The soldiers had been put under great pressure before hand as well, meeting severe verbal abuse, as well as having items thrown at them, etc. Getting away with this because the soldiers where under orders to keep there cool as they went about there patrols.
As the day unfolded things heated up, and according to the paratroopers apparently the IRA started firing live rounds towards the British soldiers, they reacted and dealt with the situation by from what they say was discriminate firing towards hostile targets. Some apparently with guns, others with nail bombs.
13 Catholic marchers were shot down that day, One other died due to wounds soon after. Only one had a proven link to the IRA.
This has been the result of ages of blood shed constantly rekindled by events such as Bloody Sunday, hatred which was started by Plantation some 400 years ago, where the British government moved protestants into Ireland to quell the possible rebellion which could be held from Ireland, being in a strategic position as a base and even before plantation there was misgivings between Catholics and protestants due to there differences in religion, giving reasoning to attack the British.
Irish Catholics went from being rich to being poor and workers for protestant landlords, who used the Irish Catholics to grow crops for rent on the land they forcefully taken from the Catholics during Plantation.
The main body of Protestants stayed in Ulster (Northern Ireland) where they remain the majority even today, and through out history they have remained the richer in Ireland, though in recent years it appears the wealth is more equal among Catholics and Protestants.
The Irish Catholic rebellion in 1641 at a period of high tension in England due to worries that the pope and other catholic countries would help incite an attack using Ireland as a base (one of the main reasons for Plantation to occur was because of this fear) Protestants found themselves at the mercy of a resentful country, the death toll is hard to determine, some report it to be in the three thousand mark, where as other information coming from British propaganda at the time you find numbers in the hundred thousands. A lot of Protestants, even if they understood why the Catholics started rebelling, believed that they were using excessive force, still a stage to hatred which can even be linked to the event of Bloody Sunday, where the Soldiers stationed there felt the Irish Catholics were being overly abusive towards them.
Protestants appeared to be at the mercy of the Catholics, from cartoons supporting the protestants the Catholics burned down houses, stole money and apparently even tortured family members; depicting a imagery of hatred which goes beyond the reasoning of the Ill-feeling from the plantation of Protestants in Ireland.
The rebellion came to a head in Drogheda where a battle was fought, between the Catholic Rebels and Oliver Cromwell, thought to be a extremely puritan Protestant, suffice to say the Catholics lost the battle, and worse still Cromwell made a example of the town and more to the point, the people who rescind in it.
“Cromwell ordered the captured officers to be "knocked on the head" and every 10th soldier executed. Nearly 4,000 Confederates died at Drogheda.”
One story describing how Cromwell ripped a baby from a Catholic mothers arms and nailed the babies head to a Church door; though this could be once again a sign of ‘Propaganda’ it shows a story of increased brutality between both sides.
And as history shows, the hatred grows upon each event, like a domino effect, acting upon the hate both Catholics and Protestants show one another.
The Catholics suffered extremely badly due to their lack of wealth during the Potato famine, which by all rights wasn’t a true ‘Famine’ as there was food grown to sustain the population, but the Catholics had to turn over there crops to the Protestants, and they had a choice between starvation and being able to pay the land lords rent, or eating what food they had and starving later on because they have no where to grow their crops.
The Protestants hardly felt the pain of the ‘Famine’ because they could afford and get food grown for them, where the Catholics died in the 1000’s; arguably the British government are to blame for deliberately up-holding a ‘Lasiez-fare’ stance on their politics regarding this, only providing food if the price of food went up by to much, controlling inflation, but for whom?
They’d have released Indian corn, which is called Maize into the market if it got to high, to make bread – but since Catholics couldn’t afford bread in the first place they’d have seen none of the food. Any Inflation control would of benefited purely the Protestants.
They started raiding the depots because of their desperation and hunger, and the British abandoned any form of ‘help’, a lot so when they could have done a lot more to help the Catholics, and a lot refer back to this as a extra reason to hate the Protestants and the British, and any attempt politically towards the Irish is raised with doubt, because mistrust is formed and kept, even from that long ago; the Catholics feeling that they have been betrayed again, felt the need to fight against British rule, many not wanting to fight immigrated to America, where a lot of money still funnels from American Catholics having a heritage from Ireland into the I.R.A, leading onto more events of hatred.
Once again the Irish Catholics Rebelled, under the I.R.A a group fighting for a “Free Ireland”, Wanting Ireland to be a independent free country, free of any British Influence. The Easter rising of 1916, marked yet another year of a great out lash of the constant hatred between the Protestants and the Catholics.
“The Easter Rising commences in Dublin on 24 April (despite a countermanding order from Eoin MacNeill on 22 April), with about 1,000 Volunteers and 200 Citizen Army. Buildings in Dublin are seized; there are small military outbreaks in other parts of the country. The lord lieutenant declares martial law on 25 April. Pearse orders surrender on 29 April. About 64 rebels have been killed, 132 crown forces, 230 civilians. 2,500 people have been wounded; the centre of Dublin has been devastated by shelling.”
Even in recent years the IRA have carried on fighting for there cause, using terrorist means to get what they want, a fully independent Ireland, where all parts of Ireland become the ‘republic of Ireland’ rather than the ‘Southern Ireland’ and ‘northern Ireland’ parts.
For example, in 1990
The IRA kills three policemen and a nun in a bomb attack near Armagh (24 July), and kills the Conservative MP Ian Gow in Sussex a week later
And in even more recent years, in 1998
Violence by Protestants follows the banning of the Orange Order's Drumcree parade; three young brothers are killed in a Loyalist petrol bomb attack in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim (12 July).
So in Conclusion; both Catholics and Protestants in large majorities wont accept any new findings the Seville Enquiry can possibly find regarding Bloody Sunday, the attacks from both sides have carried on through out time, regardless of attempts to quell the hatred, both groups believe what they have been brought up to believe, and from what they experienced both in Bloody Sunday and other events, both groups wont accept anything the report says, because the Catholics have reason not to trust the British government due to past events, and the Protestants wont accept any blame laid upon them because they’ll treat it as a means to quieten the Catholics, rather than the truth it’s self.
