Meghan Mooney
The events that occurred in Derry on 30 January 1972 became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. Why have these events produced such different historical interpretations?
‘Bloody Sunday’ was an extremely controversial event that happened in 1972, Londonderry. Violence erupted when a peaceful civil rights march suddenly became a fight; the argument is, why did a peaceful protest turn violent? I am going to consider the different viewpoints and accounts of the witnesses and families of victims, and various politicians.
One of the most debatable issues is of who fired the first shot. Source A is a newspaper article from the Daily Mail in 1999. The article mainly focuses on the soldiers viewpoints, and only contains one quote from an eye-witness. Major Hubert O’ Neill, said ‘the Army ran amok’ and described the incident as ‘sheer unadulterated murder’. The fact that the article was published in 1999, almost 30 years after the actual event could mean that it is more neutral and emotions aren’t running as high as they were in 1972. It could also mean that during the 30 years that person’s account could be mixed with other interpretations, and not be as accurate as it was nearer the time. Memory can become clouded and change over time, and 30 years is a long time considering the circumstances. We see that the author of the text was not there on the day of ‘Bloody Sunday’, which is a good thing because there is less chance his emotions will affect the writing. However, throughout the article emotive language is used in particular places, for example, one of the former soldiers attacked the new ‘evidence’ as ‘rubbish’. The choice of the word ‘attack’ could have implications of violence among the soldiers, which reflects the accused violence on their behalf on ‘Bloody Sunday’.
