Internment, Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday
Internment without trial and the killing of unarmed civilians by British paratroopers in Ballymurphy and Derry turn many nationalists against the state and swell the IRA.
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office (2010)
- Ballymurphy Inquest: Findings — Mrs Justice Siobhan Keegan, Coroners Service for Northern Ireland (2021)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA — Richard English, Macmillan (2003)
On 9 August 1971 the army arrested 342 men under the Special Powers Act and held them without trial. Almost all were nationalists; no loyalists were picked up in the first swoop, and many detainees had no link to the IRA. Some were subjected to “deep interrogation” techniques. In Ballymurphy, west Belfast, paratroopers shot dead ten civilians over the following days, including a priest and a mother of eight; an inquest in 2021 found that all ten were entirely innocent.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- Ballymurphy Inquest: Findings — Mrs Justice Siobhan Keegan, Coroners Service for Northern Ireland (2021)
On Sunday 30 January 1972 the same regiment opened fire on an anti-internment march in Derry. Thirteen people were killed and a fourteenth died later; most were young men, several were shot in the back. The army claimed they had come under attack. The Widgery tribunal largely cleared the soldiers within weeks, which the families never accepted.
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office (2010)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
After a twelve-year inquiry, Lord Saville reported in 2010 that none of the victims posed any threat and that the killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable”. Prime Minister David Cameron apologised in the Commons, and crowds in Derry’s Guildhall Square cheered. Only one soldier, “Soldier F”, was ever tried, and he was acquitted in 2025.
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office (2010)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
In 1972, the year after internment, 479 people were killed, the worst of the Troubles. Stormont was suspended that March.
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing (1999)
Proof that the British army was not a neutral peacekeeper. Innocent people were shot and then smeared as gunmen and bombers for decades. Justice has still not been done.
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office (2010)
- Ballymurphy Inquest: Findings — Mrs Justice Siobhan Keegan, Coroners Service for Northern Ireland (2021)
Many unionists accept Saville's findings but point out that soldiers faced daily IRA attacks, that far more people were killed by paramilitaries, and that pursuing elderly veterans while former paramilitaries walk free is unequal justice.
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Why it matters today
Bloody Sunday is the event nationalists most often name when explaining why young men joined the IRA. The families' decades-long campaign for the truth, vindicated in 2010, is a model for other victims, while the failure of later prosecutions and the British government's attempts to limit legacy cases remain deeply painful. Veterans' groups, meanwhile, argue soldiers are being singled out.