Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre,[1] occurred on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry,[a]Northern Ireland. Thirteen men were killed outright, while the death of another man four months later has been attributed to his gunshot injuries. Many of the victims were shot while fleeing from the soldiers and some were shot while trying to help the wounded. All of those shot were Catholics. The march had been organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) to protest against internment without trial. The soldiers were from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (“1 Para”), the same battalion implicated in the Ballymurphy massacre several months earlier.
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The incident became one of the most significant events of the Troubles. It was the highest number of people killed in a single shooting during the conflict and is regarded as the worst mass shooting in Northern Irish history. Bloody Sunday fuelled Catholic and Irish nationalist hostility towards the British Army, intensified the conflict and led to a surge of support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), especially in Derry. The Republic of Ireland held a national day of mourning and crowds besieged and burnt down the chancery of the British Embassy in Dublin.
Two investigations were held by the Government of the United Kingdom. The Widgery Tribunal, conducted shortly after the event, largely accepted the soldiers’ accounts and was widely criticised as a whitewash. In 1998, the Saville Inquiry was established to reinvestigate the killings. Its 2010 report concluded that the shootings were “unjustified” and “unjustifiable”, that none of those shot posed a threat and that soldiers had given false accounts to justify their actions. British Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologised on behalf of the United Kingdom.
Following the Saville Report, police opened a murder investigation. One former soldier was charged; after a series of legal challenges the case was resumed. In 2025, the former paratrooper known as “Soldier F” went on trial for two murders and five attempted murders and was found not guilty.
Soldier F was granted anonymity by a judge concluding that “a real risk does exist” to Soldier F’s life and that he was right to “feel genuine fear”.[36]
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood controversially used parliamentary privilege to name Soldier F in the House of Commons on 13 July 2021, stating that “for 50 years he has been granted anonymity and now the government want to grant him an amnesty”, and that “no one involved in murder during the Troubles should be granted an amnesty.”[37][38] Eastwood stated that he received death threats for doing so.[39]Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons, said that Eastwood “broke no rules” in doing so.[38] Soldier F’s name “appeared on the Bogside’s iconic Free Derry Corner and was widely known in Derry” when Eastwood named him.[40]
On 9 February 2022, Peadar Tóibín named Soldier F in the Dáil Éireann, stating that “we need to make sure that people know” the names of “the alphabet of British Army perpetrators of murder”.[41]Dáil privilege protects him from being sued for defamation.[42]
News media such as the BBC and The Journal did not name Soldier F for legal reasons.[38][41]
Hearty, K. (2025). ‘Standing with Soldier F’: Bloody Sunday, disrupting the degradation ceremony and the court of public opinion. Punishment & Society, 27(1), 109-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745241264297
There’s an edit war taking place about putting Soldier F’s name in the article. It’s pretty easy to find with web search including in an Irish magazine that editorializes against him but is still probably RS. I won’t get into it here myself but the magazine also accuses the trial judge of presiding over a cover-up. ~2026-38271-65 (talk) 19:36, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
The RFC was about a single article, not “any” article, and it was inconclusive, but thanks for the link. I’d say that if the name becomes widely published (right now it’s published but not widely) then continuing to suppress it would be pointless. On a separate matter, I’d be interested to see more in the article about the legal particulars in the trial (I’m in the US and don’t know how UK trials work). E.g. why wasn’t there a jury? Anyway I just heard about this case and don’t want to linger on it too much since it’s outside my usual topic areas, but there are things that could be said. It’s interesting that Soldier G’s name is also still suppressed. Soldier G participated in the incident alongside Soldier F, but he died sometime later. ~2026-38271-65 (talk) 20:05, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
Per WP:ONUS it’s up to those wishing to include to obtain consensus, and the idea that the RFC somehow doesn’t apply to another directly related article won’t fly. The trial was non-jury as a result of the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007. Essentially, there was a fear that any nationalists would automatically vote to convict whereas any unionists would vote to acquit. So rather than end up with a deadlocked jury it’s seen as fairer to let a judge decide. FDW777 (talk) 20:15, 4 July 2026 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Soldier_F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ATrial_of_Soldier_F#Research_article