• THE “Irish Question” is about to be as crucial to “Brit” history with Brexit, as it was more than 100 years ago with the Easter Uprising, which my maternal granda was part of.

Finally, after only 47 years, the families of the 13 unarmed civil rights marchers shot dead on “Bloody Sunday” learned this week that a former paratrooper, Soldier F, faces murder charges.

Prime minister David Cameron apologised in 2010, at the publication of Lord Saville’s 12-volume inquiry report, saying that “what happ­ened on Bloody Sunday was unjustified and un­justifiable. It was wrong.”

So, were lessons learnt and have attitudes changed? Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley recently said that the killings by the British Army in those troubled years were “not crimes”.

This is Irish History Month and there is so much to know, not only by the English but by the Irish who were denied access to their grand history, and under penalty of death dared to speak Gaelic or to know of the 350,000 women and children kidnapped to be slaves in the Caribbean. And if we are to remember and understand we should know.

PATRICK EDLIN
N1