Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bloody Sunday
Inspired by civil rights marches in America in the mid-1960s, and the Prague
Spring uprising and Paris student strikes of 1968, civil rights groups began to
protest in Northern Ireland. Initially, their goals were to gain better housing, secure
fair voting rights, and end employment discrimination for Catholics in the North.
Tensions mounted, and clashes with the predominantly Protestant Royal Ulster
Constabulary police force became frequent. Eventually, the British Army was
called in to keep the peace.
On January 30, 1972, about 10,000 people protesting internment without trial
held an illegal march sponsored by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.
British Army barricades kept them from the center of Derry, so they marched
through the Bogside neighborhood.
Thatafternoon,someyouthsriotedonthefringeofthemarch.Anelite parachute
regiment had orders to move in and make arrests in the Rossville Street area. Shoot-
ing broke out, and after 25 minutes, 13 marchers were dead and 13 were wounded
(one of the wounded later died). The soldiers claimed they came under attack from
gunfire and nail-bombs. The marchers said the army shot indiscriminately at un-
armed civilians.
The tragic clash, called “Bloody Sunday,” led to a dramatic increase in National-
ism and a flood of fresh IRA volunteers. An investigation at the time exonerated the
soldiers, but the relatives of the victims called it a whitewash and insisted on their
innocence.
In 1998, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised a new inquiry, which
became the longest and most expensive in British legal history. In 2010, a 12-year
investigation—the Saville Report—determined that the Bloody Sunday civil rights
protesters were innocent and called the deaths of 14 protesters unjustified.
In a dramatic 2010 speech in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister
David Cameron apologized to the people of Derry. “What happened on Bloody
Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong,” he declared. Cheers
rang out in Derry's Guildhall Square, where thousands had gathered to watch the
speech on a video screen. After 38 years of struggle, Northern Ireland's bloodiest
wound started healing.
The Walk:
Start out at the corner of Rossville and William streets.
The Bogside murals face different directions (and some are partially hidden by build-
ings), so they're not all visible from a single viewpoint. Plan on walking three long blocks
along Rossville Street (which becomes Lecky Road) to see them all. Residents are used to
visitors and don't mind if you photograph the murals.
