(soft ominous music)
- It's January 31st, 1972.
Rubble fills the streets in the city of Derry
in Northern Ireland,
also known as Londonderry
to British officials and local Protestants.
A conflict that is present in the very name of this place
is now manifest in the streets.
13 are dead, 14 wounded.
24 hours before,
British soldiers fired 108 rounds
into a crowd of civil rights protestors.
Northern Ireland is getting ready to tear itself apart.
In two days, the British embassy in Dublin
will be burned down.
And this is when the British Prime Minister
calls a meeting with the Lord Chancellor
and the Lord Chief Justice, John Widgery.
These are two of the most senior legal officials
in the United Kingdom.
Lord Widgery would be tasked
with investigating what happened here.
Why were shots fired?
Who was at fault?
We're looking at the notes from that meeting
uncovered by researchers in 1995.
What we see here is that in this meeting
these men seemed concerned about something different
than the death of 13 people.
The Prime Minister is emphasizing to Lord Widgery
that this investigation needs to happen fast,
to wrap up this matter quickly.
They brainstorm ways
that would make access to the Tribunal limited.
The Prime Minister then wonders
where the investigation Tribunal should take place.
They admit that the obvious place
would be the government building
right next to the scene of the massacre.
But there's a problem with this location,
says the Prime Minister.
He tells Widgery that this is on, quote,
"the wrong side of the river,
where people don't support the British government."
They should instead hold the Tribunal
a little distance away.
Widgery initially disagrees,
saying that if it's not held in the city
where the massacre happened,
that it would make it hard for witnesses
to give solid evidence.
But justice wasn't the most important priority here.
The Prime Minister then says it all
when he reminds Widgery that they were in Northern Ireland
fighting not only a military war,
but a propaganda war.
This memo tells the story of a coverup,
how the British Army killed 13 innocent civilians,
and how the British government quickly made plans
to make it go away.
So, what is the story of this memo,
the sham investigation it created,
and what really happened on that day
that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday?
(dramatic ominous music)
(ominous music fades out)
Pausing the video for a quick message from our sponsors.
Thank you BetterHelp for sponsoring today's video.
I'm a long-time believer in therapy
and as a man, for some reason,
therapy is not something that is readily encouraged.
Luckily, that's changing,
and BetterHelp is making it more accessible to all of us.
BetterHelp is a platform that you sign up for,
you fill out a survey,
and you explain where you're at mentally,
what you're struggling with,
and then BetterHelp searches in their massive network
of tens of thousands of licensed therapists
and they match you up with somebody,
and you can start therapy in a very short time,
at least compared to the traditional way
of finding a therapist.
You can do it over text,
you can do it over phone, which is what I do.
I do therapy while I'm walking around.
You can do it over video call, whatever works best for you.
If your therapist isn't a good fit, you can change.
And all of this is done through their platform,
which just makes it very easy.
BetterHelp is a long-time sponsor of the channel
and they're offering our viewers
10% off their first month of BetterHelp.
So if you want to use the link in the description,
it's betterhelp.com/JohnnyHarris.
Using the link helps support the channel
and it also gets you in on this discount
so you can try it out and see if therapy
is as much a value add to your life as it has been for mine.
Thank you BetterHelp for sponsoring the video.
Let's get back into this important story
about Bloody Sunday.
The bloody events of that Sunday in 1972
were the result of a line
that was drawn on this island decades earlier.
England had ruled over Ireland for hundreds of years.
But after a brutal war,
Ireland would gain its independence in 1921.
As the British were leaving,
they carved out a corner of this island
to remain as a part of the United Kingdom.
They would call it Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland was mostly populated
by descendants of British colonists
sent to Ireland during those years.
They were mostly Protestants
on an island made up of Catholics,
and they were known as unionists
because they wanted to stay in the United Kingdom.
It was the presence of these Protestant unionists
that was the main reason why the United Kingdom
wanted to keep this part of Ireland.
But also within these borders of Northern Ireland
was a large population of Irish Catholics
known as nationalists
because they wanted to unify the island,
making the North a part of the Republic of Ireland.
But that wasn't gonna be easy
because in Northern Ireland they didn't have the power.
The unionists did.
And for decades after the partition,
Catholics in Northern Ireland were discriminated against
by the unionists who controlled the government
and most of the wealth in the North.
This meant denying them access
to public housing and education,
which largely barred them from well-paying jobs,
which in turn prevented them from purchasing property.
And at the time, if you didn't own property,
you couldn't vote.
So by the late 1960s,
people in Northern Ireland were fed up with this situation.
They start marching for their civil rights.
(ominous music)
These marches are often
violently cracked down on by unionists,
and many times the local police force
would join in the violence to support the unionists.
By the late 1960s, the local government comes out
and bans these civil rights marches altogether.
But banning the marches does nothing
to deescalate the situation.
Civilians on both sides have already begun organizing
into paramilitary groups,
staging attacks across Northern Ireland.
On the pro-Irish side is a group of nationalist fighters
called the Provisional Irish Republican Army, or the IRA.
They arm themselves
and start using violence to achieve their goal
of ending British rule in Northern Ireland.
On the other side is the Ulster Volunteer Force
who say that they exist to fight back against the IRA
and Irish nationalism.
Violence spreads, car bombings in city centers,
attacks on police, kidnappings,
they all become common.
But to many, this conflict, known as The Troubles,
really begins in the summer of 1969.
Despite the rise of violent groups,
most Catholics in Northern Ireland
just want basic civil rights,
but they're now banned from marching.
And yet, in the summer of 1969,
in the majority Catholic town of Derry, Londonderry,
the unionist government
lets a group of young Protestant boys march in a parade
that passes right next to an Irish Catholic neighborhood
called the Bogside.
It was a provocative move
and it sparked a riot that escalated
into a full-blown battle.
Catholic residents had turned the Bogside neighborhood
into their base of resistance,
piling up bricks, wooden planks, and vehicles
to erect barriers around their neighborhood.
These barriers effectively sealed off the area
from the rest of the city,
preventing police and security forces from entering.
In this act of defiance,
they declared their territory Free Derry,
symbolizing a self-government zone
in the midst of this escalating tension.
It was from this barricaded Bogside neighborhood
that they fought police and unionist marchers
with marbles shot from slingshots,
rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Police then escalated, marching into the Bogside,
deploying gas and beating rioters.
It was clear that the conflict had reached a whole new level
and the British government back in London
had to do something about it.
But instead of acquiesce to protestors, they doubled down.
They aren't gonna give up a part
of their sovereign territory
to nationalists and the violent IRA
who they view as rebels and terrorists.
Instead, they respond with their army.
This included the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment,
otherwise known as the Paras,
an elite group of soldiers formed in World War II
and trained for high-intensity combat.
The Parachute Regiment had fought an active conflicts
in the Suez Canal and Cyprus,
and yet, somehow, here they were arriving to Belfast
to take on oppressed civil rights protestors.
- [John] You have to ask the question,
why use paratroopers to act as policemen?
The last thing you use is killers.
Paratroopers are trained to kill.
- [Johnny] The Army presence in Northern Ireland
doesn't achieve its mission
of restoring order on the streets.
The conflict just continues.
Protests, crackdowns, attacks, bombings.
By the summer of 1971,
the unionist government introduces a new policy
that allows security forces to break into the homes
of anyone suspected of being involved with the IRA
and to arrest them without any evidence or trial.
The British Army, including the Paras,
conduct a three-day violent raid
in a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast,
arbitrarily rounding up men and boys,
arresting hundreds and killing 11 people,
including a priest and a mother of eight in Belfast alone.
As mass arrests continue,
civil rights activists plan another march
against the brutal internment policy.
They would hold the protest in the city of Derry,
home to the Bogside neighborhood.
Tensions in the city were at an all-time high
as three days earlier
the IRA had violently killed two policemen here.
Before the march begins,
the Army sends the Paras in.
The battalion that had just killed 11 innocent civilians
was now preparing for this march.
By 2:50 p.m. that day,
witnesses report that 10,000 or more marchers had assembled.
Their goal is to march through town
and end up in the town center where they will hold a rally.
As the marchers move through the Bogside,
they encounter a barricade that the Army constructed
to keep the protestors out of the city center,
to contain them in the Bogside.
March leaders instruct the people to take another route.
They're trying to avoid a conflict.
At the same time,
a number of young men break off from the march
and start fighting with the soldiers at the barricade.
Soldiers begin shooting rubber bullets at the crowd,
launching gas canisters and firing a water cannon.
Panic breaks out.
By 3:55, the riot is mostly broken up
as the march continues on their new path,
but they would soon run into another barricade.
Thousands of people trapped on this street.
At 4:05, the Paras are ordered
to move in behind the marchers
and start arresting anyone associated with the rioting.
With armored vehicles,
they speed dangerously into this crowd.
They start beating demonstrators, making mass arrests.
- [Soldier] Get them cameras away.
- [Johnny] People are fleeing and panicking.
And then, five minutes after the start of the arrests,
the first shots ring out.
(gunfire booming)
Gunfire will continue for the next 30 minutes.
The crowd flees the violence, the gas, the gunfire,
trying to get out to safety.
But they're boxed in.
The soldiers chase them into surrounding neighborhoods,
firing, reloading, and continuing this relentless assault.
The soldiers shoot several people from, quote,
"almost point blank range,"
despite them posing no danger to the soldiers.
Eyewitnesses report seeing soldiers shoot people
who are already down and wounded,
or shooting at a crowd of people gathered around a body
trying to give it first aid.
A local teacher who was at the march later reported
that the Army fired indiscriminately
into a fleeing crowd of innocent people.
21 soldiers from the Parachute Battalion
fired 108 rounds that day.
And by 4:40 p.m., when the shooting finally stops,
13 people are dead and 14 are wounded.
- [John] My young brother, Michael Kelly,
was one who was murdered that day, just 17 years old.
And he was one of six 17-year-olds
who were murdered on Bloody Sunday.
- [Johnny] Previous raids and killing by the Army
had been swept under the rug,
but this case was different.
Anger exploded all across Ireland.
There were protests
in front of the British Embassy in Dublin,
and two days later it was burned to the ground.
This couldn't be ignored.
And that gets us back to this memo,
the meeting between the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor,
and the man who they chose
to lead the investigation, Lord Widgery.
In this meeting, they decide that the investigation
is not an investigation at all.
In fact, Lord Widgery's job would be to produce a document
that protects the soldiers and the government from scrutiny.
And these notes show us that the Prime Minister
was far more worried about the optics,
the location of the trial, the speed,
Widgery adding that it would help if the inquiry
could be restricted in scope.
He only wants to cover the events of that day.
He doesn't wanna look at the motivations of the soldiers,
the Army leadership,
the context that could have led to this.
He didn't want to ask why trained killers
were the ones brought in
to peace-keep a protest about internment.
And that's because,
as the Prime Minister would remind Widgery,
they were fighting a propaganda war here
meant to keep the reputation of the UK positive
while maintaining the oppressive status quo
in Northern Ireland.
So, with that, Lord Widgery takes the guidance
from his Prime Minister
and starts his investigation.
As discussed, the investigation isn't based in Derry,
but instead in a nearby unionist majority town.
The investigation is completed in just three months.
And on April 18th, 1972,
Widgery delivers this report,
stating that the soldiers who shot at the protesters
were actually not to blame.
In fact, anyone who listened to the soldiers
give their testimony, quote,
"could not fail to be impressed by their demeanor."
In fact, he finds that the soldiers were quite disciplined
on the day of Bloody Sunday.
They were just following orders.
Widgery then accounts for all of the shots fired,
108 in total.
The soldiers are kept anonymous,
just given letters instead of names.
And you can see that soldiers like Private H
shot so many rounds that he would've had to reload.
Then, Widgery issues his conclusion.
And when it comes to blame, Widgery is clear.
He says that, quote,
"there would've been no deaths in Londonderry
if those who organized the illegal march
had not thereby created a highly dangerous situation.
It was inevitable and it was the protesters' fault."
He mostly ignored
the hundreds of eyewitness accounts from that day
saying that they came to him too late in the process.
These statements would later be stuffed in a box
and unseen by the public for decades.
In fact, Widgery never even heard from the wounded victims
because they were still in the hospital
and he, quote, "did not think it necessary
to travel all the way there to get statements from them."
He concludes that the soldiers fired in self-defense
and that they were fired on first.
- [John] But Widgery was put in place to do a job,
and that job was to protect Parachute Regiment killers.
They set out to protect the perpetrators and vindicate them
and leave the blame on our people,
and that's exactly what Widgery did.
- [Johnny] Widgery himself was a soldier here,
fighting a propaganda war for his Prime Minister.
And he produced exactly what was expected of him,
a document that protected the soldiers, the Army,
and the men that unleashed them on a civilian population.
In following years,
no soldier would be prosecuted for the 13 deaths.
Bloody Sunday and the subsequent coverup
escalated the conflict in Northern Ireland
in ways that no event had.
- [Reporter] Both sides seem to have come to the conclusion
that there are no moderate solutions left.
- [Reporter 2] Everyone in the area
is automatically a suspect.
The innocent often suffer.
- [Johnny] IRA recruitment boomed after the massacre.
Bombings and attacks continued across the region
between paramilitaries on both sides.
The Army continued to crack down.
Mass arrests and hunger strikes became common news.
And for 20 years,
the hope of some kind of justice for Bloody Sunday
looked dimmer and dimmer.
Even still, Irish Catholics in the North
started marching every year to remember their dead.
The massacre had become a symbol to nationalist communities
of how the British government would treat them.
For most, it was a confirmation
of what they had already known.
By the 1990s,
the conflict had settled into an uncomfortable stalemate
that drove both sides to the negotiating table.
Those who had been traumatized
by Bloody Sunday and the subsequent coverup
fought to include a real investigation
as part of the peace process.
One of these activists was John Kelly,
who we talked to for this story.
- [John] So in other words,
people were putting it forward all the time.
You can't move forward unless you sort Bloody Sunday out.
And there's only one way to sort it out,
is to set up a new inquiry, you know?
- [Johnny] And it worked.
In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
It was a peace deal between the sides.
And as a part of the agreement,
the British government would conduct a real investigation
as to what happened that day.
Over the course of 12 years,
the British government would spend 200 million pounds
to right their wrong,
and the resulting report would go on to tell
a very different story
than the report Widgery had produced.
It acknowledges that the IRA was there that day
and had fired on soldiers,
but that none of this firing provided any justification
for the shooting of civilian casualties.
It says that none of the soldiers fired
because they were attacked with bombs,
as the soldiers previously testified.
The report says that the soldiers lied to investigators
to justify firing so many shots that day.
And most importantly, it concludes that, quote,
"none of those who were murdered that day
was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury."
In the end, this reckless use of deadly force
strengthened the IRA
and made this violent conflict in Northern Ireland worse.
- What happened on Bloody Sunday
was both unjustified and unjustifiable.
(crowd cheers)
- [Johnny] After decades, an old wound was tended to.
A formal apology, an admission of guilt,
and an exoneration of previously blamed victims.
The conflict in Northern Ireland, or The Troubles,
killed over 3,500 people
and inflicted extreme injustice
on hundreds of thousands more.
The proper investigation into Bloody Sunday
provided a measure of justice to these victims.
But for some, the report falls short of true accountability.
The trauma from protracted conflicts leaves deep marks,
and many today still live with the memory
of the injustices and discrimination
that would never have its day in court.
Injustice from that one Bloody Sunday,
but also from those many troubled years.
(ominous music)
(ominous music fades out)