There is a box somewhere in Tony Doherty’s brain that has barely been opened since January 30, 1972. Tony was 9 years old at the time and does not remember seeing his parents leave the house that afternoon, but he does return hours after his death. mother, crossing the threshold of home for the first time as a widow. What happened then remains encapsulated in that box that today, 50 years later, he is still afraid to open.
The history of the conflict in Northern Ireland is full of individual and collective wounds. But few have marked the course of those three decades of violence like Bloody Sunday, half a century old today and whose legacy continues to generate division in Northern Irish society. Thirteen unarmed civilians were shot dead that day by the British Army in a peaceful civil rights march that ended in tragedy in Londonderry. The fourteenth victim succumbed months later due to the injuries received. The massacre catapulted the conflict to a new level of violence never seen before and fueled the ranks of the IRA for decades to come. Many remember the dozens of kids queuing that same night at the doors of the safe houses of the terrorist organization to enlist. Among them, a few years later, was Tony himself.
More than 3,500 people died during the period known to Northern Ireland as the ‘Troubles’ (riots), which pitted Unionists, supporters of maintaining ties with the UK (mostly Protestants), and Republicans (mainly Catholics) in a bloody spiral of violence. The vast majority were victims of groups such as the IRA or the various loyalist movements. However, it is Bloody Sunday, a massacre carried out by the British army, which has become a symbol of that time.
A moment of the march that took place on January 30, 1972.
«The massacre had a brutal psychological impact on my generation and those that followed. Many of us thought then that peaceful efforts to resolve the conflict were useless and, in fact, in the four years I spent in prison I met many prisoners who told me that they joined the IRA because of Bloody Sunday,” he explains by phone, from his home in Derry, Tony Doherty, who today chairs the foundation that brings together the families of the victims. A direct consequence of the soldiers’ shooting and their immediate exoneration by the authorities was that the movements seeking a political solution to the conflict were relegated to ostracism. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, convener of the march, never raised its head. He was the fifteenth victim. Many more would come.
Eamonn McCann was a member of the association and that January 30 he was together with other organizers, such as the then very young Member of the House of Commons Bernadette Devlin (later McAliskey). The movement, which had been organizing protests for years to denounce discrimination against the Catholic minority in public housing, elections or employment, had managed to gather more than 10,000 people, although the march had been declared illegal by the authorities. A small group broke away from the main mass and began throwing stones at the soldiers, who responded with water cannons and rubber bullets and, soon after, with live ammunition.
“Bernadette had the microphone in her hand and had just started to speak when we heard the shots. Everyone fell to the ground, the street was carpeted with people and no one understood what was happening. My most vivid memory is of crawling on the ground with my elbows in my own street, a few meters from where I was born and raised, “recalls McCann, who has been a regional deputy, journalist and has dedicated his entire life to activism. Bewilderment and disbelief soon gave way to rage. “And rage was something the IRA could channel, much more so than a peaceful, structured civil society,” he argues.
Plaque with the names of the deceased
The feeling of injustice was aggravated by the official investigation that the Prime Minister at the time, Edward Heath, commissioned the Chief Justice, John Widgery, and which concluded – without being able to prove it – that the protesters had fired first. Neither the injured nor many of the witnesses were able to testify in the investigation. Not even Devlin herself was allowed to recount what happened the next day in the House of Commons. The resounding slap that she gave the Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, that day, for assuring that the protesters were armed, is already part of the history of the British Parliament.
Relatives of the victims and Northern Irish nationalists never accepted Widgery’s report. However, the unionists took their conclusions “because they fit what they wanted to believe, which was that soldiers returned fire from the IRA. The government was waging a war against a terrorist organization. 1972 was the bloodiest year of all the conflict, with more than 400 dead, so they were not willing to put soldiers on trial, ”argues Henry Patterson, professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Ulster.
“In prison I met many who told me they joined the IRA because of Bloody Sunday”
It was not until 1998, under the Good Friday Peace Agreement, that the British government commissioned another independent judicial investigation into the events. Judge Mark Saville’s report was 12 years in the making, cost nearly 200 million pounds, spans 10 volumes and concludes that soldiers first fired on unarmed civilians. The then prime minister, David Cameron, apologized in 2010 on behalf of the British government for this “unjustified and unjustifiable massacre”. Lord Saville’s report also identifies the soldiers who opened fire that day, although he protects their identity and names them with letters. ‘F’ stands for the soldier who fired the shot that killed Patrick Doherty, then 31 years old with six children. One of them is Tony.
I try not to think about that man. I have put it inside that box with the rest of the memories that make me furious. But it is an injustice, the victims have been left without rights because it is known who they are and what they did and, however, the State has protected people who should face charges for multiple murders, “says Doherty. Lord Saville’s report opened the door to the prosecution of the members of the parachute brigade who fired that afternoon but, last July, the Prosecutor’s Office dropped the charges against several soldiers, including “soldier F”. A few months earlier, a court had dismissed a similar case against two soldiers. The testimonies that were taken five decades ago from the soldiers did not have the necessary legal guarantees, which makes their prosecution unfeasible today.
“Bloody Sunday is an unfortunate thing that should never have happened,” acknowledges Ryan McCready, who is now a councilor for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in Derry, after spending 20 years in the British Army. McCready believes, however, that it is a date that has been politicized and that it must be understood in the broader context of the ‘Troubles’.
“When you talk to veterans who served in the Army during the ‘Troubles,’ they tell you it was a battlefield. They were constant targets of the terrorists, they were shot at, they were marginalized. And yet many people here in Northern Ireland think that unfortunately there are two kinds of justice. None of the terrorists are being persecuted, investigated or prosecuted, while those who served with the State and who were sent by the British government face trials and tribulations 50 years later, “says the councilor.
Do not look back
For part of Northern Irish society, the time has come to stop looking back. “The vast majority of young people I talk to don’t think too much about the past. They believe that this legacy is a burden on our political future, but also social, economic or environmental, “reasons the unionist McCready. Some victims, exhausted after five decades of activism and disappointment, have also thrown in the towel.
But for people like Eamonn McCann, “The 50th anniversary is not the end of anything. It is another milestone along the way. The time I have left will be spent trying to hold accountable those who were in charge that day, not just the soldiers who fired the shots.”
The real difficulty lies, historian Henry Patterson argues, in that “it is a conflict that is still open. Knowing who is responsible for the violence or most of the violence is an unsolvable question because it is not something about the past, but about the present.
The amnesty proposal that does not convince anyone
Five decades after Bloody Sunday, Northern Irish society remains divided and it is likely that one of the few things that will bring the unionists and nationalists together is their rejection of the Boris Johnson government’s amnesty law. The proposal, paralyzed until the summer, proposes to prohibit legal action against those who committed crimes during the three decades of the ‘Troubles’, the Northern Irish conflict. The law – a de facto amnesty – would apply to all sides.
Associations of victims such as those of Bloody Sunday fear that the main reason is to exonerate the members of the Army who are involved in legal proceedings. On the other side, however, they do not have the same vision: «90% of those who died were victims of terrorism and, of the 10% who died by the security forces, the vast majority were justified deaths that cannot be considered murders. » argues Ryan McCready, unionist councilor for Derry.
Some 1,200 ‘Troubles’ murders remain to be clarified, and it is estimated that a thousand legal proceedings are currently underway.
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