back to the partition settlement 51 years directly in hi on the street. If later.
mass movement on the streets. If internment ara notsucceta in putans down the revolt, then it appeared as if shootLink aemonstrators was the next stage. It became clear n all that the sectanar statelet was incapable of Created throush partition by the British ir democratically expressed Ireland wishes of the people Ireland and under the threat of 'immediate and terrible war any reform and istence. But Bloody sunday revealed sometins more important. If the brought down the Stormont regime and eventually grew over in a demand for the ending of partition, it would also find itself openly conIn Derry, January 1972, it The Derry march was organised by the Civil Rights Association in response to pressure from the the Northern Resistance Movement, an organisation supported by •he rovisionais i Peoples' Democracy. It protests against internment held in defiance of Faulkner's ban. Both the Provisionall and Official IRA had as. sured the organisers that they would not engage in any armed confrontation with the British Army on the day. There is no independent evidence to support either the Parachute Regiment's claim to have been fired on first, or the Widgery Report's acceptance of this as Heath and Whitelaw obviously decided that the time had come to take matters into their own hands. They suspended stormont for one year, but it never returned. Nationalists were overyca to see une ena of the sectoran But any hope that direct rule would lead to an improvement in the condi### "SOLDIERS FIRE FIRST Westminster, unemployment among Catholics compared to Protestants is worse than it was at the time of Bloody Sunday. This especially significant given the fact that more than a third of employment is in government services • Within the control of the impartial British Government.
Bloody Sunday represented the end of the civil rights period in the North of and revealed the true protagonists - Irish nationalists and the British state. After 20 years of war the situation is one of stalemate, militarily politically. Both sides recognise that the other cannot be defeated by Politically, the British government have repeatedly tried initiatives drain the pools in which the IRA swims - to take political support away from hem. The most promising of these has been the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which tried to woo Nationalists away from Sinn Fein by giving the Dublin Government some say in the affairs of The Agreement came about in response to increased support for Sinn ein following the Hunger Strike where, for the first time in ten years, d nass movement developed in suppor f the prisoners and against the Britist British have been unable to take this process forward, despite the efforts of 'eter Brooke. It was the Unionists, despite their divisions, who were the Some of this was undoubtedly nostalcia and the desire for the return of Stormont in some form. The more farsigntea thougat they coula extracteven stronger guarantees against Irish unity than provided in the Anglo Irish Agree. ment. Hence the demand that that the claim to the North be changed before Party (and the British Labour Party) seem quite happy to go along with Brooke, despite the fact that it pushed the question of unity into never-never land. SDLP leader, John Hume's tavoured solution is a Europe of the Regions' within the EEC, which unforthe Tory Party, even post-Thatcher.
It is not hard to see that in either of these developing scenarios, the politiIreland, will be critical for Republicans. Not all of the lessons of Bloody Sunday
fronting the British State.
quickly dashed. After twenty years of rule from : 13 die..Army accused of 'massacre'