I Can’t Close My Eyes and Make It Go Away: Remembering Bloody Sunday
January 30th, 1972 was a day that will be remembered as the breaking point between peace and violence. On that Sunday afternoon, thousands of people filed the streets of Northern Ireland prostesting over internment without trial. The silent protest was supposed to break away from the violent war between the British and the Irish over geopolitical control of Northern Ireland. In the end, thirteen people died and fourteen other people were wounded by the hail of gunfire sparked by the 1st Paratrooper Regiment of England. As the 35th Anniversary of the tragedy just happened, it is necessary to look back and understand how and why this protest march turned into a mass slaughter. For over eight centuries, Ireland has been trying to break away from the colonial powers of the British government by forms of protest and force. During Easter Week of 1916, the Irish Nationalists took up arms against the forceful British with an attitude derived from the newly formed Sinn Fein movement (ourselves alone). Not since 1798 has the Irish sacrificed themselves for the good of their homeland. The result of the Irish resistance led to the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. The act gave the Irish more freedom for their land, but the Act also was manipulative as the British could have control over certain areas of Ireland based on the grounds of force, currency, or trade. The battle for complete individual control over Ireland would wage on throughout the 20th Century.
In 1972, Irish MP’s Bernadette Devlin and Ivan Cooper, just to name a few, decided to take a stand over the recent political decisions made by British Prime Minister Edward Heath as he was pressured by the royalists to pass a law over internment without trial, which caused the arrests for many Northern Irish civilians for suspected crimes and/or conspiracies. Following the nonviolent examples led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Cooper ensured the Irish and British public that no violent force would be necessary as he dismissed the Provisional Army from participating in the march as well as the IRA (Irish Republican Army). The British Military was not pleased with the protest in general despite the changes made by the Civil Rights Association. Major General Ford of the British Military forced a ban on any form of protest within the Irish Republic stating that it was illegal and could provoke unnecessary violence between British soldiers stationed in Northern Ireland and the activists. It was on that Sunday that Ford ordered the 1st Paratrooper Regiment to head through the streets of Derry and rectify barricades and position gunmen along rooftops and walls where the civil rights march would pass through. In previous situations in which force was necessary for the British Army to use at protest marches in Northern Ireland, rubber bullets and tear gas was used. But on January 30th, 1972 live ammunition would be used instead of rubber bullets. At 2:00 pm, outside St. Mary’s Church in Derry, thousands of people gathered for the procession to protest against mass internment. The march was delayed for almost an hour due to the fact that the British had taken over the main roads in where the march was supposed to come across, hence the organizers had to re-route the march. At 2:50 pm, the march finally started. At 3:45pm, as the crowd of thousands sang “We Shall Overcome” in unison and carried signs of those arrested or who were victims of the mass internment policy, some members of the crowd dispersed and went the original route causing a riot to ensue along William St. and the Rossville Flats, where the barricades were erected by the British troops. Ten minutes into the riot, the first shots were fired by the British. At the head of the march was a huge flatbed truck carrying Ivan Cooper and the other organizers of the march. Around 4:00pm, Cooper spoke to the crowd until he witnessed the riots in the far back of the crowd. At precisely 4:07pm, chaos erupted as thousands dispersed trying to take cover from the gunshots and bloodshed. According to the Widgery Report, a report on the accounts of what the British did in “defense” in Derry, soldiers claimed that some of the marchers were armed and shot them, or that they fired the first rounds. But, in reality the British fired on those carrying only bits of cloth as a plea of not being fired upon as they were helping out their fellow men dying on the streets. Finally at 4:40pm, the British troops ceased fire and withdrew from Derry. In the aftermath of the march of nonviolence, thirteen people lay dead and fourteen wounded. These were the casualties of the march:
John (Jackie) Duddy age 17
Patrick Joseph Doherty age 31
Bernard McGuigan age 41
Hugh Pious Gilmore age 17
Kevin McElhinney age 17
Michael G. Kelly age 17
John Pius Young age 17
William Noel Nash age 19
Michael M. McDaid age 20
James Joseph Wray age 22
Gerald Donaghy age 17
Gerald (James) McKinney age 34
William A. McKinney age 27
John Johnston age 59 (died four and a half months after the march due to severe damage)
Many events have shaken up Ireland over the past century, whether it was the assassination of Michael Collins or the terrorist attacks of Inniskillin, but the shootings of twenty-seven people during a civil rights march on January 30th, 1972 have proven to be one of Ireland’s most devastating events. It caused the constant war between the British and Irish to wage on and the idealism of the nonviolent movement to die as many young men took up arms by joining the IRA. The civil rights march in Derry to stop interment is now remembered as Bloody Sunday by the countless photos and film footage of the shootings of the unarmed protesters as well as the Irish Civil Rights Association banner being coated with the blood and body of one of the thirteen victims. This was Ireland’s version of the My Lai Massacre, this was their interpretation of the Chicago riots of 1968, and this was their own version of the Kent State shootings. As the 35th anniversary of the events in Northern Ireland recently occurred, it seems necessary to look back on that day as it really hits a chord of relevance with today’s world in which terrorism seems to be the norm and adding more fuel to the endless fire of violence. Whether it was the Munich Olympic Massacre of 1972 or September 11th, 2001, any situation in which the last resort, i.e. violence, seems to be the solution only becomes temporary whereas the pain and fear becomes permanent such as what happened on the streets of Northern Ireland.
