Blue murder in Derry

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pm at Bethnal Green Gardens. pants in the various protests.

reports:

AT THE start of the"campaign for an independent public inquiry into the death of Colin Roach, the Roach Family Support Committee wrote to Home Secretary William WhiteRFSC called on the Home Secretary to set up a public inquiry into all the circumstances surrounding the death of Colin Roach in Stoke Newington police station. Numerous other organisations and individuals also wrote to Whitelaw making the same demand.

In response, the Home Secretary accepted the need for a 'full, independent and public inquiry into the matter' . However, he argued that such an inquiry would be provided by the inquest. This latter argument is fallacious and has been thoroughly discredited. Hackney North Labour Three students from St. Martin's School of Art Film School have made a film entitled 'Who killed Colin Roach?' , it shows the campaign in its various dimensions.

This video is available from RFSC, and can be used for showing at meetings, youth clubs, schools, colleges, etc.

During the course of filming all three members of the film crew were arrested. Two were charged and one released without being charged.

Details from RFSC, 50, Rectory Rd., London N16 7PP. tel.: [01]-254 7480.

public inquiry were held.

Secondly, when the coroner went to the High Court over the venue of the inquest and the interested party status of Hackney Black People's Association, he PHOTO: CLAPTON YOUTH CENTRE FOLLOT VING an inquest last week, ¡he parents of Gary English and Jim Browne are calling on the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring murder charges against British troops.

Gary, aged 19, was knocked down by an army landrover and then killed as the landrover reversed back over him. Jim, aged 18, was killed by being thrown into the air by a landrover. It happened on April 19, 1981, as the landrovers plunged into a demonstration in Derry in support of the hunger strikers.

Paul Clements, a BBC reporter, said: 'I saw one boy go up in the air four or five feet. I was dumbfounded, I couldn't believe my eyes; I expected to see at least half a dozen people dead' In August 1981 one driver and his NCO were charged respectively with 'reckless driving' and 'aiding and abetting'. But in January 1982 they were found 'not guilty'.

The defence case was that Gary had been hit as he ran across the path of the landrover. It rested heavily on the evidence of a forensic expert — evidence which was torn to pieces at the inquest.

According to Gary's father, Michael English, the reason for this verdict was that the public prosecutors 'went to court with a weak case, I believe, by design' The senior prosecuting counsel left the court on the third day of the trial - leaving all the rest of it, including cross-examination and the summing up, to the junior counsel.

'If we cannot succeed against so blatant a miscarriage of justice', says Michael English, 'then what chance is there for any normal society' in Northern Ireland.