STORY – On January 30, 1972 in Londonderry, soldiers opened fire on a peaceful demonstration by Catholic activists. Thirteen people died the same day, and a fourteenth a few months later.
Sunday January 30, 1972, Londonderry. Shortly after 4:30 p.m., British paratroopers opened fire on a peaceful protest by Catholic activists, killing 13. The “bloody sundaytipped Northern Ireland into tragedy.
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Here, from AFP dispatches at the time, is the story of this “bloody sundaya key moment in the three decades ofDisordershaving opposed Republicans, especially Catholics, supporters of reunification with Ireland, and Protestant Unionists, defenders of Ulster’s belonging to the British Crown.
Peaceful protest
That Sunday, the demonstration at the call of associations for the defense of civil rights of Catholics was banned by the government of the British province. Which has been politically, economically and socially dominated by Protestants since the partition of the island in 1921.
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Yet there are several thousand of them marching through the streets of Bogside, the nationalist ghetto of Londonderry (Derry for the Republicans) where, more than two years earlier, a revolt against the discrimination practiced by the “apartheid governmentProtestant. After intercommunity riots and the beginning of the “Disordersin the province, the British army was deployed there in the summer of 1969.
Led by Bernadette Devlin, a young Catholic MP in the Parliament of Westminster, the demonstrators of the day brandished signs demanding an end to the internment without trial of activists from the Catholic community.
This regime, imposed in August 1971 by London in Northern Ireland, then symbolized for the republican movement, British arbitrariness and “national resistance“.
“Stop, stop, go home”
The disaster plays out shortly after 4:30 p.m. British paratroopers from the 1st Battalion, brought in as reinforcements from Belfast, were posted at the junction of Bishop Street and Rossville Street, on the edge of the Bogside.
As the demonstration – the largest ever in Londonderry – ends, young people leave the flow of the procession to head towards the outpost of the soldiers. The situation escalates.
In a strident voice, Bernadette Devlin gives the order to disperse, says the AFP journalist. “She is mounted on a chair, she is very small, disheveled, her mouth disproportionately open to shout: ”stop, stop, go home”“. But the paras came out from behind their barricades. Order was given to them to invest the Bogside.
“Apocalypse Atmosphere”
Once in this fortress of Catholicism in Ulster, continues the agency, demonstrators and soldiers disappear in a maze of miserable, poorly lit little streets where for years no policeman, no soldier has dared to enter. Suddenly, tragedy strikes. We shoot, we scream, we flee. In the night, the cold, the fog of tear gas and an atmosphere of apocalypse.
The death toll from the shooting is 13 civilians, including six aged 17. All shot, most of them in the back. Another injured person died a few months later of a tumour. There are also sixteen wounded, several seriously injured.
Silence fell over Londonderry. Ulster’s second city has closed in on itself. “Behind the decrepit facades of windswept houses on the Bogside, people have locked themselves in fear and hatred“, writes AFP the day after the killing.
“Collective massacre”
For the inhabitants, there is no doubt that the paratroopers have “lost my mindand fired indiscriminately at anything that moved. Bernadette Devlin asserts that “it was a collective massacre committed by the British army“. Denis Bradley, a Catholic priest who witnessed the tragedy, accused the paratroopers of having fired “blindly” and “almost with pleasureover the crowd.
A member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland Ivan Cooper, says that the soldiers shot at him while waving a white handkerchief, he tried to help an injured person.
A spokesman for the army, for his part, assures us that the soldiers responded to fire from armed demonstrators, pointing to the “terroristsof the IRA. The clandestine organization – which will see membership flowing -, denies having caused the “massacreand announces retaliation.
“unjustifiable” act
The army’s version, widely echoed in the hotly contested conclusions of a hastily conducted investigation in 1972, was ultimately contradicted in an investigation report published in 2010.
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The report establishes, after twelve years of investigation, that the British paratroopers fired first. The victims were unarmed and were not IRA bombers.
In a solemn apology to the families, Prime Minister David Cameron called the army’s action “unjustifiable“.