The civil rights movement
A campaign for "one man, one vote" and fair housing, inspired by the American civil rights movement, is met with police batons and loyalist attacks, and Northern Ireland slides into violence.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland — Lord Cameron (chair), HMSO (1969)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
By the mid-1960s a new generation of Catholics, many the first in their families to go to university thanks to free secondary education, were no longer willing to accept second-class status. Rather than demanding a united Ireland, they asked for the rights of British citizens. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, founded in 1967, brought together nationalists, trade unionists, liberals, communists and some republicans, and borrowed its methods and its anthem, “We Shall Overcome”, from the American civil rights movement.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
The demands
The movement’s core demands were simple: “one man, one vote” in local elections, an end to gerrymandered council boundaries, fair allocation of public housing, the disbanding of the B-Specials and repeal of the Special Powers Act.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland — Lord Cameron (chair), HMSO (1969)
From Caledon to Derry
In June 1968 Austin Currie, a young nationalist MP, squatted in a council house in Caledon, County Tyrone, which had been given to a single 19-year-old Protestant woman, the secretary of a unionist politician’s solicitor, ahead of Catholic families with children. The case crystallised the housing grievance. On 5 October 1968 a civil rights march in Derry, banned by the government, was broken up by the Royal Ulster Constabulary with batons. Television pictures of police beating marchers, including MPs, went around the world.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland — Lord Cameron (chair), HMSO (1969)
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
Prime Minister Terence O’Neill announced reforms in November 1968 and made a televised appeal: “Ulster stands at the crossroads”. But a radical student group, People’s Democracy, marched from Belfast to Derry in January 1969 and was ambushed at Burntollet Bridge by loyalists, including off-duty B-Specials, while police stood by. O’Neill, squeezed between impatient reformers and an enraged unionist base led by Ian Paisley, resigned in April 1969.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland — Lord Cameron (chair), HMSO (1969)
- Ian Paisley — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
August 1969
On 12 August 1969 the Apprentice Boys’ parade in Derry led to two days of fighting between residents of the Catholic Bogside and the police, the “Battle of the Bogside”. Rioting spread to Belfast, where loyalist crowds burned out Catholic streets such as Bombay Street, and police fired on Catholic areas. Several people were killed and some 1,800 families, most of them Catholic, were forced from their homes. On 14 August British troops were deployed, at first welcomed by many Catholics as protectors.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
Most of the civil rights demands were met within a few years: the B-Specials were disbanded, a points system for housing was introduced and “one man, one vote” was granted. But by then trust had collapsed, the Provisional IRA was forming, and the moment had passed. Seamus Heaney, John Hume and Bernadette Devlin all came out of this generation, and its argument about whether reform or force changes things runs through everything that followed.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- Hume, John — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Bernadette Devlin McAliskey — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
A peaceful, non-sectarian movement for basic British rights, votes, homes and jobs, that was beaten off the streets. The state's refusal to reform in time pushed a generation towards despair, and some towards the IRA.
- Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland — Bob Purdie, Blackstaff Press (1990)
- Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland — Lord Cameron (chair), HMSO (1969)
- Hume, John — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
Many unionists believed the movement was a front for republicans and that its marches were designed to provoke. Reforms were being made, but the pace of protest and the violence that followed made the state ungovernable.
- A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism — Graham Walker, Manchester University Press (2004)
- Northern Ireland 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes — Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Serif (2002)
Why it matters today
Many nationalists see 1968 as the moment their community stood up and asked only for equal citizenship, and was answered with force; it is the starting point of their story of the Troubles. Many unionists remember it as the moment republicans used a respectable cause to destabilise the state. Both memories shape how people argue about who started the conflict.