Bogside - Bloody Sunday

Hundreds of years ago, Derry was an island in the River Foyle. But when the city walls were built (1615 through 1619), the course of the river was diverted and the area to the west of the walls became marshy. That area became known as Bogside, and in the late 1960s, it was a predominantly poor Catholic neighborhood. The Catholics were rarely considered for jobs, were not allowed to own property (because that would mean they must be allowed to vote, and that would never do), and lived in tenements--often many families to a single building.

In January 1969, Free Derry Corner was created to demarcate Free Derry, "...a self-declared autonomous nationalist area of Derry that existed between 1969 and 1972."

The Battle of the Bogside occurred in August of 1969, kicking off The Troubles.

On January 30, 1972, the Catholics in the Bogside neighborhood were engaging in a peaceful march to protest internment (jailing without trial; the march was inspired by the U.S.'s civil rights movement, especially Martin Luther King Jr.), when British soldiers opened fire on them (later saying they were reacting "...to gun and nail bomb attacks from suspected IRA members"), hitting 28 unarmed civilians. As Wikipedia states, "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."

In U2's immortal words from their song "Sunday Bloody Sunday":

And the battle's just begun

There's many lost, but tell me who has won

The trench is dug within our hearts

And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

We visited the Free Derry Museum in the Bogside, which talks about what led to Bloody Sunday, the incident itself, the aftermath, and the two inquiry tribunals that occurred:

We also saw this monument to Bloody Sunday. It says, "Their epitaph is in the continuing struggle for democracy," and lists the names of those who died as a result of Bloody Sunday:

Here are some of the murals that can be seen in the Bogside. Some are related to Bloody Sunday; some depict other clashes:

There were two inquiry tribunals conducted by the British government. The first was called the Widgery Inquiry, released later in 1972, that more or less exonerated the soldiers. The second was called the Saville Inquiry. It was launched in 1998 under Prime Minister Tony Blair, and finally finished in 2010 under Prime Minister David Cameron. His statement to the House of Commons included the words, "But the conclusions of this report are absolutely clear. There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong."

This is a placard posted in Derry's Guildhall: