Families have been fighting for 47 years to shine a light on British soldiers’ shooting of 10 unarmed people

The story sounds grimly familiar. It is the early years of the Troubles and there is ferment on the streets of Northern Ireland. Nationalists are marching and protesting.

Paratroopers are deployed and open fire, volley after volley. People drop, bloodied and wounded, some dying. Others come to their aid and they too are shot. By the time the shooting stops, 10 people lie dead.

The official investigation exonerates the soldiers and says the dead were terrorists. Relatives call it a cover-up, an insult, and campaign for a new investigation.

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A seemingly well-known story, except this was not Bloody Sunday, the killings in Derry’s Bogside in 1972 that prompted worldwide condemnation and inspired numerous songs and films.

This was in Ballymurphy, a small neighbourhood in west Belfast, in 1971. No journalists were present, no camera crews captured the events, and for a long time few outsiders seemed to remember or care about what locals called the Ballymurphy massacre.

That is set to change on Monday when a coroner’s inquest in Belfast starts to shine a light on what happened nearly half a century ago.

The inquest is expected to last several months and call hundreds of witnesses, including scores of soldiers, to try to reconstruct the chaotic, deadly 36 hours spanning the evening of 9 August and the morning of 11 August 1971. And to perhaps pave the way for prosecutions.

“It’s something we’ve been campaigning for for 47 years,” said John Teggart, whose father, Daniel Teggart, was among those killed. “It’s a step closer to the truth. My daddy was a good, loving, family man. He was labelled a terrorist and a gunman. That was a stigma that the family had to endure.”

The dead included Joan Connolly, a mother of eight shot in the face, and Father Hugh Mullan, a Catholic priest shot while giving the last rites to a wounded man. An eleventh person died days later of a heart attack, allegedly after a mock execution by soldiers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Teggart, whose father Daniel Teggart was among those killed, said the inquest was a ‘step closer to the truth’. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA

Families have had to battle decades of official obstruction and deceit, starting with the original military investigation, which falsely claimed the dead were armed, said Teggart, 58. “It’s been hard taking on the British establishment because everything was put in the way to block it.”

For example, a week before the inquest was originally due to begin in September, the Ministry of Defence handed the coroner a spreadsheet with 4,773 entries of individuals from the Parachute Regiment, the Queen’s Regiment and the Queen’s Division who had been serving at the time of the killings. This was a cynical attempt to “swamp” and delay the inquiry, said Teggart.

Pádraig Ó Muirigh, a solicitor representing the families, said missing paperwork from the “deeply inadequate” original investigations had helped veil shooters’ identities. “The big difficulty has been in tracing soldiers,” he said.

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Even so, the families were happy to finally have an inquest that should supply an official, credible narrative of the killings, he said. “It’s been a long, long road for them. They would argue that it is a basic human right to find out what happened to their loved ones.”

Tumult erupted across Northern Ireland on 9 August 1971 when thousands of troops started rounding up republicans who were to be interned without trial. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and thousands fled across the border.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A plaque remembering two victims of the Ballymurphy killings, Frank Quinn and Father Hugh Mullan. Photograph: The Troubles/Alamy

A 2014 Guardian article and interactive map reconstructed events in Ballymurphy. Residents erected barricades and clashed with Protestants in neighbouring Springmartin. Youths threw stones and petrol bombs. A small number of shots appeared to have been fired.

Some Ballymurphy residents were fleeing when soldiers started shooting into the Catholic area.

They fired so many rounds they ran low on ammunition. Soldiers “were on a high”, according to one paratrooper’s memoir. They recovered no weapons from any of the 10 people shot dead.

Earlier this year, members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary group, claimed they were involved in the gunfire. Teggart is sceptical but said families were open to hearing all evidence.

In the recent documentary The Ballymurphy Precedent, its director, Callum Macrae, argued that the shootings created a culture of impunity in the army that led to Bloody Sunday a few months later.

The Troubles, which claimed about 3,600 lives, are receding into history. This year was the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday peace agreement. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of British troops first deploying on streets.

History, however, continues to shower sparks across Northern Ireland’s politics and justice system with former soldiers, police officers and paramilitaries facing fresh questions – and possible prosecution - over decades-old deeds. Depending on perspective or partisanship each revived case is hailed as belated justice or condemned as a witch-hunt.

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Republicans cried foul last week when Irish police arrested an alleged IRA bomber, John Downey, after an extradition warrant was issued over the killing of two soldiers in Northern Ireland in 1972.

Now it is the turn of retired soldiers to complain about the Ballymurphy inquest.

“I find it hard to believe that 11 innocent civilians were gunned down just for slaughter,” said Alan Barry, a former Grenadier Guardsman who founded the group Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans.

“We fought terrorism.We didn’t go to Northern Ireland to oppress people. To claim we were running amok and shooting civilians at will is just appalling.”

The inquest was a Sinn Féin-driven witch-hunt against retired soldiers, many in their 70s, and could lead to murder prosecutions if “fading memory” tripped them up while giving evidence, said Barry. He hopes they ignore inquest letters inviting them to give evidence. “We’ve advised veterans to throw them in the bin.”