The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30189 Message #391712
Posted By: Peter K (Fionn)
06-Feb-01 - 06:56 PM
Thread Name: Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972, Derry)
Subject: RE: Bloody Sunday
Good last post Kevin. Armmies will always be as bad as, or worse than, those they're fighting - it's bred into them. If an elected government decides to deploy its army to police a demo, it has a responsibility to hold that army accountable, otherwise we might as well have a police state.
It's not realistic expecting paramilitary factions to uphold similar standards, Grab, which is one reason why I tend to favour lumping them all together as "criminal" rather than "political". (I'm talking about in a democracy, however badly flawed that democracy might be.) The IRA were not there when there was arguably a case that they should have been. And in my view all the subsequent steps towards a fair resolution of the problems would have been achieved without them, through peaceful protest.
Keith, I was with the demo, not the army, that day. I saw no shots fired - just people who had been shot. They and their friends and relatives were obviously neither freedom fighters nor terrorists. Everyone around me said the firing came from the city walls, but the way sounds reflect, and in the real confusion and terror that takes over, I didn't have a clue what was happening - except that the noise definitely didn't all come from one gun. I am equally certain that if I'd been killed, Widgery would have said I had been carrying a gun.