Bloody Sunday (1972)

Bloody Sunday — sometimes called the Bogside Massacre — was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters or bystanders were shot by the British Army Parachute Regiment during a Civil Rights Association march. Thirteen men, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after. Another man died four and a half months later from his injuries. Two protesters were injured when they were run down by army vehicles.

The Widgery Tribunal

Baron Widgery lead a purported investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday. He produced a report which exonerated the army and instead laid the blame for the killings on the march organisers for creating a dangerous situation where a confrontation was inevitable. His fiercest criticism of the Army was that their "firing bordered on the reckless".

The Saville Inquiry Report

The report of the Saville Inquiry, published on 15 June 2010 some 38 years after the events and immediately accepted by the British government, found that all of those shot were unarmed, and that the killings were "unjustified and unjustifiable." Five of those wounded were shot in the back.

Detailing 5,000 pages of evidence taken over 12 years of hearings, The Saville Report concluded that:

• none of the 14 dead was carrying a gun,
• no warnings were given,
• no soldiers were under threat
• the troops were the first (and probably only ones) to open fire with firearms

The Saville Reports represents an official declaration of innocence for the victims of the biggest British military killing of UK civilians in their own country since the Peterloo massacre in 1819. The deaths propelled a generation of nationalists into the Provisional IRA.

See Also

• Document:Bloody Sunday: Key Soldiers - Document based on a BBC Online post dated 15 June 2010
• Document:How Saville got the Higher-ups off the hook - An article by Eamonn McCann
• Document:Re-living the war in an Irish Town
• The Troubles
• Derek Wilford

External Links

• Saville Inquiry Web Site home page
• Madden and Finucane Bloody Sunday Archive
• Wikipedia - Bloody Sunday (1972) main page - A comprehensive account
• Wikipedia page on the Saville Inquiry
• Northern Ireland Conflict Archive
• Robert Fisk: 'We didn't care about the Irish -- Catholics or Protestants' - Irish Independent 16 June 2010
• Intenet Movie Database - Bloody Sunday page