Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: Civil rights march in 1968 one of the earliest examples of the power of TV news

 Who can forget the moment when, as he demanded the right to protest, a marcher roared in pain after receiving a sudden sharp dig, apparently well below the belt from a baton?
 Who can forget the moment when, as he demanded the right to protest, a marcher roared in pain after receiving a sudden sharp dig, apparently well below the belt from a baton?  Who can forget the moment when, as he demanded the right to protest, a marcher roared in pain after receiving a sudden sharp dig, apparently well below the belt from a baton?

Having marked 20 years of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, we now have another significant anniversary approaching.

As I write, a photograph of the poster announcing the civil rights demonstration in Derry on October 5, 1968 is in front of me. Although there are far fewer words, it is curiously reminiscent of the 1916 Proclamation. In their very different ways, these documents turned our world upside down. The older one is a call to arms, the more recent an innocuous-looking invitation to join a march from Waterside Railway Station to the Diamond “where a public meeting will take place” (my gimlet eye notes that the spelling on the poster is “metting”).

At the time I had a holiday job as an apple-picker in Kent, the Garden of England, to help fund my education back in Dublin. I had heard nothing all day, but in the pub that night everyone was talking about the fracas in Derry when the protest went ahead in defiance of a ban by Stormont home affairs minister William Craig. The landlord and his mates were laughing at the sight of “the Paddies - fighting as usual”.

It was one of the earliest examples of the power of TV news coverage. Scores of protesters were injured in the baton-charge by the RUC including politicians Eddie McAteer and Gerry Fitt. Who can forget the moment when, as he demanded the right to protest, a marcher roared in pain after receiving a sudden sharp dig, apparently well below the belt, from a baton? Vivid footage by the legendary cameraman Gay O’Brien can be viewed at rte.ie/archives by searching for the words “Derry demonstration”. There have been worse examples of police behaviour in history but few that were more counterproductive.

The chief organisers of the march were the Derry Housing Action Committee with the somewhat-reluctant support of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (Nicra), whose Belfast leadership apparently did not realise that the scheduled route would be provocative to unionists. John Hume was quite wary of the demonstration on similar grounds but took part eventually as an ordinary citizen.

The latter organisation is the subject of an analysis headed “Nicra – its relevance today” by Kevin McCorry, which appears in a collection of essays entitled A Festschrift for Tony Coughlan published last week by Iontas Press of Maynooth in honour of the veteran campaigner on political issues and long time critic of the European Union.

McCorry, who was a full time organiser for Nicra, highlights the role of left-wing trade unionists such as Betty Sinclair and Noel Harris, most of them from a Protestant background, in setting up the association. Nicra was founded in January 1967 and McCorry recalls that, “in May 1965 the Belfast Trades Council, a mainly-Protestant working-class body, had already held a conference to discuss organising a campaign on civil rights, gerrymandering, the Special Powers Act and the Government of Ireland Act”.

He sees it as a tragedy that the civil rights movement did not get going under those auspices at that stage as, “it would have been better able to respond to the ultra-leftism which ultimately came to bedevil its campaigning”. It might also have been possible to create common ground between civil rights for the minority and issues such as the threatened loss of 4,000 jobs at the time in Shorts (now Bombardier) aerospace company in Belfast.

Whilst acknowledging the good intentions and bravery of participants in the People’s Democracy (PD) march from Belfast to Derry in January 1969, which was fiercely attacked by loyalists at Burntollet Bridge, he comments that “the political effects were disastrous” because it sharpened the polarisation between the two communities.

There was a subsequent disturbance at a PD march in Newry, and McCorry writes that “the sectarian temperature soared”. In due course, the Provisional IRA came on the scene, nominally to defend beleaguered Catholic areas in Belfast, although he asserts that many of its actions from an early stage were “essentially offensive, not defensive”. He believes that, if cooler heads had prevailed, Nicra and the broader civil rights movement could, over time, have influenced “at least a section of unionist opinion to adopt a more positive attitude towards a united Ireland”.

Yours truly is also among the 18 contributors of articles to the Coughlan book and, although a PD sympathiser at the time, I would find it hard to dispute McCorry’s analysis today. Where we part company is on the implications of Brexit: he believes that for the south to remain in the EU, while Britain leaves, will delay the prospect of Irish unity and genuine independence.

My own perspective is that Brexit will actually bring the prospect of a 32-county independent state closer. That won’t come about anytime soon, but hopefully we’ll both be around to see it.

Ddebre1@aol.com