Northern Ireland’s Dark Past, Explained

it's January 31st 1972 Rubble fills the streets in the city of dairy in Northern Ireland also known as London Derry to British officials and local Protestants a conflict that is present in the very name of this place is now manifest in the streets 13 are dead 14 wounded 24 hours before British soldiers fired 100 8 rounds into a crowd of civil rights protesters Northern Ireland is getting ready to tear itself apart in 2 days the British Embassy in Dublin will be burned down and this is when the B

ritish prime minister calls a meeting with the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice John woodrey these are two of the most senior legal officials in the United Kingdom Lord woodrey would be tasked with investigating what happened here why were shots fired who is it fult we're looking at the notes from that meeting uncovered by researchers in 1995 what we see here is that in this meeting these men seemed concerned about something different than the death of 13 people the prime minister is e

mphasizing to Lord woodery that this investigation needs to happen fast to wrap up this matter quickly they brainstorm ways that would make access to the tribunal limited the Prime Minister then wonders where the investigation tribunal should take place they admit that the obvious place would be the government building right next to the scene of the massacre but there's a problem with this location says the Prime Minister he tells widgery that this is on quote the wrong side of the river where p

eople don't support the British government they should instead hold the tribunal a little distance away widgery initially disagrees saying that if it's not held in the city where the massacre happened that it would make it hard for witnesses to give solid evidence but Justice wasn't the most important priority here the Prime Minister then says it all when he reminds widy that they were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda War this memo tells the story of a coveru

p how the British army killed 13 innocent civilians and how the British government quickly made plans to make it go away so what is the story of this memo the Sham investigation it created and what really happened on that day that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday [Music] [Music] pausing the video for a quick message from our sponsors thank you better help for sponsoring today's video I'm A longtime believer in therapy and as a man for some reason therapy is not something that is readily e

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channel and it also gets you in on this discount so you can try it out and see if therapy is as much a value add to your life as it has been for mine thank you better help for sponsoring the video let's get back into this important story about Bloody Sunday the bloody events of that Sunday in 1972 were the result of a line that was drawn on this island decades earlier England had ruled over Ireland for hundreds of years but after a brutal War Ireland would gain its independence in 1921 as the Br

itish were leaving they carved out a corner of this island to remain as a part of the United Kingdom they would call it Northern Ireland Northern Ireland was mostly populated by descendants of British colonists sent to Ireland during those years they were mostly Protestants on an island made up of Catholics and they were known as unionists because they wanted to stay in the United Kingdom it was the presence of these Protestant unionists that was the main reason why the United Kingdom wanted to

keep this part of Ireland but also Within These borders of Northern Ireland was a large population of Irish Catholics known as nationalists because they wanted to unify the island making the nor a part of the Republic of Ireland but that wasn't going to be easy because in Northern Ireland they didn't have the power the unionist did and for decades after the partition Catholics in Northern Ireland were discriminated against by the unionists who controlled the government and most of the wealth in

the north this meant denying them access to public housing and education which largely barred them from well-paying jobs which in turn prevented them from purchasing property and at the time if you didn't own property you couldn't vote so by the late 1960s people in Northern Ireland were fed up with this situation they start marching for their civil [Music] rights these marches are often violently cracked down on by unionists and many times the local police force would join in the violence to su

pport the unionists by the late 1960s the local government comes out and bans these civil rights marches altogether but Banning the marches does nothing to deescalate es alate the situation civilians on both sides have already begun organizing into paramilitary groups staging attacks across Northern Ireland on the pro- Irish side is a group of nationalist Fighters called the provisional Irish Republican Army or the IRA they arm themselves and start using violence to achieve their goal of ending

British rule in Northern Ireland on the other side is the olster volunteer Force who say that they exist to fight back against the IRA and Irish nationalism V vience spreads car bombings in City centers attacks on police kidnappings they all become common but to many this conflict known as the troubles really begins in the summer of 1969 despite the rise of violent groups most Catholics in Northern Ireland just want basic civil rights but they're now banned from marching and yet in the summer of

1969 in the majority Catholic town of Derry London Derry the unionist government lets a group of young Protestant boys March in a parade that passes right next to an Irish Catholic neighborhood called the bogside it was a provocative move and it sparked a riot that escalated into a full-blown battle Catholic residents had turned the bogside neighborhood into their base of resistance piling up bricks wooden planks and vehicles to erect barriers around their neighborhood these barriers effectivel

y sealed off the area from the rest of the city preventing police and security forces from entering in this act of defiance they declared their territory free dairy symbolizing a self-government Zone in the midst of this escalating tension it was from this barricaded bogside neighborhood that they fought police and unionist Marchers with marbles shot from slingshots rocks and Molotov cocktails police then escalated marching into the bogside deploying gas and beating riers it was clear that the c

onflict had reached a whole new level and the British government back in London had to do something about it but instead of acquest to protesters they doubled down they aren't going to give up a part of their Sovereign territory to nationalists and the violent Ira who they view as Rebels and terrorists instead they respond with their army this included the first Battalion parachute regimen otherwise known as the Paras an elite group of soldiers formed in World War II and trained for high-intensi

ty combat the parachute regiment had fought in active conflicts in the Suz canal and Cyprus and yet somehow here they were arriving to Belfast to take on oppressed civil rights protesters you have to ask the question why you use part Troopers to act as policeman the last thing you use is Killers part rers are trained to kill the Army presence in Northern Ireland doesn't achieve its mission of restoring order on the streets the conflict just continues protests crackdowns attacks bombings by the s

ummer of 1971 the unionist government introduces a new policy that allows Security Forces to break into the homes of anyone suspected of being involved with the IRA and to arrest them without any evidence or trial the British army including the peras conduct a 3-day violent raid in a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast arbitrarily rounding up men and boys arresting hundreds and killing 11 people including a priest and a mother of eight in Belfast alone as mass arrests continue civil rights activist

s plan another March against the brutal internment policy they would hold the protest in the city of dery home to the bogside [Music] neighborhood tensions in the city were at an all-time high as 3 days earlier the IRA had violently killed two policemen here before the March Begins the Army sends the peras in the Battalion that had just killed 11 innocent civilians was now preparing for this march by 2:50 p.m. that day wh es report that 10,000 or more Marchers had assembled their goal is to Marc

h through town and end up in the town center where they will hold a rally as the Marchers move through the bogs side they encounter a barricade that the Army constructed to keep the protesters out of the city center to contain them in the bogside March leaders instruct the people to take another route they're trying to avoid a conflict at the same time a number of young men break off from the March and start fighting with the soldiers at the barricade soldiers begin shooting rubber bullets at th

e crowd launching gas canisters and firing a water cannon Panic breaks out by 3:55 the riot is mostly broken up as the March continues on their New Path but they would soon run into another barricade thousands of people trapped on this street at 4:05 the Paras are ordered to move in behind the Marchers and start arresting anyone associated with the rioting with armored vehicles they speed dangerously into this crowd they start beating demonstrators making Mass arrests get them C away people are

fleeing and panicking and then 5 minutes after the start of the arrests the first shots ring out gunfire will continue for the next 30 minutes the crowd fleas the violence the gas the gunfire trying to get out to safety but they're boxed in the soldiers chase them into surrounding neighborhoods firing reloading and continuing this Relentless assault the soldiers shoot several people from quote almost Point Blank Range despite them posing no danger to the soldiers eyewitnesses report seeing soldi

ers shoot people who are already down and wounded or shooting at a crowd of people gathered around a body trying to give it first aid a local teacher who was at the March later reported that the Army fired indiscriminately into a fleeing crowd of innocent people 21 soldiers from the parachute Battalion fired 108 rounds that day and by 4:40 p.m. when the shooting finally stops 13 people are dead and 14 are wounded my young brother Michael Kelly was one who was murdered that day just 17 years old

and it was one of six7 year olds who who were murdered from Bloody Sunday previous raids and killing by the Army had been swept under the rug but this case was different anger exploded all across Ireland there were protests in front of the British Embassy in Dublin and 2 days later it was burned to the ground this couldn't be ignored and that gets us back to this memo the meeting between the Prime Minister the Lord Chancellor and the man who they chose to lead the investigation Lord widy in this

meeting they decide that the investigation is not an investigation at all in fact Lord wd's job would be to produce a document that protects the soldiers and the government from scrutiny and these notes show us that the Prime Minister was far more worried about the Optics the location of the trial the speed widgery adding that it would help if the inquiry could be restricted in scope he only wants to cover the events of that day he doesn't want to look at the motivations of the soldiers the Arm

y leadership the contexts that could have led to this he didn't want to ask why trained killers were the ones brought in to Peacekeeper would remind widy they were fighting a propaganda War here meant to keep the reputation of the UK positive while maintaining the oppressive status quo in Northern Ireland so with that Lord widy takes the guidance from his prime minister and starts his investigation as discussed the investigation isn't based in Dairy but instead in a nearby unionist majority town

the investigation is completed in just 3 months and on April 18th 1972 widgery delivers this report stating that the soldiers who shot at the protesters were actually not to blame in fact anyone who listened to the soldiers give their testimony quote could not fail to be impressed by their demeanor in fact he finds that the soldiers were quite disciplined on the day of bloody Sun day they were just following orders WID then accounts for all of the shots fired 108 in total the soldiers are kept

Anonymous just given letters instead of names and you can see that soldiers like private H shot so many rounds that he would have had to reload then widgery issues his conclusion and when it comes to blame widgery is clear he says that quote there would have been no deaths in London Dairy if those who organized the illegal March had not thereby cre created a highly dangerous situation it was inevitable and it was the protesters fault he mostly ignored the hundreds of eyewitness accounts from tha

t day saying that they came to him too late in the process these statements would later be stuffed in a box and unseen by the public for decades in fact woodery never even heard from the wounded victims because they were still in the hospital and he quote did not think it necessary to travel all the way there to get statements from them he concludes that the soldiers fired in self-defense and that they were fired on first but Wier was put in place to do a job and that job was to protect parti of

regiment killers they set out to protect the pepper trits and vindicate them and lay the blame on our people and that's exactly what wiery did widgery himself was a soldier here fighting a propaganda War for his prime minister and he produced exactly what was expected of him a document that protected the soldiers the Army and the men that Unleashed them on a civilian population in following years no Soldier would be prosecuted for the 13 deaths Bloody Sunday and the subsequent coverup escalated

the conflict in Northern Ireland in ways that no event had both sides seem to have come to the conclusion that there are no moderate Solutions left everyone in the area is automatically a suspect the innocent often suffer Ira recruitment boomed after the massacre bombings and attacks continued across the region between paramilitaries on both sides the army Army continued to crack down Mass arrests and hunger strikes became common news and for 20 years the hope of some kind of justice for bloody

Sunday looked dimmer and dimmer even still Irish Catholics in the north started marching every year to remember their dead the massacre had become a symbol to nationalist communities of how the British government would treat them for most it was a confirmation of what they had already [Music] known by the 1990s the conflict had settled into an uncomfortable stalemate that drove both sides to the negotiating table those who had been traumatized by Bloody Sunday in the subsequent cover up fought

to include a real investigation as part of the peace process one of these activists was John Kelly who we talked to for this story so in other words people were Were pting Us forward all the time he cann't move forward unless he start Bloody Sunday out and there's only one way to start it to set up in the inquiry you know and it worked in 1998 The Good Friday agreement was signed it was a peace deal between the sides and as a part of the agreement the British government would conduct a real inve

stigation as to what happened that day over the course of 12 Years the British government would spend 200 million pounds to write their wrong and the resulting report would go on to tell a very different story than the report widgery had produced it acknowledges that the IRA was there that day and had fired on soldiers but that none of this firing provided any justification for the shooting of Civilian casualties it says that none of the soldiers fired because they were attacked with bombs as th

e soldiers previously testified the report says that the soldiers lied to investigators to justify firing so many shots that day and most importantly it concludes that quote none of those who were murdered that day was posing a threat of causing death or Serious injury in the end this Reckless use of deadly force strengthened the IRA and made this violent conflict in Northern Ireland worse what happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustified after decades an old wound was tended t

o a formal apology an admission of guilt and an exoneration of previously blamed victims the conflict in Northern Ireland or the troubles killed over 3,500 people and inflicted extreme Injustice on hundreds of thousands more the proper investigation into Bloody Sunday provided a measure of Justice to these victims but for some the report falls short of true accountability the trauma from protracted conflicts leaves deep marks and many today still live with the memory of the injustices and discri

mination that would never have its day in court Injustice from that one Bloody Sunday but also from those many troubled years [Music] Hall