Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972 40th Anniversary Today

Chuck Stone

secondopinion wrote: »

'Bloody Sunday' was an event that was preceded by 250 deaths, most caused by militant Irish Republicans and must be seen in that context.

I see you've failed to back up this comment as would be required for it to be taken seriously, ergo, it can be received as no more than a fabrication of your mind.

CDfm

secondopinion wrote: »

I've not read it.

It is very interesting and if you get a chance you should look it up.

Personally I care no more about The BS dead than all the others killed, including every single British soldier or policemen - soldiers of The British Army brought to Northern Ireland at the request of The NI Catholic community, who practically begged on their knees for the protection of The British Army one day and then fed them samwiches full of razor blades the next.

All the deaths were tragic and lots of them were shocking.

Can you explain the arrival of the British Armies deployment in NI.

The south was not unscathed from paramilitary activity either and our police , army and politicians were targets.



http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/idojgbaugb/#ixzz1Z5FPtuug

jonniebgood1

secondopinion wrote: »

You'd imagine would you?

Check all deaths up to BS for my figures - use CAIN.

It is up to you to back up your claims rather than asking others to 'check' them for you. If this is not clear then please refer to the Stickied items on the main history page. Please also refer to forum charter which states

In subjects that generally arise tensions between the forum users (discussing Nationalist or Unionist subjects for example) opinions should be backed up by a verifiable source when possible. The purpose of this is to avoid people who are simply trolling the forum as it should ensure that opinions have a basic foundation in fact. If you cannot provide a source or reason for holding a controversial opinion then it may be better to keep it to yourself as this could be seen as trolling (i.e. controversial opinions are fine but they must be based on a source of some kind).

It is necessary that people abide by this to avoid this thread descending into expressing opinions that are not based on reality. Thus in future provide your own links to back up opinions expressed. You will note that others in this discussion with you have provided external information to back up their posts. If you have any query on this then it should be made by PM to a moderator.

Moderator.

HavingCrack

secondopinion wrote: »

I've not read it.

Personally I care no more about The BS dead than all the others killed, including every single British soldier or policemen - soldiers of The British Army brought to Northern Ireland at the request of The NI Catholic community, who practically begged on their knees for the protection of The British Army one day and then fed them samwiches full of razor blades the next.

Attempting to portray the entire Northern Irish Catholic community as "begging" for the British Army to be deployed is simply incorrect at best and a lie at worst. It was a decision of the British government in Westminster to send the British army into Northern Ireland due to their opinion the O'Neill government was losing control of the situation on the ground.

The Catholic community did not 'beg' for intervention-that is simply incorrect. Now they did welcome the soldiers originally-there's no doubt about that. However it was a direct consequence of incidents such as Bloody Sunday in particular that turned the Catholic community against them. The army were no longer seen as an impartial force between the Nationalist and Unionist communities but were seen as supporting the apartheid regime of the Northern Ireland government of the time. Effectively the soldiers were treating fellow UK citizens as 2nd class due to their religious/cultural beliefs.

Understanding why the Nationalist community turned against them is quite understandable. Understanding why extremism and violence against the British army or RUC occured is not the same thing as condoning it.


Source:

Freeman, M. (2003, p. 51-58) Freedom or Security: The Consequences for Democracies Using Emergency Powers to Fight Terrorism. Greenport: Greenwood Publishing

CDfm

Have the state papers covering the decision to deploy been released ?

It is a challenging subject for NI residents but also for southerners - on the 2nd February this happened

1972: British embassy in Dublin destroyed
The British embassy in Dublin has been destroyed by a furious crowd of demonstrators protesting over the shooting dead of 13 people in Londonderry on Sunday. The crowd was estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 strong. It had been besieging the embassy building, in Merrion Square near the parliament building, for almost three days.
The mob threw hundreds of petrol bombs, as well as stones and other missiles. Fire engines which arrived to tackle the blaze were prevented from getting through for several hours.
All windows in the front of the building were smashed, and shutters torn from their hinges. Burning Union Jacks were hung on the front of the building above symbolic coffins, placed on the embassy steps by march leaders who were allowed through the police cordon around the building.
About 20 demonstrators and police have been injured, including one policeman seriously hurt when a gelignite bomb was used to blow out the front door of the embassy at midnight last night.
The ambassador and his staff evacuated the building earlier today, leaving a few security guards inside the stricken building.
Other buildings with British connections were also attacked. One of the worst incidents was at the port of Dun Laoghaire, just south of Dublin, where a British-owned insurance office was burned down.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/2/newsid_2758000/2758163.stm

HavingCrack

CDfm wrote: »

It is a challenging subject for NI residents but also for southerners - on the 2nd February this happened

I always found the reaction to it in the Republic to be quite shocking. I had no idea anti-British sentiment was still so entrenched in Ireland at the time. Well not so much the sentiment but the violent reaction to it.

A crowd of 30,000 people....the mind boggles.

CDfm

HavingCrack wrote: »

A crowd of 30,000 people....the mind boggles.

Its 1985, and the only riot I was ever at was the one that happened in O'Connell Street when U2's lazer show cancelled. So being at an event does not make you a participant.

Also, this was the Irish equivalent of the Twin Towers.

Other factors were, the traditional version of history taught in Irish schools was not exactly impartial.

The most important though was TV. Everyone had a TV and the images were instant for the first time ever.

HavingCrack

CDfm wrote: »

Its 1985, and the only riot I was ever at was the one that happened in O'Connell Street when U2's lazer show cancelled. So being at an event does not make you a participant.

Agreed, is there any source that would be able to estimate how many people were actively involved in the attack on the embassy and how many were bystanders/passers by etc.? Or is impossible to estimate the numbers?

CDfm wrote: »

Also, this was the Irish equivalent of the Twin Towers.

In terms of cultural impact I'm not sure would it be a comparable event to 9/11 but your point remains valid.

CDfm wrote: »

Other factors were, the traditional version of history taught in Irish schools was not exactly impartial.

Agreed.

The most important though was TV. Everyone had a TV and the images were instant for the first time ever.[/QUOTE]

I've actually been curious about this for a while. Do you know which station broadcast the first images of Bloody Sunday? Was it BBC/ITN/RTE?

MarchDub

HavingCrack wrote: »

I always found the reaction to it in the Republic to be quite shocking. I had no idea anti-British sentiment was still so entrenched in Ireland at the time. Well not so much the sentiment but the violent reaction to it.

A crowd of 30,000 people....the mind boggles.

Well, I was around in 1972 - and I can tell you that the reaction was no surprise at all to me.

Firstly, the older generation who had lived through the War of Independence - and those who had fought in it - were still alive, with all the memories of the atrocities of that time, the Black and Tans, marshal law, curfews, random arrests etc. Stories of the British Army's heavy hand in Dublin were commonplace for me growing up as they were for just about anyone in 1972.

Also, the country was much more proudly nationalist then. As I said in a previous post in this thread it's easy to see how that altered when we have had in the intervening years the press, the educational system, politicians, etc all spouting the same anti-nationalist rhetoric. The running down of anything nationalistic as being wrong headed - and even, God help us, unsophisticated - is now commonplace.

The average Irish person was outraged at what they saw on the television screens - BUT and this is important to get the full context of the times - we had already had our fill of images of the Army beating the hell out of people in NI, entering homes and smashing up living rooms - I remember seeing images of the army smashing Catholic statues in homes - - and the Orange Order attacking civil rights marchers willy nilly.

Bloody Sunday did not happen in a vacuum - it was for many the limit of what could have been tolerated. So emotional reaction was swift and very angry.

dave2pvd

HavingCrack wrote: »

In terms of cultural impact I'm not sure would it be a comparable event to 9/11

+1

Surprising comparison, CDfm.

CDfm

dave2pvd wrote: »

+1

Surprising comparison, CDfm.

Back then - the town I lived in had to go back to 1920 or so for its own last murder.

It just did not happen. Everyone had British cousins too -so the English were like us.

I was too young and we had just RTE so I don't know what the coverage was like but it was in peoples homes.

dubhthach

One could also argue that it's a watershed moment in the troubles. It ratcheted up everything "Post Bloody Sunday". Obviously with a 9/11 comparison you could say much the same could happen. The americans had been after Osama since the mid 90's. Everything ratcheted up after 9/11.

CDfm

dubhthach wrote: »

One could also argue that it's a watershed moment in the troubles. It ratcheted up everything "Post Bloody Sunday".

It reminded me of the Gandhi Movie

Riot Act (redirected from read the riot act)


Also found in: Idioms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.03 sec.

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div.Ov { width: 580px; } Ri·ot Act (rt)n. An English law, enacted in 1715, providing that if 12 or more people unlawfully assemble and disturb the public peace, they must disperse upon proclamation or be considered guilty of felony.

Idiom: read the riot act To warn or reprimand energetically or forcefully: The teacher read the riot act to the rowdy class.

Word History: The riot act has been read to far more people than the disturbers of the peace the Riot Act was intended to control. The official Riot Act was enacted by Parliament in 1715 to discourage unlawful assembly and civic turbulence, although the first recorded use of the term Riot Act to refer to this legislation does not appear until 1731. The act provided that if 12 or more people gathered unlawfully or for purposes of disturbing the peace, a portion of the Riot Act would be read to them, and if the assembled did not disperse by one hour after this reading, they would be guilty of felony. The Riot Act, which was not repealed until 1973, became a part of the public consciousness and developed an extended sense in the phrase to read the riot act, meaning "to warn forcefully." The first use of riot act in this way is found in a work published in 1819: "She has just run out to read the riot act in the Nursery."

Note how the Riot Act was not repealled until 1973.

Uganda gained independence from Britain in 1962 so the response is like that of a colonial army.

Obviously with a 9/11 comparison you could say much the same could happen. The americans had been after Osama since the mid 90's. Everything ratcheted up after 9/11.

9/11 was a comparison for the media affect. Vietnam in the US was the first war fought on TV.

Yes, and Osama was looking for a response , I imagine the dynamic was a bit reversed though, as the US recruited volunteers. From Bloody Sunday the IRA were able to recruit. Hardly the affect Osama wanted but it did follow on from it.

secondopinion

CDfm wrote: »

It reminded me of the Gandhi Movie




Note how the Riot Act was not repealled until 1973.

Uganda gained independence from Britain in 1962 so the response is like that of a colonial army.



9/11 was a comparison for the media affect. Vietnam in the US was the first war fought on TV.

Yes, and Osama was looking for a response , I imagine the dynamic was a bit reversed though, as the US recruited volunteers. From Bloody Sunday the IRA were able to recruit. Hardly the affect Osama wanted but it did follow on from it.

Do you think there was any seminal incident or range of incidents from which recruits to The UVF and UDA flowed?

dubhthach

secondopinion wrote: »

Do you think there was any seminal incident or range of incidents from which recruits to The UVF and UDA flowed?

Bloody Friday would be one I could think of the top of my head. I recall a documentary about David Ervine where he mentioned that he joined the UVF because of what he witnessed in Belfast on "Bloody Friday" (21 July 1972)

secondopinion

HavingCrack wrote: »

Attempting to portray the entire Northern Irish Catholic community as "begging" for the British Army to be deployed is simply incorrect at best and a lie at worst. It was a decision of the British government in Westminster to send the British army into Northern Ireland due to their opinion the O'Neill government was losing control of the situation on the ground.

The Catholic community did not 'beg' for intervention-that is simply incorrect. Now they did welcome the soldiers originally-there's no doubt about that. However it was a direct consequence of incidents such as Bloody Sunday in particular that turned the Catholic community against them. The army were no longer seen as an impartial force between the Nationalist and Unionist communities but were seen as supporting the apartheid regime of the Northern Ireland government of the time. Effectively the soldiers were treating fellow UK citizens as 2nd class due to their religious/cultural beliefs.

Understanding why the Nationalist community turned against them is quite understandable. Understanding why extremism and violence against the British army or RUC occured is not the same thing as condoning it.


Source:

Freeman, M. (2003, p. 51-58) Freedom or Security: The Consequences for Democracies Using Emergency Powers to Fight Terrorism. Greenport: Greenwood Publishing

Could you expand on your use of the word apartheid in this context? I was not aware that any apartheid type laws existed in NI at that time...

Could you also provide evidence that "the soldiers were treating fellow UK citizens as 2nd class due to their religious/cultural beliefs" - ideally with clear source material...

CDfm

dubhthach wrote: »

Bloody Friday would be one I could think of the top of my head. I recall a documentary about David Ervine where he mentioned that he joined the UVF because of what he witnessed in Belfast on "Bloody Friday" (21 July 1972)

Can someone explain this to me as it it something I know very little about.

And, when I was growing up RTE was not the most unbiased of newssources.

secondopinion

dubhthach wrote: »

Bloody Friday would be one I could think of the top of my head. I recall a documentary about David Ervine where he mentioned that he joined the UVF because of what he witnessed in Belfast on "Bloody Friday" (21 July 1972)

Yes, I remember Ervine saying this. A terrible event:

There have been many terrible events in the history of Northern Ireland's conflict, but few have seared the collective consciousness of its people as those on Friday, 21 July 1972, a day that became known as Bloody Friday.


By the end of the day, the IRA's Belfast brigade had detonated at least 20 bombs across the city.

In just 75 minutes of violence, nine people were dead and some 130 more were mutilated, injured and mentally scarred by what they had witnessed.

From the outset, the IRA's bombing of the city caused widespread chaos and stretched the security forces to the limit.

Such was the scale of the attack, witnesses at the time remember seeing people running in all directions, not knowing where the bombs were being detonated.

As one report at the time described the scene, "it was impossible for anyone to feel perfectly safe".

Car bombs

While the scale of the attack was huge, it was two car bombs that between them claimed the nine lives - one at the Oxford Street bus station in the city centre, the other outside shops in Cavehill Road in north Belfast.
Victims: Many were blown to pieces


At Oxford St, the busiest bus station in Northern Ireland, four Ulsterbus workers and two soldiers were killed.


When the emergency services reached the scene, they found that some of the victims had been literally blown to pieces, leading to initial estimates of a death toll of 11.

At the Cavehill Road bomb, the victims were two women and a 14-year-old schoolboy.

Of the 130 injured, 77 were women or children out shopping in the city centre. One police officer at the scene recalled the events for the BBC series Provos in 1997. "You could hear people screaming, crying and moaning. The first thing that caught my eye was a torso of a human being lying in the middle of the street," he told the series.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/2132219.stm

secondopinion

One of Ulster's foremost Loyalist militants was Billy Wright, The UVF's mid-Ulster Brigade OC. It was The Kingsmill massacre carried out by Republicans that forced Wright to take up arms:

Billy Wright was a loyalist paramilitary - a former member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and subsequently leader of the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).

He was born in Wolverhampton, but grew up in south Armagh in Northern Ireland, mixing freely with Catholics and playing Gaelic football.

Wright joined the youth section of the UVF at 15, following the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, when 10 Protestsants were killed by republicans. His uncle, father-in-law and brother-in-law were also killed by republicans during the Troubles.

http://www.channel4.com/news/the-billy-wright-story

The Kingsmill massacre:

THE PROVISIONAL IRA carried out the “purely sectarian” and “calculated slaughter” of 10 Protestants in south Armagh 35 years ago in an attack that became infamously known as the “Kingsmill Massacre”, the Historical Enquiries Team has found.

Bereaved relatives of the 10 victims of the January 1976 attack gathered in Bessbrook town hall, not far from Kingsmill, yesterday morning to consider the report outlining how their loved ones were murdered.

The Protestant textile workers were murdered after their bus bringing them home from work was waved down by a man flashing a light at Kingsmill. When they got off the bus, they were lined up by at least 11 gunmen.

The one Catholic among them was identified and told to run away. The IRA gang then gunned down the men. Ten died while one man, Alan Black, survived even though he was struck 18 times.

The inquiry team was dismissive of the claim at the time that the murders were the work of the South Armagh Republican Action Force. It said such was the widespread revulsion that the IRA attempted to distance itself from the attack by using this cover-name.

No one has ever been convicted of the killings, although the report makes clear that one of the chief suspects is a former IRA member, subsequently a senior dissident republican. He was held as being one of those responsible for the Real IRA Omagh bombing of 1998, in which 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, were murdered.

Raymond McCreesh, who died on hunger strike in 1981, is named as one of those linked to an Armalite rifle used in an attempted murder attack on security personnel in June 1976, and which was also used in the Kingsmill Massacre just six months earlier.

Ballistic studies found that guns used in the attack were linked to 37 murders, 22 attempted murders, 19 non-fatal shootings and 11 finds of spent cartridges between 1974 and 1989.

The attack took place the day after the UVF carried out sectarian attacks on two Catholic families, also in south Armagh, that claimed the lives of three members of the Reavey and three members of the O’Dowd families.

While the murders were in “direct response” to these killings, the attack was pre-planned. “The murderous attacks on the Reavey and O’Dowd families were simply the catalyst for the premeditated and calculated slaughter of these innocent and defenceless men,” it added.

“The motive was purely sectarian, with each man being murdered purely because he was a Protestant,” the report found.

It added: “There is some intelligence that the Provisional IRA unit responsible was not well-disposed towards central co-ordination but there is no excuse in that. These dreadful murders were carried out by the Provisional IRA and none other.

“This was appalling savagery on a gross scale, which brings utter shame on those responsible and disgrace on any cause they professed to support.”

There was one Catholic on the bus, the late Richard Hughes. In previous testimony he recounted how his Protestant colleagues “bravely tried to shield his identity”, fearing he would be the victim. But he was recognised as a Catholic and told to run down the road.

The report described how the victims were ordered to “tighten up” so that they could be gunned to death more easily and how after the first shootings the order was given to “finish them off”.

Up to 150 spent bullet cases, bullets and bullet fragments were recovered from the scene.

“It would be difficult to overstate the horror of this scene,” the report said. “Honest, ordinary men, they were harmless and utterly defenceless.” The report acknowledged that the RUC faced huge work pressure at the time but said additional resources should have been deployed for an investigation of such scale.

There was a list of 63 names suggested as being involved and it was clear the killers were among this group. “The police wanted to conduct arrests and interviews but the men used the proximity of the Border to avoid arrest by remaining resident in the Republic. There were no grounds to seek their extradition. There was good co-operation with the Irish authorities, and An Garda Síochána arrested and interviewed a number of suspects but no evidence was found.”

The ten victims were: Kenneth Worton (24); Joseph Lemmon (49); Reginald Chapman (29); Walter Chapman (29); Robert Samuel Walker (46); James McWhirter (63); Robert Chambers (18); John McConville (20); John Bryans (50); and Robert Freeburn (56).

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0622/1224299384987.html

CDfm

David Ervine was very articulate and I lived outside Ireland when he was on the go politically but remember seeing him on tv around the time he was visiting Downing Street and it was very difficult to "see" whose "side" he was on.

I imagine it was far more difficult than he made it look.

secondopinion

CDfm wrote: »

David Ervine was very articulate and I lived outside Ireland when he was on the go politically but remember seeing him on tv around the time he was visiting Downing Street and it was very difficult to "see" whose "side" he was on.

I imagine it was far more difficult than he made it look.

He was definitely of great asistance to The UK State in pushing The Belfast Agreement on Unionism. Make of that what you will.

Him and Billy Wright were bitter enemies. Ironically, at the time Wright split with The UVF (Wright opposed where The PUP/UVF were heading), it was Wright who was being applauded and idolised by young Loyalists across Ulster, whilst Ervine was seen as the establishment's man.

Wright ended up murdered in a UK prison under highly suspicious circumstances to say the least. He'd got eight years for an offence he'd have probably got six months for in England. Again, make of that what you will.

:eek:

CDfm

secondopinion wrote: »

He was definitely of great asistance to The UK State in pushing The Belfast Agreement on Unionism. Make of that what you will.


:eek:

As a former newsagent he had more in common economically and politically with some of the southern irish parties than Sinn Fein did.

Now that is off topic , but the political ideology of the NICRA was very left of center and that rarely gets discussed.

secondopinion

CDfm wrote: »

As a former newsagent he had more in common economically and politically with some of the southern irish parties than Sinn Fein did.

Now that is off topic , but the political ideology of the NICRA was very left of center and that rarely gets discussed.

I'm not sure how 'left wing' the public position of The NICRA was. The problem was that like many organisations there was more to them than met the eye. They actually renamed themselves The CRA - removing the initials NI (Northern Ireland). 'Northern Ireland' is a term that Republicans don't like - they prefer 'north of Ireland', 'six counties',etc.