Bloody Sunday (1972)

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, occurred on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland. Thirteen men were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later has been attributed to his gunshot injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. All of those shot were Catholics. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) to protest against internment without trial. The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment ("1 Para"), the same battalion implicated in the Ballymurphy massacre several months earlier.

The incident became one of the most significant events of the Troubles. It was the highest number of people killed in a single shooting during the conflict and is regarded as the worst mass shooting in Northern Irish history. Bloody Sunday fuelled Catholic and Irish nationalist hostility towards the British Army, intensified the conflict and led to a surge of support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), especially in Derry. The Republic of Ireland held a national day of mourning and crowds besieged and burnt down the chancery of the British Embassy in Dublin.

Two investigations were held by the Government of the United Kingdom. The Widgery Tribunal, conducted shortly after the event, largely accepted the soldiers' accounts and was widely criticised as a whitewash. In 1998, the Saville Inquiry was established to reinvestigate the killings. Its 2010 report concluded that the shootings were "unjustified" and "unjustifiable", that none of those shot posed a threat and that soldiers had given false accounts to justify their actions. British prime minister David Cameron formally apologised on behalf of the United Kingdom.

Following the Saville Report, police opened a murder investigation. One former soldier was charged; after a series of legal challenges the case was resumed. In 2025, the former paratrooper known as "Soldier F" went on trial for two murders and five attempted murders and was found not guilty.

Background

The City of Derry was widely regarded by many Catholics and Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland as emblematic of what they described as "fifty years of Unionist misrule". Although the city had a nationalist majority, gerrymandering ensured that elections to the City Corporation consistently returned a unionist majority. Derry was also perceived to have been deprived of public investment: motorways were not extended to the city, a new university was established in the smaller (Protestant-majority) town of Coleraine rather than in Derry (see University for Derry Committee), and the city's housing stock was generally in poor condition. As a result, Derry became a major focus of the civil rights campaign led by organisations such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in the late 1960s. It was the scene of the major riot known as the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969, which prompted the Northern Ireland administration to request military support.

Although many Catholics initially welcomed the British Army as a neutral force – in contrast to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), which was widely regarded as a sectarian police force – relations deteriorated rapidly.

In response to rising levels of violence across Northern Ireland, internment without trial was introduced on 9 August 1971. Disorder broke out across the region following its introduction and 21 people were killed in three days of violence. In Belfast, soldiers of the Parachute Regiment shot dead 11 civilians in what became known as the Ballymurphy massacre. On 10 August, Bombardier Paul Challenor became the first soldier to be killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) in Derry, when he was shot by a sniper in the Creggan housing estate. A month after internment was introduced, a British soldier shot dead a 14-year-old Catholic schoolgirl, Annette McGavigan, in Derry. Two months later, Kathleen Thompson, a 47-year-old mother of six, was shot dead in her back garden in Derry by the British Army.

IRA activity also increased across Northern Ireland, with 30 British soldiers killed in the remaining months of 1971, compared with 10 in the period before internment. A further six soldiers had been killed in Derry by the end of 1971. At least 1,332 rounds were fired at the British Army, which also faced 211 explosions and 180 nail bombs, and returned fire with 364 rounds. Both the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA had erected barricades and established no-go areas for the British Army and RUC in Derry.

By the end of 1971, 29 barricades were in place to prevent access to what became known as Free Derry, 16 of which were impassable even to the British Army's one-ton armoured vehicles. IRA members openly mounted roadblocks in front of the media, and daily clashes occurred between nationalist youths and the British Army at a location known as "aggro corner". Rioting and incendiary attacks caused an estimated £4 million worth of damage to local businesses.

Lead-up to the march

On 18 January 1972, the Northern Irish Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, banned all parades and marches in the region until the end of the year. Four days later, in defiance of the ban, an anti-internment march was held at Magilligan strand, near Derry. Protesters marched towards an internment camp but were stopped by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment. When some protesters threw stones and attempted to move around the barbed wire, paratroopers drove them back by firing rubber bullets at close range and making baton charges. Several protesters were badly beaten and some paratroopers had to be physically restrained by their own officers. Allegations of brutality were widely reported on television and in the press, and some within the British Army believed that excessive force had been used.

NICRA announced another anti‑internment march in Derry on 30 January. It was to go from Bishop's Field, in the Creggan housing estate, to the Guildhall in the city centre, where an anti-internment rally was planned. In consultation with Brigadier Pat MacLellan, the army commander in the city, Chief Superintendent Frank Lagan of the RUC suggested that no action be taken against marchers save photographing the organisers with a view to prosecuting them later. His views reached Major General Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland. The final decision was taken by a "higher authority": the march would be allowed to go ahead but contained "within the general area of the Bogside and the Creggan Estate so as to prevent rioting in the City centre and damage to commercial premises and shops". MacLellan's tactical plan saw this containment being achieved by 26 sequentially numbered barriers cutting off all streets leading from the march route to the Guildhall. No action was to be taken if the march stayed within the Creggan and Bogside. Should violence occur, an arrest force was to scoop-up as many rioters as possible. Any arrest operation was only to be launched on the specific order of the brigadier, when rioters and marchers ”were clearly separated". Ford ordered 1 Para to be deployed to Derry, under MacLellan's command, as a reserve force to arrest rioters. The arrest operation was codenamed "Operation Forecast". The Saville Report later criticised Ford for selecting the Parachute Regiment, noting that it had "a reputation for using excessive physical violence". March organiser and MP Ivan Cooper had been assured beforehand that no armed IRA members would be near the march, although Tony Geraghty wrote that some of the stewards were probably IRA members.

Events of the day

Paratroopers arrived in Derry on the morning of the march and took up positions. MacLellan was the operational commander and issued orders from Ebrington Barracks. He gave orders to Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, commander of 1 Para, who in turn gave orders to Major Ted Loden, the officer commanding the company that would launch any arrest operation.

The march formed up behind a coal delivery lorry carrying the main speakers and bearing a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) banner. It set off at about 2:45pm, with many joining along the route until there were 10,000–15,000 people present in the Bogside, many more than the 3,000 to 5,000 noted by Widgery. It proceeded along William Street but, as it neared the city centre, found the route ahead blocked by British Army barriers. The organisers redirected the march to the right down Rossville Street, intending to hold the rally at Free Derry Corner instead. Despite the efforts of stewards to guide the marchers to follow the lorry, quite a large number broke away and carried on along William Street towards Barrier 14, just past the junction with Chamberlain Street. The crowd jeered soldiers and RUC men, then began to thin out as youths started to throw stones and missiles at soldiers manning the barrier; the troops responded with rubber bullets and CS gas. When sheets of corrugated iron were used as shields by rioters, soldiers drenched them with purple-dyed water from a water-cannon. A canister of CS gas thrown from the crowd exploded in front of the water cannon. Missiles were also thrown at soldiers manning Barrier 12 in Little James Street. Such clashes between soldiers and youths were common, and observers reported that the rioting was no more violent than usual.

Paratroopers were sent forward from the area of a Presbyterian church to cover the cutting of barbed wire for a possible outflanking scoop-up movement through Barrier 12. They were spotted in a disused taxi depot in William Street and pelted with stones and bottles. At about 3:55pm, two paratroopers opened fire at civilians on waste ground opposite that building. The first shots fired on Bloody Sunday injured two people. The first was 15-year-old Damien Donaghy, who had been throwing stones and whom the soldiers claimed to be holding a black cylindrical object. Also wounded was 59-year-old John Johnston, an uninvolved passer-by (despite soldiers later testifying before Lord Widgery that nail bombs had been and were about to be thrown). Johnston, who was hit twice, died 4½ months later. The Saville Inquiry found that neither man was armed. Shortly afterwards, a single high-velocity rifle shot was fired by a member of the Official IRA, narrowly missed the wire-cutting party and striking a drainpipe on the Presbyterian church.

At 3:55 Lt-Col Derek Wilford, commanding 1 Para, requested permission to "deploy sub-unit through barricade 14 to pick up yobbos in William Street/Little James Street". MacLellan's reply, sent at 4:07, read: "Orders given to 1 Para at 1607 for one sub-unit of 1 Para to do scoop-up op through barrier 14. Not to conduct running battle down Rossville Street". At approximately 4:09 pm, a convoy of ten army vehicles carrying the battalion's Support Company and its officers moved through Barrier 12 towards the Bogside and was photographed on waste ground off Rossville Street at 4:10 pm. These troops were followed at about 4:11 pm by colleagues from a different company, who entered through Barrier 14 on foot and in armoured vehicles. In contravention of MacLellan's order, which envisaged an operation on foot through Barrier 14 only, and with a gap between rioters and peaceful marchers, army vehicles chased people down Rossville Street and further into the Bogside. The separation desired between rioters and peaceful marchers had not been achieved. By this stage, although some rioters remained at Barrier 14, most had drifted away. Rossville Street and the waste ground to the north of the Rossville Flats contained many stragglers from the march, as well as onlookers. The British Army coming much further than usual into the Bogside caused some panic amongst the crowd, some of whom fled down Rossville Street towards Free Derry Corner, whilst a large group was caught in the courtyard of the flats which was surrounded on three sides by high‑rise buildings.

Paratroopers opened fire with baton rounds immediately upon disembarking from two APCs that drove into the waste ground in front of the flats. There were numerous claims of soldiers beating people, striking them with rifle butts, firing rubber bullets at close range, making threats to kill and hurling abuse. The Saville Report agreed that soldiers "used excessive force when arresting people […] as well as seriously assaulting them for no good reason while in their custody". Two people were also knocked down by army vehicles.

After alighting, Lieutenant "N" fired three warning shots over the heads of a "hostile crowd" forming up at the end of an entry off Chamberlain Street, in order to disperse them; this action was later criticised by the Saville Inquiry. Very soon afterwards soldiers opened fire with live ammunition, killing one civilian and wounding six others. The fatality, Jackie Duddy, was running alongside a priest, Edward Daly, when he was shot in the back.

One group of paratroopers took up position at a low wall on the right-hand side of Rossville Street about 80 yd in front of a rubble barricade that stretched across the street. There were people at the barricade and some were throwing stones at the soldiers, but they were not close enough to hit them. The soldiers fired at the barricade, killing six and wounding a seventh.

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