Partition is the other reason which might have led of Bloody Sunday happening. Because the Unionists (Protestant) were against the home rule and wanted to be in part of Britain. But the Nationalists (Catholic) were in favour of home rule and wanted to be separate from Britain. This started to be the threat of civil war. As a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty-1921- Ireland was Partitioned. The 6 countries of Northern Ireland remained part of the UK. The rest of Ireland became an independent republic, ruled by a separate government in Dublin.
However not everyone agreed with partition such as the loyalist as they wanted Ireland to remain part of the UK and be ruled by the British Parliament.
As a result of partition, discrimination was taken place and the Unionist (Protestant) community got the better jobs, council houses and got better facilities compared to the Nationalist (Catholics) community who were treated unfairly and got the worst council houses and experienced greater unemployment. The Nationalist had also no power in local government because the Unionists fixed election boundaries so that the Nationalists could not win. Terrorist violence came in and the Unionist suffered attacks from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the discrimination got even worse for the Nationalist.
The final reason that could have caused bloody Sunday for happening are short term reasons, however these reasons was mainly due to the partition because as a result of this, election fixing, discrimination, violence, the IRA, the British army and interment took place.
In 1922 the Unionists abolished proportional representation for local elections: this meant that the party with the most votes would gain overall control. As there was a unionist majority in most of Northern Ireland this meant that Unionist parties were likely to gain overall control of local councils.
Nationalists withdrew from the election process in protest, this left the unionists free to fix election boundaries so that they had a unionist majority in all areas - this is known as gerrymandering.
This fixing led to discrimination against Catholic and it became a feature of the Northern Ireland state – even at the highest levels. Catholics hardly ever got jobs in the civil service. Protestant Unionists used their power to help their own community and Catholics found it difficult to get jobs or decent council houses.
This led to violence and the IRA who were strongly opposed to partition conducted a violent campaign in Northern Ireland. The Unionist Government in Northern in Northern Ireland suspected the Dublin Government of supporting the IRA. The IRA campaign also made the Unionists government in Northern Ireland suspicious of the Nationalists community in NI which led to greater discrimination against Nationalists.
This led in to 1969 when the British army were introduced and they were welcomed by everyone. The RUC had lost control and everyone wanted peace resorting, but the Unionists government sent the army in the Catholic falls road area of Belfast. People were not allowed to leave their homes for 35 hours and tear gas was used. Now the army looked like the enemy for too many Nationalists.
In 1970-71 the IRA began their war against the British army. In 1970 the first British soldier was murdered by the IRA. In total 26 people were killed in IRA violence in 1970 and 186 people were killed (including 46 soldiers) in 1971. In 1971 the IRA began a major bombing campaign, they targeted Protestant owned businesses.
The final short term reason was interment. Interment was introduced in 1971. Only Nationalists were interned and 1600 of the 2300 people that were interned had never been involved with the IRA. Interment was where police force arrested nearly every local people because in this way they have a likely chance of capturing a Republican and there was no limit how long they were kept in prison.
In my opinion I think partition was the main and the only reason why bloody Sunday took place because this caused other incidents to happen such as: interment, discrimination, the IRA attacks, the British army and the violence that took place. So it all started with partition as this caused hatred, no compromise and no trust towards each other. With partition taken place people had different responses towards it which made them argue and increased the hatred between them.
