The paratroopers believe that they were fired on and therefore returned fire back. But within the last 3 decades forensics has come on leaps and bounds, new information has been found into the death of Barney McGuigan, who was shot in the back of the head with a type of bullet made illegal by the Geneva Convention. It is very hard to believe what the Paratroopers are saying when evidence as substantial as this is found. Although this new evidence has been found the government could not show the British army to be murders as this would be bad publicity for Britain. The soldiers have maintained their story for so long because the soldiers do not want to be seen as murders and they do not want to say they were wrong.
The other side of the event is the protesters; they believe that they paratroopers simply opened fire on the crowd instead of making arrests, when there was no sign of guns or shooting from anyone. Source B shows us that one marcher was shot twice whilst he was lying on the ground; this can hardly be seen as an offensive posture.
The protesters were marching against interment in Northern Ireland, the unfair right for security forces to arrest without trial. The protesters saw this event as a great opportunity for propaganda, which would make the Army look like murderers and would gain support for the IRA.
After Bloody Sunday, an inquiry by UK Prime Minister Edward Heath followed the incident. Lord Widgery concluded in his investigation and reports that the soldiers had been fired on first. He says there would have been no deaths if there had not been an illegal march, which had created "a highly dangerous situation". No action was taken against the soldiers. Reports and Scientific evidence on bloody Sunday has shown that evidence he used in his report may be wrong and incorrect. Lord Widgery concluded that the soldiers had been fired on first; although Widgery admitted that the soldiers' firing "bordered on the reckless".
Source A shows us that DR John Martin, who had given evidence to the Widgery hearing that Mr. Wray had been handling guns or explosives, has reversed his opinion. Lord Widgery said that “at one end of the scale, some soldiers showed a high degree of responsibility; at the other end, firing bored on recklessness”. He is saying that the paratroopers didn’t do anything wrong and no action need to be taken against them. Lord Widgery had other evidence; he had pictures of Gerald Donaghy with 4 nail bombs in his pocket. But when people were trying to find identification, they found no sign of nail bombs in his pockets and doctors said they had searched his pockets and found nothing before the pictures were taken. This therefore means that the pictures had to of been placed on his body as a set up, consequently covering up for the Paratroopers. This therefore makes some of the evidence untrue and makes finding the truth about Bloody Sunday twice as hard.
Source C is yet again another interpretation to what happened on Bloody Sunday; it shows us that the Paratroopers had planned beforehand of ‘clearing the bog.’ This means that they were planning to kill the protesters. Daniel Porter claimed he was told of the plan by off-duty troops in a pub in England, when he heard off-duty troops saying that they were going to ‘clear the bog’ and they would be landing with tanks. This therefore means there is another interpretation to the event of Bloody Sunday. The paratroopers didn’t just fire because they were being fired at and then returned fire, or they killed innocent people who didn’t have arms or bombs, but they planned before hand that they would be “clearing the bog.”
There are many conflicting interpretations to what happened on Bloody Sunday and there are many pieces of evidence that people are able to look at, unfortunately there is a lot of evidence that contradict each other. Some of the evidence could be bias, as a paratrooper is not going to admit that there were no weapons present on any of the victims of Bloody Sunday, although he shot an innocent person in cold blood.
With such heated conflict between the Nationalists and Unionists, it is unavoidable that there would be different interpretations of the event. In some ways you can see why the Army might have lost control of the situation and were reckless. A soldier called soldier H, thought he saw a person popping up and down at a window. He fired a total of 22 bullets and claimed that he fired 19 bullets at a gunman behind a frosted window in Glenfada Park but the window was untouched. This is a reason to why he used more bullets.
When the soldiers were on operations in Ireland they were constantly being attacked with stones and nail bombs etc. The soldiers must have been under enormous pressure and were eager to get there own back. I can also see why the protesters, if they did, would fire on the Army. They saw the Army as a force of oppression and wanted to break free, they didn’t want to be controlled by the English. With such heated rivalry and conflicting interpretations it is difficult to make any judgment.
I think that there are so many different historical interpretations and conclusions about what occurred on Bloody Sunday, because there are many different people who have different views of what occurred on Bloody Sunday. Such as the Paratroopers, the Catholics, the Protestants, the protestors, the 14 Families of the killed men, the Scientists, the general public, and many other groups of people that have different interpretations of the events of bloody Sunday. As there are so many different views and groups, the evidence has come from many different people. Consequently the different views of people changed the interpretation of the events. Therefore this causes many different views to what actually happened on Bloody Sunday which is why it is so hard for new inquiry’s, like Lord Savilles’s inquiry, to find the correct facts. To find out what really happened on Bloody Sunday and to find who is too blame for the deaths of 13 men and the other man who later died from his injuries.
