Commemoration and Bloody Sunday Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies General Editors: Andrew Hoskins and John Sutton The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes in gener- ational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibil- ities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the past thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remem- ber and forget. This groundbreaking series tackles questions such as What is ‘memory’ under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the pros- pects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination? Brian Conway COMMEMORATION AND BLOODY SUNDAY Pathways of Memory Forthcoming titles: Richard Crownshaw THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE AND CULTURE Mikyoung Kim and Barry Schwartz (editors) NORTHEAST ASIA’S DIFFICULT PAST Studies in Collective Memory Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–23851–0 (hardback) 978–0–230–23852–7 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Commemoration and Bloody Sunday Pathways of Memory Brian Conway © Brian Conway 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-22888-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-31032-6 ISBN 978-0-230-24867-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230248670 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 For my parents and in memory of the Bloody Sunday dead Patrick Doherty, Gerald Donaghey, John Duddy, Hugh Gilmour, Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Kevin McElhinney, Bernard McGuigan, James McKinney, William McKinney, William Nash, James Wray, John Young, and John Johnston This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgements xv Spatiotemporal Chronology of Bloody Sunday Commemorative Activity, 1972–2009 xix Abbreviations xxvi 1 Introduction: Actors, Contexts and Temporality 1 2 Bloody Sunday in Historical Perspective 23 3 A ‘Simple People Who Want a Simple Memorial’ 41 4 On the March 68 5 ‘The Holocaust that was the Bogside of Sunday’ 95 6 The Politics of Visual Memory 118 7 Conclusion: Trajectories of Memory 142 Methodological Appendices 161 Notes 170 References 192 Index 207 vii This page intentionally left blank Illustrations Figures 3.1 Sculptor’s designs for Bloody Sunday memorial, Rossville Street. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 51 3.2 An artist’s impression of the proposed Bloody Sunday memorial. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 52 3.3 NICRA poster for unveiling of memorial. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 53 3.4 Crowds assemble at the Bloody Sunday memorial prior to the start of the 2005 memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony. (Photograph by the author) 56 3.5 The Bloody Sunday Memorial, August 2004. (Photograph by the author) 60 3.6 The families of the dead lay wreaths at the Sunday morning memorial service during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 64 3.7 Speakers address the assembled crowd at the Sunday morning memorial service during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 65 3.8 The Bloody Sunday memorial shortly after the memorial service and wreath-laying ceremony during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 66 4.1 Crowds assemble at the Creggan shops, Derry, for the start of the 2008 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 69 4.2 The front of the march being photographed by local photographers at the start of the 2008 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 70 4.3 Republican banners lined up along railings at the Creggan shops prior to start of the 2005 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 71 ix x Illustrations 4.4 Crowds assembling behind a banner announcing state collusion at the start of the 2005 Bloody Sunday commemorative march. (Photograph by the author) 72 4.5 Families bearing white crosses and images of the dead assemble before start of rally at William Street during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 73 4.6 Speakers address the assembled crowd at the rally during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 76 4.7 Families bearing white crosses and images of the dead en route to Free Derry Corner during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 77 4.8 Sea of Solidarity-Sea of Flags initiative during the 2009 commemoration. (Photograph by the author) 78 4.9 NICRA commemorative poster, 1973. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 82 5.1 Bloody Sunday commemorative poster, 2002. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 106 5.2 Bloody Sunday commemorative poster, 1982. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 111 5.3 Bloody Sunday commemorative poster, 1986. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 112 5.4 Bloody Sunday commemorative poster, 1996. (Courtesy of Adrian Kerr, Museum of Free Derry) 113 6.1 Exterior of Museum of Free Derry, Glenfada Park. (Photograph by the author) 123 6.2 Bloody Sunday mural, Rossville Street. (Photograph by the author) 130 6.3 Bloody Sunday mural, Westland Street. (Photograph by the author) 131 6.4 Guildhall stained- glass commemorative window. (Photograph by the author) 134 Tables 1.1 Continuity and constructionist perspectives on collective memory 16 2.1 Trajectory of social drama 24 5.1 Commemorative discourses across three historical phases 102 6.1 Comparing three sites of Bloody Sunday memory 122 7.1 Framings of Bloody Sunday since 1972 144 Preface In the early 2000s I was enrolled as a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, the symbolic intellectual (and football) “home” of the Irish in America. The early part of the graduate programme involved taking various classes and I enrolled in a course under the title “Society and Identity” taught by Professor Andrew Weigert. One of the course textbooks, Eviatar Zerubavel’s slim and compact Social Mindscapes,1 contained a short chapter with the curi- ous title ‘Social Memories’, and, serendipitously, reading this set off an interest in memory that has taken up a good deal of the last six years of my academic life. Earlier than I expected, my intellectual interests formed around collective memory. Casting about for an empirical case study to engage with the literature, naturally enough I was drawn to his- torical events close to home, and Bloody Sunday stood out as a particu- larly intriguing and fascinating empirical example from the Irish experience. Until then I knew little or nothing about the event apart from a skeletal knowledge one builds up from media coverage and school history textbooks. I subsequently wrote my class paper on Bloody Sunday memory, drawing on Zerubavel’s insights, and later published a revised version of this in Identity.2 About a year later, and now knowing more about the event, I set off on the difficult dissertation research and writing process with Bloody Sunday as the ‘case study’ and collective memory as ‘the literature’. The answer to the “a case of what” question in relation to Bloody Sunday was not always straightforward or simple, though.3 I began with a theor- etical interest in the complex relationship between official memory and vernacular memory4 – influenced by the thinking of historian John Bodnar5 – and this “frame” guided my dissertation work.