January 30, 2012

Forty years ago today, a civil-rights march against British rule in Derry, Northern Ireland, ended in tragedy and went on to become one of the defining moments of "The Troubles", as the extended period of conflict in the second half of the 20th century is often called.

Known as "Bloody Sunday", January 30, 1972, has gone down in history as a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations, a day that ended with 14 protesters dead after British paratroopers began firing live ammunition at the marchers. Seven of the victims were teenagers, and the Saville Inquiry, the second British investigation into the incident (the initial 1972 Widgery Tribunal has been discredited by many observers) found that none of them were armed (five were shot in the back).

While many of the day's event s remain in dispute, some of the basic facts are not: In the 1960s, resentment between separatist Catholics in Northern Ireland (who wanted their territory to leave the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland next door) and Protestant loyalists (who wished to remain part of Great Britain) had started to reach a fever pitch, with incidents of violence growing more frequent. The British Army was deployed to help maintain control, and by 1971, amid growing confrontation and conflict, a policy of internment without trial was introduced, as was a general ban on marches and parades.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association went ahead with a planned march against the internment policy for January 30, 1972. It was meant to be peaceful, and British authorities hoped to simply direct the march away from Derry's Guildhall Square. A battalion of paratroopers was brought in to help and possibly arrest protesters.

What followed has been the subject of much debate and inquiry, but was marked by growing confrontation between the marchers and the authorities. Several teenagers began throwing stones at British forces, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. At one point, however, those were replaced with live ammunition, and paratroopers began firing directly on the marchers.

By day's end, 14 marchers were killed, another 14 wounded, and the image of British rule in Northern Ireland had forever changed: There was widespread revulsion at the events in Derry, and opposition to British rule entered a new, more confrontational stage.

"The Troubles" continued to escalate after Bloody Sunday, and did not come to an end until the Good Friday peace agreement between Catholic and Protestant forces in 1998 (though violence has remained a problem in Northern Ireland since then).

The events of January 30, 1972, have become a major reference point for analysis of the situation in Northern Ireland, and Bloody Sunday has entered the larger cultural discussion. Many artists have used the day as an inspiration, most famously the Irish band U2, whose "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is one of the group's most celebrated anthems:

In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Paul McCartney wrote and released "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", which was initially banned by the BBC:

In 2002, on the 30th anniversary of the day, director Paul Greengrass released the movie "Bloody Sunday", a fictionalized recreation of the day's events:

That same year, Britain's Channel 4 aired a TV movie written by Jimmy McGovern and directed by Charles McDougall called "Sunday":

Related Stories on Strombo.com:

Michael Fassbender on the Troubles in Ireland

Stuart Townsend On Growing Up In Ireland