by Pa Rock
Student of History
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of what has come to be known as "Bloody Sunday, the day British paratroopers opened fire on marchers who were holding a peaceful demonstration in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, to protest what they regarded as the British occupation of their country and the British treatment of Irish prisoners. The paratrooper unit, which had a history of excessive violence, fired indiscriminately - for the most part - into elements of the crowd, which numbered between 10,000 and 15,000 activist Irish Catholics. The British bullets struck twenty-six human beings, with thirteen killed outright and one dying of his injuries a few months later.
Most of the victims ere shot in the back. All were unarmed.
The dead were primarily young men. Jackie Duddy, Michael Kelly, Hugh Gilmore, John Young, , Michael McElhlinney, and Jerry Donaghe were all just seventeen. William Nash was nineteen, Michael McDald was twenty, Jim Wray was twenty-two, and William McKinney was twenty-six. A few were older, though not by much. Patrick Doherty was thirty-one, Gerry McKinney was thirsty-five, Barney McGulgan was forty-one, and John Johnston, the old man among the victims, was fifty nine. (Johnston was the victim who died a few months after the violence but whose death was attributed to that awful day.
Two formal inquiries were held regarding Bloody Sunday. The first was a whitewash job that was held soon after the event and largely exonerated the British military, and the second, held more than a quarter-of-a-century later, laid much of the blame on the British military and resulted in an apology from her majesty's government, but with no formal action against any of the shooters.
Today, just as it was fifty years ago, most of Ireland is its own nation, but six counties, commonly known as "Northern Ireland," remain under British control, a stark reminder of Britain's intolerant colonial past.
That was fifty years ago today, and it, too, was a Sunday.
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