On 30 January 1972 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) organised a peaceful, yet illegal march in Derry, Northern-Ireland. This march was one of a series of marches NICRA had...Show moreOn 30 January 1972 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) organised a peaceful, yet illegal march in Derry, Northern-Ireland. This march was one of a series of marches NICRA had organised in January 1972 to protest against interment. During the march in Derry, the British Army opened fire on the demonstrators, which led to the death of thirteen civilians. Fifteen other civilians were wounded, one of whom died a few months later due to his wounds. This day is more commonly known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. Two days later, the British government announced that an inquiry would be established under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921 to investigate what had happened in Derry, and more importantly, why it happened. An inquiry is set up ‘where is has been resolved by both Houses of Parliament that it is expedient that a tribunal be established for inquiring into a definite matter described in the Resolution as of urgent public importance’. The report, led by Lord Chief Justice Widgery and therefore known as the Widgery Report, was published within eleven weeks, on 19 April. It concluded that ‘there is no reason to suppose that the soldiers would have opened fire if they had not been fired upon first’. About the victims, both deceased and wounded, Widgery concluded that although none of them were proved to have been armed when they were shot, there was a ‘strong suspicion that some [of the victims] had been firing weapons or handling bombs in the course of the afternoon and that yet others had been closely supporting them’. Not everyone agreed with this ‘official’ account of the events of 30 January. Some opponents to the findings have been re-enacting the Bloody Sunday march annually since 1973 in order to both show their disapproval of the Widgery Report, and to keep the memory of the victims alive. After twenty-five years of commemorating Bloody Sunday, and six years after a justice campaign for the victims had started, the then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed to a new inquiry in 1998. This inquiry, known as the Saville Inquiry, was published in June 2010, twelve years after it had been set up. Contrary to the conclusions of the Widgery Report, the Saville Report concluded that it was the British Army, and not the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or the demonstrators, had fired the first shot, that the actions of the army were unjustifiable, and that the victims of the gunfire had been innocent. This paper looks at the annual Bloody Sunday commemorations from 1973 to 2013 in Derry to see what the effect of the public inquiries of 1972 and 1998 was on the perception of what happened at Bloody Sunday.Show less
