Bloody Sunday 29/1/02

CROWD SINGING:
We walk hand in hand
We walk hand in hand

GUNSHOTS

IVAN COOPER:
For the first time in my life I saw live rounds being fired. It's something which I can never, ever forget. In this country of ours, this lovely country of ours, there is no political cause worth one drop of blood.

GORDON BREWER:
Something evil happened in the Bogside 30 years ago tomorrow, like every other event in the history of Northern Ireland, its meaning is still hotly disputed. But what if, what if Bloody Sunday was simply malignant, as an event and in the legacy it has left. It's become almost a cliché to describe Bloody Sunday as a strategy. Of course it was a tragedy for the families of those who were killed, that tragedy may or may not find some sort of closure as a result of the Saville Inquiry being held here at the Guildhall. For the people who organised the march, it was a tragedy in a much wider sense. At least republicans can argue that Bloody Sunday showed there was no point in peaceful demonstrations against Stormont and British rule in Ireland in general. For the civil rights campaigners that wasn't the case, for them Bloody Sunday has led to over 20 years of violence, 20 years which were completely and utterly unnecessary. Two powerful docu-dramas were made for tomorrow's anniversary. One portraying it as a perceived wrong yet to be made right. In one of them, James Nesbitt plays Ivan Cooper, an SDLP MP, who was also a leader of the civil rights movement.

COOPER:
Unity will be the one thing that will further our cause. We must not let divisions set in.

BREWER:
For years Cooper, himself a Protestant, had preached the message of peaceful protest.

COOPER:
Shoulder to shoulder, brother to brother, Catholic to Protestant.

BREWER:
He emerges in the film as a folk hero. But for him one of the meanings of Bloody Sunday was and is guilt.

COOPER:
If I had the opportunity knowing what I know now I would have called off the march. I didn't pull the trigger but I have a feeling of culpability. It will be with me, that is a feeling that will be with me until I end my days, despite Saville.

BREWER:
Few would now dispute that the civil rights movement had a case, particularly here. Under the old Derry Corporation, election boundaries were rigged, blatantly, to keep the Catholic majority out of power. Catholics were funnelled into cramped housing in a few electoral wards for the same reason. Add to that mix internment without trial and the setting up of no-go areas to stop people being nabbed and interned and by January 1972 you had the most volatile situation imaginable. A state which had lost control of its own territory, versus a community which disowned its own state. On Bloody Sunday that mixture exploded. For those in the streets when they opened fire, the meaning of Bloody Sunday has been loss, pain and trauma. Geraldine McBride witnessed two deaths.

GERALDINE McBRIDE:
I prayed, his head fell forward, I knew he was dead.

BREWER:
Powerfully depicted in Channel 4's dramatisation, McBride became hysterical after witnessing another man shot in front of her.

McBRIDE:
I was very traumatised. It was horrific. The first recollection I have after that is under the bridge and an ambulance with another body in it, and the army coming in and them being taken to the hospital. The hospital was horrendous.

BREWER:
Even today it's clear Geraldine McBride is still disturbed by the events she witnessed. The interview she gave in early 1972 was among the last times she spoke about the subject, even to her friends, for 20 years.

McBRIDE:
My mum and dad had brought us up to believe and knowing justice and truth and I really felt that Lord Widgery would make it right, that all the people would be found innocent. He more or less didn't believe my evidence and said it was suspect and I felt that I had let the people of Derry down and myself down. I couldn't believe what he had written and after that, I decided my way of coping, my life, I was getting married, was to go on and I knew I would never forget it but I didn't want to keep talking about it.

BREWER:
The Widgery Report, ordered by the then Prime Minister Ted Heath immediately after Bloody Sunday, was seen in the Bogside as a whitewash, hence the crucial importance of the Saville Enquiry. It will try to find out why the paratroopers opened fire, whether they were fired on first and who, if anyone, ordered them to shoot. But at the time, the meaning of Bloody Sunday, among Nationalists seemed obvious.

COOPER:
After Bloody Sunday, the numbers of the Provisional IRA increased significantly all over Ireland. Everyone knew where I stood on the issue of violence, but I was meeting people, immediately afterwards, people telling me it to forget non-violence, the only solution is the gun.

DOT PILLING:
Bloody Sunday escalated the troubles here. Young lads in the town were queuing up to join the IRA.

BREWER:
Bloody Sunday quickly took on another meaning for the Protestant community. Although it was a city where Catholics and Protestants couldn't agree on their name, in Derry or Londonderry, the two communities lived side by side pretty much. Dot Pilling was 11. She played regularly with Catholic children, but soon that all changed.

PILLING:
The bombing campaign in the town intensified. The city in the 70s was brought to its knees. I think we had something like nine shops open and between that time, and today, 12,000 Protestants have actually left the city side. There was a rush of people actually leaving.

BREWER:
The Saville Enquiry can't solve that problem. Nor can it decide the debate within the Nationalist community - were the Republicans right to argue force could only be met with force?

COOPER:
For the last 30 years of my life I have never departed from my commitment and my belief in non-violence. I am more certain today than I ever have been before, that non-violence is the only way forward. Those who tried the gun and bomb have had to take on the suits now and become involved if the type of negotiation which is part and parcel of the role of being a normal politician.

BREWER:
Of course, applying to Bloody Sunday that message is if anything, even more depressing. It implies part of the evil of the event was the influence - years of violence that could have been avoided to lay alongside the wrecked lives and lost family members.