Bloody Sunday
Professor Paul Arthur on Jimmy McGovern's Sunday
How faithful was Sunday to the actual events?
This was a powerful piece of drama. It conveys accurately conditions on the ground at that time. I say 'at that time' because I was not in Derry that day. The shots of the march itself encapsulate a carnival atmosphere, the sense that a 'risen people' would overcome their perceived generational injustices. The programme illustrates how diverse were the marchers in terms of age, gender and class – although not religion in a city where 80% of the births in the city were Catholic (according to the 1961 census).
The same census revealed that two-fifths of the population in the South Ward (essentially the Bogside and Creggan where the action takes place) were under 15 years of age. McGovern is very good on this youth culture – those who became known as the Derry Young Hooligans (DYH), who engaged in what was known as the 'Saturday matinée' (and many other days for that matter) when it was the practice to riot against the security forces. He shows how Bloody Sunday was intended to be another such day when the hotheads broke through the stewards' lines to take on the army. He demonstrates, too, that theirs was a mixture of rioting as a rite of passage combined with a vague sense of securing civil rights.
The youth culture aspect spills over into conveying the sense of community – an American political scientist has commented on the extent that the Bogside and Creggan was a community and not a war zone. This sense of community pervades the drama from the opening (camera) shots to the outpouring of grief after the Paras moved into the Bogside. It remains one of the most stunning and persistent images in the drama.
The DYH also represent another more sinister image in the eyes of the establishment: to them, these were not mindless hooligans but a cover for IRA activities and a standing rebuke to the legitimacy of British authority in Northern Ireland. All of this is conveyed in the scenes where the army was preparing to take on the Bogsiders. Their sense of frustration comes through very powerfully. McGovern makes excellent use of the young soldier's flashback to illustrate how discipline had broken down, particularly in Glenfada Park.
Finally he makes much of the quasi-political role of the Widgery Inquiry. Sunday does not end with the events of that day but gives proper consideration to the inquiry which followed and the sense in which Catholic Derry felt an almost deeper outrage.
So, beyond a certain degree of stereotyping (to which I shall return), Sunday strikes me as an accurate and cathartic documentary-cum-drama.
| How plausible were the performances of the actors compared to the actual people they were portraying?
I return to the sense of community and of family. The central performance of the Young family was a brilliant device. It enables us to get a sense of the conditions in which people lived; of the large and extended families; of the ambivalence towards the authorities; of the short distance between politics and violence; of the central place of religion especially in time of grief; of the crucially essential role of the woman of the family with her combination of dignity and defiance and of her need to begin some process of reconciliation. Compare this with the huge moral outrage demonstrated by Maura at the wake and with the sense of loss and helplessness shown by Leo in the church.
The complex family structure is explained, too, through the Doherty family and their relationship to Gerard Donaghey. That the husband was employed by the army may seem surprising but it illustrates that Derry was a garrison town and that the army was a considerable employer. Relations had not always been uniformly hostile.
This viewer had no difficulty in accepting the plausibility of the performances and the characters' capacity to survive in extreme and contradictory conditions.
To fit into the time allowed for a TV drama, certain events in Sunday have had to be omitted and times compressed. Has anything of great importance to an understanding of the truth of the events been left out?
Inevitably there will be complaints about omissions and stereotypes. In terms of placing Bloody Sunday in context, the drama covered events very rapidly from 1968 onwards. Two events could have been given greater prominence. First, the shooting dead of Beattie and Cusack by the army in riot conditions in the Bogside in July 1972 may well have been a turning point in army-civilian relations. Second, the reaction of paratroopers to a civil rights demonstration at Magilligan Strand on the previous Sunday may have gone some way to explain the particularly bad relations that the Paras enjoyed.
It will be objected that the army has been stereotyped. But a few points are worth making. We get a sense of tension and of divided counsels in the conversation between Lieutenant Colonel Jackson and Brigadier MacLellan; the closed nature of the army as an institution is relayed through General Ford and the reactions of the squaddies in the mess after the shootings; and Ford personifies the political nature of the campaign.
What is missing is the Protestant community and their political leaders. The former appear only once – and that as a bigoted mob outside the court house in Coleraine. I caught only one reference to Brian Faulkner, the Northern Ireland prime minister. It is as if the local political establishment had no role to play at all in decisions of the day. Equally the reservations of the local RUC commander to the army's handling of the march doesn't appear at all. Insofar as the RUC is portrayed, it is as an insensitive force. In short, McGovern suggests that Bloody Sunday is a private affair between the Catholic community and the British establishment.
Some critics have pointed to dangers inherent in a blend of history and drama. Did you find this true in any way in Sunday?
Sunday belongs to a genre that invites political comment. Think Braveheart; think Michael Collins; think American reaction to the post-Vietnam syndrome. The most obvious parallel would be with Brian Friel's play The Freedom of the City, which was produced in 1973 and then withdrawn until recent years.
I cannot vouch for the absolute accuracy of Sunday. But that is not the point. McGovern makes no claims to being an academic historian. The beauty of his drama is that it is an accurate portrayal of the political and social milieu.
Has our understanding of the events of Bloody Sunday and its aftermath been enhanced by this dramatic treatment?
Yes, and for one reason: it humanises an event and a community that have been presented in stereotypical and propagandistic terms. It is a work of catharsis.
