Ivan Cooper

Ivan Averill Cooper ( January 1944 - June 26, 2019 ) was a Northern Irish politician and Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland . He was best known as the leader of a demonstration against the internments on January 30, 1972, which ended with the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry .

Life

Cooper was born in 1944 to a working-class Protestant family in Killaloo , County Londonderry , and later moved to the Derry neighborhood called Bogside . He was a brief member of the Ulster Young Unionist Council until he joined the Northern Ireland Labor Party in 1965 . His commitment to nonviolence made him one of the main figures in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association during the late 1960s. In 1968 he left the Labor Party and founded the Derry Citizens' Action Committee .

In contrast to traditional Northern Ireland politics , which is divided into Protestant-Unionist and Catholic-Nationalist camps, Cooper believed that Catholics and Protestants could work together, especially the working classes of both parties to the conflict, as they would share greater common interests. On the Protestant side, he was therefore often viewed as a traitor.

In 1969 Cooper was elected in the elections to the Northern Irish Parliament in the constituency of Central Londonderry. The constituency had previously been held by the Nationalist Party . Cooper was later one of the founding members of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) and organized a march for civil rights and against the internment policy of the British on Sunday January 30, 1972 . At the end of the march, soldiers from a British paratrooper regiment shot dead 13 demonstrators and wounded 14 others. The soldiers said they had been attacked by snipers. Participants in the civil rights march contradicted this. With the publication of the investigation report, the so-called Saville Report, on June 15, 2010, it was publicly proven that the soldiers had opened fire on the unarmed victims.

Cooper stated in an interview, "Bloody Sunday had such a devastating effect on my life that it was a ghost that I had to calm down."

After the adjournment of the Northern Irish Parliament in 1972, Cooper was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly (1973) and the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention (1975) in the Mid-Ulster constituency. Furthermore, he was the candidate of the SDLP in the elections to the British Parliament in Westminster in February 1974 and October 1974. His candidacy in February led to a split in the Catholic nationalist camp and thus sealed the defeat of the independent Bernadette McAliskey , who previously held the constituency represented in London.

In 2002 Paul Greengrass filmed the events of January 30, 1972 from the perspective of Ivan Cooper, who was then involved in the march and played by James Nesbitt , under the title Bloody Sunday . Commenting on the film, Cooper said:

"I assist this film, because I believe the more people who see this film will see the injustice which was done that day by the [British] Army, first of all, and then by the [British] government itself endeavoring to cover up the damage they had done. [...] that's my mission in life. "

“I support this film because I believe the more people see this film, the more will see the injustice that was committed that day, first by the [British] army, and then by the efforts of the [British] government itself who tried to cover up the damage they had caused [...] that is my job in life. "

- Ivan Cooper : Interview with Tor Thorsen

Ivan Cooper died in June 2019 at the age of 75.

Web links

• Dominic Casciani: Bloody Sunday leader finds faith in film. In: BBC News . January 30, 2002 (English). 

Remarks

1. ↑ Kevin Mullan: The veteran Derry civil rights leader Ivan Cooper has passed away. In: Derry Journal. June 26, 2019, accessed June 26, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Quoted from: Tor Thorsen: Interviews: Sunday Revisited. In: reel.com. Archived from the original on February 22, 2004 ; accessed on June 26, 2019 (English): "Bloody Sunday had such a devastating effect on my life, that it was a ghost I had to lay to rest." 
3. ^ Tor Thorsen: Interviews: Sunday Revisited. In: reel.com. Archived from the original on February 22, 2004 ; accessed on June 26, 2019 (English).