40th Anniversary of foundation of NI Civil Rights Association

Monday February 05, 2007 12:53

by Seán

A gathering of veteran civil rights campaigners took place in Belfast at the weekend to mark the 40th anniversary of the fonding of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA)

The Fortieth Anniversary of the birth of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement was marked at the weekend close to the former International Hotel venue in Belfast where the first NICRA Executive was elected 40 years ago.

A number of those who had been present at the meeting in 1967 gathered to share and discuss the successes and failures of the movement that went on to initiate the Civil Rights marches of 1968 and received national and world wide attention. The NICRA campaign led to a direct intervention by the British government and major reforms of Northern Ireland including the introduction of one-man-one vote and the disarming of the police.

Des O'Hagan, who in 1967 was a lecturer at Stranmillis Teacher Training College, attended the original meeting as a representative of the Republican Clubs. He recalled the first meeting deciding that NICRA should aim to attract a broad-based membership and initiate a campaign for a Bill of Rights that would benefit all the citizens of Northern Ireland. "This was critical to the subsequent success of bringing in particular, young unionists and liberally minded people to recognise and support the Civil Rights demands for an end to abuses of power by Stormont", he told the 2007 audience. "Those abuses ranged from denying individual voting rights and the gerrymandering of political boundaries. It addressed the unfair allocation of housing, a Special Powers Act akin to the siege mentality of South Africa, a heavily armed police force with a Reserve force of 'B' Specials drawn solely from one side of the community", he said.

Oliver Quinn said that he continued to be amazed at the number of people who in the last forty years claimed to have been at that first NICRA meeting. "You would have needed three hotels to fit them all in," he told the 2007 audience of over 100 that included members of a variety of political parties, legal professionals and Trade Unionists involved in current human and civil rights issues.

Michael Mc Corry said that as one of the relatively small number of sixty in attendance in 1967 that comprised the first NICRA meeting, they were looking for a more democratic Northern Ireland. "In such a short space of time, by December 1969, public support for NICRA's demands and the courage of the unarmed and disciplined ranks of the Civil Rights marchers achieved a political revolution: the introduction of one-man-one vote; the disarming of the RUC; the disbandment of the 'B' Specials; and the creation of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive; with more reforms then to follow on electoral boundaries and an end of gerrymandering, forced on Stormont by James Callaghan and an embarrassed British Government.

" There was no SDLP and no Provisional IRA, they just didn't exist, although there are some people today who think the Provisionals had something to do with Civil Rights. It was the NICRA gains of 1969 that were revolutionary before the bombs and bullets. New paramilitaries such as the Provos and the UDA, destroyed those political advances and condemned us all to 25 years of futile violence and the sectarian politics which has led to the political mistrust we live with today," he said.

A message was read by founding member Marian Donnelly on behalf of long time member and former President of the Workers' Party, Tomas Mc Giolla, who is currently in hospital in Dublin, acknowledged that Republican Clubs had played a major role in the organisation and stewarding of many of the early Civil Rights marches. "NICRA was neither republican nor socialist but focused on civil rights for all of the citizens of Northern Ireland and therein was its strength and the basis of its success. The unfinished business of NICRA, when devolved government is returned to the people of Northern Ireland, remains a Bill of Rights," he said. " A Bill of Rights is the only way to tackle the divided society and sectarian carve-up offered by nationalism and unionism in Northern Ireland today. That can fulfil the aims of the Civil Rights movement that won such international respect and acclaim in seeking to provide rights to all citizens, not contrived religious and political gangs," the veteran republican leader stated in his message to the meeting celebrating the founding of NICRA.

NOTE: The first meeting to launch the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was held in the International Hotel, Belfast on the 29th of January 1967.

Former founding members of NICRA gathered on Saturday the 3rd of February to mark the event in the Lower Falls Social and Recreational Club, Belfast

The first meeting elected an Executive and recognised that there were persons in attendance from: the Belfast and District Trade Council; individual Trade unionists; the Republican Clubs; the Communist Party of Northern Ireland; the Young Unionist section of the Unionist and Conservative Party of Northern Ireland; individuals with no party or Trade Union affiliation including the Mc Cluskey family from Dungannon.

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Comments (16 of 16)

Lets Stick together

by Cynic

Mon Feb 05, 2007 13:22

If the author was any way honest he would have admitted that this was a gathering of WP members who in spite of their political irrelevancy are still intent on rewriting history. A WP report by a WPer on a WP propaganda event doesnt even fool the feeble minded.

Cynic

by Sean

Mon Feb 05, 2007 13:35

Maybe it's just a reflection of who was behind the setting up of NICRA?

Sean

by cynic

Mon Feb 05, 2007 14:25

"Belfast and District Trade Council; individual Trade unionists; the Republican Clubs; the Communist Party of Northern Ireland; the Young Unionist section of the Unionist and Conservative Party of Northern Ireland; individuals with no party or Trade Union affiliation including the Mc Cluskey family from Dungannon. "

Above in your article you outline who was at the foundation meeting of the NICRA. Why didnt you invite any of them along to your celebrations in your drinking club in the Lower Falls? I think it would also be correct to say that many people who were your comrades in those days left to join and form Sinn Fein, IRSP, DL etc.

The gathering you celebrate was nothing other than a Stalinist sectarian rump. I call your party poisonous because it continues to rewrite history. You dont have the same power you once had but you still have as much bile as ever. The NICRA eas not smashed by the IRA. It was smashed by the Stalinist manouvering of what was then Official Sinn Fein & the OIRA. You had to control it so you drove everyone else out and were left with an empty shell.

Yes, you had your days. You controlled RTE, anyone who disagreed with you on the North was smeared as a Provo-Trot. The WP totally debaed Political Discourse on this Ireland. And all the time you had your own secret army - The Official IRA to carry out financial levies on the banks and shoot and intimidate your opponents.

Any opportunity to remember those people & thank them is good.

by unimportant who i am

Mon Feb 05, 2007 15:53

The civil rights movement in the western world came quicker to Ireland & the north of Ireland than any other movement at the time. I don't know if it was more necessary than feminism or secularism or pacifism. I'm sure when the people who made up the movement were divided those "-isms" or the opposites would get writ large in our history. For a variety of reasons I don't want to write about the respect I had and have for them, (too many names and not a few long dead to utter & list & append their party tribe, faith or lack of it, quality of housing in the ward, quantity of thoughts & deeds on what came next. But I admired them since I (who was born after that struggle) learnt about them. I felt honoured to meet a few of them at the "indulged young adult stage" when thanks & only thanks to their legacy I too could sit and talk about "the questions of the day" from a university podium. & then maybe I even nursed pretensions of that so easy belief in retrospect :- "oh yes I would have walked close to them at the top of the march & shown my face & added my unimportant name". Nothing but the pretensions we may all nurse long after the hardest walking had been done. I suppose the best way to prove our admiration collectively not only in Ireland (north or south) but everywhere the Civil Rights movement fought is to learn about them. Not to recite their names with the "respect plaque & we are assembled here today to pretend we are the same quality of men & women". But to really learn about them.... "the ordinary people" who wanted to be "ordinary citizens" so that we can be.

Yep. got it through my head now at last.
That's respect. It gets written in blood & headstones
& almost always comes too late.

Prehaps CR came here first because we had some people looking for something to fight for...

by Pete

Wed Feb 07, 2007 00:40

If people where in anyway honest they would relaise there would have been no NICRA without the OIRA. To paraphrase Al Bore - ‘It’s and inconvenient truth’, cynic are your prehaps just a little bit stickophobic and possibly a sectrianoid on top of it? - or I'm I being a little bit to Cynical

Well more Oficial Sinn Fein

by DM

Wed Feb 07, 2007 17:31

I'm not saying OIRA didn't control OSF but the organisation of the Civil rights movement was mainly attributed to OSF and the CPI.
And adressing this to Cynic the WP in their hay day were extremly relevent to Irish society and the Irish left. The Civil rights movement is a testimony to that. (as well as the fact that they are now leaders of the Labour Party)

Wed Feb 07, 2007 17:39

The Civil Rights Movement was much more than the sectarian rump organisation that ended up controlled by OIRA/OSF. Have you never heard of Peoples Democracy? It was also a mass organisation in its day

Pete Here

Wed Feb 07, 2007 18:57

I have. But you will also be aware that PD was a university based group that had an impact for three years of their existance - were never a mass movement in any but the most hyperactive mind and came into exisitance two years after the establishment NICRA and lost all real revalancy by 1973 after leaving NICRA in 1971, so back to my question are you a stickophobic and a secterianoid?

PDs

Wed Feb 07, 2007 19:22

Well we can debate how influential the PDs wer and for how long. But how relevant was the NICRA when the PDs left. The NICRA were no longer capable on their own of attracting mass crowds. The fact that NICRA was dominated by a Stalinist clique of OSF/OIRA & the CP showed how irrelevant it had become.

Pete Again

Wed Feb 07, 2007 23:53

That clique went on to win 7 seats and MEP, in the largest vote a far Left party working class party has ever got in Ireland - what did the PD/SF/IRSP go on to do - kill a few more people make excuses for killing people and probally further from a Unitied Ireland now than in 1969 - oh and by the way it was the OIRA that wanted equality all the other crowds would not finish until victory! or prehaps a cushy number lecturing pish at university or warming a seat in Stormount - that had to be smashed!

DM again

Thu Feb 08, 2007 17:12

Here here, i'm not saying there wern't criminals in that organisation but they did move towards peace and equality and their involvment in NICRA was the greatest sign of that. The worst of their organisation carried on the "struggle" that left hundreds dead for no reason.

Pete

Thu Feb 08, 2007 17:26

You will find that many members of the OSF/WP were also lecturers in Universities. Also the OIRA/OSF recognised Stormont at an early stage. The WP also believed in coalition government. As early as the 1982 Assembly elections the WP were all for having a coalition with the UUP. Unfortunately the ungrateful electorate didnt give the WP any seats.

If you want to talk about killings then a long list of killings by the OIRA can be provided. But the PDs never killed anyone so we'll just put that down as yet another Stalinist smear.

And Finally...

Thu Feb 08, 2007 18:13

To Cynic - your first paragraph - totally agree - the OIRA/WP where ahead of the game, it took a few hundred more deaths for others to see the way it had to be.

On PD see below - "people make excuses for killing people" .

On the list of killings - not into what aboutry but OIRA invloved in appox 70 deaths that including members - most combatants of some form or another others completely innocent civilians, none below 15 years of age.

And the PIRA, INLA, UVF, UDA, Security Forces results are....

Thu Feb 08, 2007 18:32

"To Cynic - your first paragraph - totally agree - the OIRA/WP where ahead of the game, it took a few hundred more deaths for others to see the way it had to be."

The OIRA were responsible fir some of those deaths.

"On PD see below - "people make excuses for killing people" ."

How about the excuses that the WP/OIRA made for the killing of people by the USSR, China, North Korea? In particular how about the WP/OIRA defending the shooting of those trying to escape from the socialist paradise of East Germany?

"On the list of killings - not into what aboutry but OIRA invloved in appox 70 deaths that including members - most combatants of some form or another others completely innocent civilians, none below 15 years of age."

So you include clerical workers at RUC/Army bases as combatants? The OIRA were the first to carry out such attacks and kept on doing it for 2 years after they were supposed to be on cease-fire.

"And the PIRA, INLA, UVF, UDA, Security Forces results are...."

What? Do you condemn "Security Force" killings now? Its not so long ago that the WP were cheering everytime there was a shoot to kill incident.

Pete's Back

Fri Feb 09, 2007 13:10

When the OSF finally became the WP then perhaps responsible for one of those deaths - this while attempting to practice politics in the war zone that the terrorists and BA had turned northern working class communities into.

If you think 'defending' the communist regimes as a party position is equal to cheerleading and giving essential ideological support to sectarian killers within your own community then that’s up to you.

I take it you where not in Cyprus Street cheering away with WP members? Are you just going in for a bit of hyperbole here or swallowing Provo propaganda hook line and sinker - bullshit is part of the problems in Northern Ireland please try to get over it. I condemn the murder of all innocent civilians in Northern Ireland and regret the death of combatants and their ideological backers, as did the WP.

Workers Party and OIRA

by knew them all

Fri Feb 09, 2007 19:00

Would the Workers Party people please tell us what Groups A and B were,did Groupe B kill anyone and if so who?

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40th Anniversary of foundation of NI Civil Rights Association

Comments (16 of 16)