Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland. Fourteen people died: thirteen were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later was attributed to his injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets, or batons, two were run down by British Army vehicles, and some were beaten. All of those shot were Catholics. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) to protest against imprisonment without trial. The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, the same battalion implicated in the Ballymurphy massacre several months before.
The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.
The Irish state came into being in 1919 as the 32 county Irish Republic. In 1922, having seceded from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, it became the Irish Free State. It comprised 26 counties with 6 counties under the control of Unionists which became Northern Ireland in 1921. Bunreacht na hEireann 1937 constitution renamed the 26 states 'Ireland'. In 1949, only 26 counties explicitly became a republic under the terms of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, definitively ending its tenuous membership of the British Commonwealth. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Communities (EC) as a member state which would later become the European Union (EU).
The Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP), informally known as Ulster Vanguard, was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1978. Led by William Craig, the party emerged from a split in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and was closely affiliated with several loyalist paramilitary groups. The party was set up in opposition to power sharing with Irish nationalist parties. It opposed the Sunningdale Agreement and was involved in extra-parliamentary activity against the agreement. However, in 1975, during discussions on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland in the constitutional convention, William Craig suggested the possibility of voluntary power sharing with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. In consequence the party split, with dissenters forming the United Ulster Unionist Party. Thereafter Vanguard declined and following poor results in the 1977 local government elections, Craig merged the remainder of Vanguard into the UUP in February 1978.
The Bogside is a neighbourhood outside the city walls of Derry, Northern Ireland. The large gable-wall murals by the Bogside Artists, Free Derry Corner and the Gasyard Féile are popular tourist attractions. The Bogside is a majority Catholic/Irish republican area, and shares a border with the Protestant/Ulster loyalist enclave of the Fountain.
Free Derry was a self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland that existed between 1969 and 1972 during the Troubles. It emerged during the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, which sought to end discrimination against the Irish Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government. The civil rights movement highlighted the sectarianism and police brutality of the overwhelmingly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
The Ulster Protestant Volunteers was a loyalist and Reformed fundamentalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. They were active between 1966 and 1969 and closely linked to the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (UCDC) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), established by Ian Paisley and Noel Doherty in 1966.
The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) (Irish: Cumann Cearta Sibhialta Thuaisceart Éireann) was an organisation that campaigned for civil rights in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in Belfast on 9 April 1967, the civil rights campaign attempted to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, and lobbying for an end to discrimination against Catholics in areas such as elections (which were subject to gerrymandering and property requirements), discrimination in employment, in public housing and abuses of the Special Powers Act.
Edward Kevin Daly was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and author. He served as the Bishop of Derry from 1974 to 1993. Daly took part in several civil rights marches and events during the Troubles. He came to wider attention during Bloody Sunday in January 1972, waving a blood-stained white handkerchief as he escorted a group carrying a mortally wounded protestor after British troops opened fire on demonstrators.
The Curragh Camp is an army base and military college in The Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. It is the main training centre for the Irish Defence Forces and is home to 2,000 military personnel.
Operation Demetrius was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during the Troubles. It involved the mass arrest and internment of people suspected of being involved with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was waging an armed campaign for a united Ireland against the British state. It was proposed by the Unionist government of Northern Ireland and approved by the British Government. Armed soldiers launched dawn raids throughout Northern Ireland and arrested 342 in the initial sweep, sparking four days of violence in which 20 civilians, two IRA members and two British soldiers were killed. All of those arrested were Irish republicans and nationalists, the vast majority of them Catholics. Due to faulty and out-of-date intelligence, many were no longer involved in republican militancy or never had links with the IRA. Ulster loyalist paramilitaries were also carrying out acts of violence, which were mainly directed against Catholics and Irish nationalists, but no loyalists were included in the sweep.
HMS Argenta was a prison ship of the British Royal Navy.
Fergus O'Hare was involved in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland as a member of People's Democracy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Later he became a founding member and executive member of the Northern Resistance Movement, which continued to campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland.
Miriam Daly was an Irish republican and communist activist as well as a university lecturer who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1980.
The city of Derry, Northern Ireland, was severely affected by the Troubles. The conflict is widely considered to have begun in the city, with many regarding the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 as the beginning of the Troubles. The Bloody Sunday incident of 1972 occurred in Derry, in the Bogside area.
The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Protestant establishment. The Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was founded by Conn McCluskey and his wife, Patricia. Conn was a doctor, and Patricia was a social worker who had worked in Glasgow for a period, and who had a background in housing activism. Both were involved in the Homeless Citizens League, an organisation founded after Catholic women occupied disused social housing. The HCL evolved into the CSJ, focusing on lobbying, research and publicising discrimination. The campaign for Derry University was another mid-1960s campaign.
The 1971 Newry killings was an incident during the Troubles in Newry, Northern Ireland where undercover British Army soldiers shot and killed three Catholic civilians in disputed circumstances on 23 October 1971. Four Royal Green Jackets soldiers were stationed on the town's Woolworths department store after the army had received a tip-off that the Provincial Bank across the street would be the target of a bank robbery by the IRA.
The burning of the British Embassy in Dublin happened on 2 February 1972 at 39 Merrion Square. This occurred during demonstrations outside the chancery by a very large and angry crowd, following the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry on 30 January 1972, when the British Army's Parachute Regiment shot dead 14 unarmed Catholic civilians during a civil rights demonstration.
John McGuffin (1942–2002) was an anarchist from Northern Ireland who was prominently involved with People's Democracy upon the onset of the Troubles in the 1970s.
