The march itself was illegal because the parliament had banned all marches to prevent violence. The plan was for everyone to walk through the city to the centre where a rally would be held. To prevent any trouble the paratroopers sealed off the city centre which led most of the marchers past it but a few held back in order to confront the paratroopers. These remaining marchers fired stones and abuse at the paratroopers who responded with the standard rubber bullets and water cannon, with the demonstrators still not responding they let out tear gas into the crowd which kept away most of them. The next part is confused but it is definite that members of the parachute regiment fired bullets into the crowd killing the 13 people, another person later died in hospital from bullet wounds.
The day after Bloody Sunday the Prime minister launched an investigation into the events, it was run by the lord chief justice Widgery. In the report it decided the paratroopers were shot at and were just returning fire, this was and still is the official version of events but it has been openly disputed and recently a further inquiry was launched, since the Catholic community rejected the Widgery report and started a long campaign for another inquiry, questioning the reliability of the Widgery report. The findings of the new report by Lord Saville have not been disclosed yet but the three sources I am studying are about this report. The Widgery report could be false as it was done so soon after the event people may have been afraid of getting into trouble, also as it was run by the government they would not want their side to look bad. This would have put the paratroopers into an untenable position, and Unionist and Nationalist relations would have been even more strained.
The paratroopers claim they were shot at and were just returning fire in self defense but the protesters say the Paratroopers opened fire unprovoked. The evidence surrounding Bloody Sunday is variable. There is a lot of bias on the evidence, most of it comes from either the Catholic marchers or the army, both would not want to look in the wrong and their evidence can be seen as unreliable. The soldiers would have seen the events as teaching the youths in Derry a lesson whilst the marchers would have seen the shooting as a pointless massacre. This is the main issue. People may only have seen what they wanted to see, the long history of opposition would only cloud judgment further. The following sources show different sides to the story; they are all biased in their own right.
Source A is from The Daily Mail in 1999, written by Paul Eastham. The Daily Mail is a right wing tabloid supporting Unionism. It is sympathetic towards the soldiers although shows both sides of the story. It is fair in its argument to put its point across as it is a respectable newspaper that would want to remain respected by its readers. It “says there is no credible evidence that any of the 14 people killed by the army in Londonderry in January 1972 had been handling firearms.” It is after all impossible that they could have shot at the army with no guns. The source goes on to argue although the new forensic evidence looks very bad on the paratroopers involved this is just a small piece of evidence and is not the whole story. It says that there is little support for the new inquiry and much belief in the original ruling. Although this can not be entirely true as many Catholics have been campaigning for years for a further inquiry and the Government thought it a very suitable way to help the peace process in Northern Ireland. The paratroopers may not be so infuriated by the release of new evidence if they have nothing to fear and were innocent. A former soldier clearly stated “we came under fire and under attack. It is strange how the “new” evidence is coming out when nobody mentions the nail bombs and acid bombs they threw at us” he also says “If people say that we were firing indiscriminately why were there no women and children killed?” he seems very adamant that what he is saying is the truth. The inverted commas over the “new” evidence must have been put in by the writer showing he believes in what this soldier is saying making the report at least a little biased and not completely reliable however I think as both sides of the story have been considered a lot of thought must have been put into the writers opinion.
The training and equipment of the paratroopers needs to be considered, they could have used live ammunition instead of rubber bullets by accident, or for fear of being shot at with the increasingly active IRA shot in terror. The Paratroopers are not like police officers, they are not trained to deal with people and crime but to fight, and they are part of the armed forces and qualified to be aggressive as that would win England wars, this policing of the march would not have been a regular routine and special training had not been considered by the government. Many could view the deaths as a result of the government’s bad judgment.
Source B is from a liberal newspaper, the Guardian which usually supports nationalism, it is written by an Irish man John Mullin in 1999 and says that the victims of bloody Sunday were innocent. The writer described Bloody Sunday as the Londonderry massacre which indicates little tolerance of the paratroopers shooting at the marchers, whatever the circumstances, the word massacre being very emotive. He describes the same forensic evidence as source A was against as a “major breakthrough in the families of their (the families of the 14 people shot dead on Bloody Sunday” 27 year fight” stating clearly his opinion which is obviously biased from the start. He thinks that “those who died were innocent and defenseless victims of British paratroopers”. To put his point across he personalizes the victims “Jim Wray, 22, father of six” inducing commiseration and bringing hatred to the soldiers for killing them. Source A did not mention any details of the forensic report but source B mentions a lot of graphic details such as one of the dead being “shot through the back of the head by a “dum-dum” bullet. These fragment on impact and are illegal”. Even if the paratroopers were just returning fire it is pretty horrific of them to use a “dum-dum” bullet which is illegal and should not be used in the 1st place. Source B also states that the scientist that originally gave evidence saying there was a “strong suspicion” that the victims were near or held weapons had withdrawn his original statement and says his findings could be explained in other ways. This evidence the newspaper shows does not reflect well on the Northern Irish government who controlled the previous report.
Source C is from a British TV broadcast in 2000. It explains about a witness that has stepped forward recently claiming that Bloody Sunday was a conspiracy arranged by British army. He claims to have heard soldiers talk beforehand about “clearing the bog”, the Bogside is where the killings happened on January 30th 1972. If this conspiracy theory is true then it appears the soldiers were out to teach the citizens of Derry a lesson and it is highly likely they opened fire or planned to. This evidence however only comes from one witness so it is not very reliable. However the witness was English so would therefore not want to deliberately harm Britain’s reputation with a lie; in this case it is one word against another.
The three sources I concentrated on here were in 1999 and 2000 which is 28years after the event. After this length of time memories fade and can be biased especially when they have been affected by other peoples thoughts and ideas, so it is impossible to be certain about what happened. Sources A and B are from journalists and show how a person or newspapers views can influence the public and put different interpretations on the same facts. Another word for this is propaganda. Both Sources A and B have used the same statistic twice to show different things, this can happen with a lot of the evidence so results are often indefinite. However all these years could make the truth in the matter clearer as people possibly wouldn’t mind accepting they were wrong any more and tell the reality of the matter?
There are so many contradictory beliefs as to what happened on Bloody Sunday, who fired the first shot, and whether the paratroopers were just retaliating. Both sides had reasons to hate the other and it would have been understandable if either of the sides shot first, when in operation in Ireland the army must have been constantly attacked making the army want to get their own back, but it was their job and this was something they should not have done. The Catholics saw the army as a force that oppressed them and they wanted freedom from that, feeling bitter about those years they also had plenty of reason to shoot. After so many years of conflict in Northern Ireland both sides can not listen to the other, they are so adamant that their own beliefs are correct. The Saville inquiries’ conclusions will probably never be acceptable to either the army or the original marchers and their relatives