Derry - My Mind Is Blown

While we like to think we're pretty worldly people, sometimes we stumble into something totally unexpected that results in being awestruck.  This was one of those times.

We thought, "Let's go to Derry.  It's supposed to have an old wall, and from there we can take a day trip outside of the city and then move on."  Such silly, uneducated tourists we are.

Derry (to Irish Nationalist/Republican people) or Londonderry (to Unionists/British Loyalists) was the site of Bloody Sunday in 1972, and an epicentre of the Nationalist/Republican/IRA/etc. movements during the "Troubles".  Even the town name is controversial - just the way you said it (Derry vs. Londonderry) would mark you as a Nationalist or a Unionist during the Troubles.  Merchants went to great lengths not to say/write the name of their own town, so as not to alienate any group of customers.  The present politically-correct term is Derry-Londonderry.

Derry is the only fully-walled city in Ireland.  Only the core of the old city is walled - it has since expanded to both banks of the tidal inlet it is next to.  It's a lovely small city, very picturesque.  They're trying to be some kind of "UK city of culture" for 2013, so are upgrading all kinds of public works.  And they have money to do it.  (The contrast between Ireland and UK-funded Northern Ireland is instantly noticeable - Northern Ireland has British money and Ireland does not.)

The walled part of the city was essentially built by the English in King John II's time (late 1600s).  The walled part was originally on an island - the river was diverted to one side of the island, and the other side (now filled) was called Bogside.  Catholics were generally relegated to Bogside and other less-desirable areas, while the English-derived (Protestant) ruling class largely lived in the walled city and other more-desirable places.  The English loyalist/Irish nationalist split in the area dates back to 1688 in a big way, and of course to even before then.

Derry city wall and tower behind

Sarah and original restored 17th century cannons

Looking down on "Bogside", site of "Free Derry"

A bit of nomenclature we learned about the time of the Troubles (1968-1998) - I hope I have this right:

• Nationalists: those living in Northern Ireland who wanted it to be an Irish state/part of Ireland, and wanted to achieve that vision through political means/within the present system.  There was a Nationalist political party.
• Republicans: those living in Northern Ireland who also wanted it to be Irish, but who wanted to use force to achieve those ends.  (Force had more or less worked for the rest of Ireland back in 1916-1922, when all of Ireland except Northern Ireland achieved independence through a treaty after much armed conflict.  There was a brief civil war just after 1922 between the Irish forces who had signed the treaty (which included separating Northern Ireland and keeping British rule there) and those who were against the treaty as it stood.)
• Unionists/Loyalists: those living in Northern Ireland who want it to remain British and/or Protestant.  Usually Protestant people of UK origin, though their families could have resided in Northern Ireland since the 1600s or even before.

Unionists are specifically Northern Irish Protestant residents, and at the start of the Troubles were seen as the more immediate oppressors of the Catholic Nationalists/Republicans than the English, since the Unionists controlled the government and its institutions, including the police, and the English were across the Irish Sea.  This changed when the British Army arrived and turned out not to be the expected liberators of the Catholic Irish, but truly reinforcements for the ruling (Unionist) powers in Northern Ireland.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back on track: there is a "Free Derry Museum" in Derry, near the Bloody Sunday site (more on that later).  Sarah and I thought hey, let's go there, they're supposed to have tours that describe the many political murals we see painted in the area.

In fact, the museum is a Nationalist (I'll use this as a catch-all for the Catholic/non-Unionist side) view of the lead-up to and the day of Bloody Sunday.  It attempts to limit itself to topics of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, and how this brought the Northern Ireland conflict to a head; however, the civil-rights movement is pretty intertwined with Nationalist and Republican efforts at secession, so the omission of certain violent events leading up to and in particular following Bloody Sunday (by the IRA and others) is noticeable, though it does keep things more focused.

We asked the guy at the front desk about the "mural tour."  Silly us.  He let us know it was a "political tour" featuring a bit of description of the murals.  It was pouring rain and freezing so no one was around to give the tour, but he called someone up who came down in about 15 minutes to give us the tour, which was a nice gesture.  It cost a few more Euros than we expected for the tour and access to the museum, so we were a little hesitant, but in the end said OK.  Again, silly, silly tourists - we had no idea of the quality of the tour.

In the meantime, we got to poke around the museum.  The front desk guy explained that the museum explained the causes of the strife in Derry up to and including Bloody Sunday in 1972, and was largely limited to those topics.  His brother had been killed on Bloody Sunday.  Whoa, OK - no wonder he works at the museum.

Our tour guide, Eugene, showed up as promised.  We stood outside the museum in the chilly, pouring rain with umbrellas and he added some colour to what we had already seen in the museum.  It was amazing.  He gave us the Bogside/Catholic/Nationalist perspective that was barely covered in the news media at the time.  This blog post highlights that perspective - not that I endorse one side over another; the Troubles are incredibly complicated.

After Irish independence in 1922, Unionists ruled Northern Ireland, and particularly Derry, at all levels.  The ruling Unionists eventually became a minority as more Catholics emigrated to Derry, but through the design of electoral riding boundaries and voting rules, Unionists/Protestants retained power. For example, you had to be a landowner to vote in local elections - and most Catholics weren't landowners.  Further, Catholics were only allowed to live in certain areas, such as Bogside, and this kept them out of other ridings and limited the number of seats won - the agency that determined where you could live or own land was Union-controlled.  (Apparently the voting rules weren't made completely fair for all religions/families/landowners or renters and at all levels of government until as late as 1973.)  Etc.  Being Catholic could also shut you out of certain types of employment entirely, and made you less employable generally (the unemployment figures varied widely between Catholics and Protestants).  The police force was up to 98% Protestant in certain years, despite the large numbers of Catholic citizens they patrolled.  Appointed judges were largely Protestant and pro-government, and were often more interested in protecting the state than safeguarding civil rights.

(In those days, it appears marginalized groups were not afforded the types of civil and legal safeguards that we have come to take for granted in Canada.  This is yet more justification for being vigilant of any erosion of the safeguards we have in place at home - please listen carefully to the Law Society and the Canadian Bar Association when they warn of such things!)

So apparently, there was official and unofficial discrimination against Catholics living in Derry.  Things continued like this for decades.  Nationalists weren't very effective in the political realm - the system prevented them from obtaining any real power, and they were ineffectual at changing the system.  The Catholic clergy seemed similarly content with the status quo.

In the 1960s, Catholics in Derry saw what was happening in other areas of the world in the cause of human rights, particularly Martin Luther King Jr. and the US civil rights movement.  This encouraged groups of Catholics in Derry to voice their concerns over the discrimination they faced or perceived, and to begin holding rallies and marches for their cause.  The first large-scale march was October 5, 1968.  (It gets very complicated from here on, so I'm not even going to try to describe all of the events.)  The marches were supposed to be against abuses of civil and human rights and systemic discrimination. However, a certain percentage of participants saw the way to fix such civil rights abuses was to shrug off rule by the UK & join with Ireland or form a separate nation.  The Unionists and/or UK of course were worried that, in the best case, the marches could result in rule by Nationalists/Catholics within Northern Ireland and produce discrimination against Unionists/Protestants, and in the worst case the marches were the beginning of another Easter Uprising and a full-scale revolt and insurrection.

Government/police response to such marches was generally swift and hard - likely as a deterrent, to show that any form of resistance to Unionist/UK rule was bound to fail.  But it really confirmed the Catholics' position, that they were being oppressed by a strong state force due to their religious background, and that their protests were being quashed.  It really was armoured cars and tear gas vs. rocks and homemade petrol grenades in the early times.  (Considering these protests/marches for civil rights being apart from IRA activities.)

Bogside was a focal point of the Catholic civil rights/resistance cause.  At one point in the 1960s, one of the resistance groups painted an iconic sign on a wall that read "You Are Now Entering Free Derry," implicitly declaring that Bogside had seceded and would no longer acknowledge Unionist rule.  Barriers went up around Bogside - blockades and such.  The police came in force to knock down barricades and search for leaders.  The barricades went back up as soon as they were taken down.  Police abuses escalated - Bogside homes were broken into by police in the night & ransacked, the people intimidated and beaten.  This happened to our guide Eugene - he was a very young boy when this was happening, and his Mom's house was raided several times.  A friend of his died of a police beating during one of these raids.

The Bogside defence was increased by the residents, who successfully repelled a fairly strong police force at one point.  The police tried other tactics, like sealing the residents in to Bogside & not allowing them to leave, rather than trying to stop the blockades.

(Note: old Derry and Bogside are not big areas - they're actually very small.  You can walk across the whole area in 5-10 minutes.)

At one point, British troops were called in from England for support & to deal with the "Free Derry" problem.  They were seen as potential liberators by the Bogsiders - a more impartial force that wasn't part of the Protestant/Unionist establishment that included the oppressive police, local government and judicial system.  When they arrived, the barricades were opened for the troops & no resistance offered.  However, it soon became clear that the troops were government troops, and on the Union side after all.

So marches continued, clashes continued, Free Derry continued with its resistance and campaign for civil rights.  Much support was found among bogsiders, but it wasn't universal.  IRA activities (armed conflict to achieve Northern Irish independence) ramped up in the first couple of years of the 1970s, as did violence generally.  In response to this, the government introduced internment without trial - in other words, you could be held for extended periods, practically indefinitely, with no trial. This sparked a fresh wave of protest and violence at this fresh denial of civil rights - not surprising, as this is a very fundamental breach of human rights.  It's equivalent to Guantanamo Bay internment, but in your own back yard.

Then came January 1972.  Another civil rights march was organized, primarily to protest internment without trial.  It was ruled illegal and forbidden by legislation before it occurred.  It went ahead anyway.  Some of the younger marchers split unexpectedly 1/2 way through the march, against the instructions of the organizers, and got into a confrontation with soldiers (as was common at the time), hurling rocks and bottles and being dispersed with water cannons and tear gas.  This might have confused the troops and police stationed along the path of the main protest.  At any rate, right outside the Museum of Free Derry, where we were standing with Eugene, used to be a block of high-rise apartment buildings.  For whatever reason, elite British troops were sent in, with live ammunition, to break up the main body of the protest.  Outside the apartment block (right beside where we stood), they opened fire on a crowd of protestors.  People were shot in several locations.  26 people were shot or wounded and 14 died (including several shot in the back as they ran away).  It's hard to believe - an elite force of British paratroopers, in full British Army uniforms, was not only sent to a civilian protest, it was also given orders to fire live ammunition in broad daylight and in front of countless witnesses and the media against a group that was only rumoured to be armed.

Mural from a famous photo showing people carrying the first shooting victim of Bloody Sunday.  The bishop on the right went back to assist the victim, despite more shots coming his way.  The paratrooper has been added to the photo scene - notice he is standing on a civil rights banner, and the only colour is the red blood on the banner.

The original Free Derry sign was painted on the end of a block of flats.  The flats were demolished, but the wall with the sign saved.  It gets repainted all the time to support various other "kinship" causes: Palestinian colours, pink for gay rights, etc.  The day we were there it was red and black for some kind of anarchist cause.  However, between 10 in the morning and when we saw it around 3:00pm, someone had thrown paint on it.  Some tensions still simmer below the surface!

Apparently people like throwing paint on things they don't like.  This is a monument to some religious figure who defended the city or something around 1680 - with paint thrown on it.  Really, a person 400 years ago was of the wrong religion and you're steamed about it?  There's WAY more history/baggage here than I can imagine...

This is the actual banner carried by the protestors during the Bloody Sunday march.

In the top-left of the right-hand photo is a young man walking behind some people helping one of the shooting victims.  He is wearing the green jacket pictured.  Moments later he is shot by British paratroopers, and the exit hole on the right side of the jacket is from the bullet that killed him.

Rather than eliminate the civil rights protests, Bloody Sunday galvanized resistance against the government and against British rule among Catholics and Nationalists.  The IRA had no trouble finding persons sympathetic to its cause after this point.  Armed conflict was common, and the IRA often seen as defenders among many Catholics and Nationalists who considered themselves under attack from government forces.  It was a major turning point in the Troubles.

Some months after Bloody Sunday, an overwhelming force of British Army troops was sent to clear out IRA forces from Bogside.  When the IRA forces in the area heard of it, they saw the writing on the wall and cleared out, so little was found by the huge army force when they arrived.  From that point until the late 1990s and the peace process, it appears Bogside was effectively an army-occupied area, possibly the most militarized in Northern Ireland.  (According to Eugene, the army had a frigate and an aircraft carrier stationed off the coast, apparently (though I'm not sure where he learned this) with orders to strike Bogside should anything go wrong with the clearout/occupation operation.)

Eugene when on to explain a bit about the post-1972 troubles, and in particular the laying down of arms by the IRA in the late 1990s and the peace process that is still on-going.  There was a government inquiry into the shooting shortly after it happened, and while it contained gentle reprimands of the army, it was generally considered a whitewash.  There was another inquiry from 1998-2010, and it finally declared that the shootings were unjustified and unjustifiable, and that the protestors were all unarmed; it resulted in an official apology from British PM David Cameron.

I'm sure Wikipedia has a more complete account of the subject, but this is what Eugene told us.  How does he know all this?  Because he lived it.  He's Catholic, and grew up in Bogside.  He remembers Bloody Sunday.  He was arrested countless times and interrogated/beaten by police, often for days at a time with no opportunity to see a solicitor, all in order to force some kind of confession (this was common among his community).  While growing up in this environment, he joined the IRA at age 14, and learned bomb-making skills and weapons skills and (without giving us details) experienced things that even hardened army soldiers might not ever endure.  At age 17 he was charged, convicted and spent 14 years in prison.  While in prison, he obtained a teaching degree and a sociology degree, and educated himself in many ways - including, quite apparently, by better-informing his political beliefs and position.  He has a son and a daughter, ages 19 and 14, and he only told them he spent time in prison last year.  (He didn't want to glamourize it, or to colour his children's beliefs - he thinks they should make up their own minds.)  He still looks forward to a day when Northern Ireland is Irish (he only allows Irish Gaelic to be spoken in his home), and seems satisfied that the peace process is continuing, though he doubts an independent Northern Ireland will be achieved in his lifetime.  In the meantime, he's leading a normal but very politically-aware life.

Eugene was precise and firm in his speech and his thoughts, like a military commander with excellent political savvy.  I can't imagine what it was like to live through those times, or to be involved like he was.  While I might not agree with violent means to achieve certain ends, I can't fault him for not thinking through all of his actions thoroughly and completely and finding personally-sufficient justifications for the path he chose.

Sarah and I arrived in Derry thinking we'd have a quick stopover - and only hours later we had this mind-blowing opportunity to speak with someone who had lived through the Troubles at point-blank range and could give us the most intimate perspective imaginable.  Our discussion was all too brief, but it was moving and very memorable.

Hopefully Sarah and I will be able to hear more perspectives on the Troubles before leaving Northern Ireland.  We hear echoes of our visit to Sarajevo here - only through multiple stories do you start to see a complete picture.