VETERAN civil rights campaigner Ivan Cooper has received an honorary degree from actor James Nesbitt - the man who played him in the 2002 film Bloody Sunday.
Mr Nesbitt, who is Chancellor of Ulster University, presented the 72-year-old with the Doctor of Law (LLD) degree in recognition of services to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
A founding member of the SDLP, Mr Cooper served as a minister in the Sunningdale power-sharing executive which collapsed in the face of the 1974 loyalist workers’ strike.
As a civil rights activist he was one of the organisers of the January 1972 anti-internment march on what was to become known as Bloody Sunday.
The Derry man said he was flattered to receive the honor at Ulster University’s Magee campus on Tuesday.
“Jimmy Nesbitt, who played me of course in the film Bloody Sunday, made the presentation and I’m overwhelmed by that,” he said.
Mr Cooper said he always felt it was right that he should be played by a Protestant actor because, as a Protestant, he himself was a “contradiction” in Northern Ireland.
“I am proud of my Protestantism,” he added.
In his acceptance speech, he also highlighted the move of Protestants from Derry’s west bank to the Waterside.
“The process of sectarian polarisation does not bode well for the future, not least because it deprives us of the richness of cultural diversity,” Mr Cooper said.
