THE FREEDOM TO BE CATHOLIC: THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND,

Transcription

1 THE FREEDOM TO BE CATHOLIC: THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND, A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Abigail Bernhardt August, 2012

2 THE FREEDOM TO BE CATHOLIC: THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN NORTHERN IRELAND, Abigail Bernhardt Thesis Approved: Accepted: Advisor Dr. Martin Wainwright Dean of College Dr. Chand Midha Faculty Reader Dr. Michael Graham Dean of Graduate School Dr. George Newkome Department Chair Dr. Martin Wainwright Date ii

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION...1 II. USING THE NARRATIVE TO CONTROL THE MEMORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Foundations of the Civil Rights Movement...12 August 1968 Coalisland to Dungannon..23 October 1968 Derry 28 November and December 1968 Escalation.42 January 1969 Belfast to Derry 45 August 1969 Derry The Battle of the Bogside 57 III. USING THE MEMORY TO CONTROL THE MEANING OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Shaping the Meaning of the Civil Rights Movement IV. CONCLUSION 84 BIBLIOGRAPHY..86 iii

4 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The civil rights movement of late 1960s Northern Ireland brought the question of Ireland back to the British government s attention with sudden violent urgency. What began as isolated local events escalated to a national issue that drew international attention. The civil rights movement focused on addressing inequalities that existed within Northern Ireland between the Protestant and Catholic communities. The main goals of the civil rights movement were to address housing inequality, electoral reform, employment discrimination, and brutality by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). 1 These disparities led Catholics to believe that their society was structured specifically to exclude them. In 1968, several local groups came together under the banner of civil rights to address these grievances. From the beginning of the agitation for equal treatment for Catholics, tensions escalated between the Catholic and Protestant communities, particularly the Nationalist and Unionist factions in each group. Between 1968 and 1969, there was a significant increase in violent clashes as Catholics staged more demonstrations and drew international attention to their situation. Conservative Protestant backlash fueled the conflict, which would eventually span three decades, a period 1 Christopher Hewitt, Catholic grievances, Catholic nationalism and violence in Northern Ireland during the Civil Rights Period: a reconsideration, British Journal of Sociology, 32 (Sept. 1981),

5 commonly referred to as the Troubles. 2 As civil rights gave way to the Troubles, the struggle to control the memory of the movement began. The publication of memoirs and autobiographies contributed to the battle for meaning not only by outlining motives and rationales but also by designating the importance of events through page space and interpretation. By examining the language used and exploring the political motivations of the authors, this thesis seeks to understand the creation of the historical memory and how the individual purposes of each author came together in order to shape the common understanding of what happened. It also explores in the intersection of civil rights, nationalism, and socialism. This thesis examines the period from August 1968 through August 1969 through the eyes of three men: Terence O Neill, Gerry Adams, and Eamonn McCann. Specifically, this paper seeks to determine how their writing reflects the ways in which they attempted to shape the historical memory of the events of those thirteen months years after the fact. As Catholic activists, McCann and Adams tend to interpret the events of 1968 and 1969 in a similar way with an equal view as to their importance, as opposed to O'Neill, who tries in his writing to minimize their importance. Terence O Neil was the moderate Unionist Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1963 to In contrast to McCann and Adams, both Catholics, O'Neill was an Anglican. In 1972, three years after leaving office, he published The Autobiography of Terence O Neill, in which he gives an account of his life from birth to when he resigned 2 The Troubles refers to the period from roughly 1969 to 1998, starting with the rioting in the Bogside in Derry and ending with the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. Some sectarian violence has continued since 1998, which problematizes such a timeframe. 2

6 as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. 3 In addition to the summary of his life, he argues that he did the best he could for Northern Ireland under the circumstances in which he was forced to operate. The civil rights movement, in his view, caused as many problems as it solved because of the ensuing societal upheaval. Gerry Adams was a Catholic activist and a member of Sinn Féin, the republican political party often associated with the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, during the civil rights period. 4 In 1986, he published The Politics of Irish Freedom, which serves as autobiography and political manifesto. 5 Adams uses the book to explain how he came to be involved in groups such as the West Belfast Housing Action Committee and Sinn Féin and how his political activism shaped his politics to the time of publishing. In his opinion, the civil rights movement was a good start to improving the lives of Catholics, but ultimately only an independent, united Ireland could provide the desired outcome. Eamonn McCann was also a Catholic activist, and a leading leftist in Derry. 6 He was heavily involved in local organizing, especially in the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) and the planning of the civil rights march on October 5, In 1974, he first published War and an Irish Town, in which he describes what it was like growing up Catholic in Northern Ireland and gives his account of the civil rights 3 Terence O Neill, The Autobiography of Terence O Neill (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1972). 4 Adams is currently president of Sinn Féin, has published multiple subsequent books calling for the unification of an independent Ireland, and remains an active figure not only in Northern Ireland but in Europe more generally. 5 Gerry Adams, The Politics of Irish Freedom (Dingle: Brandon Book Publishers, 1986) 6 The name Derry is a point of contention. The official name of the town and province that share this name is Londonderry, but because of its British connotations, Nationalists refer to it instead as Derry. For the sake of clarity, Derry is used here because the two sources that refer to it most prominently used the Nationalist name. 3

7 movement, particularly the events in Derry in which he served as an active participant. 7 For McCann, the civil rights movement was an immediate means to address the inequalities he saw in society, although he too had in mind the larger goal of full Irish independence. Terence O Neill placed a lot of the blame for the state of Anglo-Irish relations on the shoulders of Queen Victoria, claiming that if she had treated Ireland as she had treated Scotland then Ireland would have had a better relationship with Britain. 8 It is interesting that O'Neill attributed so much responsibility to the symbolic power of the monarch, a reflection, it would seem, of his loyalty to Britain and particularly to the monarchy. However, the tensions, especially sectarian tensions, have a far longer history. England first colonized Ireland in 1170 during the reign of Henry II, beginning a long and complicated relationship between the two islands. For at least half of their shared history, Britain and Ireland also shared a common religion. This changed in 1534 when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church. 9 The English during the reign of Henry VIII established the first plantations in Ireland and began the attempt to convert the Irish to Protestantism. With the exception of Queen Mary, who continued the plantation scheme of her father which would cause so many problems in later centuries and spawn the Catholic nationalist movement, the increasing tendency for British monarchs to embrace 7 Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town, 3 rd Ed. (London: Pluto Press, 1993). War and an Irish Town has gone into its third edition, though McCann claims at the beginning of the third edition that he has taken care not to make too many modifications to the text itself, despite the addition of a new sixty page introduction. McCann has since retired from activism, although he retains his journalist credentials and continues to reside in the Bogside. 8 O Neill, Autobiography, 3. 9 Paul F. State, A Brief History of Ireland (New York: Checkmark Books, 2009), 93. 4

8 Protestantism led to tensions between the two groups, especially during the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 10 Once Britain became a Protestant state, the nobles sent to Ireland to continue colonizing were Protestants after their monarch, while the majority of the Irish population remained Catholic despite numerous attempts by the British to convert them. One of the results was that Irish elites tended to be Protestant, while Catholicism was the religion of the masses. 11 Further complicating the matter was the fact that the division was more than simply Protestant versus Catholic: the settlers who came over in the Ulster plantation scheme in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were primarily Scottish Presbyterians. This served the dual purpose of removing perceived troublemakers from the borderland between England and Scotland while at the same time transplanting Protestantism to Ireland. 12 It also created many of the tensions which would appear in later centuries between Catholics, Presbyterians, and Anglicans. The Protestant population was largely concentrated in the north of Ireland, a demographic arrangement which would become important when Ireland was granted independence in 1920 under the Government of Ireland Act of This was not a coincidence, however, but a lasting result of a plantation scheme backed by James I which targeted the province of Ulster for settlement because of its history and reputation as being a difficult area of the island to control. 13 During this period, towns in Ulster 10 Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), MacCulloch, Reformation, MacCulloch, Reformation, Mac Culloch, Reformation,

9 especially were renamed to reflect English supremacy; among the most significant was the renaming of Derry to Londonderry. 14 Later nationalists would seize upon the older name of Derry as a way of making a political statement about who had the proper sovereign power in Ireland. Catholicism was even more stridently repressed under Oliver Cromwell, a zealous Puritan, whose efficiency in suppressing a Catholic insurgency in Ireland left a better imprint on Irish Catholic folk memory. 15 Also important in Catholic historical memory was the so-called Glorious Revolution in which William of Orange, who became co-ruler with his wife Mary, succeeded James II in a relatively bloodless coup. 16 The coup was decidedly less bloodless in Ireland and Scotland, where James II staged rebellions in an attempt to regain the throne. 17 Two events in particular had a lasting effect on Catholic-Protestant relations in Ireland: the Siege of Derry, the start and end of which are commemorated by Protestants every December and August; and the Battle of the Boyne, which James II was decisively defeated by William s Protestant army. 18 The annual commemorations of these events is a long-standing source of tensions between Catholics and Protestants, with Catholics viewing the commemorations as intentionally provocative, with the sole purpose of the events being to remind Catholics of their second-class status State, History, State, History, MacCulloch, Reformation, MacCulloch, Reformation, MacCulloch, Reformation, 532; State, History, State, History,

10 Catholic nationalism achieved a partial victory in the aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916 and the IRA campaign of The Government of Ireland Act became law on December 23, 1920, creating the Irish Free State. 20 The Act included a provision allowing for the six majority Protestant counties in the north to secede from the Irish Free State and remain in the United Kingdom. They did so, forming themselves into Northern Ireland. The creation of a divided Ireland did not end the republican sentiment which had pushed for an independent Ireland. In many ways, Catholics regarded partition as interfering with the completion of an unfinished revolution which would end Britain s colonial presence in Ireland. 21 Partition also did not create a state in which Catholic Irish were given the same rights as Protestant Irish. Catholics in Northern Ireland faced discrimination in housing and employment, and lived in a one-party state which did not allow for civil redress of grievances. The level of dissent among Catholics in Northern Ireland varied from the state s creation, but seems to have come to a peak starting in While most of the 1960s had been relatively calm following the failed IRA border campaign of , the level of activism in 1968 and 1969 reached new levels, and Catholics tried new approaches to improving their situation. 22 The increased activism in 20 State, History, 240. The Irish Free State formally became the Republic of Ireland in 1949 (State, History, 279). 21 For more on the idea of the unfinished revolution, see Niall Ó Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) 22 For a concise explanation of the history of Ireland with regard to Britain and religion, see Rosemary Sales, Women Divided: Gender, Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (London: Routledge, 1997). In her first two chapters, Sales explains the history of Ireland s relationship with Britain, and how that brand of imperialism led to the republican movement. She also explains how the demographic layout of Catholicism and Protestantism contributed to the formation of Northern Ireland, and also how policy built around preserving the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland has impacted Irish history. 7

11 turn led to conservative backlash as Protestants reacted to changes Catholics were trying to enact. The historiography of Northern Ireland has relegated the civil rights movement to a largely supporting role. Bob Purdie published a book on the origins of the civil rights movement in 1990, although his is very much in the minority among what historians, sociologists, and journalists have written on Northern Ireland. 23 Robbie Munck published an article in 1992 delving into the civil rights movement as the origin of the Troubles. 24 Most scholars treat the civil rights period as either a starting point for writing about the Troubles or as a brief stopping point when writing a narrative of paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland. More recent works, particularly on paramilitaries, have taken a longer view of the twentieth century as more sources become available for research purposes, starting sometime around or before partition with the 1916 Easter Rising serving as a typical pivotal first event, and continuing through to sometime in the 1990s, depending on the date of publication. A few historians have continued past the 1998 Belfast Agreement to examine the effects of the peace process on Northern Ireland. One of the most recent works by Simon Prince has taken a different approach, looking at the civil rights movement in a global context, with particular attention to how the events in Northern Ireland in 1968 reflected events that happened elsewhere, primarily in the United States and Europe. 25 No scholars at this point have undertaken a memory study to 23 Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990). 24 Robbie Munck, The Making of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Journal of Contemporary History, 27 (Apr., 1992), Simon Prince, Northern Ireland s 68: Civil Rights, Global Revolt, and the Origins of the Troubles (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 8

12 explore the civil rights period. Although Munck acknowledges in his article that the filter of memory may play a role in how the participants recall this period, he does not explore that aspect in any great detail. The civil rights movement and Irish nationalism were distinct, although not antithetical. One tendency which appears quite frequently in the historiography is for historians to assume that the civil rights movement was something of an anomaly, in which Catholics aimed for achieving the same constitutional rights as Protestants by working within the system. Bob Purdie s articulation of this argument has influenced many of the books written in the past twenty years. 26 Richard English summarizes the civil rights movement as anomaly stance quite succinctly: there emerged during the 1960s a civil rights movement which was separate from Irish nationalism and which sought only equal treatment for Catholics. 27 In contrast, Christopher Hewitt argues that there is in fact a greater link between nationalism and the civil rights movement than has generally been acknowledged. 28 While Hewitt s position is largely ignored in the historiography and Purdie in particular is one of the most commonly cited sources, an examination of the language used by Adams and McCann shows that the nationalist position and rhetoric heavily influenced their politics. Some of the civil rights activists may have rejected the nationalist position in order to pursue civic equality without attempting to completely undermine the Northern Ireland state, but that was not true of all civil rights activists. It is also important to note the role of socialism in conjunction 26 Purdie, Politics, Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Hewitt, Grievances,

13 with civil rights and nationalism. As was a common theme in the postwar period, socialism attracted many activists seeking a solution to the perceived economic exploitation of capitalism and the imperial systems which used it. For that reason, socialism and nationalism have a long, connected history. 29 Hewitt discusses the fact that civil rights may have been used as a way of dismantling Northern Ireland from within. Because Catholics considered the existence of Northern Ireland reliant on systemic discrimination in order to exist, there was the belief that eliminating the discrimination would remove the basis for Northern Ireland s legitimacy, causing it to fade from existence, thereby ending partition in Ireland. 30 Eamonn McCann, who was very active in the civil rights movement, mentions in his memoir that Catholics in Derry believed It was our task to finish the job, to cleanse the remaining traces of foreign rule from the face of Ireland. 31 Quotes such as this reveal the extent to which republican sentiment still thrived in the late 1960s. One of the aims of this thesis is to show how, in the process of shaping the memory of the civil rights movement by portraying it as something apart from previous republican movements, the language of McCann and Adams in particular reveals the extent to which nationalist aims still affected the discourse. The scope of this study covers events in Northern Ireland from August 1968 through August In August 1968, the first civil rights march was held as demonstrators organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) 29 Henry Patterson discusses the link between socialism and Irish nationalism in The Politics of Illusion: Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989). 30 Hewitt, Grievances, McCann, War,

14 marched from Coalisland to Dungannon. On October 5, 1968, a second civil rights march was held in Derry. In January 1969, members of the People s Democracy marched from Belfast to Derry, but were attacked by loyalists at Burntollet. April 1969 saw more violence as tensions between nationalists and unionists escalated. August 12-14, 1969, is often referred to in primary and secondary sources as the Battle of the Bogside. Three days of rioting after the Apprentice Boys annual march on August 12 culminated in the government calling in the British Army in an attempt to diffuse the situation. Finally, a brief note about terminology: Nationalist and Catholic tend to be used synonymously in the literature; Unionist, Loyalist, and Protestant are similarly linked. Republican is also used to refer to Catholics, but usually denotes a specific political position that is sometimes linked with paramilitary activity, whereas Nationalist usually refers to a peaceful stance without the paramilitary linkage. It should be pointed out that none of these labels are all-inclusive: not all Catholics embraced Nationalist ideologies, while not all Protestants were strictly Unionist in their politics. As with any political agenda, even within movements there were varying degrees to which people bought into the espoused ideology. However, for the sake of ease of understanding, the terms Catholic and Protestant here are used to refer to Nationalists and Unionists as other historians have done. There is an effort here to attempt to problematize these labels, however, especially when doing so aids the main argument. 11

15 CHAPTER II USING THE NARRATIVE TO CONTROL THE MEMORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Terence O'Neill, Eamonn McCann, and Gerry Adams each used their writings to give meaning to the civil rights movement. By retelling the events of the movement, each gives his own interpretation of what was important and what it meant. Thus, they attempted to use the narrative to emphasize what they considered the importance of what had happened and how it ought to be remembered. This chapter will focus on the structuring of the narrative to reflect what each believed to be the important message for the readers to gain from the accounts. Foundations of the Civil Rights Movement Civil rights in Northern Ireland came to national and international attention starting with the October 5 march, but it had begun on a local level months before that. In most of Northern Ireland, the civil rights movement first took shape in the form of housing action committees aimed at addressing the disparity in available housing and the allotment of that housing. Groups such as NICRA and the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) only gradually came to symbolize what Catholics thought was wrong with Northern Ireland on a national level. Before the movement grew and tensions escalated, 12

16 most of the activism began at the local level. This local activism was largely aimed at addressing the housing discrimination which Catholics experienced. While the events in Northern Ireland were to some degree purely local in their nature and context, to a certain extent they were also part of a larger global phenomenon of the 1960s. Gerry Adams places the events of 1968 and 1969 firmly in the context of the global nature of the 1960s. 32 He argues that there was something in the air which lent itself to the formation of the civil rights movement and a challenge to the way things were: This was the promise of the 60s, that the world was changing anyway and the tide of change was with the young generation. This produced a sense of impatience with the status quo allied to a young, enthusiastic and euphoric confidence. 33 It might not be overly surprising that in 1986 Adams would remember the 1960s as a period of massive upheaval and change, especially considering events that had happened since the early days of housing action committees. Gerry Adams was actively involved in the civil rights movement as a Catholic agitator, first becoming involved in the West Belfast Housing Action Committee, which he describes as an impromptu formation whose aim was to provide direct action in response to housing discrimination. In many places, the local housing corporations denied Catholics housing based on their religion, while some houses and apartments sat empty. 34 The West Belfast Housing Action Committee and other local housing action 32 Simon Prince s recent work, Northern Ireland s 68, explores the global context to which Adams refers. Prince, however, argues that instead of drawing parallels to South Africa or Israel-Palestine, as Adams does, the better comparison is to France and West Germany. 33 Gerry Adams, Politics, According to Eamonn McCann, housing was assigned by a Protestant-dominated body. The Derry Housing Corporation was very much aware that only householders could vote in Northern Ireland, which 13

17 committees helped homeless families squat in empty houses. Often their efforts were successful, and the housing corporations granted housing to Catholic families on the waiting list. It was this sort of direct action, with its immediate results, that formed the basis for what would later build into the civil rights movement. 35 As Adams relates in The Politics of Irish Freedom, much of the civil rights movement in Ireland began as smaller ad hoc initiatives that later fitted together to form the civil rights movement. 36 It is important to notice, however, how Adams and McCann both frame the activities of the housing action committees as noble and humane when in fact they were encouraging people to trespass, something which often involved breaking and entering. By framing it in a positive light and emphasizing how they were acting in the best interests of their fellow Catholics, McCann and Adams were able to portray the housing action committees as groups of heroes rather than potential criminals. Eamonn McCann was similarly involved in the Derry Housing Action Committee. He describes a comparable situation in terms of housing discrimination in Derry to what Adams describes in Belfast: The housing situation too was very bad and enmeshed in the complexity of the local government structure. Only householders could vote at local government elections. To give a person a house, therefore, was to give him a vote, and the Unionist Party in Derry had to be very circumspect about the people to whom it gave votes. It would have been political suicide for it to have given Catholics led to housing discrimination against Catholics as a way to prevent them from gaining an electoral majority (80). The Housing Action Committees focused on government bodies because they would have been able to exert more influence over them than over private landlords who would have been less subject to public opinion. 35 Adams, Politics, Adams, Politics,

18 houses and votes outside the South Ward where most Derry Catholics were corralled. 37 Both McCann and Adams were acutely aware of the political implications of housing discrimination. In the above quote, McCann characterizes the implementation of discrimination as a way to keep the Catholics where the Protestants could control them, all penned together, rounded up like unwanted animals that needed to be contained. Because suffrage in Northern Ireland was tied to having a house, the Protestant housing corporation had a strategic aim in restricting Catholic access to housing, especially in areas over which it wanted to maintain electoral control. 38 If the aim was the preservation of a Protestant state for Protestant people, it was necessary to suppress Catholic votes. The knowledge that being Catholic somehow made them different and politically inferior to Protestants echoes through McCann s and Adams writings. In discussing the ongoing struggle for Irish freedom, McCann observes, An essential part of the Irish Freedom for which patriots had fought through the centuries was, we understood, the freedom to be Catholic. 39 In a few words, McCann describes what is at the heart of the matter for civil rights agitators: the Protestant government has made it as difficult as possible for the Catholics living in Northern Ireland, and in response they are 37 McCann, War, The University of Ulster's Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) provides an overview of the issues at stake in the Troubles. Brendan Lynn, Introduction to the Electoral System in Northern Ireland, Conflict Archive on the Internet, (accessed April 30, 2012). Included in the discussion is the fact that in the 1960s, Northern Ireland franchise was based on ratepayer suffrage, which meant that only the owners or tenants of a dwelling and their spouses were eligible to vote in local elections. These restrictions would have looked fair on paper, similar to literacy or property requirements enacted in the American South following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. The practice of gerrymandering was not confined to Northern Ireland. Here, however, it manifested itself as controlling the placement of the population rather than as redrawing district lines to reflect demographic changes. 39 McCann, War,

19 seeking only as much as the Protestants already have. That is, the civil rights movement as McCann portrays it was about achieving equal status for Catholics. 40 The fact that Catholics had a higher birthrate than Protestants did not alleviate the housing situation because it tended to lead to overcrowding in the areas where Catholics were allotted houses. According to McCann, Since Catholics, who were in an overwhelming majority on the housing waiting list, were not eligible for the estates outside the South Ward, houses in these were, for Protestants, very easy to come by. Or so it seemed to us. When building land in the South Ward began to run short the corporation was faced with the problem of either housing Catholics in other wards or not housing them at all. It opted for the latter. 41 McCann acknowledges, however briefly, that some of the disparity may have been only a matter of perception. The Catholics felt that there was rampant discrimination against them, and whether this was in fact the case matters very little compared to how that perception affected Catholic activism. 42 The increasing population only seems to have fueled the feelings that Catholics were the disadvantaged group in Northern Ireland. Housing discrimination in particular contributed to the outcast feeling because having proper shelter is an essential concern for any group of people. McCann focuses on the housing situation not only because it was his entrée into the civil rights movement, but also because it provides dramatic proof of the injustice of the system they were fighting. 40 One view which opponents pushed was that the movement intended to either cause as much havoc as possible or to overthrow the state. There was the constant fear that it was really a front for the Irish Republican Army. 41 McCann, War, Christopher Hewitt s article Catholic grievances, Catholic nationalism and violence in Northern Ireland during the Civil Rights Period: a reconsideration, British Journal of Sociology, 32 (Sept. 1981), , delves into the disconnect between Catholic perceptions of discrimination and the reality by examining evidence from within Northern Ireland and comparing the data with other comparable countries, including the United States and Australia. 16

20 It was only natural that they would rebel against being denied something as basic as a place to live. This feeling of being the unwanted element of society did not immediately lend itself to action, however. It took some time for discontent to evolve into a political movement. After all, the partitioning of Ireland had occurred in the 1920s and it was not until the 1960s that activists began to mobilize against the inequities in Northern Ireland. It was not until the postwar generation came of age that Catholics mounted a serious challenge to the status quo. McCann describes the relative acquiescence felt by the Catholic community in the 1960s toward their situation: There was no revolutionary ferment arising at all. Expectations were little higher than the reality. As long as the state existed there would be discrimination, and as long as there was discrimination we would suffer unemployment and slum housing. Everyone knew that. Demands were made, of course, that discrimination be stopped, but more for the record than in real hope of result. 43 Based on McCann s analysis of the level of Catholic dissent, he does not consider it a given that there would be an organized movement to agitate in favor of Catholic rights. This does explain why it was nearly fifty years after the creation of Northern Ireland before Catholics mounted a visible opposition to the state. The Catholic-Protestant tensions dated back centuries, and the existence of Northern Ireland after the independence of the Republic of Ireland reinforced that Protestants would remain the privileged group in the north. After centuries of discrimination against Catholics at the hand of British Protestants, McCann points out that the level of acceptance was expected. Previous demonstrations had not achieved the same position for Catholics in the north as they had in the south. Gerry Adams description of the Catholic community s general 43 McCann, War,

21 attitude is slightly harsher than McCann s: Most working class Catholics were overwhelmingly fatalistic and apathetic. 44 In Adams view, even more obviously than in McCann s, it is amazing that the Catholic community managed to cobble together a movement at all. Adams blames the Catholic community in part for the state of their affairs. He considers the disparity largely systemic, but acknowledges that had the Catholics been more active and less apathetic, their reality might have been better. By March 1968, at least in Derry, it seemed that for the younger generation enough was finally enough. McCann recounts how the Derry Housing Action Committee began to take action against the housing discrimination by staging a demonstration at the Londonderry Corporation meeting: In March they and some others had organized themselves, if that is not too strong a word, into the Derry Housing Action Committee, which set out with the conscious intention of disrupting public life in the city to draw attention to the housing problem. The DHAC introduced itself to the public by breaking up the March meeting of Londonderry Corporation. 45 Throughout his narrative, McCann takes care to underline the lack of organization in the movement. This may be a reflection of how impromptu most of their actions really were, or it may be McCann s attempt to imagine the people in the group as behaving in a largely disorganized fashion because that would undermine any attempt to portray them as acting on behalf of another group, such as the Irish Republican Army, as would become common particularly in the early 1970s. If McCann and his compatriots were truly as unorganized as he makes them seem, then the civil rights movement was a genuinely spontaneous attempt to end the inequity within Northern Ireland and was not a 44 Adams, Politics, McCann, War,

22 front for paramilitary activity. The fact that their actions were spontaneous meant that they could not have been sinister. We invaded the public gallery of the council chamber with banners and placards and demanded that we be allowed to participate in the meeting. The mayor naturally refused, and made it clear that he was not going to tolerate hooliganism in the chamber. From the Nationalist benches Alderman James Hegarty voiced the opinion that we were under the control of card-carrying members of the Communist Party... It was a very successful demonstration. We repeated it at the April and May meetings of the corporation. 46 By embracing the role of hooligan and underlining the importance of hooliganism to initiating change, McCann argues that such behavior was really the only way to accomplish anything. While the disruption of the housing corporation meeting angered the members of the corporation and resulted in the removal of the DHAC members by the police, McCann describes the events of the meeting with pride at having succeeded in forcing the corporation to take notice of their displeasure. He proudly takes on the labels communist and hooligan as a way of setting himself up as an agitator and someone who would make things happen. It also allows him to further emphasize the movement's spontaneity and disorganization. It was a modest start to their campaign for change through civil disturbance. For six months afterward, activists largely confined themselves to disturbing corporation meetings. But through this small scale activity, McCann and company gained confidence in their ability to eventually force change through disruption. After a few months, they shifted their focus to look more broadly at areas where they could force the issue of discrimination against Catholics. The DHAC s success in interfering with the business of 46 McCann, War,

23 corporation meetings would eventually lead them to attempt bolder actions, including the October 5 civil rights march. Despite the modest success at causing a disturbance that the DHAC enjoyed in Derry, some other activists felt stymied by repeated encounters with resistance. According to Gerry Adams, this apartheid system was supported at every turn by the assurances of senior British political figures or the British government itself. 47 By invoking the racial segregation of South Africa, Adams makes a powerful connection between Catholic Irish and black Africans. He also argues the complicity of the British government in allowing such gross inequalities to continue. By choosing South Africa as his point of comparison, as opposed to Paris or West Germany, Adams underlines the systemic nature of the inequality, particularly the fact that South Africa had also been part of the British Empire. 48 In doing so, Adams is framing it as a problem of empire and not drawing parallels with other equal European nations. Without the support of the British government, Adams implies, the Protestants would not be to continue enforcing the status quo. Unionists refused, and refuse still, to deal with their Catholic neighbours as equals because they didn t need to. Unlike their black counterparts in South Africa, however, the Irish Catholic labour force, both rural and urban, wasn t necessary for the well-being of the state. 49 Employment discrimination was also a major point of contention for the civil rights movement. Protestant employers routinely blocked Catholic workers from certain jobs, 47 Adams, Politics, Like many other African nations, South gained its independence in the early 1960s when it voted to leave the British Commonwealth. 49 Adams, Politics,

24 especially working class positions. The economic divide provided another motivation for activists such as McCann and Adams, and clearly shaped the rhetoric Adams used to defend his republican politics. It also contributed to the popularity of socialism as an alternative to imperialist capitalism. Adams argues that the religious divide and it civic correlation were created along with the Northern Ireland statelet, and that that system was a means of maintaining control over the Irish people. By using a diminutive such as "statelet," which serves as a variation on "the six counties" as a way of referring to Northern Ireland without calling it by name, Adams calls its legitimacy into question while simultaneously portraying it as a puppet of the British government, allowing him to reinforce the necessity of full Irish independence through an indictment of the current situation: Partition was, and remains, the main means by which equality is denied us and the principal method by which self-determination is withheld from us. Partition aborted a national independence struggle in the 1920s, secured Britain a toehold in part of Ireland from which she could influence all of Ireland; it divided the Irish people into two states, and within one state it established a Unionist monopoly which divided us once more. 50 Such plain language succinctly lays out Adams political modus operandi, and explains why he became involved in local activism and supported the activities of other republicans. He understood that this division of the Irish people against themselves was exploited by certain Protestant elements in order to preserve the status quo. To Gerry Adams and Eamonn McCann, this division of Irish society was precisely the problem. If they could find a way to end the discrimination and injustice inherent in the makeup of Northern Ireland, then they might ultimately be able to end the partition of Ireland. While 50 Adams, Politics,

25 most historians have dismissed the ending of partition as one of the goals of the civil rights movement, both Adams and McCann discuss how partition and Protestant ascendancy in Northern Ireland have affected their understanding of what it means to be Catholic in a state where Catholicism is not the preferred religion. This understanding, paired with their knowledge of Irish history, is laid out from the beginning of their books and colors their writings. While ending partition was not an explicitly stated aim of the civil rights movement, and there were activists who did not embrace this purpose, that goal was accepted by many Catholic activists and certainly drove their actions. Adams describes a situation when the Catholics and Protestants in Ballymurphy came together to build a pedestrian crossing; what began as nonsectarian cooperation was derailed when Unionist followers of Reverend Ian Paisley, a conservative Presbyterian minister and one of the most vocally reactionary opponents of the civil rights movement, descended on the town and brought religious differences back into the situation. 51 Adams saw the conclusion of this episode, during which he first became aware of the negative words thrown at Catholics, as indicative of the struggle that Catholics would face in their quest for equality: If the state would not allow Catholics and Protestants to get a pedestrian crossing built together, it would hardly sit back and watch them organize the revolution together. 52 He paints the episode with the pedestrian crossing as a utopian attempt by Catholics and Protestants to work together to improve their community, at least until the extremists stepped in and prevented such cooperation. This analogy implies 51 Ian Paisley was a prominent figure in Northern Ireland. A conservative Presbyterian minister, he is often portrayed as the major right-wing adversary. He was very much a vocal reactionary as the civil rights movement unfolded. In many instances, Paisley s name became shorthand for conservative Protestantism. 52 Adams, Politics,

26 that if both sides had worked together to build crossings more often, then the entirety of the civil rights movement might have been unnecessary. In Adams view, intolerance in the form of state restrictions and Protestant extremism were the main obstructions to peaceful progress. As much as he embraced and promoted the political goals of nationalism, he occasionally reveals that the ultimate goal was a functioning, harmonious society. While for the bulk of his writing independence is the only solution, in this moment it might not be. In this instance at least, his perspective is not all that different from Terence O'Neill's in emphasizing the importance of cooperation. This example is somewhat contradictory given how adamant Adams is throughout his writing that this struggle is ultimately about Irish nationalism and the importance of independence to Catholics in particular. However, this anecdote reveals some of the tensions between Catholic religious and Irish national identity. The fact that Adams remembers sectarian cooperation so favorably demonstrates that the situation in Northern Ireland was not nearly as simple as some have tried to make it, including Adams himself. August 1968 Coalisland to Dungannon Several diverse groups including NICRA, the Belfast Wolfe Tone Society, the CSJ, and the local housing action committees all came together under the banner of the civil rights movement. 53 The first organized march that NICRA sponsored went from Coalisland to Dungannon on August 24, 1968, a distance of about four miles. Terence O Neill recorded in his Autobiography that while he was aware of the first march, he and 53 Adams, Politics,

27 his government treated it as being relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of events: Northern Ireland being a country of marches, one tended to accept these things as normal. 54 There was no sense in O Neill s mind initially that this might be the start of something bigger. At the time, it had simply seemed like more of the same, something for which he seems almost relieved, as more of the same meant that the march was not the portent of massive societal upheaval to come. O Neill writes four years later about how the August march was in fact something far bigger than his government had initially considered: Had we all known it, that unreported Civil Rights march was to be the start of something which would shake Northern Ireland to its foundations, split the ruling Unionist Party, and initiate more reforms in two years than I had thoughts possible in ten. Moreover, Westminster, our sovereign Parliament, had Northern Ireland thrust on its plate as never before since the Government of Ireland Act of O Neill traces every difficulty he faced from sectarian opposition back to the upheaval caused by the civil rights movement. This march, as he sees it, marked the beginning of a movement that would change the face of politics in Northern Ireland. For him, despite the lack of media attention, it was not an insignificant event. O Neill was very much aware of how important the civil rights movement became after the fact, with the benefit of knowing what happened between the start of the civil rights movement in 1968 and the time he sat down to write in 1972: 1968 was to usher in a new era. The repercussions from the first Civil Rights march are still with us as I write these words and are likely to 54 O Neill, Autobiography, O Neill, Autobiography,

28 remain with us for a long time to come. 56 With the benefit of hindsight, O Neill could confidently state that the civil rights movement was an important turning point in the history of Northern Ireland, or especially his own history. It should be noted that, in principle, O Neill was not opposed to reforming Northern Ireland. He was aware that the inequalities which existed between Catholics and Protestants were only harming the country, and as a result, he was willing to work toward the needed reforms. His major objection to the civil rights movement was that it forced the changes to come swiftly, rather than allowing them to be enacted in due time. Despite the criticisms lobbed at him by men such as McCann and Adams who were of a far more radical disposition, when compared with the years leading up to his premiership, O Neill was in fact a progressive leader, even if his progressivism was mitigated by a desire to let things come when they would and not force too much on an unwilling people. In his discussion of the Catholic civil rights movement and its ramifications, O'Neill does not discuss the connection between the movement and Irish nationalism. Given the ways in which McCann and Adams both make an effort to connect the two, it is interesting that O'Neill chooses to isolate the two and focus exclusively on the civil rights movement to the point of ignoring the issue of nationalism. Likely, O'Neill's Protestantism and Unionism influence his interpretation of events and what he considers important. However, this means that he ignores the impact of nationalism on events as a driving force behind the activists' actions. O'Neill sees the movement in an entirely different light, focusing instead on the outcomes over the motivations. 56 O Neill, Autobiography,

29 Eamonn McCann remembered the August 1968 march in very modest terms, and gives it at best a cursory mention while setting up his discussion of the subsequent civil rights activities. While he mentions the large number of people who participated, he takes care to underline that the march had little lasting impact: 57 The CRA had organized a march the first civil rights march in Northern Ireland from Coalisland to Dungannon in August to protest against discriminatory housing allocations in that area. About four thousand had marched and it passed off peacefully despite being prevented by the RUC from reaching its objective, Dungannon market square. 58 McCann s mention of the march has an obligatory quality, because it shared many of the same goals as his group in Derry. However, in his narrative, he gives far more weight to the events in which he was personally involved, to the point of dismissing the first civil rights march in order to give more importance to the second march in Derry. 59 The lack of dramatic confrontation in the march provided an interesting measure for future marches: in several instances in the following year, march organizers made a point of seeking a violent, and therefore dramatic, confrontation. The goal was to draw more attention by provoking a disproportionate response to the actions of the marchers, something which the police and RUC could generally be relied upon to provide. Even if the number of participants was not as many as the number who marched in August 1968, the increased coverage was in some ways an adequate trade off for those who were 57 In terms of the civil rights movement as a whole, the first march in August 1968 was perhaps most important for marking a visible beginning of the movement. Its peaceful nature also set the bar for the aims of subsequent marches especially with regard to the desired media attention. In the following months, when planning additional marches organizers such as McCann looked to both the August 1968 march and to international examples such as those in the United States, particularly Selma and Montgomery. 58 McCann, War, McCann, War,