the provisional ira as a result of what was felt to be the tragedy of bloody sunday. one of them was dennis, who had seen his best friend shot dead in front of his eyes. it wasn t a straightforward thing. about getting even. it broke up that barrier of conscience. doing damage to another person. bloody sunday, for me,. i went down that route. dennis got 16 years for trying to murder seven british soldiers. on bloody sunday, he set out with six friends, all of them joined the ira, all went to jail. in the end, in 1998,
into the heart of the bogside in a running battle. the paras, stationed in a derelict building on the fringe of the bogside, fired first with five rounds, just before four o clock. two innocent men were wounded. the paras claimed one of them was a petrol bomber. lord saville says he was not. minutes later, there was a second shot fired by an official ira gunman at the paras in the building. what was the significance of that? the significance was there was at least one weapon on the other side, and if there was one weapon, there were probably others. the paratroopers were, one assumes, pretty hyped up. does that help explain something of what happened? yes, i think it does. but they should ve realised that the chances of an outbreak of firing and innocent people being shot in an exchange of fire was such that he shouldn t send his troops down into the bogside.
i think the proof could been that there may have been l two or three individuals, i but i feel in my own heart that those people were innocent. did bloody sunday achieve anything? nothing at all except tragedy. nothing. i think that has to be - the worst thing about it. it was a tragedy and nothing good came out of that. - ironically, the only beneficiary was the ira. what did bloody sunday do for the ira? as far as the provisionals were concerned, it served as a very efficient recruiting sergeant. and a lot of people who joined