The Ballymurphy Inquest has found that 10 people shot dead by the British Army in Belfast in 1971 were innocent and unarmed.

It’s beyond time that this country came to terms with the brutality that successive British governments inflicted on the north of Ireland.

Mike Jackson, who was present in Ballymurphy as a press officer and later became the head of the British Army, perpetuated the lie that those murdered were gunmen – even including it in his autobiography.

That lie has stood for 50 years, and did untold damage.

If you want a sense of how much damage:

Just months later the same battalion, also including Jackson as an adjutant, shot 26 civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday, killing 14. The same lies – they were gunmen.

That's why the families refer to the 'Ballymurphy Precedent.'

It needs to be said – because the story has not resonated over here – that Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday came at the end of a Civil Rights campaign that the Ulster and British governments suppressed.

Its demands were equal access to housing, jobs and voting rights. All denied.