Bloody Sunday, Human Rights Discourse and the Role of the Irish Government in Lobbying for a Second Inquiry

This article looks at the campaign for a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972), and how framing the issue as a human rights question helped secure the support of the Republic of Ireland in order to pressure the UK government into granting a second public inquiry into the event. The Widgery Inquiry, set up in 1972 immediately after the event, had already been criticised and challenged by both human rights groups and the Irish government at the time. In 1989, in the context of a nascent peace process, a justice campaign was set up, whose members set out to change the public perception of Bloody Sunday and to reframe it as a human rights issue, rather than a political issue tied with Irish nationalism or republicanism. Using recently released archives, special attention is given in this article to how this strategy allowed the campaign to secure the support of the Irish government, and how the latter played a key role in putting pressure on the UK government to set up a new public inquiry in 1998.