Sunday Bloody Sunday

"Sunday Bloody Sunday" is a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono that was first released on their 1972 Plastic Ono Band album with Elephant's Memory, Some Time in New York City. The song addresses the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 and is one of two on the album that addresses the contemporary Northern Ireland conflict, "The Luck of the Irish" being the other. Background Lennon had sympathies for the Roman Catholic Irish minority in Northern Ireland and had joined a protest in London on 11 August 1971 that attempted to pressure the British government into removing its troops from Northern Ireland, shortly before Lennon moved to New York. On 30 January 1972 at a protest march in Derry, 13 marchers were killed by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The killing was quickly dubbed "Bloody Sunday". Lennon, who was living in New York at the time, was enraged by the massacre and wrote "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as an angry response. Lyrics and music The lyrics of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" express Lennon's anger. Ben Urish and Ken Bielen explain that the lyrics "start off with some nice rhetorical spins and a modicum of insight" but eventually devolve into "lyrical hyperbole" as Lennon's anger takes over. Beatles biographer John Blaney felt that Lennon's need to express his disgust at the incident caused him to write a song that is "a piece of pro-Republican propaganda that ignored the historical facts in favour of emotional blackmail". Music critic Paul du Noyer similarly described the refrains as being too simplistic to address the complexity of the longstanding Irish-British problems, although he acknowledged that they were "heartfelt". Among the controversial lyrics are suggestions that the "Anglo pigs and Scotties" need to go home and the reference to concentration camps (Long Kesh was commonly compared to a concentration camp amongst contemporary critics of the Government's internment policy). The lyrics also express the wish that Falls Road, Belfast should be free forever at a time when the Falls Road Curfew was still in recent memory. Music critic Johnny Rogan finds "unintended polemic humour" in the verse: You anglo pigs and scotties Sent to colonise the North You wave your bloody Union Jacks And you know what it's worth How dare you hold to ransom A people proud and free Keep Ireland for the Irish Put the English back to sea.