Remembering Derry's Bloody Sunday, 1972

"I can't believe the news today," the song starts. "Oh, I can't close my eyes, And make it go away." The lyrics to U2's hit song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is known by millions, but the specific event that it commemorates resonates perhaps most intimately with those directly effected by the events of January 30, 1972, the day referred to as Bloody Sunday. That morning, members of the British military opened fire on an unarmed Irish civil rights protesters, killing 14 of them (several of which were teenagers).

U2's Bono, who grew up in Ireland during this time, described the event as a tipping point during The Troubles, when people began "queuing to give up on peace...who had had enough of empire and would now consider every means necessary - however violent or ugly - to drive it from their corner." Indeed, support for the Irish Republican Army surged after the massacre, increasing violent advocacy for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from Northern Ireland, prolonging The Troubles, and making the idea of a unified Ireland that much more impossible.

But what specifically drove military personnel to gun down unarmed Irish civilians? Who and what are the driving forces behind this tragedy and what are some of the other effects this event has had on Irish history? We will see that Bloody Sunday was the result of a culmination of people, events, and ideas that are rooted in hundreds of years of conflict, all perpetuating a violent momentum that accelerated at a frightening rate in the 1970s. Let's briefly explore some of the key components of this major event and try to understand a bit more, starting with a quick look at the tumultuous political landscape of the time.

Politics in Ireland during this era were brutal and harsh, and it's no wonder why it was referred to as The Troubles. This thirty-year period of political violence and civil unrest in Northern Ireland sometimes spilled into other parts of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe, highlighted by bouts of guerrilla style warfare between minority Catholic republicans fighting for a united Ireland, and a majority of Protestant loyalists who wanted Ireland to stay a part of the United Kingdom. Communal rioting, arson, bombings, and shootings were all common occurrences, and with each act of violence, negative sentiment between the two groups continued to swell. Although more than 3600 people lost their lives during this conflict (about 2000 of which were civilian deaths), Bloody Sunday marks the most violent event of that period.

Throughout the later part of 1969 and early 1971, the IRA began to dramatically increase the size and scope of its operations and recruitment. During this time they also began acquiring firearms which allowed them to easily target British military personnel, minimizing collateral damage and striking more directly at their intended targets. Robert Curtis became the first British soldier to die on duty in Ireland since 1921 when he was gunned down by an IRA machine gun on February 6, 1971. By March, six more military personnel were targeted and killed, and in May a British sergeant was targeted and killed by a bomb in the Belfast police station. By the end of summer, more than 100 people were dead as a result of attacks on British forces, four times the amount from the year before. As the body count climbed, so too did the heavy-handed nature of the British military's response to its IRA opponents and those perceived to be sympathetic to their cause. In turn, Catholic civilians became increasingly enraged with the swelling presence of the British Army and the IRA saw its recruiting numbers soar.

The escalating violence was too much for British Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark to handle, and he stepped down. His successor Brian Faulkner took the reigns in March 1971 with a promise to hit the ground running, leveraging his authority with the Special Powers Act. His tough talk of impending crackdowns on the IRA "thugs and murderers" did little to intimidate the IRA however, and although he appointed a few Catholics to various cabinet positions, nothing seemed to stun the IRA's momentum. To quell the rising tide of violence and overt religious discrimination playing out in the streets of Northern Ireland on a daily basis, Operation Demetrius was born. Hundreds of suspected members of the IRA, especially young men who appeared or acted sympathetic to the nationalist cause, were rounded up and sent to holding centers where they were interred for days and interrogated under extremely harsh circumstances. Reports of British soldiers abducting people from their homes were not uncommon. The real issue here was the notion of internment without trial of suspected individuals.

Perhaps not surprisingly, all these actions triggered a whole new wave of unrest in the north. Some of the worst riots took place in Ballymurphy where, during Demetrius, six civilians were shot dead, including one Catholic priest and a 19-year old boy who were attempting to help wounded people escape the violence. Some groups, such as The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, felt a non-violent protest would be a more effective way of responding to the British government's egregious actions. NICRA leaders planned to organize a peaceful (but still illegal) demonstration to protest the government. On the morning of January 30, about 10,000 people gathered in Londonderry and began marching towards Guildhall Square in the city center. The British military was deployed to contain the demonstration and keep it from reaching its intended destination, funneling groups away from the main body of demonstrators, and further thinning the crowd with arrests of rambunctious marchers. Groups of local youth began clashing with military and police along the route at various barricades, pelting them with rocks and other homemade projectiles. The army responded with rubber bullets and water cannons, but this did little to settle or contain the crowd. The largest group of demonstrators started moving toward the Bogside, a corner of the area known as "Free Derry" by the Northern Ireland government where British rule was not recognized by Catholics, who also accused local Protestant unionists of gerrymandering in their local elections.

At approximately 3:55 p.m., British paratroopers hiding in a derelict building opened fire on a group of demonstrators who had spotted them and started throwing stones at their position. Two civilians, Damien Donaghy and John Johnston were shot and wounded, sending the demonstrators into a frenzy. The paratroopers were ordered to start arresting rioters and began pursuing them on foot and in armored vehicles. In the ensuing chaos the troopers failed to make distinctions between peaceful demonstrators and violent rioters. Troopers taking cover at a low wall on Roseville Street opened fire on people throwing stones from a rubble barricade, killing six and marking the first deaths of Bloody Sunday. Another group of soldiers chased a group of demonstrators into a car park at Rossville Flats, ending the pursuit in a courtyard where they opened fire and killed another civilian and wounded six more. Demonstrators who fled to another car park took fire from paratroopers approximately 50 yards away, and two in this group were also killed. Other demonstrators were killed at close to mid range gunfire, with one falling to a trooper who according to eye-witnesses had fired his gun from the hip into a crowd.

After thirty frantic minutes of horror, 13 people were dead, another lay dying of fatal injuries, and 28 more people were wounded. Many of the killed demonstrators had been shot in the back as they fled, although the soldiers maintained they only fired at civilians they perceived to be carrying firearms or bombs. Exactly who shot first remained a point of contention for decades following the massacre. For years it was believed that a 21-year old IRA party negotiator, Martin McGuiness, fired a Thompson sub-machine gun which prompted nervous British soldiers to return fire. Following the massacre, lord chief justice of England Lord Widgery concluded it was the demonstrators who had fired first, however the Saville Inquiry (launched by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998 and published in 2010), settled the accusation stating there was no evidence to support McGuiness or any demonstrator fired his weapon first. The Savile Inquiry also concluded that each of the civilians killed were unarmed and did not pose a serious threat, and that none of the soldiers fired their weapons in response to being attacked. It was shown however, that some Irish republicans did in fact fire their guns at some point during the demonstration.

Bloody Sunday heightened the conflict to new levels of tension. In the weeks following the massacre, Northern Ireland withdrew its ambassador from London, and anti-British sentiment rose to a fever-pitch with an angry mob besieging and burning down the British embassy in Dublin. In April 1972, the British government exonerated British troops involved in the massacre from any illegal action, while at the same time increasing its military presence in the North. On July 21, the IRA detonated 20 bombs in Belfast, killing numerous British military personnel as well as a number of civilians. In response, the British government instituted a new court system removing jurors from any trial held for terrorist suspects. Conviction rates rose to 90 percent. The Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, Harold Wilson, saw Bloody Sunday as proof that uniting Ireland was the only real solution to ending The Troubles. Stormont Home Affairs Minister William Craig proposed ceding Londonderry to the Republic of Ireland in order to avoid future bloodshed. However, the ideas proposed by each of these men would fall on deaf ears. Ironically, when the British military was first deployed to Northern Ireland, it was largely welcomed by Roman Catholics who welcomed it as a neutral force dedicated to protecting them from Protestant persecution. After Bloody Sunday however, the percentage of Catholics who viewed the British army negatively greatly increased, sealing their position as an occupying force, although events like Operation Demetrius and the Ballymurphy Massacre were swaying public opinion negatively prior to Bloody Sunday.

The divide between unionists and Irish nationalists widened dramatically. Within weeks of the shooting, another new prime minister, Edward Heath, suspended Ireland's parliament and imposed direct British rule which would not end until 1998 with the Good Friday peace pact. With the pact came an official declaration of ceasefire by both sides, a decommissioning of the IRA's weapons, reform of the North Ireland police, and a withdrawal of the British military from the streets and sensitive border areas. A new power-sharing government was also established, called the Northern Ireland Executive, which is required to consist of both unionist and nationalist members.

The effects of Bloody Sunday continue to simmer around the edges of Ireland's political scene, in spite of a massive effort by the British government and civil rights groups to recognize the victims' efforts and condemn the massacre. In 2010, the British government formally apologized for the events of Bloody Sunday and exonerated those who died in the form of the Saville Inquiry. In his report on the Saville Inquiry's findings to the House of Commons, prime minister David Cameron said:

I never want to believe anything bad about our country. I never want to call into question the behavior of our soldiers and our army, who I believe to be the finest in the world. And I have seen for myself the very difficult and dangerous circumstances in which we ask our soldiers to serve. But the conclusions of this report are absolutely clear. There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.

Londonderry continues to be a site for civil unrest. In July 2018, the city was rocked by six nights of violent rioting shook the city, perpetuated by what Northern Ireland's police chief called the "New IRA." Hundreds of petrol bombs were hurled at police. Although the rioters of today are referred to as misguided youth disavowed by Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, their actions echo the same frustrations their countrymen felt four decades ago.