🙂 Interesting history
🙁 Bloody Sunday Massacre
Paul and I had booked a tour with Tours by Locals in Londonderry. We were guided by a chap called Gleann whose Father had been killed in the Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, which was a massacre on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland. He was just 7mo old at the time. Very interesting listening to his perspective and learning about this dark time in Northern Ireland’s history. Generally, although not always, nationalists favour using the name Derry, and unionists Londonderry. Legally, the city and county are called “Londonderry”, while the local government district containing the city is called “Derry City and Strabane”. The Protestants of Derry drifted over to the Waterside leaving the Cityside (as it is now known) almost entirely Catholic. Only a small area near the city walls, known as the Fountain, contains a community of Protestants.
This is the only remaining completely walled city in Ireland and one of the finest examples of Walled Cities in Europe. The Derry Walls were built during the period 1613-1618 by The Honourable the Irish Society, as defences for early seventeenth century settlers from England and Scotland.
We then moved to the areas of troubled political past. According to Gleann, the conflict that took place in Ireland and the north in particular from August 1969 until July 2005 and has been called many things over the years but warfare is what it was. The British government have told many that the conflict was Catholic-Protestant and that they were caught in between, but this is not true at all. With the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought the conflict to an end after 3700 deaths.
