The Queen's reign oversaw more than 3,600 deaths over three decades in Northern Ireland in fighting between the Irish Republican Army and forces backed by Britain.
Well, there was a civil rights march in Derry, January the 30th, 1972, in which about 10,000 people marched. They were marching against the military presence in Northern Ireland, and specifically for the rights of people. It was a civil rights march. It wasn’t a republican march. It had a broad support.
That was carried out — that massacre was carried out, as I say, by members of the Parachute Regiment, of which, as he then was the Prince of Wales, i.e. King Charles— he was the commander-in-chief of that regiment.
So, in a way, when we talk about the adaptations that Sinn Féin has made, the contribution to the peace process, and the adaptations that they have made in that context, I mean, to that issue, to the British royal family, you see, keep in mind that this isn’t such a — in terms of abandoning the armed struggle and so forth, to an objective observer, this is something which has been sort of in the making, beginning to happen, sort of, over a long number of years.
One thing we can say, that the idea of using armed struggle, using violence, or to coerce the Protestant in the North into a united Ireland, that’s gone. That’s not going to happen anymore. The people who were advocating that and carrying that out have realized that it was never possible, and have abandoned it for constitutional politics. And what’s happened in the last couple of days is confirmation of the strategy, a formalization, sort of, of that attitude. And we’ll have to see what happens.
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