Bloody Sunday (1972)

Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry, in Northern Ireland. Thirteen men were killed outright and the death of another man four months later has been attributed to his gunshot injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. Other protesters were injured by shrapnel, rubber bullets or batons; two were run down by British Army vehicles; and some were beaten. All of those shot were Catholics. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) to protest against internment without trial. The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment ("1 Para"), the same battalion implicated in the Ballymurphy massacre several months before.

Two investigations were held by the Government of the United Kingdom. The Widgery Tribunal, held in the aftermath, largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of blame. It described some of the soldiers' shooting as "bordering on the reckless", but accepted their claims that they shot at gunmen and bomb-throwers. The report was widely criticised as a whitewash.

The Saville Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville of Newdigate, was established in 1998 to reinvestigate the incident much more thoroughly. Following a 12-year investigation, Saville's report was made public in 2010 and concluded that the killings were "unjustified" and "unjustifiable". It found that all of those shot were unarmed, that none were posing a serious threat, that no bombs were thrown and that soldiers "knowingly put forward false accounts" to justify their firing. Most of the soldiers denied shooting the named victims but also denied shooting anyone by mistake. "Soldier F" admitted that there was evidence he had killed four of the victims, but claimed they were armed. On publication of the report, British Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologised. Following this, police began a murder investigation into the killings. One former soldier was charged with murder, but the case was dropped when evidence was deemed inadmissible. Following an appeal by the victims' families, the Public Prosecution Service resumed the prosecution. In September 2025 the former paratrooper known as "Soldier F" went on trial for two murders, as well as five attempted murders, and was found not guilty.

Bloody Sunday came to be regarded as one of the most significant events of the Troubles because so many civilians were killed by forces of the state, in view of the public and the press. It was the highest number of people killed in a shooting incident during the conflict and is considered the worst mass shooting in Northern Irish history. Bloody Sunday fuelled Catholic and Irish nationalist hostility to the British Army and worsened the conflict. Support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) rose and there was a surge of recruitment into the organisation, especially locally. The Republic of Ireland held a national day of mourning and huge crowds besieged and burnt down the chancery of the British Embassy in Dublin.