Irish Examiner view: Shaping a scarred past into a positive future

50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday

Victims of Bloody Sunday: Top row, left to right: Patrick "Paddy" Doherty, Gerald Donaghey, John "Jackie" Duddy, Hugh Gilmour, Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Kevin McElhinney. Bottom row, left to right: Bernard McGuigan, Gerard McKinney, William McKinney, William Nash, James Wray, John Young.

Many millions of words have been written about the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, 50 years ago tomorrow.

The 10-volume, 5,143-page Saville Report, published in 2010, demolished the earlier whitewashing of events by the senior British judge Lord Widgery. Its cost was variously estimated at between €280m and €500m. More than 900 witnesses gave evidence over a period of five years.

Today’s potent description of the impact of the wilful shooting of civilians by soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment (1 Para), is written by a member of the Irish Examiner’s staff whose family was touched to the core by an event which is as seminal to the story of the North and its relationship with the UK as earlier notable turning points in history, such as that other Bloody Sunday in Croke Park in 1920.

It can be ranked alongside the Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) massacre of 1919 and yet a third Bloody Sunday on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 as the moments when human and civil rights became, eventually, unstoppable forces.

It is important for states, especially relatively young ones such as Ireland, to retain a full appreciation about what has been achieved and the sacrifices of ordinary people.

Grievous losses of all

It is only by such recognition that the paths to progress and reconciliation can be cleared and the determination instilled to continue to build a better and more peaceful future. For that to take place in Ireland, there must be awareness of the grievous losses of all.

The concluding paragraph of the Saville Report states: “The firing by soldiers of 1 Para on Bloody Sunday caused the deaths of 13 people and injury to a similar number, none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury.

“What happened on Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed. Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland.”

A catastrophe indeed. The question which now faces the whole of Ireland is how it is to manage that shared and scarred past to create a positive future as its legacy.

Our reporter describes her feelings for ‘Soldier F’, who emerged from Glenfada Park to shoot her 31-year-old uncle in the back. She has chosen to honour the recollection of the words of Paddy Doherty, father of six, who told his children not to hate because “hate eats at your heart”.

It is a fine epitaph and one which repays the sharing.