[lbo-talk] Bloody Sunday, 40 years on

[James Heartfield]

The Guardian today runs a piece on Bloody Sunday, when 13 civil rights protestors were shot dead. 40 years on they note that the marchers were exonerated and David Cameron had apologised. That was not how they reported it at the time. Then they blamed the demonstrators for the killings:

‘The organisers of the demonstration, miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield.’ (Guardian, 1 February 1972)

When Lord Widgery's report into the killings was widely denounced as a whitewash, the Guardian disagreed. ‘Lord Widgery’s report is not one-sided’, it led. Indeed they questioned Widgery’s view that trouble could have been avoided if the army had kept a low-key attitude: ‘To ask anyone to keep a low-key attitude if persistently stoned is to ask superhuman behaviour.’ (Guardian, 20 April 1972)