“The truth has to be told.”
Channel 4’s Dispatches series continues this weekend with an in-depth documentary that focuses on a specific, extremely harrowing event that took place in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
Airing on Saturday night, Massacre at Ballymurphy tells the story of Briege Voyle, a daughter desperately looking for answers.
Her mother, Joan Connolly, was one of ten people shot in a West Belfast neighbourhood over three days in 1971.
The killings were subsequently referred to as the Ballymurphy Massacre.
Channel 4’s forensic exposé looks at the shocking killings of which the British Army stand accused, with the army maintaining their stance that those killed – including a Catholic priest – were terrorists.
“The last words my mummy said to me were; ‘The Protestants would shoot you but the army wouldn’t, and I believe my mummy walked out into the middle of that field thinking, ‘I’m a woman, they will not shoot me'”, explains Voyle in the documentary.
She explains how she felt compelled to tell co-workers that her mother died in a car accident, due to the media treatment of the events.
Voyle contends that the soldiers “knew who they were shooting” and says that her mother had previously received threats on her life.
The families involved are hopeful that an inquest into the shootings will result in the truth they have been chasing for decades.
“It’s not a matter of rewriting history,” says Voyle. “We’re just trying to rectify history. It has to be told. The truth has to be told, warts and all.”
Dispatches: Massacre at Ballymurphy is on Channel 4 on Saturday 8 September at 9pm.
“It has to be told… the truth has to be told."
In August 1971 the British Army shot and killed 10 people in a Catholic estate in Belfast – claiming they were terrorists. One of the victims was a mother of eight children. This is her story.#MassacreAtBallymurphy Sat 9 pm C4 pic.twitter.com/LMiYkWGNEd
— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) September 7, 2018
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