As if to underline the futility of nonviolent resistance, when Eamonn McCann and a huge mass of peaceful protesters assembled in Derry one chilly Sunday afternoon in January 1972, British paratroopers opened fire on the crowd, killing thirteen men and wounding fifteen others. The soldiers subsequently claimed that they had come under fire and that they only shot protesters who were carrying weapons. Neither of these assertions turned out to be true. Bloody Sunday, as it would forever be known, was a galvanising event for Irish republicanism.
