Northern Ireland civil rights movement

Northern Ireland civil rights movement
Battle of the Bogside part of the 1969 Northern Ireland riots
Date	1967 - 1972
Location	Northern Ireland
Goals	Civil and political rights
Result	Development of the Troubles

The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged which challenged inequality and discrimination in Northern Ireland. The Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was founded by Conn McCluskey and his wife, Patricia. Conn was a doctor, and Patricia was a social worker who had worked in Glasgow for a period, and who had a background in housing activism. Both were involved in the Homeless Citizens League, an organisation founded after Catholic women occupied disused social housing. The HCL evolved into the CSJ, focusing on lobbying, research and publicising discrimination. The campaign for Derry University was another mid-1960s campaign.

The most important organisation established during this period was the Northern Irish Civil Rights Association (NICRA), established in 1967 to protest discrimination. NICRA's objectives were:

Irish Republican activists were involved in setting up NICRA. During the 1960s, the IRA moved to the left, as a number of left-wing intellectuals gained influence over the leadership. Anthony Coughlan and Roy Johnston were not members of the IRA; they were involved in the Wolfe Tone Societies (WTS), an independent adjunct to the Republican movement, Through the WTS, they advocated a campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland. When NICRA was formed on 29 January 1967, it was predominantly made up of individuals outside the Republican movement. A thirteen-person steering committee was elected, including representatives from trade unions, the Belfast WTS, the Republican clubs, the Belfast Trades Council, the Republican Labour Party, the Ulster Liberal Party, the Northern Ireland Labour Party, the Ardoyne Tenants Association and the Young Unionists. The board included two members of the Wolfe Tone Societies and one member of the IRA (Liam McMillen, Belfast Officer Commanding at the time); Betty Sinclair (Communist Party) was the chair.

During its first two years NICRA wrote letters, petitioned and lobbied; it was "a period of general ineffectuality". In the summer of 1968 NICRA "somewhat hesitantly" agreed to hold its first protest march from Coalisland to Dungannon, on 24 August. The march was publicised as a "civil rights march", and the organisers emphasised its non-sectarian dimension. Bernadette Devlin (who became a civil-rights activist) described a festival atmosphere which turned "uglier" when the police stopped the march from entering Dungannon, where a counter-demonstration had been called by the Paisleyites. The NICRA organisers announced that they would not breach the police cordon. However, as Devlin recalls, they began to "lose their hold on the marchers". According to Devlin, many of the initial organisers soon left after efforts to wind down the movement failed; those who remained "sat down in big circles all over the road and sang rebel songs till midnight".

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