VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 19:27:15 09/03/02 Tue
Author: Part 1
Subject: The Road to the Streets

In the main, what follows is updated from a work in 1994, by a Civil Rights veteran. It appears below, with his kind permission, unamended, from a manuscript which he plans to create as an e-book in 2003. We greatly look forward to that noteworthy event.

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROAD TO THE STREETS

ON THE 24th of August 1968 the first-ever official Civil Rights march took place from Coalisland to the Market Square in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. This was not a spontaneous affair, but rather, the end of a process that began some nineteen months earlier. On the road to the streets Derry groups were to play a pivotal role that would push the demands of the Civil Rights Movement onto the world headlines following the second dramatic official march in Derry, on October 5, that same year.

However, the early 1960s were little different from any other decade in so far as there existed minute pressure groups dotted throughout the Six Counties. The most influential of these was the Campaign for Social Justice in N.Ireland which was created and led by Dr. Conn McCloskey and his wife Patricia of Dungannon. Their main activity consisted simply of cutting out examples of discrimination from the newspapers, which all too frequently occurred in the spheres of housing, employment, or electoral malpractice, known generally as 'Gerrymandering'.

These clippings were pasted unto sheets, photocopied, given an introduction and an illustrated cover page, and mailed as a regular booklet to Members of Parliament in Westminster, public representatives in the USA or T.D.s in

- 4 -
Dublin. There was little need for greater elaboration as the facts spoke for themselves in every issue. When funds permitted additional copies went to individuals at home or groups abroad concerned with human rights and civil liberties.

This couple personally prepared, edited and financed this newsletter for several years, long before the northern Six Counties became a topic of global debate.

In Derry, it was the most economically deprived people who first began to organise. From a discussion held in the front parlour of the late Johnny Coleman's house, beside Mailey's "Bluebell Bar" and the Gasyard Wall, later made famous by Phil Coulter's popular song, "The Town I Love So Well", the Derry Unemployed Action Committee was conceived. It was a comment made by Bridie Cavanagh, Johnny's married daughter who lived with him, that got the ball rolling. She simply said she was sick listening to people complaining about things, rather than, grabbing the bull by the horns and doing something about it. That comment was quickly followed by the birth of the D.U.A.C. at Quigley's Hotel in Foyle Street on the afternoon of January 22, 1965. Little more than a handful attended its inaugural meeting, but soon, "The Derry Journal" would be filled with reports on its varied activities.
Derry in those days could best be summed up in three words, defeat, despair and the dole. Emigration between 1911 and 1961 had kept the nationalist population figures in the entire Six Counties almost static. 10% of those who emigrated
- 5 -
annually, came from Derry. It is therefore not surprising that historians record that most social agitation for change originated in the Catholic working-class areas, in towns where, although non-unionists has a numerical majority, such was not mirrored within the various elected assemblies because of the undemocratic nature of one-party rule since 1921.

Between 1945 and 1966, out of a total of 224 new industries coming to the Six Counties, only 24 (or 9%) were sent west of the River Bann, with only two coming to Derry, the second largest city in the statelet. The leaders of the city's unemployed began to talk of 'Industrial Apartheid' and produced detailed facts and statistics to support their analysis. During those years 117 incoming industries occupied 'advance factories', whereas in Derry the first such factory did not materialise until the mid-1960s.

Proof of discrimination in the spheres of jobs, housing and votes screamed out from the pages of various official reports issued down through the years by the Stormont Governments. The old regime barely concealed its overall strategy for the East-West divide. Their various reports dealt mainly with an area within a 30-mile radius of Belfast, and mentioned only briefly regions west of the Bann i.e. Derry, Fermanagh and Tyrone. Needless to say, these latter counties had anti-unionist majorities.


- 6 -
Body Blows
Many socially-aware people felt that things could only get better, as there was a comparative economic boom in Britain during those years. Several publicly refused to participate in agitationary activities. All that began to change, slowly however, as it was becoming evident that not only was the old regime content to deliberately ignore the western counties, but seemed determined to deal this region a series of deliberate body blows in the mid-1960s.

The G.N.R. rail link which transversed the western region was axed, leaving Fermanagh, Tyrone and practically all of County Derry with no lines whatsoever. The other three counties had two separate systems, one running north from Belfast, and the other south.

A month after the local unemployed action committee was established, the unionist regime accepted the Lockwood Report. It essentially rejected Derry, the second city, as the site for Ulster's second university. This was in spite of the fact that Magee University College, then a century-old institution, was providing the first two years of university education in
certain disciplines. This, for many, justified Derry as the most logical location and resulted in the University for Derry Campaign, amid allegations of 'Faceless Men', who were covertly selling the city short for purely political reasons that smacked of blatant sectarianism. Derry people from all

- 7 -
creeds and walks of life were privately outraged and this took public form in a series of protests that included a number of well-attended rallies and a massive cavalcade to Stormont itself.

In the same month the Stormont Government also accepted the Wilson Plan. This outlined four centres for rapid industrial development. All of these were within the 'magic' radius of Belfast, and none were designated in the western counties, which, for generations, had suffered most from the high levels of unemployment.

In order to strengthen further the relatively prosperous east, the Stormont Government passed plans to build a new city in Co, Armagh, with the promise, that when such was completed, many industries would fill specifically-created advance factories. As a further irritant for nationalists the new city was to be named after one of unionism's most notorious anti-Catholic spokesmen, "Craigavon".

Obvious Choice

In the early period of the plan, an English specialist, Geoffrey Copcutt, was engaged as chief designer. He took the post after planning Cumernald New Town, which was near the Scottish city of Glasgow. After a year's work he resigned saying: "I have become disenchanted with the Stormont scene."

- 8 -
He bravely went on to suggest the abandonment of the new city, and called for the development of Derry City, "to give the province a reasonable balance." But he was not dealing with reasonable men !

In his statement on education, at the time of the Lockwood Report, Mr. Copcutt had this to say: "Derry is the obvious choice to expand as the centre of higher education outside Belfast, and would prove the most promising way of unifying future immigrant communities." Needless to say, few nationalists were surprised when his resignation was speedily accepted by the Orange/Unionist regime, which in those days, before Direct Rule, was a power unto itself.

Orange/Unionism, it seemed, had discovered its own 'final solution'. It professed both the will and the way to turn its plans into reality. There seemed to be no cash-flow problems for this planned "Dream City". A staggering initial down-payment of one hundred and forty million pounds was set aside for such green-field developments. Derry, and the western regions, naturally, were outraged, for had they not been told so often about supposed lack of resources, etc, etc. Such were
now, correctly, viewed as lame excuses for not promoting economic regeneration, west of the Bann. The regime's utopian plans were unveiled in a fanfare of publicity. The unemployed, homeless and gerrymandered in the west could but look on, it seemed, as Stormont's vision of the future was presented in a 126-page report, which had taken four years to compile.
- 9 -
Campaign-Building

In tandem with unemployment, the acute lack of proper housing was uppermost in the minds of working-class families since the end of World War II. In Derry, Springtown Camp, supposedly temporary Nissen huts erected for the Allied Forces at the start of W.W. II, were still standing and occupied. These became a symbolic monument to years of official indifference, apathy and deliberate neglect. During the early '60s re-development in the south ward took the form of multi-storey flats. Many believed that this was to maintain unionist control, by arresting any potential drift of population that might threaten the existing electoral status-quo, in the city, overall.

Re-development in most cities might be welcomed, but the realities of unemployment made people somewhat concerned as their rents rose, some say threefold, in contrast to that paid in the older dwellings, that now came under the hammer. The housing shortage was so dire that sections of the unemployed tried to stop demolition, or at least slow it up, after families moved out to the new flats.

Local government left much to be desired, insofar as the Derry Corporation Housing Committee had not functioned for many years. Even attempts by private community groups, such as the Derry Housing Association, met with overt and covert

- 10 -
political opposition. This association was headed by the late Fr. Anthony Mulvey, a popular, passionate, pioneering priest, and its collective efforts offered a degree of hope for hundreds of homeless families, and newly-married couples.

The D.H.A.'s plan was simple - to build 700 houses. Yet great difficulties were experienced even though these were planned for the west bank of the Foyle. After some years permission to build only a proportion of the suggested target was permitted, and then only after countless tedious appeals to the central authorities.

If Fr. Mulvey had lived in a truly British city, he would have been awarded with the highest civic honours and proclaimed a man with a positive humane spirit, and fêted at several royals' tables. Alas, this was a place called Derry, prefixed with the word "London", and ruled by men whose political self-interest left little room for such civic virtue, or justified recognition.
For as many years as one could remember, as if to add insult to injury, one person was in total charge of the allocation of what few houses were built, and that was none other than the unionist mayor of the day. Although proclaiming their supposed "Britishness", mayors and unionist councillors in the main, refused to implement policies that pertained in Britain itself.


- 11 -
There, Housing Associations, which built houses to supplement local authority provision and private enterprises, had full co-operation from local councils.

In Dungannon, patience was also wearing very thin in the year 1968. Tearful members of the Housing Association there, told the homeless that they could no longer function, after being blocked in three different sites, by the unionist-controlled Dungannon Urban District Council.

Derry City had the lowest number of houses built, hitting the floor at 70 per 1,000 of the population, estimated in reference to the 1961 census figures. The town of Limavady stood at 137, Larne 140, Portadown 109, Newry 144 and Coleraine 109 respectively. These figures combine the joint efforts of local councils and the former Housing Trust.

The full impact of these figures became apparent only when contrasted with another variant - a comparative analysis that includes figures for population density. Again, these are based on the 1961 census. Here we can see that Derry City came off worst of all, with a figure of 25 persons to the acre. This figure was three times greater than that of Coleraine, which stood at 8, with Lurgan, Lisburn and Bangor standing at 9, and the port-town of Larne coming out best of all at 7 persons to the acre.


- 12 -
The population in Derry's south ward, generally referred to as the Bogside these days, was put as high as 100-125 persons to the acre, 4-5 times the average for the rest of Derry City, although these figures are based on popular assumptions at the time, rather than revealed by official statistics, which proved difficult to obtain, then and now.

Harsh Medicine

Basically, people began to realise that factors such as jobs, homes and votes were not separate and distinct issues, but strategically inter-related due to the existing dominant political ideology that held sway within numerous boards, quangos and all the undemocratically-elected councils. These were part of a carefully created network, all of which was dominated by key figures within Freemasonry and the Loyal Orders, both Orange and Black. The latter, as we approach the second millennium, still pull the strings at each unionist show, and possibly, more sinisterly, in darker corners, call the shots also, off stage.

It was neither hard to argue for, or understand, that all those spheres of neglect and discrimination could only be resolved effectively, if confronted, head on, by a more unified approach across the Six Counties. Some looked for inspiration to the black struggles in America, and South Africa, and wherever activists met "We Shall Overcome" could be heard with increasing frequency.

- 13 -

We viewed ourselves as Ulster's white Negroes - a repressed and forgotten dispossessed tribe captured within a bigoted, partitionist statelet that no Irish elector had cast a vote to create.

Few could disagree with what some of our prime activists, including the Dungannon Doctor were prescribing. We needed the tonic of one unified protest movement for civil rights, and the Stormont junta required a powerful reforming laxative aimed at the evacuation of all forms of sectarian malpractice, which we were in no doubt would be highly difficult to administer.

After several months of discussion between various groups, including the Campaign for Social Justice in N.Ireland, the Wolfe Tone Society, republican and socialist activists, as well as those engaged in social agitation linked to homelessness and unemployment throughout the Six Counties, a consensus for action began to emerge. The end result was the creation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) at a public meeting held in Belfast in January 1967.

Some forty attended. An English woman socialist, a Dublin-born economics lecturer from the Magee campus, and this writer, travelled from Derry to become its co-founders. The event was not occasioned by any great media fanfare, yet one had a very strong sense that we were actively participating at a truly historic inception.
- 14 -
NICRA initially modelled itself on the National Council for Civil Liberties in Britain. However, the handling of individual complaints was to prove totally inadequate, as the real remedies needed a structuralist approach if the average citizen was ever to experience any tangible benefits. Put simply, what was required was a mass campaign aimed at obtaining a comprehensive programme of reform that would transform the existing abnormal political structures, which were, anti-pluralist in terms of composition, procedures and construction. Not all within NICRA's executive agreed with this radical analysis, and so, intense internal debate became the order of the day.

Six Demands

For the first year of its existence, NICRA carried out activities similar to the NCCL and its predecessor, the Campaign for Social Justice. the internal debate was drifting towards the structural perspective, as NICRA, eventually, adopted a series of demands. None of these could be considered revolutionary , by peoples elsewhere who had enjoyed, for generations, the liberties accruing from liberal/pluralist ideology.
These demands numbered six in all:
1. One-man-one-vote in local elections.
2. The removal of gerrymandered boundaries
3. Laws against discrimination by local government, and the provision of machinery to deal with complaints.
- 15 -
4. Allocation of public housing on a points-system.
5. Repeal of the Special Powers Act
6. Disbanding of the sectarian RUC B'Special force.

The adoption of these demands was a victory for those of us who wished to build a broadly-based mass movement. However, the likelihood of direct conflict increased as the loyalist statelet would prove most reluctant to implement such reforms, without pressure from Westminster, linked to the deepening of international awareness.

In Caledon, Co. Tyrone, homeless Catholic families, with support from republicans, began squatting in newly-built council houses. The unionist controlled Dungannon Rural Council refused to allocate houses to them, yet unmarried childless, single supporters of the ruling-party had been catered for.

In June 1968, a Catholic family was evicted from a council house in which they had been squatting. A nineteen-year-old unmarried Protestant, Emily Beattie, secretary to a local unionist politician, was allocated the house. Austin Currie, then a nationalist Member of Parliament at Stormont, who was raising the matter without any success, occupied the house in protest and was duly evicted and fined. Currie's protest put discrimination and housing unto the top of the reformist agenda.

- 16 -
In August 1968, the Dungannon-based Campaign for Social Justice decided to hold a march from Coalisland to the Market Square, Dungannon, to protest against the sectarian housing policy. Appeals sent to the Derry Housing Action Committee,
formed on St. Patrick's Day, some five months earlier, were immediately met with a reply that the local group would be there, and would march under their newly painted banners. With some reluctance however, NICRA finally agreed to support the march which was scheduled for 24th August.

A group calling itself the Ulster Protestant Volunteers, created by the Rev. Ian Kyle Paisley from Ballymena, a town many miles away in another county, immediately called a counter-demonstration and openly promised violence if the march entered Dungannon's Market Square. The RUC, on the day of the march, obliged the opponents of the civil rights cause by re-routing the march from the centre of the town. Large numbers of the RUC's B-Specials had been mobilised, and were recognised by local journalists as they swelled the ranks of Paisley's counter-demonstration. Such was, and is the nature of 'policing' in these Six Counties.

Remarkable Success

This first-ever Civil Rights march was a remarkable success. By the time it reached the barriers erected by the RUC, between 3,000 and 4,000 were present. Derry's homeless

- 17 -
were well represented, and others, including the leader of the Nationalist party, the late Eddie McAteer, representatives of the local Labour Party, Young Socialists and Young Republicans travelled from Derry to express their solidarity with the common people of Tyrone. A few scuffles took place as counter-demonstrators, fired by Paisley's bigoted rabble-rousing, numbering about 1,500, attempted to disrupt the peaceful protest. The organisers wisely stopped the march and held a rally at the police lines.

After the speeches, the leaders of the march advised the marchers to go home. Instead, many of the local marchers sat down in the road and began to recite poems or sing protest songs. They stayed there until quite late into the night, even after the counter-demonstrators had departed to make their respective journeys home, some, to places as far east as Ballymena - a town referred to often as the heart of 'Paisley-Country'.

Derrymandering

The roots of the struggles for jobs, homes and electoral reform in the 1960s were firmly embedded in the history of the 1920s, and before. An historical perspective is therefore an essential ingredient to any truly comprehensive analysis.

The last All-Ireland General Election was held in 1918.

- 18 -
The final counts revealed that, out of a total of 105 seats, 79 went to candidates in favour of independence. 73 of the 79 seats swung to Sinn Fein. Historians claim this was the largest-ever single vote cast for any one party in any western
European democracy. Consequently, Dail Eireann, the All-Ireland parliament, assembled in Dublin in January 1919. Its members would refuse to conduct Irish affairs from Westminster and the assembly was almost instantly deemed to be "illegal" by a London-based government. A reign of repression followed its first meeting on January 19th. Such brought a response based on the belief that self-defence is no offence, and a militant Irish reaction became manifest. Britain subsequently advanced its own political remedy to overturn the nationally-expressed will of the Irish electorate.

Partition was incorporated into the Government of Ireland Act of February 1920. The Act effectively acknowledged that attempts by 40,000 British troops, and their allies, to crush the Republican/Nationalist forces, and their democratically-elected government, had been abortive. The period is known alternatively as the 'War of Independence' or the 'Black and Tan War'.
The initial demand by the Orange/Unionist establishment was for a nine-counties statelet encompassing the whole of the historical province of Ulster. After being advised by British ministers, they eventually settled for six counties. Stormont opened its doors on 7th June 1921, with the King of England, in attendance.
- 19 -
This institution was not the product of any popular will expressed through the ballot-box, and was literally enforced on the majority of Irish people, as was the Leinster House administration in Dublin by those who accepted the terms of a 'Treaty of Surrender' under a British threat of 'immediate and terrible war'. The latter supported the emergence of the Irish Free State and ruthlessly crushed those who maintained their sworn allegiance to the principles of the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of the First Dail. The defeat of the Republican/anti-partition forces in the rest of Ireland was a black period for northern nationalists, who knew they had been literally captured within this artificial statelet. Its inception was occasioned by ferocious pogroms against the native minority population, particularly in Belfast.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.