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The debate in Commons produced little more than bitterness and disagreement. It also indicated that Bloody Sunday had radicalized many of the Ulster moderates—notably members of the nonviolent Social and Democratic Labor Party—who until then had still hoped for a rational political solution. A case in point is Gerald Fitt, 45, a Catholic who represents both a district in the Ulster Parliament and the constituency of Belfast West in Britain's Commons. "Until last Sunday," Fitt told the Commons, "I regarded myself as a man of moderation. I have consistently condemned violence." But because of Bloody Sunday, he said, "whether we like it or not, the British army is no longer acceptable in Belfast, Derry or anywhere else in Northern Ireland. It is seen as acting in support of a discredited and corrupt Unionist government." (The Unionist Party favors continued ties with Britain.) And he added, "I tell the Home Secretary that the marches will continue. They will continue next weekend in Newry, and then the following week and the week after that, until the internment problem is tackled by the Westminster government, because it is the only government that can tackle it."
Futile Exercise. Bloody Sunday made it clear to all that the 15,000-man British army force, which is technically under Stormont's control but is independent in practice, has not yet reduced violence in Ulster to "an acceptable level," as Maudling recently described its aim. The Londonderry killings, moreover, succeeded only in polarizing still further Ulster's divided Catholic and Protestant communities —and in strengthening the hands of extremists on both sides. The recently split Unionist ranks now have closed behind Faulkner and his no-nonsense rejection of any form of Irish unification. From Stormont came cold statements blaming the marchers for "a meaningless and futile terrorist exercise." The typical Protestant worker's reaction was expressed by one laborer in a Belfast pub last week when he said, "I wish it had been 1,300 of the bastards."
On the Catholic side, the killings immensely increased the influence of the I.R.A. terrorists, who now have more applicants than they can possibly train. Internment had confirmed the Catholics' worst fears about the Protestant-dominated Stormont government: that its ultimate answer to Catholic political and civil rights demands would be naked sectarian repression. No Unionist Prime Minister, they feel, can ever survive while ignoring the extremist Orangemen's call to "make the Croppies [Catholics] lie down." For Catholics, the Derry shootings have now added weight to the I.R.A.'s claim that the real enemy is the British government at Westminster. Says Oliver Napier, vice chairman of the nonsectarian Alliance Party: "Sooner or later, [the I.R.A.] has been saying, British troops would put the boot in good and hard. People have been half expecting this. Sunday in Derry has fitted the piece of the jigsaw in. My personal view is that the risk of civil war here has never been greater."