Ivan Cooper Ivan Cooper Ivan Averill Cooper (born January 1944) is a former politician from Northern Ireland who was a member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and a founding member of the SDLP. He is best known for leading an anti-internment march which developed into the Bloody Sunday massacre on 30 January 1972, in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Cooper was born to a working-class Protestant family in Killaloo, County Londonderry, and later moved to the "Bogside" area of Derry city. He was briefly a member of the Claudy Young Unionist Association until April 1965 when he joined the Northern Ireland
Free Derry the murals of the Bogside Artists and the Museum of Free Derry. Free Derry Free Derry () was a self-declared autonomous nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland, that existed between 1969 and 1972. Its name was taken from a sign painted on a gable wall in the Bogside in January 1969 which read, "You are now entering Free Derry". The area, which included the Bogside and Creggan neighbourhoods, was secured by community activists for the first time on 5 January 1969 following an incursion into the Bogside by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Residents built barricades and carried