Original subtitles

[SHE SIGHS]

You OK?

Mm.

Grand.

I'm going to show you a clip.

Press the space bar.

My God!

[CLIP]: The 32 contestants were today being put through their paces

in Dublin's Burlington Hotel as they rehearsed

for tonight's contest.

The winner will represent Ireland in the Miss World Competition

in London later this year.

Well, the striking thing, of course, is always the pretty face

and the figure to go with it.

We like a girl to be ladylike, know how to carry herself,

have poise and confidence.

Oh!

Oh, my God.

Did you see yourself in there?

I bloody did, aye.

That is I.

Oh, the '80s hair!

[SHE LAUGHS]

Isn't it great?

I didn't know how to put on make-up.

I had zero idea.

"Poise, elegance and ladylike"?

I was a fucking tomboy!

I remember going onto Miss Ireland then was...

That was an eye-opener.

I was really greenhorn.

I'd never been outside of Derry at that point.

I've always done things where it's nearly a form of escapism,

to not think about what I was going through.

I put on a character.

I wasn't me.

None of those people knew my experiences in the North.

Nobody knew that my brother was murdered.

None of them.

And I'm not a victim of the Troubles.

I survived the fucking Troubles and I survived all the shite

that was going with it.

I'm just a defiant, determined shit, and I'm going to get through it.

Nothing's going to beat me down.

I can't make sense of the past.

And sometimes I try not to think about it

and I can close myself off.

But, as I say, my absolute truth is I know Jim's gone.

For what?

I don't know.

I just feel really angry that so many people

in this part of Ireland

had to suffer the shit that they did.

Should it be Catholic, Protestant, policemen, soldiers,

everything in between.

[MUFFLED SHOUTS AND SCREAMS]

I remember...

I remember crying.

I remember feeling afraid.

I remember frightened... I remember feeling frightened.

And I can remember... I just remember me mammy.

I remember people were joyful.

I can remember the excitement, the butterflies in the stomach.

I remember just feeling so happy and loved.

I remember the first time... I remember...

I just remember...

...the anger that I had. ...flashing and guns going off...

[INDISTINCT VOICES OVERLAP]

My father always said to us...

..."Tell the truth.

"Tell the truth and shame the devil."

# In my memory #

# I will always see #

# The town that I have loved so well. #

I was born in the Bogside, in Derry.

Born at home.

Three-bedroomed house.

But people think,

"Oh, yous were lucky you had a three-bedroomed house,"

but there were three families.

There was a family in each room.

But I was too young... I slept in a drawer

because there was no room.

There's two siblings before me, so I was the third.

Happy days, looking back, you know?

There's some good times.

Some very sad times, but some good times.

All right, George?

Now you're in the heart of the Bogside.

99.9 Catholic nationalist area.

Great people.

Best people in the world.

IRA rules. [HE CHUCKLES]

Nice to meet you.

Where are you from, Berlin?

Yeah.

- This is me on the wall. - That's you?

- Yeah. - OK.

Come on, we'll get a photograph.

OK.

Folks tell me you could be here for the full day,

taking photographs,

all year round.

That's a signed copy of the T-shirt.

The museum now sell a few.

They make a few quid on them.

There's a souvenir.

This is me on the wall.

Yeah. Do you want a photograph?

Come on.

My name's Billy McVeigh.

Some people call me the wee man,

some people call Wee Bill.

Some people call me the best rioter in Derry.

[INTERVIEWER]: They did what?

Who is?

People called me that.

I probably was!

[SHOUTING]

People ask me, "What was it like in those days?"

And I'd said, "Well, if you weren't shot

"and you weren't caught, the craic was 90."

Yeah, good craic. It was good craic, yeah.

It was dangerous. Dangerous good craic.

Did the Troubles start off with the riots?

No, not at all.

# We shall overcome some day... #

It started off, we had the civil rights movement

a couple of months before it.

It was peaceful demonstrations.

# We'll walk hand in hand... #

What were people asking for?

Housing, jobs, mainly.

Housing and jobs, better conditions.

Catholics were second-class citizens, you know.

It was total discrimination It was clear to be seen.

Here a man is either a Protestant or a Catholic.

He is either with us or with them.

You knew there was a separation.

When you looked across the river,

it sort of just rang a bell in your head.

"They're all Protestant over there."

The divide was plain to be seen

because they all had good houses.

They also had better jobs.

If we had jobs at all, we were lucky.

So there was something in the air. You could tell.

The discrimination was going to explode.

It was going to come out.

Enough was enough.

I just remember there was a tension in the city.

And when you went round to the shop, you just could feel the atmosphere

was really charged.

And I remember people saying, "Oh, we've no jobs.

"We've outside toilets... we've no bathrooms."

And I thought about it and I said, "But that's me."

You know, that's exactly what...

We'd no... Nothing either.

We were just working-class Protestants,

working-class Catholics.

There was no difference.

Do you know what?

I was happy enough with the way my life was,

to tell you the truth.

Had a house, had my kids.

And my husband.

We didn't want our life to change.

I was very selfish that way.

I just wanted to live in this lovely, happy city

where everybody went out and got on.

Derry, Londonderry, whatever you want to call it.

Do you know this?

I'm so lucky for its lovely memories, sitting talking to you.

It is. It's great memories.

[ARCHIVE FOOTAGE]: Catholics call it Derry.

Protestants call it Londonderry.

My name's Jeanette Warke.

Proud to be a Derry woman,

or a Londonderry woman!

Which are you?

I'm a Londonderry woman.

Cause a whole uproar with the prods. "She said 'Derry'!"

Cause a whole lot with the Catholics. "She said 'Londonderry'!"

# We shall overcome some day... #

You know, Protestant people can be very proud, too.

You know, my mum would never have taken part in marches, never.

We didn't feel comfortable to go,

and we don't know anybody that was going anyway,

from our community.

And you kind of knew deep down that something was going to happen.

The atmosphere was electric.

"We're getting together here."

One of the main aims was "one man, one vote".

One person, one vote.

[CHANTING]

I remember the civil rights campaign.

I was 14, 15.

Maybe 15.

I was starting to become interested in politics.

Like "one man, one vote"...

who would be against one man, one vote?

Do you not think that it's more democratic to have

one man, one vote?

No, I don't.

[CHANTING]: One man, one vote! One man, one vote!

But you had to be a homeowner to have a vote.

[ARCHIVE FOOTAGE]: In local elections, the seven adults in this family

have only two votes... for the householder and his wife.

Very few Catholics owned their houses.

Hadn't got any money.

Paid rent.

So if a lot of Catholics didn't have votes at all,

whereas the Protestants, quite a few of them did own their houses.

And this is a crucial element in all of this.

The state of Northern Ireland was designed so that

there would be a permanent Protestant majority.

Ever since the partition of Ireland,

power has been monopolised by one party, the Unionist Party,

devoted to the British Crown and to the Protestant religion.

We were basically demanding equality

and we were being beat off the streets.

And don't forget, the police was predominantly Protestants, as well.

[SHOUTING]

[SCREAMS]

After the 2nd or 3rd March,

you went prepared for a riot.

People armed themselves.

That was the beginning of it.

[CHANTING]

We were being told that the civil rights movement was dangerous.

"Really dangerous people.

"And they're fighting our police and our...

"They are OUR police."

And I can remember my father saying, you know,

"All this civil rights carry-on is just a front for the IRA,"

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Your father was like the oracle, you know, in those days.

You didn't sort of...

Whatever he said was the fucking law, basically.

You know what I mean? He used to wear...

He had two pairs of glasses, you know. He had one on the point

of his nose and one up here, and he sort of alternated them

for looking at whatever he was looking at and reading the paper.

And he'd go, "Da, da, da..." And then he would go like this...

"Well, are you going to argue with that?

"There it is in black and white."

[DRUMS AND SHOUTING]

[ARCHIVE FOOTAGE]: The most violently anti-Catholic group is that led

by the Reverend Ian Paisley,

moderator of his own Free Presbyterian Church.

All our life and heritage is at stake.

Paisley was preaching suspicion.

He was preaching hate.

He might've had a grain of truth...

...and then a shovel full of shit along with it

So he was sowing fear,

petty much like the right wing in America do,

you know, to their people.

Romanism has controlled in this land for many centuries,

and Romanism has bred poverty and ignorance

and priestcraft and superstition.

Fear is a great motivator, you know?

"Oh, if you don't do something now..."

...oh, all was lost.

Protestant culture was gone.

We as Protestants have always been British,

and we intend to remain and stay British.

The Roman Catholics want to be under a united Ireland.

"Let me tell you that the whole thing is constructed by Rome

"against the Protestant people!"

I thought he was great.

Like, I used to go to the rallies religiously.

It felt like you were a part of something big.

No surrender! [CHEERING]

You're focused heavily on my...

...prejudicial past.

Yeah, I know.

Because it's important to understand.

- It's... - Because you're trying to make sense

out of something that maybe I've never even made sense out of,

you know what I mean?

Like being empathetic, you know?

I would've seen anybody who was empathetic

or anybody who had any feelings for "the other", you know?

As they were as bad as the other type.

So when you say "the other", you're talking about Catholics?

Yeah.

[SHOUTING]

This is Londonderry.

The police have just made their first baton charge.

They're now inside the Bogside area,

but the crowds are pushing them back.

There's been another fusillade of stones flying into the police.

[SHOUTING]

I mean, thinking back on it, Battle of the Bogside was '69.

I was 17.

Only kids.

It was a three-day riot.

Very violent.

But we kept the police at bay.

Come back up here, boys. Come up here.

They're going back up.

Come on back. Come on!

Everybody was angry because the police used to

come to the Bogside in the middle of night

and break windows and smash doors,

just to get their own back, if you like.

Even the women were in the streets, making petrol bombs.

And the police were there to protect us, really, weren't they?

I remember standing, I had the pram with me, and looking at them.

And it just got to you, you know?

Why...

Why are they suffering like that?

What did you think was going to happen?

Oh, I thought we were all going to get shot,

killed, blew up, everything.

The city was finished.

I did despair.

[ARCHIVE FOOTAGE]: Inside the Catholic Bogside area, the second day

of siege is under way, and barricades at every street

keep visitors and the police outside.

I never prayed as hard in my life.

I did. I just felt everything was over for us.

I did, honestly.

And then it just escalated, really, didn't it?

[NEWSREADER]: After Londonderry, the conflict spread,

and Protestant and Catholic gangs fought savage battles

in the streets of Belfast.

About 150 yards from my house...

...the sky was absolutely on fire.

All red.

Houses blazing.

And me and my father and my granda,

who was 76...

...were in a small room in the back of the house.

And my father had a lump hammer.

And my granda was working a set of rosary beads.

He was praying.

And my da... I remember my da's face.

My da wasn't fear'd.

There was no fear in his face.

He was ready to go, he was ready for battle.

And he said to me, "Grab your Harley bat.

"If anybody comes in here, me and you's getting into them."

There was whole streets being burnt out...

...by Protestant extremists.

The world had turned chaotic.

Who do you think did this to your house?

It was no Protestant that I know that done it.

Do you know what I mean? I dare say, like...

...with Paisley agitation and different things

would be responsible for a lot of it.

If there is no solution, the alternative

is too terrible for words.

The alternative is civil war.

And what must be realised by everybody on all sides

is that nobody gains from this.

On one side, what use is one man, one vote

if you're not there to exercise it?

And on the other side, what is the use of maintaining a situation

of privilege and power over a desert?

The price of no solution is total destruction.

[MILITARY BAND PLAYS]

I arrived in British Honduras on the 25th of November 1968,

and became 18 on the 26th of November, the day after.

What a birthday present, eh?

Sun, sea, sand, palm trees, beautiful women.

You name it.

Every day was new, every hour was new.

Every minute was new with what you did.

It was brilliant.

Oh, I forgot to add that I got married just before I went,

as well, by the way.

My name's Tom Wharton.

I came from a military family.

My grandfather got five campaign medals in the Boer War.

And on a Sunday afternoon when everybody had had a few drinks,

the medals would come out, and pinned on my chest.

And I'd walk around with these medals on at 11 years old.

So I decided to join the Army.

We were young lads.

We didn't read newspapers.

You know, if you found one lying around you'd pick it up and

look to the sports pages and then throw it down again.

We were a million miles away from what was happening in the UK.

[BAND PLAYS]

Oh, well done!

So we then started getting briefings about the riots that had been

going on and the killings in some places

that had been going on.

We said, "Where's all this happening?"

"Oh, it's happening in Northern Ireland."

This was the scene as a new batch of British troops arrived to take

over security duties at Belfast, Bogside and other strategic points.

[ROCK MUSIC]

[SHOUTING]

We were going in as kind of saviours.

We'd been brought in to stand in the middle, basically,

and to stop them killing each other.

At the start, there was a real, real tense situation because people

didn't know what these guys were going to do.

I mean, I'd never heard an English voice before The Troubles.

And I didn't know what the fuck they were saying.

And then...

...all of a sudden, you see these wee women coming with trays of tea

and coffee, and the whole heat's taken out of the situation.

There was that sense of, "Well, thank God they're here now.

"Maybe a bit of calm will descend."

And I remember bringing out biscuits.

You did?

Aye. I think it was Rich Tea.

You got both Catholics and Protestants competing with the tea.

So they'd come from one side with a tray of tea and sandwiches,

and you'd eat those, and then you'd turn round

and from the Protestant side they'd come along with another...

And you think, "Oh, God I'm full!"

You know, because you're not getting much exercise

when you're stood on the end of a street, you know.

"Will you come in for breakfast?"

And the people on both sides were so pleasant.

It was unbelievable.

You know?

What's all this about?

Why are we here?

There you are now.

That's for after your lunch or after your dinner.

- Thank you very much. - Thank you.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

You've got to remember, most of the soldiers came from areas

just like this.

Middlesbrough and Scarborough and Halifax.

We came from areas like they lived in.

You know, you thought to yourself,

"Good grief. I'm home."

They were smiling and laughing and there was...

...people talking to them just like they were decent,

normal human beings, and...

So...

...that was the early days.

We didn't know what was round the corner, really, then, did we?

I was doing O-levels at this time.

I remember my father saying...

He says, "This is the start of something huge."

I hadn't a clue what he was talking about,

and he wouldn't elaborate.

But he saw something that I didn't.

My father was a republican, had been a republican,

had been a former commander of Belfast during the 1940s

for a while.

And so the people who he classified as friends

were always committed to armed struggle.

They were not civil rights people.

These people were out-and-out revolutionaries.

And I would say that even by that stage they were...

...rubbing their hands and plotting.

And...

...probably talking about raising an army to fight.

It was tailor-made for them

because they had an enemy right in front of them

in a green uniform.

The British Army.

The British Army!

They had foreigners on Irish soil.

It was 1921, War of Independence all over again.

It was tailor-made for a revolution, and these guys went for it.

They went for it

like racing drivers.

And what they were plotting, is that what became...

The Provisional IRA.

And that's what happened.

The IRA, totally dormant.

Nobody even talking about it.

Suddenly the unsaid was being said.

You know, "We want a united Ireland."

[THEY PLAY 'JINGLE BELLS']

Your whole day was preoccupied with the riots.

From the minute you got out of school,

it's all about the riots.

[MUSIC: "Baba O'Riley" by The Who]

Where was the riots?

Who was rioting?

What was on fire?

Every day there was trouble somewhere.

My name's Richard Moore,

and I'm delighted to be here today.

I would've been probably eight or nine years of age then.

# I don't need to fight #

# To prove I'm right #

# I don't need to be forgiven Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah... #

When they come back...

And again when they come round.

It's amazing the things that become your normal language,

like water cannons, rubber bullets.

# It's only teenage wasteland... #

We had dog shit thrown at us.

Loads of it, and they'd get it on a stick and go...

[HE LAUGHS] You know, you'd be ducking,

and there's things flying all over the place.

And the kids loved it.

And what are you going to do against kids?

[SHOUTING]

My second tour, 1971, the whole atmosphere had changed.

Some Catholic communities hated the British by now.

It's quite inevitable that if you are going to pursue

a counter-terrorist campaign, you have to go in amongst

the population which harbours the guerrilla

and gives him sustenance.

You cannot do this without causing a degree of bitterness.

[BRITISH SOLDIER]: Well, I hope you realise we have to come round

and look at these houses from time to time.

Oh, I know. Yes, I know that. I understand.

I mean, we just have to make absolutely certain there are no

- weapons or anything in this area. - I know, yes. - Thank you.

We became known as a republican family.

We were singled out for supporting a united Ireland

and classing ourselves as Irish.

They were raiding our house to see if we were either hiding

guns or gunmen.

Has anybody approached you at any time to join the IRA

- or take part in any activities whatsoever in this area? - No.

- Not at all? - No.

Are you absolutely sure?

Positive.

It's always... It's the feet. [SHE STAMPS]

The feet. That's one of the things that I remember.

That "bang, bang, bang, bang!"

The stairs just literally being pounded in.

"Come on, come on, get out of your fucking beds!"

And it's...

...just all young girls in the room.

These weren't the same people that were sitting on the wall

that I was handing biscuits to.

They were angry and they were shouting and they were

wrecking the place, and...

...you know, dragging us out of bed and...

And when they eventually left,

there was no "sorry... we didn't find anything"...

there was nothing.

The new army searches have brought a rash of complaints

from Roman Catholic residents.

The Army, for their part, claimed they used minimum force to enter

the house and suggest that perhaps local residents had done it

in order to win sympathy for the republican cause.

I've been over in England quite a few times, and I think to myself,

"How would they feel if this was going on in their city?

"How would they feel?

"Would there be an uproar against it?

"Or would people just comply?"

Hold on. I'm not finished.

[LAUGHTER]

You blokes are standing in the middle over here and,

strictly speaking, you can't take sides with it,

Protestants or Catholics.

Is it really possible to do that, Tom?

No, I don't think...

I get embarrassed when I see it. Why?

For one thing, I'm sat there going, "Hm, hm, hm..."

And for another thing, I don't know. It's just embarrassing.

God. I mean, look at the hair, for one thing.

So you go into a Protestant area.

They give you tea, they give you cakes. They're friendly.

You go into a Catholic area,

they throw bottles, they throw stones and they shoot at you.

So it's only natural you're going to be biased.

I'm biased. I'm biased.

How do you feel about Catholics now?

I am a Catholic.

And I just... I don't like the Irish Catholics over here.

Not everyone out there is out there to kill you.

But there are some.

News of the murders has undoubtedly shocked people here,

and there's a wave of sympathy for the Army.

Apparently, no-one saw anything in the pub where the young soldiers

had been drinking, and no-one could explain how they were lured out

to be shot at close range in the head and left dying,

heaped on each other at the side of the ditch.

The IRA killed a couple of soldiers.

People feared then that the thing was escalating.

"Who would be next?", you know?

We would have seen ourselves as British.

So "Brits out"... what? Does that... Does that mean me?

You know, it wasn't like one night there was, "Ahh!"

It wasn't like that.

It sort of crept in and crept in and crept in

till it became the big monster that sort of everybody feared was now

on our doorstep type of thing.

Shortly after that, there was bombs and, you know, blah, blah.

And, you know, it was sort of starting to move on

to another level.

[NEWSREADER]: Victims were not restricted to the shooting war

between IRA and British soldiers.

The savagery of urban terrorism was indiscriminate.

We just couldn't understand why the city was getting blew up.

It was just horrific.

I mean, there wasn't a Saturday that passed that you weren't caught up

in either CS gas or rioting or bombs or something.

You more or less felt like a prisoner in your own home.

But you didn't know what you were going to walk into.

The fear of God set in then.

Trust me.

Our whole tactics changed.

The IRA weren't messing around.

They were killing people.

So you've got to come up with something.

And that's the only thing we had.

Internment.

[ARCHIVE]: The British government may detain, without trial,

anyone they suspect of terrorism.

On the 9th of August, the British swept in

and they arrested over 300 individuals.

They were not the right people.

The Provisional IRA was relatively brand-new.

So they didn't know who they were.

But they knew all the old-timers from the '50s

and they knew who the civil rights people were.

So they arrested a lot of civil rights people

and they arrested a lot of old republicans who weren't involved.

[ARCHIVE]: Ulster's Catholics felt that both house-to-house searching

and the policy of internment were directed at them

rather than at the Protestants.

All those things were there,

give you a sense of a community that was...

...under siege at times.

But, in all honesty, I have to say, I don't remember feeling terrified.

I genuinely don't.

You know, you would almost describe it as exciting.

It was mad. It was like a movie.

[EXPLOSION]

Children anywhere else in the world, you would play cowboys and Indians.

We used to play soldiers and IRA men.

[MUSIC PLAYS]

And in your games, who won?

[HE LAUGHS] I...

I don't know if they ever had a winner,

but if there was going to be a winner

it would've been the IRA, wouldn't it?

[HE LAUGHS]

Oh...

# Armoured cars and tanks and guns #

# Trained to take away our sons #

# But every man would stand behind the men behind the wire... #

This song, which British people would consider in bad taste,

has become the popular anthem of the internees.

The people in England don't really know what it's all about.

# Heedless of the crying children #

# Dragging fathers from their beds #

# Beating sons while helpless mothers #

# Watched the blood flow from their heads... #

The Catholic people just can stand no more.

# On the people, step together #

# Proudly firmly on your way #

# Never fear and never falter #

# Till our boys come home to stay #

# Armoured cars and tanks and guns Came to take away our sons... #

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

Did you join the IRA?

Yeah.

Tell me about that.

What's to tell you?

I joined it. [HE CHUCKLES]

What made you want to join?

For our country, for Ireland, to get the Brits out.

It's more or less a defiance,

making a stand...

...against...

...armoured cars and tanks and guns, they say.

I mean, when you mention the IRA,

people think this is a team of people come out of space

or somewhere... the IRA was in your street.

They were in every street.

So the IRA were the people.

You'd be trained on guns, etc.

And back in Belfast, you'd be on active service.

And how did that feel to join? Brilliant.

I felt ten foot high.

As far as I was concerned,

I was doing the right thing, absolute right thing,

the patriotic thing

to fight these foreigners who were on Irish soil.

Before internment, the IRA had killed ten soldiers.

By the end of the year, they had killed 40.

[RADIO]: Take extreme caution in the area.

My unit, in a period of four months, had five killed

and over 100 wounded.

Gunshot wounds, bricks,

bottles in the face,

nail-bomb blasts...

...in a British city.

It got really serious.

What does your wife think about you being over here?

The wife's very calm.

You know, I haven't been long married. She's very calm.

She doesn't understand why all these British blokes

should be getting killed and that.

All I get is, why don't you kill the Irish so-and-sos and all this?

You know, they keep saying, "What are you going back over for?"

I say, "It's my job. I've got to go over."

- Would you like to go home, Tom? - Yes.

You mean, would I go home if I had the chance?

Well, if someone came up to me and said that there's a plane

at the airport, there's your ticket,

I'd burn his hand with friction.

But I've got a job to do, and the Army's needed here.

I've got a wife at home. She doesn't want me to be here.

I'd rather be with her.

But my job says I come out here so I'll follow it.

Have ever been tempted to buy yourself out,

to get shot of this place?

Er...

I've thought about it. Erm...

This time, in fact, this tour. Last tour, no. This tour, yes.

I've seriously thought about it.

Will you?

Doubtful.

I had the conversations with my wife

about whether I wanted to stay in or not.

And, er, she just said, "It's up to you."

There was always the chance...

always the chance... that I wouldn't be coming back.

And she took it pretty hard when I got blown up.

She really did.

Er...

The last thing I remember is a wooft... gone.

That's it. Wooft... gone.

[EXPLOSION]

Down at the bottom of the brick wall here,

they'd taken two bricks out.

Then they put PE behind that

and then concrete behind the PE.

What's PE?

Plastic explosive.

Then they had filled the front of that hole full of bolts and nails

and everything else that could find and packed it in.

So they just triggered it

and that blew all the nails out into the alleyway.

Er...

I had about 140 stitches up my back of my left leg,

I had shrapnel in my right leg,

that was broken where one piece had gone right through.

And, as you can see, that hand absolutely shattered.

Those fingers were, er...

Well, the hand was almost severed.

Apart from that, I was all right.

[HE CHUCKLES]

It's the old saying, the old adage.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

So are they freedom fighters or terrorists?

What did you think they were? Er, terrorists.

Nothing more than terrorists.

# If you hate the British Army, clap your hands #

# Clap your hands #

# If you hate the British Army... #

I lived just a few streets down from where the march was starting.

You know, the march protesting against internment.

In our house that morning, some of my brothers were...

...getting ready to go

because it was the thing to do and was where all their friends were.

And girls would have met fellas, fellas would've met girls at it,

you know, there would've been all of that.

If the people up here at the front

think that that's an orderly beginning to the demonstration now,

patch yourselves on.

Now, can you please move back behind the civil rights banner?

Please.

It started on this hill in a Catholic area

overlooking Londonderry.

Several thousand people... men, women and children...

gathered behind Civil Rights Association banners

and marched down the hill toward the British troops

in defiance of the ban against demonstrations.

When we arrived at William Street, they were stopping us.

They said it was an illegal march.

And us being the great rioters that we were, we said...

...we'll take these guys on today.

We broke away from the crowd

and we were rioting... heavy stuff.

But it didn't last that long, you know? 15, 20 minutes.

We retreated back to the Bogside.

Next thing, somebody came round the corner and said,

"The paratroopers are coming on up."

And that's when the shooting started.

I can remember one of our neighbours coming up

and he had tears in his eyes.

But I actually thought the tears maybe were from tear gas

cos, at that stage, we were fairly used to CS gas being fired

and, you know, makes your eyes run.

But I... I... I remember him saying,

"There's murder down there."

And he had tears in his eyes.

[SOMBRE MUSIC PLAYS]

And then we start to hear the stories.

I'd seen three or four dead, like.

Two right beside me.

You just feel like...

...screaming.

[EXPLOSION]

Get away!

Get away.

If I'm making this sound easy, believe you me, it's not.

What do you mean?

Talking like this, about this.

I mean, I get the same nightmare...

I've been shot in the back, running away.

And that's where most people were shot... in the back, running away.

You know?

[HE TAKES A SHUDDERING BREATH]

[EXPLOSION, SCREAMING]

Run, you mad bastard.

I was only ten years of age...

...but I would've been...

...very much aware that...

...the British Army...

...were wrong.

I'll never understand how it was allowed to happen.

And then how it...

...you know, how it was attempted to be justified.

[HELICOPTER FLIES OVERHEAD]

The aim of the operation, in fact, was an arrest operation

against the hooligans who've been attacking us

for probably a couple of hours.

My information at the moment...

and it is very almost immediately after the incident...

is that the power battalion fired three rounds altogether

after they'd had something between 10 and 20 fired at them.

They fired three rounds only.

My information at the moment...

- I believe there are more than three dead. - They fired three.

I certainly, I have seen three dead myself.

Well, they may well not have been killed by our soldiers.

Are you saying that the paras only opened fire

because they were fired on first?

Because the people in the Bogside are saying that no shots were fired

at the troops as they came in. Most certainly.

There's absolutely no doubt at all

that the paratroops did not open up until they'd been fired at.

Oh, General Ford, aye.

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

He tells them too, aye.

You know, it's just "liar".

You're just thinking to yourself, "Liar," you know?

But it makes you angry, you know?

Makes you angry.

OK, I'm just going to go back a little bit.

When you woke up that day, what was your plan?

I was never really interested in politics, you know?

And my boyfriend was taking flying lessons

and I was up in a wee plane.

And then I was sitting in his house around five that evening

and started to hear the news, actually,

you know, about people dying in Derry.

Never dreaming that it was my own family,

but I was thinking, "Jesus, this is awful."

You know, "This is awful."

And, er...

Knock at the door, then.

And it was a friend of mine.

She says, "Your... Your, erm...

"Your brother Willie was shot dead," she says.

"Your father's been wounded, but he's OK. He's in the hospital."

You know?

Aye. My world kind of fell apart then, to be honest with you,

I just couldn't believe it was happening.

I didn't... I thought then, "Oh, this is just a nightmare.

"I'm sleeping and I have to wake up and... Please wake up, kid.

"Wake up. Please, God, don't let this happen.

"Please, God. Please, God. Please, God."

My father had to come out in a hail of bullets,

running towards the barricade, to help his son.

People there said they couldn't stop him.

I just... I had to get home.

I had to get home and I had to see my father, you know.

Do you know what I mean?

The minute I got to him, I said to him about his wound, you know,

I said, "That looks sore."

And he says, erm...

"Willie's in the morgue."

I still remember that.

I remember that vividly, actually.

"Willie's in the morgue," you know, and he's just...

My father was a big, smiling man, you know, he...

...he never looked like that.

Never looked like that, the way he looked that night.

I mean, he was there with Willie,

right there with him, you know, when he died.

Aye.

Oh, God love him.

We, in the Protestant community, believed that

every one of those people that were shot on Bloody Sunday

deserved to be shot.

You know, people were saying all these people were murdered

and the people in my community were saying they weren't really murders,

no, they were shooting at the army and the army shot back

and killed them, like, so.

Here we are with an audience, a Protestant audience,

from the Shankill area of Belfast.

The paras in Londonderry, they call it Bloody Sunday.

We call it Good Sunday,

- because it was the first time that the... - You call it what?

We call it a good Sunday because the troops did their duty...

- Oh, surely now... - ...as we Protestants should see it been done.

That is, if gunmen opened fire on them,

they have the right to reply with gunfire.

Not rubber bullets. Not rubber bullets.

We have no hesitation in saying here now

that the troops didn't shoot half enough of them that day.

- Oh, I'm sure that... - We are all in agreement on that here today.

All right, first of all... All right, let me just see,

how many of you think of it not as Bloody Sunday, but Good Sunday?

[CHORUS OF AGREEMENT]

Good Sunday, yes.

We used to sing songs, you know,

"We shot one, we shot two,

"We shot 13 more than you."

Not nice.

But I can remember cheering, you know,

and laughing and clapping my hands.

I went, "Yay! Yeah! That's... Woo!

"Woo, woo, woo!"

You know?

Do you feel guilty for those years?

Of course I do.

No, there's part of me inside that feels bad to this day.

Like, how could you not? You're looking back and saying,

"Oh, Jesus Christ, was I that person? Was I ever that person?"

Clearly...

...I once was that person, you know?

And, to this day... and you've been in Derry...

in loyalist areas, what do you see flying from lampposts?

Paratroop flags.

Second Battalion.

I can't get my fucking head around that

and I grew up a loyalist and I cannot get my head around that.

There's not many people don't know the truth.

And if you don't know the truth, you don't want to know the truth.

That's...

That's where I'm at, you know?

Mm-hm.

# Until this life is over #

# And then forever more #

# Oh, sacred heart of Jesus #

# We love ye and adore. #

The thing that stands out in my mind,

almost most of all,

was seeing 13 coffins on the altar.

And it sort of brought it home,

the enormity of what happened that day.

And you did sort of think,

there's no turning back now, like.

You can't undo this.

And when I think of it as a young boy, I think that...

...something changed, as well, because...

...it wasn't funny any more.

Or it wasn't exciting any more.

It wasn't like a movie any more.

[HE EXHALES]

[DAVID CAMERON]: The conclusions of this report are absolutely clear.

What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable.

It was wrong.

The first shot was fired by the British Army.

[SHE WAILS]: Oh, I miss you and I loved you.

What's more, some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing

or going to the assistance of others who were dying.

One person was shot while crawling away from the soldiers.

There was some firing by republican paramilitaries,

but none of this firing provided any justification

for the shooting of civilians.

And the report refers to the father...

...who was hit and injured

by Army gunfire after he had gone to tend to his son.

On behalf of our country,

I am deeply sorry.

That's Willie.

He's smiling away.

Wondering, "What can I do next? What can I get up next?"

Well, he was a funny guy.

I'm sure he would've ended up, you know, with some nice girl.

He was a nice fella, aye.

Aye.

Terrible.

You can't apologise for murder.

Committing a crime like that requires justice.

Aye, an apology is not enough.

My brother was murdered.

My brother was shot down in cold blood.

But why?

Why?

Is it pure hate?

Do they hate...? Do they hate us?

Do those people in power over there hate us?

Is that what it feels like to you?

Aye.

What else could it be?

Bloody Sunday...

...I feel...

...just sealed my brother Jim's fate.

He was so incensed by it. He...

He thought, "Right, that's it. I'm signing up."

And when you say signing up...? He signed up to the IRA.

Erm...

So many people done it,

and, I mean, you had boys lying about their age just to sign up.

And, erm... Do you know what?

That alone was the biggest recruitment drive...

....for the IRA... ever.

So, he was 16 years old when he signed up.

I'm sure when you're that age,

you think you're going to save the world.

Four years later, he was dead.

Killed by a British soldier.

I've had people actually saying to me,

"Well, you deserve what you get."

Sure, we were the thugs and we were the terrorists.

Well, I think that's everybody has their own terrorist

and the British Army are mine.

They always were and they always will be.

That's just the way I view it.

They...

You know, they inflicted terror on me.

They traumatised me.

So, you know...

...that's what they are to me.

It was snowing and...

...there's four or five of us in the house.

And we heard about Bloody Sunday.

I'm going to leave it at that.

- What do you mean? Why...? Why? - Because...

Just... I don't really want to talk about it.

We were very, very angry

that 14 innocent people had been mowed down by the paras...

...but have very vivid memories of it.

It wasn't too hard to say to yourself, "You know what?

"I'm ready, boys. Come on, let's have it."

My knowledge at the time was that we were like

the French Resistance...

...to the Nazis.

My name is Ricky.

I was involved in the struggle for Irish freedom.

As far as I was concerned...

...this is war.

[GUNSHOT]

My community, my people, my city was being attacked by the IRA.

We needed to fight back and this was our army.

I was in charge of guns when I was 17.

Guilty as charged.

When you went down to the Harp Bar,

religion went out the window.

I mean, it was a dump.

But it was our dump.

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