Bloody Sunday

Originally posted by zeeblebot
what took em so long?

Throughout the period of the civil rights movement, people in Ireland could watch both British (BBC) and Irish (RTE) broadcasts from Ulster of the events taking place. The difference in images shown was startling. In my personal memories I hold especially sharp images of an event when marchers at a place called Burntollet Bridge were attacked by hoodlums led by Ian Paisley and with the visible tolerance of the so called police. Regarding Bloody Sunday, the refusal for so long to acknowledge the blindingly obvious was profoundly stupid and destructive of trust between a government and its citizens.

What Bloody Sunday represented was a dismal and tragic betrayal of an entirely peaceful and political campaign for basic civil rights, in which we could watch British soldiers taking sides with the bullies against whom they were under a duty to protect the catholic community. The soldiers were there, remember, because Catholic communities were being burned out of their homes and the violence against Catholics was becoming truly frightening.