These sources relate to events at Burntollet Bridge on 4th January 1969. Why have these events produced such different historical interpretations. Refer to sources A to C and any other interpretations of the events from your studies to help you in your answer.
There are three sources that come from different understandings of what took place on the 4th of January 1969. These events happened on the last day of a four-day march from Belfast to Derry. The march was carried out by the People’s Democracy who was mostly made of students from Queen’s university, Belfast. There were riots at Derry before the march had started that were started by Reverend Ian Paisley who had provoked the Protestants by encouraging negative feelings towards the marchers. When the marchers arrived at Burntollet they were confronted by a group of Protestants that were waiting for them at the bridge.
The first source was written by Bernadette Devlin in 1969, it is an account from her autobiography called ‘The Price of My Soul’. She is a leading member of the Civil Rights movement; at the age of 21 she became the youngest woman to enter the House of Commons. She was one of the marchers at Burntollet and witnessed what happened but is likely that she will be bias towards other points of view. She starts by describing what happened when they arrived. “A curtain of bricks and boulders and bottles brought a march to a halt” she describes that the protestants ambushed the marchers and attacked them with several different types of weapons. Some marchers escaped but the rest were left behind. She also says that she witnessed one man being attacked by four or five ‘Paisleyites’ with a policeman looking on. “A few policemen were at least trying to stop us from being killed” but others were pleased that the marchers were getting “What, in their terms, we deserved.”