the scene, thump up a few people who might be doing nothing more than shouting and jeering, they seem to think that they can get away with whatever they like...."

So spoke a Brit Captain, but his last sentence was certainly proven correct, insofar as none of the Bloody Sunday murderers ever faced trial and their Commanding Officer, Col. Derek Wilford was decorated by the English Queen for "outstanding service to the Crown" less than twelve months after the massacre.

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