Thirteen civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by the British Army on the day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, in northern Ireland, forty years ago today. But the Guardian thought it was the Civil Rights activists who were to blame:

The organisers of the demonstration, miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield. (Guardian, 1 February 1972)

Lord Widgery’s 1972 enquiry was widely seen as a whitewash — but not by the Guardian. “Lord Widgery’s report is not one-sided,” it led. Indeed they questioned Widgery’s view that trouble could have been avoided if the army had kept a low-key attitude: “To ask anyone to keep a low-key attitude if persistently stoned is to ask superhuman behaviour.” (20 April 1972)