It was the Official IRA's largest attack in Great Britain during "the Troubles" and one of its last major actions before it declared a permanent ceasefire in May 1972.
To maintain law and order in Northern Ireland the British Army was deployed on to its streets in rioting hot-spots such as Derry and Belfast to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
On 30 January 1972, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment shot 28 unarmed civilians during a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in Derry.
[1] Aside from the priest Weston (38), the others who died during the attack were the gardener John Haslar (58), and civilians working in the Mess at the time, Jill Mansfield (34), Thelma Bosley (44), Margaret Grant (32), Sheri Munton (20) and Joan Lunn (39).
In November 1972, Noel Jenkinson, 42, a transport manager, was convicted for his part in the terrorist bombing and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the presiding judge Sir Sebag Shaw recommending that he serve at least 30 years.
[12] He had also been a member of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity[13] and Clann na hÉireann, an association sympathetic to the Official IRA.
The evidence relating to Jenkinson was initially linked to his fraudulent hire (with Kissane) of a Ford Cortina car that was then used in the fatal bombing leading to the subsequent discovery of a case of gelignite found in his garden shed, as publicised at the time.