History Question Answer

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’.

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One of Lord Saville’s accusations is that the soldiers fired indiscriminately upon the crowd. The soldiers deny this and claim that they were fired upon first; their evidence is that no women or children were killed, and apparently ‘nail bombs’ were found on some of the victims. It is understandable to an extent why the soldiers are angry at a fresh enquiry, as they are afraid that they will get into trouble; also, they thought that justice had already prevailed in the Widgery Report. However, this behavior could be viewed by the families of victims to be guilty. We also need to consider the different groups the army and marchers were from; the army was British and hated by the Irish due to long term issues, and the majority of the marchers were Catholics. Catholics think differently to Protestants, so interpretations would have differed in that area too.

The nature of the event would certainly have caused interpretations to differ; because it was such a wide-spread chaotic conflict, what people saw in the street may easily have been completely in contrast to what another saw from a different angle. We have to remember that the street would have been full of screaming, dust, rubble and smoke which are physical aspects of differing accounts.

Subsequent events previous to Bloody Sunday may also be a cause of different interpretations. For example, the Good Friday agreement would probably have softened some people’s views of Bloody Sunday, whereas the OMAGH bombings would have hardened others.

Science and technology progressed a lot 30 years after Bloody Sunday. This allowed for more accurate evidence, but also caused interpretations to differ.

The Widgery report, in contrast to the Lord Saville enquiry, is conducted 11 weeks after the events on Bloody Sunday. This means that time was an issue for Widgery, and he possibly rushed the report. Lord Saville’s enquiry, however, has taken 11 years and still isn’t complete; surely this is the sign of an accurate report, one that has been written with much more care and detail. Lord Saville has many more witness accounts in his report, and because it is now 30 years later he also has considerably developed forensic science to use as well. The only down side to this is that 30 years down the line, interpretations are almost certainly going to have changed and been mixed.