Sunday, January 30, 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. To commemorate this pivotal moment in the conflict known as the Troubles, crowds gathered at the scene of the crime. Derry became the place where the bells of St. Eugene's Cathedral rang for the dead, wreaths were laid for the victims at the Bloody Sunday memorial, and family members and their supporters retraced the steps of their fallen sons, brothers, fathers, and grandfathers. They wanted to remind the world that 50 years earlier, the British, in a highly provocative action, sent their elites soldiers—the 'paras'— to police a civil rights protest, and the results were deadly. It should have remained peaceful. After the 15,000 strong assembly of marchers were turned away at an army barricade, they redirected to Free Derry Corner. Sure, a few stayed behind and threw rocks and bottles at those occupying the barricade, but the overwhelming majority made their way away from the skirmish. Then something happened: the British soldiers opened fire on the crowd. By the end of the encounter, 13 lay dead and over a dozen others were rushed to hospital. It was a bloodbath. Unarmed protesters killed by the bullets of the paras. It took years for the families to persuade the British to investigate Bloody Sunday. When the British eventually agreed, they were forced to admit that the soldiers were the one's responsible for what happened that day. However, this admission didn't come until 2010. British Prime Minister David Cameron, the person responsible for delivering an apology on behalf of his nation, knew that his statement had to be sincere. Reflecting on the formal apology he delivered, Cameron said he chose his words wisely. "Unjustified and unjustifiable means, let's not go on arguing about this. What happened was wrong—full stop—end of [conversation] and let's make a proper apology," he told the BBC on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Despite the government's formal admission of wrong doing by British forces, no soldier has been held accountable for what happened on Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday plays a key role in my novel My Father's Secret. For more details, check out: bloody-sunday-and-my-fathers-secret.html
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Poetic license and the killing of Jim Reilly It changed the course of the Troubles. On January 30, 1972, the sway of the civil rights associations was replaced by the militancy of the Provisional IRA. That’s the day the British sent in the paras—an elite paratrooper unit of the armed forces—to help ‘police’ the 15,000 strong group of protesters who were marching against internment in Derry.
Let’s be clear: this was not a kumbaya, peace sign waving lovefest march for human rights. This was a group of angry, disenfranchised people who had had enough of Ulster rule and the imposing of un-democratic measures like internment. Internment gave the authorities the power to detain ANYONE without charges. Previous civil rights association marches had been the source of conflict and tension between Republican marchers and Ulster police. The Derry march was not likely to be free of similar conflict and tension but, by days end, no one thought 13 people would be lying dead and 15 others seeking medical attention at area hospitals. So, here’s what happened. The protesters gathered on the Creggan and began marching toward the Guildhall in the city centre. Police and soldiers were ready and turned the protesters away from their intended destination—mostly because a counter-protest was slated to arrive at the same location, at the same time, which meant all hell would break loose between the two groups. When the authorities stopped the advancing protesters, most diverted toward Free Derry Corner while a passionate minority started hurling rocks at the cops and soldiers. The authorities responded with water cannons, rubber bullets and CS gas—a pretty standard response in the early days of the Troubles. At one point, the order was given to the paras: arrest as many protesters as you can. Perhaps the effort to detain so many protesters triggered something in paras. Some soldiers say they heard shots fired at them (this was later proven false). At least one military officer disobeyed orders and brought his men into the Bogside. Whatever caused the first soldier to fire the first bullet is irrelevant—the results were clear: 21 of the paras opened fire on the crowd in the area of Rossville Flats, discharging 108 live rounds, killing 13 and injuring 15 (one of whom died six months after Bloody Sunday and is acknowledged as the 14th victim of that deadly afternoon in January). For years British investigators exonerated the soldiers for opening fire. However, mounting pressure by the families and social justice crusaders resulted in an apology from British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 where he admitted that the soldiers fired the first shot and that all those who died where unarmed civilians. Later, in 2016, authorities prepared to lay murder charges against Soldier F (the British military upheld their right not to identify the soldier) in the deaths of James Wray and Willian McKinney, as well as the attempted murders of three other men. In 2021, the charges were dropped when the prosecution determined that they did not have a reasonable hope of securing a conviction. While there was a mountain of evidence of what happened that day, perhaps it was the near 50-year gap between the incident and the willingness to consider charging the soldier that led to the dismissal of charges. This brings us to My Father’s Secret. I do my best in the novel to re-create the tragic events of Bloody Sunday. I created the character Jim Reilly as a Republican nationalist who attended the protest that day along with two of his friends. Reilly encounters the equivalent of a Soldier F, who executes him in Glenfada Park. For the record, the Bloody Sunday shootings appear, from the accounts I’ve read, to be an exercise in madness and mayhem. Once the shots were fired, people fled while bodies dropped. Most of the shooting happened in the first few minutes with the killing spree ending about 40 minutes after it started. I admit to using poetic license in the killing of Jim Reilly to highlight the power of Bloody Sunday on Irish consciousness. It is fiction—there was no execution witnessed by onlookers. However, soldiers did pick off victims, some of whom were prone when they were shot. Bloody Sunday is the most significant wound of the Troubles. It marked a shift in militancy that lasted until the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 (some say the militancy has never gone away). When tension is allowed to build, and peaceful releases are not discovered, the result is always profound devastation. For more, see: https://www.britannica.com/event/Bloody-Sunday-Northern-Ireland-1972 https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/british-soldier-charged-over-1972-bloody-sunday-will-not-stand-trial-2021-07-02/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0615/132189-bloodysundaytimeline/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0702/1232632-derry-bloody-sunday-prosecutions/ |
Sean Patrick Dolan's BlogSean Patrick Dolan is the author of the thriller, My Father's Secret, inspired by the Air India Bombing. Archives
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