Rare BBC Footage: During the 1970's, as the calls from Northern Irish Catholics for basic civil rights and equalities began to reach a deafening level, the British government banned all civil rights marches in an attempt at keeping segregation, and subjugation, ongoing. But with momentum in their sails, and a global public beginning to take note of their plight, Catholics kept taking to the streets. In 1972, a demonstration by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association against interment (imprisonment for long periods without charge) was allowed to go ahead in Derry on 30th of January, after consultations with the police and army. British paratroopers fired on the marchers and 26 unarmed protestors were shot, five of them in the back. In total, 13 people died that day from their British Army-inflicted injuries, and another died some months later. |