PLANS by the unionist government of the 1960s to ensure the 'New University of Ulster' would be predominantly Protestant backfired spectacularly, it has been claimed.
Retired businessman Michael Canavan (90), a founding member of the SDLP, was one of the leaders of the campaign to have the university sited in Derry.
The 1965 decision to locate the university in Coleraine rather than Derry, the north's second city, was seen by many as one of the civil rights issues which led to the Troubles.
Fifty years on, Mr Canavan said it was still not too late to undo the damage done by the 1965 decision.
Mr Canavan's son, business leader Padraig Canavan is leading the present-day University for Derry campaign.
Mr Canavan senior believes the damage done by the 1965 decision could be overturned by raising a government cap on the number of students who can study at Ulster University's Magee campus.
"In 1965 various reports ordained that no university should be sited unless there was a surrounding population of over 50,000. At that time Derry had a population of 63,000 but Coleraine had a population of only 12,000," he said.
The Lockwood report - which recommended that the university be sited in Coleraine - suggested that it would benefit the landladies in Coleraine, Portrush and the north coast.
Mr Canavan said: "Unfortunately this led to the Coleraine campus being called the 'knickers campus' because of the landladies' reference."
He is "still livid" 50 years on at the insult to Derry Catholics and Protestants by the decision to establish the university in Coleraine.
He said everyone knew Stormont's real motivation was its fear that any university in Derry would have a majority Catholic student population.
Mr Canavan said the Chilvers report of 1982 which warned that the Coleraine university might have to close showed the original decision resulted in failure.
"The interesting thing now is that Catholics are in a majority in the University of Ulster of which Coleraine is a part. So the outrageous battle to deprive Magee of its entitlements by the Stormont bigots was a total waste of time," he said.