|
|
Joy breaks 40-year silence
07.10.08
A GREENCASTLE woman has
broken her silence after 40 years to describe her
part in highlighting the truth about what happened
during the legendary Civil Rights march in Derry on
October 5, 1968.
Joy McCormick, wife of the late architect Liam
McCormick, whose practice was in Derry, watched the
march in Duke Street from the Cityside. |
 |
"I heard the screams
and saw a water cannon taking off across the bridge.
That night I watched the footage on RTE television
showing how the RUC beat people already on the
ground with batons, with exceptional brutality," she
said.
Horrified that nothing like the truth had emerged on
a much-sanitised version of events on the BBC news,
Joy waited until Monday to telephone one of the
station’s top current affairs programmes.
"Having some knowledge of the workings of the BBC
and hoping that my unfortunate anglicized accent
might be useful in this event, I suggested to the
programme's |
producer that he should
view the RTE film.
"He showed it nationally that night. The reality of
what was going on in Northern Ireland made the
British Government start to take it very seriously,"
she added.
Joy said she was “nervous” preparing to speak about
her 1968 phone-call to the BBC four decades later at
the Guildhall. She also outlined how, on a
subsequent Civil Rights march in Derry, she
overheard a woman on the sidelines, carrying a red,
white and blue umbrella, saying to her friend; 'I
wonder who got the British press and TV on to
this?'' |
|
