Northern Irish Civil Rights Association

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was an organisation which campaigned for civil rights for the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in Belfast on 9 April 1967, the civil rights campaign attempted to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, and lobbying for an end to discrimination in areas such as elections (which were subject to gerrymandering and property requirements), discrimination in employment, in public housing and alleged abuses of the Special Powers Act. The genesis of the organisation lay in a meeting in Maghera in August 1966 between the Wolfe Tone Societies which was attended by Cathal Goulding, then chief of staff of the IRA.

During its formation, NICRA's membership extended to trade unionists, communists, socialists, with republicans eventually constituting five of the 13 members of its executive council. The organisation initially also had some unionists, with Young Unionist Robin Cole taking a position on its executive council. Official Sinn Féin and IRA influence over NICRA grew in later years, but only as the latter's importance declined, when violence escalated between late 1969 until 1972, when NICRA ceased its work.

Since Northern Ireland's creation in 1922, the Catholic minority had suffered from varying degrees of discrimination from the Protestant and Unionist majority. Many nationalist historians regard the ethos of Northern Ireland as unambiguously sectarian, however, academic and author Senia Paseta posits that discrimination was never as calculated as republicans maintained nor as fictional as unionists claimed.

In the 1966 elections to the Westminster parliament, the Ulster Unionist Party won 11 of Northern Ireland's available 12 seats, while in 1969 Stormont elections some 39 out of the 52 available seats (i.e., 75%) went to the Unionist and Unofficial Unionist parties. The Stormont Assembly returned the Protestant Official Unionist Party (later Ulster Unionist Party) to office continuously between Northern Ireland's founding in 1922 and the dissolution of the Assembly in 1972.

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