JUDE COLLINS: The similarities between two Bloody Sundays
Bloody Sunday 1920 earned its name. Unlike the Bloody Sunday of 1972, there were two bloodbaths occurred on Sunday 21 November 1920. In the morning the first batch of killings were carried out under instructions from Michael Collins. A hand-picked group of IRA Volunteers assassinated fifteen members of what was known as the ‘Cairo Gang’ – undercover British intelligence agents, living in and working from South Dublin. When news of the killings filtered through, several other British agents in the Dublin area fled to the security of Dublin Castle. In the afternoon, the second round of killings happened. These occurred at Croke Park that afternoon and are often referred to as ‘retaliation’ by the British forces for the elimination of the Cairo Gang in the morning. However, on its website last week the BBC claimed that “The British authorities suspected some of the gunmen had disappeared into the crowd at Croke Park, so armed police were deployed to block all the exits and search thousands of spectators.” I haven’t heard that explanation before. If it’s true, it shows the British authorities were more than a little dim. How did they hope to locate their suspects among the thousands of spectators, and what did they think the thousands attending the game would have been doing while they conducted their search? Whatever the thinking, following a flare signal from a small spotter plane overhead, the British military fired into the crowd and at players on the field. In all, fourteen people were killed, including three schoolboys aged 10, 11 and 13, and one player on the field, Mick Hogan, after whom the Hogan Stand in Croke Park is named.
