Bloody Sunday: Massacre in Northern Ireland

Although I found most of this book exciting and insightful to read towards the end it started getting repiticious. Most of the people had the around the same thing to say, so after the 250th page I had known all I needed to know basically. There was new information in some letters, but for the most part they had the same thing to say. It was very helpful in fully understanding Bloody Sunday and so that is why I have to give it 4 stars.

The eyewitness accounts of Sunday, 30 January 1972, illustrate in stark detail the reality of what happened to civil rights demonstrators that fateful day in Derry. These accounts dispute the hurried conclusions of the British government's Widgery Report which attempted to cover up the British Army's gross misconduct. The evidence in this book is compelling, with independent eyewitnesses unknowingly corroborating each others' accounts of soldiers shooting unarmed and fleeing demonstrators and bystanders. It's raw and sometimes painful reading, the story of ordinary people caught up in bloody and violent events. For anyone who wishes to understand the calls for justice and the re-opening of an honest inquiry into Bloody Sunday, this book is must reading.

This book recounts the massacre of Bloody Sunday; January 30, 1972, in Derry City and its subsequent official cover-up by Lord Widgery. It was a peaceful human rights march of some 20,000 until two British army regiments started firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Though dozens of international news reporters witnessed it all, not a single one of the murderers was ever charged; much less imprisoned. Evidentiary audio-tapes of army transmissions indicating murderous intent were rejected by Widgery, as was the testimony of anybody except the perpetrators. Soldiers shot a total of 30, most of them boys, most in the back; of whom 14 died. The subsequent brazen cover-up and award of the Order of the British Empire to its Commanding Officer, Col. Derek Wilford, demonstrated the incorrigible nature of British rule in Occupied Ireland. Many of those human rights marchers later joined the IRA to fight for their freedom; of whom two died on hunger strike. Bloody Sunday was the third deadliest British terrorist atrocity in Ireland since 1969. This book, as the definitive work on that atrocity and its on-going official cover-up, demonstrates why the Irish still have no viable option but to take up arms. Nobody denies the truth of this book. Read it!