Taken from http://www.derryjournal.com/bloodysunday/fullbsmain.asp?DJID=7196
Opinions on Bloody Sunday from some one who was there:

IT'S NOW 30 years since the day they call 'Bloody Sunday' happened. The inquiry is up and running and already it is the most expensive in British legal history and it may not even be past the halfway point yet. Some say it will cost £100 million; others say that amount won't even look at it. What price the truth, they say. The revisionists who want the world to believe their story present it like this: Catholics were marching for their civil rights; the British government was determined to teach them a lesson so it sent in the Paras. The Paras did what Paras do best and 13 innocent young men lay dead after a peaceful march. The unionists feel guilty now, so they keep their heads down hoping it will all blow over, and the nationalists will give over whingeing and moaning, accept the new inquiry and get on with it.

Well, so much for wishful thinking.

Now for the real world.

In the four weeks before that day in Londonderry, the following violence was carried out by the various factions of the IRA: nine separate bomb attacks on commercial and security force premises; six separate shooting incidents, including an 80-minute gun battle, gelignite and nail-bomb attacks. A robbery occurred where 157 British army uniforms were stolen and several soldiers were wounded. Just three days before the march two RUC officers were callously murdered less than a mile from where the march was due to start.

This is not an exhaustive list but it does give some idea of what was going on when Martin McGuinness was second-in-command of the Provisional IRA in Londonderry, as he has recently confirmed. Disorder There was, of course, disorder and violence in many other parts of Northern Ireland and internment had been used as an unwieldy measure against republicans.

It was in this context that the march occurred, with many soldiers fearing for their lives as they prepared for what they believed was going to be (and turned out to be) a violent confrontation. Thirty years on, there are going to be hundreds of witnesses called to give evidence regarding what they saw, heard and did on that day. Given the thousands on the march, and the hundreds of soldiers on duty, is there going to be anyone anywhere who has not only the razor-sharp memory going back to that time but who was exactly in the right position at just the right time to see enough to be certain, not only as to what happened, but to relate the motives of those soldiers who fired their rounds?

Of course, McGuinness has already said he will not be naming any other members of the IRA. Openness apparently is to be demanded of the Paras but not of the Provos. The IRA was actively carrying out bomb and gun attacks right throughout January, and we are expected to believe that they suddenly took rest and recuperation on this particular day, even when some republicans have had to concede that, at least, one civilian gunman was seen and photographed at an early stage in the day's proceedings.

There is unionist anger at the inquiry, its cost and its duration. There is even more anger at the fact that it has continued for two years up to this point, and its proceedings have been summarised every day of its sittings on local radio and television. Local newspapers carry extensive coverage of witness evidence each week. It goes on and on and on and on.

This is happening while at the same time there is no inquiry into the events that occurred at that time and since that have allegedly involved the person who is at present the Minister in Northern Ireland with responsibility for the education of our children:

Martin McGuinness. Civil rights The demand, they said, was for civil rights. One of their leaders said at around the time of Bloody Sunday: "When we get our civil rights there will be no revenge". Thirty years later, what has been the result of that campaign? The west bank of Londonderry, where the march took place, is now 99 per cent Roman Catholic - 65,000 people with fewer than 1,000 of them Protestants. Thousands of jobs have been created in recent years across the whole city, which is about 25 per cent Protestant, but only about 10 per cent of them for that community.