It was a cold but sunny Sunday on January 30, 1972. The Northern Irish city of Londonderry was gearing up for massive protests. For many families it was a pleasant outing.
“It wasn’t like an Orange March with parades, it was messier,” Liam Wray recalled. “Everyone chatted to each other, there was an exuberant mood.”
But what started as a happy day ended in a horrific carnage that would go down in history as… Bloody Sunday. That day marked a drastic turning point in the Northern Ireland conflict.
Liam was eighteen years old at the time. Together with his parents, brothers and sister, he took part in the civil rights demonstration, as they had done before. They protested against the British government detaining Catholics without trial.
The city of Londonderry (Derry for Catholics) had been the epicenter of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement for several years. At that time Catholics had only limited voting rights, they could not claim social housing and were discriminated against in the labor market. Inspired by the black civil rights movement in America, Catholic Northern Irishmen took to the streets to demonstrate for equal rights.
Cold-blooded execution
The Northern Ireland government had banned all demonstrations in early 1972, but residents of predominantly Catholic Londonderry ignored the ban. Thousands took to the streets. The protest march was supposed to end at the stately Guildhall in the center of town, but British soldiers blocked the route with barricades. The protest march turned towards the Catholic neighborhood of the Bogside.
From then on it escalated. “At one point people started shouting, ‘They’re moving into the neighborhood.’ Soldiers going into the Bogside: we hadn’t seen that before,” recalls Liam Wray. “We all started running.”
In the chaos, Liam lost his father and brother Jim. “Not long after that, the soldiers started firing live ammunition. The sound of real bullets was unmistakable, it sounded like a whip. Pieces of concrete shattered.”
The whole family managed to get home safely. Only Liam’s 22-year-old brother Jim was missing. His father went back into town to find his son, but heard from neighbors that he had died. “A soldier had shot him in the back. An eyewitness said he was still seriously injured, but the soldier shot him in the back a second time. It was a cold-blooded execution.”
When his father broke the news to his mother, she let out a long, drawn out scream. “I’ll never forget it. It went to the marrow and bone.”
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