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Revision as of 23:02, 4 December 2002 by Gabbe (talk | contribs) (Edward Health -> Edward Heath)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)On Sunday January 30th 1972 twenty-seven people were shot by British soldiers during a civil rights march in the Bogside area of the city of Derry, Northern Ireland. Thirteen of the victims were shot dead, with another man later dying of his wounds. The official army line was that the Paratoopers had reacted to the threat of gunmen and nail-bombs from suspected IRA members. However, marchers and residents of the Bogside who witnessed the events challenge this account; many of them claim that the soldiers fired indiscriminately into the crowd, or were aiming at fleeing people and those tending the wounded. In the rage that followed, the British embassy in Merrion Square in Dublin was burned by an irate crowd. Anglo-Irish relations hit one of their lowest ebbs, with Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillery, going specially to the United Nations in New York to demand UN involvment in the Northern Ireland troubles.
In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, the British government under Prime Minister Edward Heath established a commission of inquiry under the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery. His quickly produced report supported the army analysis of the events of the day, to the extent of implying on the basis of scientific evidence that some of those shot had handled explosives. Nationalists disputed the report's conclusions.
A second commission of inquiry was recently established to re-examine 'Bloody Sunday'. The Saville Tribunal is engaged in a far more wide ranging study, interviewing all the key witnesses; the locals, soldiers, journalists, politicians, etc. While its report has not been written (indeed the new tribunal continues to sit, and is expected to continue for a number of years), evidence so far has severely undermined the credibility of the original Widgery Tribunal report. The scientific basis for the claims regarding the alleged involment of those shot in handling explosives has already been fatally undermined, with the discovery that some bodies were placed next to guns and explosives, while other substances (including playing cards) have been found to leave the same residue on people's hands as that which would be got from explosives. Even the scientists responsible for the original reports to the Widgery Tribunal now dismiss their own findings, and the interpretation put on their findings. While the chair of the current Tribunal, Lord Saville, has declined to comment on the Widgery report, and indeed has made the point that the Saville Inquiry is an inquiry into 'Bloody Sunday', not the Widgery Tribunal, he and his fellow judges have implicitly dismissed the Widgery report by refusing to defend it or trust anything it says.
The prevailing view across the two communities is that the much more thorough Saville Tribunal is throwing new and disturbing light on the behaviour of the Parachute Regiment in Derry/Londonderry that day. Few today take the report of the Widgery Tribunal seriously as an accurate factual analysis of what happened on 'Bloody Sunday'.
Whatever truly happened that day, what all sides are agreed was that 'Bloody Sunday' marked a major negative turning point in the fortunes of Northern Ireland. When they arrived in Northern Ireland, the British Army was welcomed by nationalists and catholics as their protectors, there to protect them from the B-Specials, a paramilitary unit associated with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. After 'Bloody Sunday', many nationalists and catholics distrusted the army, seeing it no longer as their protectors but as their enemies. Young nationalists became increasingly attracted splinter republican groups. With the Official IRA and Official Sinn Féin having moved away from mainstream Irish nationalism/republicanism towards marxism, a new breakaway organisation. the Provisional IRA appeared and gained the support of newly radicalised, disaffected young people.
In the following twenty years, the 'Provos' as they were called, mounted a campaign of what they described as 'war' on the 'British' (by which they meant the British Army, the RUC, the Ulster Defence Regiment (of the British Army) and indeed large elements of the protestant and unionist community). With rival paramilitary organisations appearing on both the nationalist/republican and unionist/loyalist communities (the Irish National Liberation Army, a republican rival to the Provos, the Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Freedom Fighters, etc on the loyalist side), a bitter and brutal war took place that cost the lives of thousands. Terrorist outrages involved such acts as the killing of a catholic pop band, the Miami Showband by loyalists (who took them out of their van after a concert and shot them) to the massacre by the Provos of World War veterans and their families attending a war wreath laying in Enniskillen and the blowing up of a young child at Warrington in Britain.
With the offical cecession of violence by some of the major terrorist organisations, and the creation of the power-sharing executive at Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast under the Good Friday Agreement, the Saville Tribunal's re-examination of what remains one of the blackest days in Northern Ireland for the British Army offers a chance to heal the wounds left by the events of the notorious 'Bloody Sunday' in January 1972.
General
The Events of the Day
Contempory Newspaper coverage
- "13 killed as paratroops break riot" from The Guardian, Monday January 31, 1972
- "Bogsiders insist that soldiers shot first" from The Guardian, Tuesday February 1, 1972
Importance and impact