20,000 March On Anniversary Of ‘Bloody Sunday’

Twenty-five years after British troops gunned down 13 Roman Catholic demonstrators, more than 20,000 marchers and political leaders called for justice Sunday in a display of anger and grief.

The Jan. 30, 1972, killings at the end of a civil rights march in Londonderry came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” and galvanized Catholic support for the Irish Republican Army like no other event in the Northern Ireland conflict.

Sunday, as police in armored Land-Rovers observed and videotaped from a discreet distance, the crowd marched in bright sunshine through the Catholic Bogside district to the spot of the massacre.

No soldier was prosecuted for the deaths. A British inquiry into the killings concluded that troops had been justified in firing because some of the demonstrators may have been armed. Locals dispute that claim, saying the soldiers fired first and deliberately.

“It is said that the Irish remember too much. I make no apology for remembering … British murder in Derry’s streets,” Michael McKinney, a brother of one of the victims, said to cheers from the crowd.

Locals flanked the podium and carried 25-foot-high banners depicting each of the “Bloody Sunday” victims, who included both IRA supporters and moderates.

The commemoration Sunday served as a de facto election rally for leaders of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, which hopes to win seats in British Parliament elections.

Many of those at Sunday’s commemoration were Sinn Fein supporters bused from across Northern Ireland. They were accompanied by fife-and-drum corps in black berets.

Sinn Fein leaders and Catholic moderates called for an international investigation into the massacre.

“The road to peace is through justice,” Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness said.

In 1972, McGuinness was 21 years old and reputedly the IRA’s commander in the city. He told the crowd of his memories of marching on “Bloody Sunday” and of his horror at seeing bodies strewn about.

He listed several other locals killed by police or soldiers - all cases in which no murder or manslaughter charges were filed.

He also acknowledged that Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority and the British likewise have suffered from IRA bombings.

“We know there are two roads before us. There is the road to further conflict. And one is to the negotiating table,” McGuinness said, emphasizing that he believes there is “nowhere else to go” but into negotiations.

Sinn Fein has been excluded from peace talks that began last June because the IRA ended a 17-month cease-fire with a bombing in London in February 1996.

Nine Northern Ireland parties participating in the talks have made little progress toward finding a form of government acceptable to Protestants, who demand the province remain linked with Britain, and to Catholics, who are determined to build ties with the rest of Ireland.