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Commemoration and Bloody Sunday

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

General Editors: Andrew Hoskins and John Sutton

The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes in gener-ational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibil-ities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past.

These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the past thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remem-ber and forget. This groundbreaking series tackles questions such as What is ‘memory’ under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the pros-pects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?

Brian ConwayCOMMEMORATION AND BLOODY SUNDAYPathways of Memory

Forthcoming titles:

Richard CrownshawTHE AFTERLIFE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz (editors)NORTHEAST ASIA’S DIFFICULT PASTStudies in Collective Memory

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

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Commemoration and Bloody Sunday

Pathways of Memory

Brian Conway

© Brian Conway 2010

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ISBN 978-1-349-31032-6 ISBN 978-0-230-24867-0 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230248670

For my parentsand in memory of the Bloody Sunday dead

Patrick Doherty, Gerald Donaghey, John Duddy,Hugh Gilmour, Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Kevin McElhinney, Bernard McGuigan, James McKinney, William McKinney, William Nash, James Wray, John Young, and John Johnston

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vii

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xv

Spatiotemporal Chronology of Bloody Sunday Commemorative Activity, 1972–2009 xix

Abbreviations xxvi

1 Introduction: Actors, Contexts and Temporality 1

2 Bloody Sunday in Historical Perspective 23

3 A ‘Simple People Who Want a Simple Memorial’ 41

4 On the March 68

5 ‘The Holocaust that was the Bogside of Sunday’ 95

6 The Politics of Visual Memory 118

7 Conclusion: Trajectories of Memory 142

Methodological Appendices 161

Notes 170

References 192

Index 207

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ix

Illustrations

Figures

3.1 Sculptor’s designs for Bloody Sunday memorial, Rossville Street. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 51

3.2 An artist’s impression of the proposed Bloody Sunday memorial. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 52

3.3 NICRA poster for unveiling of memorial. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 53

3.4 Crowds assemble at the Bloody Sunday memorial prior to the start of the 2005 memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony. (Photograph by the author) 56

3.5 The Bloody Sunday Memorial, August 2004. (Photograph by the author) 60

3.6 The families of the dead lay wreaths at the Sunday morning memorial service during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 64

3.7 Speakers address the assembled crowd at the Sunday morning memorial service during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 65

3.8 The Bloody Sunday memorial shortly after the memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 66

4.1 Crowds assemble at the Creggan shops, Derry, for the start of the 2008 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 69

4.2 The front of the march being photographed by local photographers at the start of the 2008 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 70

4.3 Republican banners lined up along railings at the Creggan shops prior to start of the 2005 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 71

x Illustrations

4.4 Crowds assembling behind a banner announcing state collusion at the start of the 2005 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 72

4.5 Families bearing white crosses and images of the dead assemble before start of rally at William Street during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 73

4.6 Speakers address the assembled crowd at the rally during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 76

4.7 Families bearing white crosses and images of the dead en route to Free Derry Corner during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 77

4.8 Sea of Solidarity-Sea of Flags initiative during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 78

4.9 NICRA commemorative poster, 1973. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 82

5.1 Bloody Sunday commemorative poster, 2002. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 106




6.1 Exterior of Museum of Free Derry, Glenfada Park. (Photograph by the author) 123

6.2 Bloody Sunday mural, Rossville Street. (Photograph by the author) 130

6.3 Bloody Sunday mural, Westland Street. (Photograph by the author) 131

6.4 Guildhall stained- glass commemorative window. (Photograph by the author) 134

Tables

1.1 Continuity and constructionist perspectives on collective memory 16

2.1 Trajectory of social drama 245.1 Commemorative discourses across three historical phases 1026.1 Comparing three sites of Bloody Sunday memory 1227.1 Framings of Bloody Sunday since 1972 144

xi

Preface

In the early 2000s I was enrolled as a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, the symbolic intellectual (and football) “home” of the Irish in America. The early part of the graduate programme involved taking various classes and I enrolled in a course under the title “Society and Identity” taught by Professor Andrew Weigert. One of the course textbooks, Eviatar Zerubavel’s slim and compact Social Mindscapes,1 contained a short chapter with the curi-ous title ‘Social Memories’, and, serendipitously, reading this set off an interest in memory that has taken up a good deal of the last six years of my academic life. Earlier than I expected, my intellectual interests formed around collective memory. Casting about for an empirical case study to engage with the literature, naturally enough I was drawn to his-torical events close to home, and Bloody Sunday stood out as a particu-larly intriguing and fascinating empirical example from the Irish experience. Until then I knew little or nothing about the event apart from a skeletal knowledge one builds up from media coverage and school history textbooks. I subsequently wrote my class paper on Bloody Sunday memory, drawing on Zerubavel’s insights, and later published a revised version of this in Identity.2

About a year later, and now knowing more about the event, I set off on the difficult dissertation research and writing process with Bloody Sunday as the ‘case study’ and collective memory as ‘the literature’. The answer to the “a case of what” question in relation to Bloody Sunday was not always straightforward or simple, though.3 I began with a theor-etical interest in the complex relationship between official memory and vernacular memory4 – influenced by the thinking of historian John Bodnar5 – and this “frame” guided my dissertation work. This later extended – in an article co-written with Lyn Spillman – to looking at the dynamic relation between embodied and textual memory via Paul Connerton’s work.6 Over the last few years I have read more widely and drawn on other theoretical resources about difficult pasts, memorializa-tion, commodification, and globalization, to help me make sense of the Bloody Sunday case before finally settling on mnemonic trajectories as a way of bringing these disparate topics together under one overarching idea. Bloody Sunday as a case study of longitudinal commemorative change explained via the concepts of actors, contexts, and temporality

xii Preface

then, is the result of my thinking about the event over a lengthy period of time and reading into other previously ignored literatures. Clearly, the way I “cased” Bloody Sunday – to use the language of Charles Ragin7 – has changed from my earlier engagement with it in my dissertation.

A good number of times since then I’ve been asked the ‘why Bloody Sunday?’ question. However, I am not so much interested in, and this book is not so much about, Bloody Sunday as it is about remembrance and commemoration. It has less to do with what happened on Bloody Sunday and more to do with the trajectory of its remembrance and com-memoration publicly articulated via a range of cultural practices and artefacts from street murals to memorials and marches. Put another way, this book is about what happened afterwards – in cultural and symbolic terms – rather than what happened materially and physically on 30 January 1972. For this reason it is intended to appeal not just to people who are interested in Bloody Sunday but also to people who are interested in collective memory.

The question of “where I stand” in relation to the topic and whether I have any interests to declare deserves some comment. The fact that I am a white male of southern Irish identity and have some background knowledge about the event and the society in which it took place makes me something of an “insider” in relation to the topic though, equally, the fact that I was not born at the time Bloody Sunday happened, have no personal connection to the event, researched and studied it from the vantage of a sociology doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame, and was guided in my research by sociological concepts and methods, gives me some claim to “outsider” or stranger status as well.8 I hope that my sociological engagement with Bloody Sunday does not disavow or diminish the intensely emotional and morally charged nature of it espe-cially for the families of the dead. Bloody Sunday may well be an inter-national political symbol but this does not liquidate the deeply personal nature of the event for the relatives of those killed.

Beyond serendipity, what makes the Bloody Sunday case so fascinat-ing to me, and I hope others, is the possibilities it opens up for interro-gating the kinds of intellectual things that sociologists of memory attend to: memorialization, the politics of memory, the relationship between global contexts and local conditions in shaping memory work, the visu-alization and materialization of the past, remembering difficult pasts, and the private remembrance/public commemoration nexus. More broadly, the case opens up a wide range of interesting questions that have to do with historical symbolism, meaning-making and interpret-ation, and how these undergo change and modification over time,

Preface xiii

memory as a resource in grounding claims to power and authority, and memory’s role in constituting societal and group identities, three ‘big questions’ delineated by Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins in their 1998 review of the literature as the canonical focus of the then (and still) emerging field of memory studies.9

Given all that has been written and said about Bloody Sunday over the course of the last thirty-seven years, one wonders whether there is anything left to say about it at all. Some people even suggested to me that the event has already been well catered for. Although ‘the afterlife’ of the event in terms of how it has been represented and commemo-rated symbolically has not been completely ignored by scholars,10 there is still a good deal about this aspect of the Bloody Sunday story that has not been investigated and scrutinised. Interestingly, most of this writing on or about Bloody Sunday was published in the 1990s as temporal dis-tance from the event increased. Hayes and Campbell’s study investigates the emotional consequences of the event and employs the concept of trauma to analyze this among the victims’ families. They find that the families of the dead experienced trauma from what happened as well as from what happened afterwards via the Widgery inquiry and point to the difficulty of processing difficult pasts at an individual level even through a second British state inquiry.11

Journalists Don Mullan, Eamonn McCann and others have put together various accounts of what happened on Bloody Sunday drawing on eyewitness testimony, photographic evidence, and, in some cases, personal memories.12 Mullan’s work played a critical role in promoting commemorative activity around the 25th and 30th anniversaries and highlighted the important link between inscribed and embodied mem-ory. It acted as an impetus for the Paul Greengrass directed docudrama Bloody Sunday13 – the front cover of Mullan’s book symbolically linked itself to the docudrama through a depiction of the lead actor Ivan Cooper played by James Nesbitt and the caption declaring it a revised edition of the book that was a key impetus for the Bloody Sunday inquiry and the docudrama – whose release date responded to and sought to shape the political context and ongoing Saville Inquiry. The Saville Inquiry itself has spawned more analysis of the event and Eamonn McCann considers the challenges and satisfactions of it for the families of the dead and their long and seemingly interminable quest for truth.14

Moving up to the collective level, the politics of Bloody Sunday mem-ory is taken up by historian Graham Dawson and in his analysis Bloody Sunday is also interpreted as trauma and this is expressed through a range of spatial mnemonics mapping history onto geography.15 In other

xiv Preface

work Dawson documents the shift from local to global orientations in relation to the event through a detailed historical chronicle of the ori-gins and development of the Bloody Sunday Initiative and Bloody Sunday Justice Campaigns – highlighting the 1990s pairing of commem-oration to political mobilization – but lacks an account of the social forces that fuelled it.16 Seamus Dunn also considers of politics of Bloody Sunday memory and examines symbolic changes in the commemora-tive march but lacks a theoretical scheme through which to analyse it and,17 at a methodological level, relies on newspaper accounts.

Herron and Lynch’s recent work interrogates the memory of the event from a theatrical, literary and cinematic standpoint through a close study of Bloody Sunday poetry, plays, docudramas and the use of clever visual iconography. This work offers an analysis of how visual and ver-bal resources are mobilized to underwrite claims to truth and authenti-city and register variable challenges to the dominant inscribed state memory.18 They see fictional public representations of the past as play-ing an important role in articulating truths about the event – fiction speaking to truth – though one wonders about whether literature, thea-tre and film are appropriate spaces for communicating truths about the past. Because they read these representations mostly as texts, they are less interested in the human actors involved in putting them together and the social forces shaping them. Finally, Bloody Sunday commemo-rations get a passing mention in Ian McBride’s relatively recent edited collection on Irish memory but no sustained or extended treatment is given to them.19 Thus, Bloody Sunday has been studied from literary, theatrical, psychological, historical, and journalistic perspectives. Beyond academic literatures and media accounts, filmmakers, musi-cians, artists, and poets, have all turned their attention to the topic resulting in a rich diversification and diffusion of the event. To date, though, no detailed study exists of its commemoration and remem-brance from a specifically sociological standpoint.

xv

Acknowledgements

As every sociologist knows well, writing books, as with most endeavours in life, is a social enterprise. In writing this book over the past number of years, I’ve been encouraged, supported and challenged – to write better work – by many people.

My first important debt is to my dissertation advisor, Lyn Spillman, who helped me to think about how Bloody Sunday could contribute to the broader collective memory literature. When I finished my dis-sertation in the department of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Lyn presented me a book about how to make ‘the book from the dissertation’ transition. I hope the pages between these covers are faithful to the wise counsel in it and to her scholarly example. I am especially grateful for her patience, encouragement and insights dur-ing the research and writing stages of my dissertation. She invited me to co-present with her at a mini-conference on symbolic interactionist approaches to collective memory organized by Gary Alan Fine and held at Northwestern University in 2004 and through this made me feel part of the small community of collective memory scholars. Dissertation committee members Luke Gibbons, Eugene Halton and Andrew Weigert also deserve special thanks for their time and commitment to my dis-sertation project. Luke Gibbons graciously gave of his time despite many demands on it from others. Eugene Halton and Andrew Weigert pointed me in positive directions and helped me to organize my emer-ging ideas.

At the University of Notre Dame I had the privilege of working – either as a research assistant or teaching assistant – with several other professors. I thank Joan Aldous, Kevin Christiano, David S. Hachen Jr., Eugene Halton, David Klein, David Yamane and Michael Welch for their encouragement, generosity and hospitality on many occasions. Gene Halton kindly invited me to his house on several occasions for music and food and both in good measure. I thank David Hachen especially for working with me on my Master’s thesis and seeing it through to publication as a journal article. Through Michael Welch I came to know a lot more about the process of academic writing. I learned more soci-ology from Robert Fishman, Maureen Hallinan and Samuel Valenzuela. I got a strong training in social statistics from Richard Williams. Special thanks are also due to sociology staff Pat Kipker, Nancy Mitchell and

xvi Acknowledgements

Katie Schlotfeldt who were always cheerful, sympathetic and helpful in dealing with everyday concerns about graduate school. I thank Chris Fox for supporting my work and inviting me to become affiliated with the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies during the time I spent in South Bend. Together, the Department of Sociology and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies created a rich intellectual environ-ment for graduate study.

Beyond Notre Dame, Michael Hill and Mary Jo Deegan at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln shared many important insights – via CD-ROMS, letters, and conversations – with me about my emerging research. I thank them as well for their warm hospitality at their Lake Michigan cottage. In Pittsburgh, the Cunningham family have been great friends since I first went there to study in 1997. I will always to be grateful to Jim, Rita and Steve for their kindness and support during my graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh and ever since. Professors Morton Coleman and Hide Yamatani taught me much about community organizing and evaluation research. I thank Andrew Aurand, Rob Clark, Jill Moyer, Dan Norton and Matt Onorato – fellow M.S.W. students – for their friend-ship during the time I spent in Pittsburgh. I thank Barry Schwartz at the University of Georgia for encouraging me from early on to write a book about Bloody Sunday memory. At University College Dublin, I thank Gabriel Kiely for his support of my academic career. I thank my former sociology colleagues at The Robert Gordon University – Julian Bell, Rory Lynch, John Love, Val Sheach-Leith, Phil Sutton, Stephen Vertigans and Chris Yuill – for the welcome they gave me during my short Scottish sojourn in 2006. In Dublin I thank Frank Boucher-Hayes, Aidan Dennehy, Aengus Daly, Krisztina Kosma and Frank Sammon.

The National University of Ireland Maynooth gave me my first job as a sociologist. I thank Seán Ó Riain for all his encouragement and advice and my sociology colleagues in Maynooth – Mary Corcoran, Laurence Cox, Colin Coulter, Pauline Cullen, Honor Fagan, Jane Gray, Aphra Kerr, Deirdre Kirke, Mary Murphy, John O’Brennan, Rebecca King-Ó Riain, Peter Murray, Michel Peillon and Eamonn Slater – for creating a depart-ment supportive of research about culture. Thanks to Áine Edmonds and Trish Connerty for their administrative help.

In an earlier identity, I was employed as a housing liaison officer in Carlow Town Council and I thank my former colleagues – Michael Brennan, Dougald Fitzgerald and Joe Watters – and the local author-ity tenants and elected councillors I worked with for teaching me about the satisfactions and challenges of grassroots urban community organizing.

Acknowledgements xvii

Several people took the time to read parts of the book and for their careful reading I thank Gary Alan Fine, John Walton, Stephen Vertigans, Seán Ó Riain and Rebecca King-Ó Riain. Each gave thought-ful comments and suggestions that improved the book. Máirtín Mac An Ghaill read an earlier version of the full manuscript, and I thank him for his suggestions and encouragement. Andrew Hoskins also gave very useful suggestions for revision. Anonymous reviewers for earlier journal articles helped me to think more clearly about Bloody Sunday. Feedback from participants at various conferences also helped me to write better work.

At Palgrave Macmillan I was very fortunate to have a first-rate pro-duction team – Christabel Scaife as editor, Renée Takken as editorial assistant and Vidhya Jayaprakash as copyeditor, and I thank them for their patience, professionalism and efficiency in preparing this book for publication. Two anonymous Palgrave reviewers gave me important and thoughtful feedback on the book. I thank Andrew Hoskins and John Sutton for initiating the Memory Studies series and shepherding this book through to publication as its inaugural monograph.

Earlier versions of parts of this book appeared in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Memory Studies and Cultural Sociology and I thank the publishers for granting permission to reprint this material. Field research for this book was carried out in Derry and the interviewees deserve particular thanks for their time and for sharing with me their memories of Bloody Sunday commemorations. Two people are deserv-ing of special thanks for facilitating my research – John Kelly and Jean Hegarty.

For granting copyright permission to use previously published mate-rial in this book I thank Martin McGinley, Gerry O’Regan, Colm MacGinty and Seán Mac Brádaigh, editor of the Derry Journal, Irish Independent, Sunday World and An Phoblacht newspapers respectively. I also thank Eoin McVey of The Irish Times, Eamon Sweeney and William Allen of The Sentinel and Bernadette Walsh, archivist for Derry City Council, for granting copyright permission. I thank Edwina Stewart, former honorary secretary of NICRA, for granting copyright permis-sion to use material relating to Bloody Sunday contained in NICRA’a archive in the Linenhall Northern Ireland Political Collection. Thanks to Adrian Kerr of the Museum of Free Derry for granting permission to use commemorative posters and other important archival material and for supplying copies of them to me. Nell McCafferty granted permission to use an article she wrote in the Derry News and I am grateful to her for this. I also thank Martin McGinley for supplying me with a copy of a

xviii Acknowledgements

photograph of the unveiling of the Bloody Sunday memorial from the Derry Journal archives for use as the jacket image of this book.

Researching and writing a book costs money. A Zahm Travel grant from Notre Dame’s Graduate School supported my fieldwork in Derry in 2004. For funding the indexing, I wish to acknowledge the National University of Ireland for its Grant in Aid of Publication.

I thank the library and archival staff at the Linenhall Northern Ireland Political Collection, Belfast, the Central Library, Derry, the Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Ulster at Coleraine and Magee and the Belfast Central Newspaper Library. Bernadette Walsh, archivist for Derry City Council, was very helpful in facilitating access to its archival repository. Pat Devine, Bobby Dobbins and Damien McMahon helped me to gain access to documentary material in Derry City Council. Charles Morrison told me about the construction of the Bloody Sunday memorial and helped me find interviewees involved in its planning.

Finally, I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to my brothers – Paul, Joe, Noel and Gerard – and in America, sister-in-law, Kelly, and nephews Cassidy and Colin – for their long-distance phone calls and visits during the time I spent at Notre Dame. My greatest debt is to my parents and for this reason this book is dedicated to them.

xix

Spatiotemporal Chronology of Bloody Sunday Commemorative Activity, 1972–2009

1972

27 February DWAC hold march along original route of Bloody Sunday march.

February Galway music group, Dinkeas, release song entitled ‘The Derry Massacre’.

1973

27 January DCRA all-night vigil at Free Derry Corner.28 January New record entitled ‘London’s Derry’ is released by music

group, Blackthorn.28 January Requiem Mass at St Mary’s Church, Creggan.

Inter-denominational service at Rossville Street.Cutting of first sod on site of proposed memorial at Rossville Street by British Labour Party Peer, Lord

Fenner Brockway. Recitation of Thomas Kinsella’s poem ‘Butcher’s Dozen’

by British film actor, Vanessa Redgrave.Singing of songs dedicated to Bloody Sunday.One-hour vigil organized by Newry Civil Disobedience Co-ordination Committee held outside Newry police

station.30 January First annual commemorative marches organized by

DCRA and NICRA. SF march against internment takes place from the Creggan to Westland Street to Celtic Park where a rally

is held. Recitation of ‘Have you Forgotten Bloody Sunday?’

poem by Kathleen Largy.First anniversary Mass at St Mary’s Church, Creggan.

Laying of wreaths at graves of dead in city cemetery and at site of proposed memorial.Singing of songs in memory of dead.Observation of two-minutes’ silence at 4pm.

Inter-denominational service at Rossville Street flats.

xx Spatiotemporal Chronology

28 January – Black flags flown in Creggan and Bogside.30 January Black armbands worn by Bogside residents.

Window blinds lowered.First candlelit vigil in Bogside at end of commemorative ceremonies.

4 February March from Derrybeg to town centre organized by NCDCC.

1974

26 January Unveiling of Rossville Street Monument by Bridget Bond of DCRA.Two commemorative marches held – PSF and DCRA and NICRA.

1976 SF Commemoration theme: demand the release of all Republican prisoners.

31 January NICRA Commemoration theme: “Civil Rights – not – Civil War”.

1978 Provisional IRA display M-60 heavy sub-machine gun at Bloody Sunday march for the press.Only SF commemorative march held – NICRA held wreath-laying ceremony.

1983

22 January Fourteen trees planted at Rossville Street by Derry SF.

1984

25 January First Bloody Sunday Commemorative lecture, ‘The Road from Bloody Sunday: Reflections 12 Years On ...’

at Creggan Community Centre. Bloody Sunday march raised to the level of a national

event by SF.

1985

January 27 American Red Indians participate in march and rally.Bloody Sunday Commemoration Committee organizes commemorative events.

January 27 Relatives of Bloody Sunday dead placed wreaths at the memorial and recited a decade of the Rosary.

January 22 Motion tabled at Derry City Council for Bloody Sunday commemorative plaque to be erected in the

Guildhall.

Spatiotemporal Chronology xxi

1986

25 January Bloody Sunday Forum at Central Drive Community Centre, Creggan, addressed by Ken Livingstone.

1988 Seven days notice given to RUC of intention to hold commemorative march under Public Order Act

(Northern Ireland) 19871989 Establishment of Bloody Sunday Initiative30 January – Bloody Sunday photographic exhibition in Pilot’s Row

Community Centre organized by Camerawork Darkrooms.

3 February Bloody Sunday memorial damaged by graffiti.7 December Stained-glass commemorative window installed in

porch of Guildhall.

1990

28 January “Free the Birmingham Six” chosen as theme of commemoration.

1991

November Gregory Campbell criticizes BSI as a ‘closet Sinn Féin type’ organization and declines support for applica-

tion for funding by the BSI for two Bloody Sunday commemoration seminars on human rights.

27 January Plaque at Glenfada Park to Charles Love, who was killed by an IRA bomb intended for the security

forces, unveiled by Love’s father, Patrick Love, as the march passes. Plaque was erected by the BSI.

1992 (20th anniversary)

26 January March proceeds to Guildhall Square for the first time where white crosses and wreaths were laid at the

steps of the Guildhall.30 January Former NICRA executive committee members lay

wreaths at memorial out of concern for people who wished to commemorate Bloody Sunday without it ‘being linked to any political party or paramilitary group’ (Derry Journal, 24 January 1992).

March proceeds to Guildhall Square. Establishment of Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign. A mock High Court judge whitewashes over the Bloody

Sunday victims mural on Westland Street.

xxii Spatiotemporal Chronology

1993 March returns to original route.Bloody Sunday Memorial Weekend on theme of “Bloody Sunday – Beyond Injustice”.Gregory Campbell criticizes BSI for inviting Robert McBride, convicted for killing three civilians in South

Africa, as the main speaker at the rally.1994 Ms Bernadette McAliskey delivers first annual BSJC

Memorial lecture.“March for Peace” chosen as theme of annual commemorative march.

28 January Forum on “Just Peace”.

1995

28 January Unionist/Loyalist Perspectives on the Peace Process discussion forum held in Bogside.

1996 Third annual Bloody Sunday weekend commemoration.


30 January Re-dedication of Rossville Street monument.Establishment of Bloody Sunday Trust.Two minutes’ silence observed throughout Derry marking beginning of weekend-long series of

commemorative events. Concelebrated commemorative Mass in St Mary’s

Church, Creggan.Derry Journal Bloody Sunday commemorative supplement published.Image of each victim is raised at Fahan Street as their names are called out.

31 January Fourteen trees planted at Creggan Reservoir.Seamus Heaney publishes poem, ‘The Road to Derry’.

2 February Bloody Sunday commemorative badges go on sale.Street drama of walking through a large-size reproduction of the front page of the Widgery Report at Westland

Street. Banners depicting Bloody Sunday dead are displayed on

embankment at Southway at start of march. Unveiling of new Bloody Sunday victims’ mural on Westland Street.

Black flags flown at Free Derry Corner.18 April Commemoration in Guildhall of publication of Widgery

Report.

Spatiotemporal Chronology xxiii

September ‘Remember Rossville’ street exhibition in Bogside.

1998

25 January Sunday Business Post publishes eight-page supplement of photos of and interviews with victims’ relatives.

28 January Discussion forum on Unionist/Loyalist perspectives on the Peace Process at Pilots Row Community Centre,

Bogside.30 January Publication of Bloody Sunday booklet by BSJC.

First SDLP political representative addresses the rally.Fourteen banners of the faces of the dead are raised along Rossville Street.Fourteen black flags flown at Free Derry Corner.BSJC booklet Bloody Sunday: A Miscarriage of Justice published.

1 February Six large paintings of British soldiers are hung from the Derry Walls at the Grand Parade section.Worldwide tour of exhibition ‘Hidden Truths: Bloody Sunday 1972’.

1999

30 January Two-minutes’ silence observed by people of Derry at 4pm.

27 September Bloody Sunday Centre opens in Shipquay Street.2000 March proceeds to Guildhall instead of Free Derry

Corner.Service at Bloody Sunday Memorial attended by Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, SDLP, and SF

Assembly members. Commemorative garden added to Rossville Street

memorial.30 January Commemorative march changes traditional route and

continues on to the Guildhall Square, Derry city centre.

Free Derry Corner undergoes landscaping and rally takes place on the fringes of it.

29 January Discussion forum in Workhouse Museum, Waterside, on meaning of Bloody Sunday to Protestants (event

cancelled).2001 “Protecting the Guilty?” chosen as commemoration

theme.

xxiv Spatiotemporal Chronology


24 January Launch of Bloody Sunday black ribbons and programme of commemorative events

29 January Unveiling of Bloody Sunday mural at Free Derry Corner.

Unveiling of plaque at the Bloody Sunday memorial. Launch of A Matter of Minutes: The Enduring Legacy of

Bloody Sunday.30 January Minute’s silence at Rossville Street memorial to mark

time when British army opened fire. Bishop Daly officiates at rededication of memorial

wearing stole he wore on Bloody Sunday.1 February Derry Journal eight-page commemorative supplement

published.12 August ‘Hidden Truths – Bloody Sunday 1972’ photograph

exhibition opens in Pilots Row Community Center, Rossville Street.

2003

2 February Banners and lighted torches at Free Derry Corner commemorate massacres across the world.

Launch of ‘Open the Files’ campaign (campaign to force British government to make publicly available

information about collusion between the state and loyalist paramilitaries in bringing about the deaths of people in Derry and Donegal).

2004 “Time for Truth” chosen as commemoration theme.2005 “Time for Truth: From Bogside to Basra” chosen as

commemoration theme2006 “Towards Justice” chosen as commemoration theme

2007

27 January Official opening of Museum of Free Derry “Hold Power to Account” chosen as commemoration theme

2008 “Truth and Lies” chosen as commemoration theme

2009

31 January Unveiling of DCRA banner in Museum of Free Derry.

Spatiotemporal Chronology xxv

1 February “Justice Delayed Justice Denied” chosen as commemoration theme.Sea of Solidarity-Sea of Flags – expressing solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza victimized by Israeli military

attacks – involved carrying 1,000 Palestinian flags on the Bloody Sunday march.

Rally takes place in William Street at spot where barricade was erected to stop the original march reaching the

Guildhall.

xxvi

AOH Ancient Order of HiberniansBBDA Bogside and Brandywell Development AssociationBBI Bogside and Brandywell InitiativeBSJC Bloody Sunday Justice CampaignBSI Bloody Sunday InitiativeBST Bloody Sunday TrustBSWC Bloody Sunday Weekend CommitteeCAIN Conflict Archive on the InternetCRA Civil Rights AssociationDCRA Derry Civil Rights AssociationDUP Democratic Unionist PartyDCAC Derry Citizens Action CommitteeDCRA Derry Civil Rights AssociationDHAC Derry Housing Action CommitteeDWAC Derry Women’s Action CommitteeEU European UnionIF Irish FrontIIP Irish Independence PartyINLA Irish National Liberation ArmyIRA Irish Republican ArmyLDC Londonderry Development CommissionLHNIPC Linen Hall Northern Ireland Political CollectionLVF Loyalist Volunteer ForceNCDCC Newry Civil Disobedience Co-ordination CommitteeNICRA Northern Ireland Civil Rights AssociationNIHE Northern Ireland Housing ExecutiveNIO Northern Ireland OfficeOBE Order of the British EmpirePUP Progressive Unionist PartyPSF Provisional Sinn FéinPOW Prisoner Of WarPFC Pat Finucane CentreRTÉ Radio Teilifís ÉireannRUC Royal Ulster ConstabularySAS Special Air ServiceSDLP Social Democratic and Labour PartySF Sinn Féin

Abbreviations

Abbreviations xxvii

UCAN Ulster Community Action NetworkUDA Ulster Defence AssociationUDR Ulster Defence RegimentUTV Ulster TelevisionUUP Ulster Unionist PartyUVF Ulster Volunteer Force

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