Bloody Sunday speakers 'were fired on directly'

Speakers at the march which became Bloody Sunday were fired on "directly" and had to lie down to save their lives, it was claimed today.

Solicitor Rory McShane told the Saville Inquiry that he and the then Mid-Ulster MP Bernadette Devlin saved the life of elderly English peer Lord Fenner Brockway when he remained standing, oblivious to the gunfire.

Then an executive member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, he also claimed he spotted gunmen arriving in Derry’s Bogside - but insisted it was after the Army shooting, which killed 13 men that day, had ended.

Giving evidence on day 128 of the inquiry’s public hearing in the Guildhall, Derry, Mr McShane described the moment he first heard the troops shooting and said he immediately dived down on the platform and moved on to the ground.

He said: "It was that point, rather bizarrely, Lord Brockway was standing up there totally erect, and I suddenly realised that he did not know what was happening.

"Bernadette Devlin and I had to come back from underneath the platform to physically get him down. He was quite an old man and, I think, I have a recollection of arching my back and of Bernadette Devlin grabbing his legs to try to get him to move down from the platform."

No-one on the platform, a flatbed lorry in front of Free Derry Corner, was shot on Bloody Sunday - the casualties were all hit about 100 yards further north, the direction from which troops entered the Bogside.

However, in his written statement Mr McShane said: "My firm impression when the shooting started was that it was fired directly at Free Derry Corner."