On January 30, 1972, a Sunday stained Northern Irish history with blood. In the Bogside district of Derry, a peaceful march against inequalities between Catholics and Protestants turns into a massacre. As tensions escalate between the two communities, British soldiers fire live ammunition and claim fourteen lives. A look back at a dark day sung by U2, and the resumption of a conflict that will kill nearly 3,500 people in three decades
Bono steps onto the stage mimicking the martial step of a British paratrooper. Picking up the microphone, he yells: “This song isn’t a rebel song”, an allusion addressed to Irish folk groups, such as the Wolfe Tones, classified as republicans, not to say pro- IRA, and who triumph within the Catholic community of Northern Ireland and Scotland. Under the cheers of a vibrant crowd, he then attacked “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, U2’s first universal hit, initiated by a riff by David Howell Evans, alias “The Edge”. Guitarist and composer, he is at the origin of the sound architecture of the U2 style. It was he who, with nervous fingers, composed this series of rhythmic chords which anchors the melodic line of the piece. It was 1982, ten years after the tragedy in Derry. Fourteen demonstrators fell there under the English bullets, including seven people under the age of twenty.
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If the lyrics start with: “I can’t believe the news today”; if they continue with, “I can’t close my eyes and drive them away,” they culminate in a despairing, “How long, how long do we have to sing this song?” How long ? How long ? All of “green” Ireland shares in these imprecations which, basically, – according to Bono – are not. Commemorating the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre does not, for U2, mean bringing shame on the Protestant community. Since William of Orange in the 17th century, it has made its own the counties of Ulster, in the north of the island, the cities of Belfast and Derry (which, out of loyalty to the British crown, it renames …Londonderry). Minority Catholics and Protestants established for four centuries are fighting a quadruple Hundred Years War! War never concluded, even in the aftermath of the Irish revolution, because, in 1921, six counties of Ulster remained in the bosom of the Kingdom.
Ten thousand people rush to William Street, and have only corrugated iron shields when the bullets rain
It is in this context that “Sunday Bloody Sunday” fits. The 1960s saw the “Celtic revival” and, for the supporters of the unity of the island, the elections won by the Catholics, including Bernadette Devlin, who would sit for five years (1969-1974) in the British Parliament. On the other side, the Protestant ultras are increasing their attacks on civil rights.
To read, in the archives of Match: 1969, Northern Ireland catches fire
On January 30, 1972, the Northern Irish Association for Civil Rights organized a peaceful demonstration. Ten thousand people, coming from the Bogside, an area huddled behind the 29 barricades of Free Derry, an enclave forbidden to the British army and the Ulster police (RUC), crowd in the direction of William Street. They only have corrugated sheets for shields when the bullets rain down. Initially, rubber balls. Then, real ammunition, fired without warning. Victims fall, sometimes hit in the back; armored vehicles run over two boys. The investigation will last almost thirty years. Its conclusions will be published in 2010. David Cameron, then Prime Minister, apologizes to the House of Commons, no soldier having found himself in a situation of self-defence.
Bloody Sunday! “Domhnach na Fola” in Gaelic. There is another: on November 21, 1920, in the midst of the War of Independence, the British armed forces opened fire during a Gaelic football final in Dublin. The Croke Park massacre will kill fourteen people (as many as in Derry), including a player. The U2 song does not forget them.
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