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Diarmaid Ferriter
is a professor of
modern Irish history
at University College
Dublin. You can listen to an
extended version of this inter-
view on the HistoryExtra podcastON THECampaigners hold aloft banners depicting
victims of Bloody Sunday, 2010. The Saville
Inquiry found that those who were killed
were unarmed and innocentThe episode showed that the complex
situation in Northern Ireland was not being
sufficiently controlled by unionist politi-
cians, who had been dominating Northern
Ireland politics since the foundation of the
territory 50 years previously.6 YQQʛEKCNKPSWKTKGUKPVQ$NQQF[5WPFC[
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In 1972, immediately after Bloody Sunday,
Lord Widgery [lord chief justice at the time]
was charged with the task of presiding over
an inquiry into what had happened. At this
point, there was a determined attempt to
control the narrative from the British
perspective, to show that what was done
by the soldiers of the Parachute Regiment
was a reaction to them being placed in
mortal danger – that they were reacting to
shots being fired by the IRA and they were
not to blame. That narrative was sustained
by the Widgery Inquiry, which ultimately
became completely discredited.
Then, in 1998, the Saville Inquiry [official-
ly the Bloody Sunday Inquiry] was launched.
Unlike the Widgery Inquiry, it really gave
weight to the personal testimonies of thosewho were involved in and impacted by
Bloody Sunday. It found that firing by the
British soldiers caused the deaths of 13 people
and injury to a similar number, none of
whom posed a threat, and that none of the
soldiers fired in response to attacks or
threatened attacks. Those killed were un-
armed and entirely innocent.
After the findings of the Saville Inquiry
were published in 2010, there was a very
moving day when then British prime minis-
ter David Cameron unreservedly apologised
for what had happened on Bloody Sunday,
saying it was unjustifiable. That was a mo-
ment for which thousands had been waiting,
for decades. Their reaction was very emotion-
al, very dignified. In its own way it was also
joyous – like the lifting of a suffocating
weight that so many people had
There was a very struggled under for so long.moving day when then
British prime minister
David Cameron
unreservedly apologised
for Bloody Sunday