Part II – Northern Irish Catholics inspired by the black civil rights movement in 1960s America.
The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland
Origins and Influences
The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formally founded in January 1967, but its roots stretched back several years. In 1964, Dr Conn and Patricia McCluskey, a nationalist doctor and his wife from Dungannon, had established the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) to publicise discrimination against Catholics in housing and employment. The CSJ’s careful documentation of abuses was widely circulated and provided the statistical backbone for later activism.
NICRA’s founders were a diverse coalition:
- Nationalists and republicans (including members of the republican movement’s political wing, the Republican Clubs).
- Trade unionists and socialists, some Protestant, committed to ending discrimination on class and economic grounds.
- Students and young radicals, many inspired by the US civil rights movement and global decolonisation struggles.
- Liberal professionals seeking constitutional reform.
Their model drew heavily on the American civil rights movement, particularly Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaigns for voting rights and equality. Peaceful marches, mass participation, and appeals to universal human rights were deliberately chosen to make the cause broad-based and to win international sympathy.
Core Grievances
NICRA’s initial demands were pointed but carefully framed to avoid explicit calls for Irish unity:
- One Person, One Vote
- In local government elections, only ratepayers and their spouses could vote, while business owners had extra votes — a system favouring Protestants and Unionists.
- End to Gerrymandering
- Boundaries were drawn to give Unionists control of councils in Catholic-majority areas, most notoriously Derry City, where a 60% Catholic population still returned a Unionist majority.
- Fair Housing Allocation
- Local councils often awarded housing to Protestants ahead of Catholics in greater need. Housing allocation also determined voting rights.
- End to Employment Discrimination
- Catholics were excluded from many skilled jobs and underrepresented in the civil service, police, and public bodies.
- Disbandment of the B-Specials
- The Ulster Special Constabulary was an almost exclusively Protestant auxiliary police force with a reputation for harassment in nationalist areas.
- Repeal of the Special Powers Act
- This draconian law allowed for arrest without warrant, internment without trial, and sweeping search powers, and was used almost exclusively against nationalists.
The First Actions
NICRA organised its first major march on 24 August 1968, from Coalisland to Dungannon, to protest housing discrimination. It was peaceful but met with a counter-demonstration led by loyalist hardliners, including supporters of Ian Paisley.
The real turning point came with the Duke Street march in Derry on 5 October 1968, protesting gerrymandering and housing inequality. The Minister for Home Affairs banned the march; NICRA defied the order. The RUC baton-charged the demonstrators, injuring over 100 people, including MPs. Television footage broadcast across Britain and abroad showed helmeted police beating unarmed protesters — an image that transformed a local grievance into an international story.
Official Responses
- Stormont Government (Northern Ireland)
Prime Minister Terence O’Neill attempted a cautious reform programme in late 1968, offering limited changes to voting rights and housing allocation. Hardline Unionists saw this as capitulation, while many nationalists thought it was too little, too late. O’Neill’s reforms were undermined by fierce resistance from Paisleyite loyalists and divisions within his own party. - British Government (Westminster)
Initially, Westminster regarded the unrest as a local matter for Stormont. The Home Office and Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Cabinet did not intervene directly in 1968, though they were increasingly concerned by the RUC’s heavy-handedness and Unionist intransigence. It wasn’t until August 1969, when rioting escalated and the Northern Ireland government lost control of the streets, that Westminster deployed the British Army.
Why This Matters
The Civil Rights movement in Northern Ireland began as a broad-based, non-violent campaign inspired by international examples and rooted in verifiable grievances. Its founders believed they could achieve reform within Northern Ireland’s constitutional framework.
The movement’s early years are critical to understanding the Troubles because the state’s failure to respond fairly — coupled with loyalist counter-mobilisation and police violence — convinced many nationalists that reform was impossible, setting the stage for escalation into armed conflict.
Defending Catholic areas from attack by militant protestants causes a rupture in northern republicanism.
IRA in the 1960s: From Armed Struggle to Politics
After the failure of the 1956–1962 Border Campaign, the IRA leadership faced a hard truth: armed raids and guerrilla actions hadn’t forced Britain out of Northern Ireland. Under Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding, the leadership in Dublin steered the movement toward Marxist-influenced socialist politics and away from traditional militarism.
The focus shifted to:
- Building alliances with left-wing groups in the Republic and Britain.
- Emphasising working-class unity across sectarian lines.
- Contesting elections through Sinn Féin, which was reoriented as a socialist political party.
This was a major departure from the traditional, militarist republicanism that had defined the IRA since 1919.
The Core Debate
By the mid-to-late 1960s, the split inside the movement was ideological and tactical:
- Goulding and the “Officials” (Official IRA)
- Argued that class struggle should take precedence over the national question.
- Wanted to build a revolutionary movement based on socialism, not just nationalism.
- Believed the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement offered a path to political transformation, and armed struggle should be deferred until conditions were ripe.
- The Traditionalists (“Provisional” faction)
- Saw the new left-wing focus as a betrayal of the IRA’s central mission: ending British rule by force.
- Believed the leadership’s neglect of military preparedness left nationalist communities defenceless — especially in Belfast and Derry.
- Prioritised defending Catholic areas from loyalist attacks and the RUC, particularly after the August 1969 riots and the burning of Bombay Street.
The Trigger: August 1969
The Battle of the Bogside in Derry (August 12–14, 1969) and the spread of violence to Belfast marked the breaking point.
- Loyalist mobs, sometimes aided by the RUC and B-Specials, attacked Catholic neighbourhoods.
- The IRA, caught unprepared after years of de-emphasising arms, could not mount an effective defence.
- In Belfast, this failure was seen as proof that Goulding’s leadership had abandoned the movement’s basic duty to protect its own people.
Joe Cahill, Billy McKee, and other traditionalists accused the leadership of “talking socialism in Dublin while Catholics were burned out in Belfast.”
The Split: December 1969
The movement formally divided at the IRA convention in December 1969 and Sinn Féin’s Ard Fheis in January 1970.
- The Officials (Goulding’s faction) stayed committed to Marxist politics, civil rights, and limited military action.
- The Provisionals (Provisional IRA and Provisional Sinn Féin) broke away, reasserting the primacy of armed struggle and traditional republicanism.
Initial Objectives of the Provisional IRA
In its early phase (1970–72), the Provisional IRA’s objectives were clear and limited compared to its later all-out campaign:
- Defend Catholic/Nationalist Areas
- Immediate priority after August 1969 was to arm and organise defensive units to protect against loyalist attacks and state forces.
- Much of their early activity was patrolling areas, setting up barricades, and deterring incursions.
- Rebuild the Military Capacity of the IRA
- Recruit and train volunteers.
- Secure arms from the United States and sympathetic contacts abroad.
- Maintain the Goal of a United Ireland
- While the early rhetoric focused on defence, the long-term aim remained the same as the old IRA’s: force a British withdrawal and unite Ireland.
- Undermine the Legitimacy of Northern Ireland’s State Apparatus
- Target the RUC, B-Specials, and other symbols of Stormont’s authority to show the state could not function without British military support.
From Defence to Offensive
Although the Provisionals initially presented themselves as purely defensive, by mid-1971 they had begun an active campaign against British military targets, following internment without trial in August that year. This escalation marked their transformation from a defensive militia into a full-blown insurgent force.
Even if we indulge the fiction that 1969 marked the start of the Troubles, the IRA’s war did not begin for another two years. In 1966 it was militarily dormant — no bombs, no campaign, no insurgency. The first bombs of the Troubles were planted by loyalists, the first people murdered were by loyalists, and the first RUC officer was killed by loyalists. Only after three years of Paisleyite incitement, UVF gunfire, and British Army incursions did the IRA rearm and fight back. Calling that the starting gun is not history — it’s propaganda.
Part III – The United Kingdom did not become a democracy until 1973.
https://falsehistory.ie/uk-becomes-a-democracy-in-1973/
