NORTHERN IRELAND: DERRY/LONDONDERRY, PART II (THE BOGSIDE)

 July 9, 2024

We met our guide, whom Bob had booked through Derry Blue Badge Guide, at Guild Hall, a beautiful building originally used for tax collecting and as a town hall and now the seat of local government. The current building was erected in 1912 after the previous one burned down. During "The Troubles," which I'll explain in a minute, this building suffered damage in multiple terror attacks. When Bill Clinton visited Derry in 1995, he gave a speech in the large square in front of the Guildhall.

 

Our guide was excellent. When "The Troubles" began in the late 1960s, he left the country in order to escape being embroiled in the conflict. He returned when it all ended. Though he was not present, he was well-informed. He knew and was passionate about Derry's and Ireland's history, particularly from the time "The Troubles" began in the 1960s to 1998 when they ended.

So, what are "The Troubles"? On the surface, it was a civil war between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, which is how most people see it--a religious war. In reality, the conflict really centered more around who would rule that section of the country--Great Britain or the Irish. It is just that the pro-British Rule side tended to be Protestant and the Irish Nationalists were overwhelmingly Catholic. But it went even deeper than that. We learned that a central issue was voting rights, which were given only to landowners, e.g., Protestants. The majority of Catholics had no rights.

We began by walking through the Catholic neighborhood that had been the scene of so much bloodshed and terror, and where our guide grew up as one of eleven children in a Catholic family. He told us that his dad was part of the civil rights protestors. This area is outside the city walls and is known as The Bogside. It got its name from the marshland that used to be here.

A three-day altercation in this neighborhood in August 1969, known as the Battle of the Bogside and fought between the Catholic/Irish Nationalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary/Loyalists, led to more violence in other Northern Ireland locations and is generally seen as the beginning of The Troubles.

A picture from the same neighborhood shows a scene from the battle.

This was an interesting poster: "We serve neither king nor NATO but Ireland." It refers to ICA (Irish Citizens' Army, established in 1913) and INLA (Irish National Liberation Army, established in 1974), and then notes "We owe our allegiance to the working class." 

These groups wanted to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and unite it with the Irish Republic.

The story of Derry is told on its walls. Between 1994 and 2006, Bogside artists painted twelve murals on the walls of local apartment buildings. The first one we came across, the Mothers and Sisters mural, pays tribute to female protestors and those who lost family members during hunger strikes in prison. The close up of the face in the top center of the wall shows Peggy O'Hara, whose son was one of the hunger strikers. Peggy went on the be elected to the assembly in 2007. She died in 2015. The other woman, top right, is Margaret Devine, sister to Mickey Devine who also died during The Troubles. The little girl is pointing towards a peace mural on a nearby building.

Nearby is a grouping of four Nobel Peace Prize winners. Three of the faces should be familiar to you: Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa. You probably don't know the man in the top left corner: John Hume. He was an Irish nationalist and founder/leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. The Nobel committee gives him credit for bringing to pass the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended most of the conflict of The Troubles.

John Hume is also in this Civil Rights Mural--bottom row in the center.

One of the most significant events of the conflict was Bloody Sunday, a massacre of 26 unarmed civilians by British soldiers in January 1972 during what began as a peaceful march protesting internment without trial. Thirteen men died at the scene and another died of his wounds later. Some were shot in the back as they ran away, others were shot as they tried to help the wounded, two were run over by British army vehicles, and some were beaten. All the dead and wounded were Catholics and unarmed. 

Our guide told us that one witness, a former British soldier, saw it all from his apartment window. When he called it in to his superior, he was told to keep quiet. Authorities refused to take evidence from most of the eyewitnesses, and British soldiers' testimonies were altered to absolve them of wrongdoing. An investigation into the murders was finally opened 26 years after Bloody Sunday (at which the aforementioned witness testified), but it wasn't until 2010 that a report concluded that the killings were unjustified.

A monument to those who lost their lives was erected two years after the massacre. Seven of the victims were teenagers.

This mural depicts the young activist Bernadette Devlin. Our guide confessed he was--and still is--completely in love with her. (She is 77 years old, about 10 years older than he is.) Born in 1947, she was just 22 when The Troubles began, but she had been involved in civil rights protests before that. The year before, she had been elected to the Westminster Parliament at age 21, the youngest MP at the time and the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster until 2015 when a 20 year old was elected. For her participation in the Battle of the Bogside, she was convicted of incitement to riot and served six months in prison. She was a witness to Bloody Sunday and survived an assassination attempt in 1981 during which she was shot nine times in front of her children. She has remained politically active throughout her life.

Our guide told us that this famous Entering Free Derry sign painted on a gable wall was borrowed from a similar slogan used by students involved in free speech protests at Berkeley University in California. Our guide said that Derry civil rights leaders traveled to Berkeley three or four times for training regarding non-violent protests, but I haven't been able to find any information corroborating that claim. In any case, between 1969 and 1972 the sign represented the resistance of the locals to rampages and invasions by government "security forces." 

The graffiti scrawled on the lower half refers to a man who has been a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), an illegal dissident paramilitary group, for most of his adult life and has served many prison sentences related to his IRA activities. He is charged with current IRA membership as detected by police surveillance in July 2020. He lives in the Republic of Ireland but is wanted in Northern Ireland. If extradited, he would be tried in a European court.

Nearby is a metal sculpture of an Easter lily commemorating the 1916 Easter Uprising, part of the earlier battle for independence when armed Irish nationalists revolted against British rule during Easter Week in 1916. It was the first armed conflict of the revolution, and although it was quickly put down and sixteen of the leaders were executed, it helped build support for Irish independence.

Many of the murals were in newspaper-style black and white. By the way, these murals have to be refreshed pretty often because of weather-caused erosion.

The Petrol Bomber, a young boy holds a petrol 
bomb during the Battle of the Bogside

Bloody Sunday - Bishop Edward Daly leads a
group of men carrying the body of the first
fatality: Jackie Duddy.
Note the soldier trampling the Civil Rights sign.

A garden to honor the Catholic priests who stood
with the protestors, including Bishop Daly

The Victims of Bloody Sunday

The names of those killed on Bloody Sunday surround the artistic rendering of an eternal flame, and the names of the injured are painted among the leaves of an oak tree--the symbol of Derry.

Che Guevara is a hero in Ireland not just because of his anti-imperialist struggles and protest movements, but also because his ancestors came from Galway.

The Free Derry movement ended in July 1972 when the British army invaded the neighborhood and tore down the barricades with bulldozers in an assault known as Operation Motorman. The mural below left shows a solder battering down a door and the mural on the right shows residents running from explosions and tear gas.

I love the picture on the sign below, which reminds me of photos of MLK's civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965.

Even young people in Derry got involved in the rioting when they weren't in school. The mural below left is called Saturday Matinee, referencing the lost childhood for many as they swapped going to a movie for participating in a riot. In contrast, the Peace Mural below right shows a dove emerging from an oak leaf.

Things are a lot quieter in Derry these days, but there are indications of bubbling undercurrents.

One of the things our guide told us is that Northern Ireland is on the path to freedom from Great Britain and reunification with the rest of Ireland. He said that's what everyone wants, and if both sides vote for it, Britain will let it happen. But when we got to our B&B and we asked the owner about that, he said Northern Ireland wants to stay with Britain as it is less corrupt. Two very different stories.

Well, that was the end of our tour, and really, after all that conflict and emotion, we needed to cool down.

A little retail therapy yielded yet another sighting of my friend Frida, painted by an Irish artist. Of course, I bought the card.

It had been a long, somber, overwhelming day. We were ready to find dinner and check in at our bed and breakfast.