Catholic Irish Civil Rights Movement?

Well the North of Ireland has always been a very sectarian place since the early 17th century. So when Loyalists got control of the place in the 1920's they passed laws that made things handy for Protestants/Loyalists and hard for Catholic/Nationalists, like the infamous Special Powers act which gave the government in the North the power to pretty much do whatever they liked and there was the gerrymandering and all that.

Te British Ambassador to Germany in the 1970's Sir Oliver Wright said about Stormont in a interview

"Democracy, in the circumstances of Northern Ireland, Stormont then equated to a form of tyranny, a minor form of tyranny not a Stalinist form of tyranny, but that was what the Stormont parliament was about."

Understandably people got sick of this after a while.
People's Democracy - a left-wing students group was set up in the mid 60's to protest these injustices. The Civil Rights Association was formed around the same time, which campaigned for one person one vote, reforms in housing allocation and an end to gerrymandering.

Austin Currie who went on to became a SDLP MP, protested by squatting in a new house that had been allocated by Dungannon Rural District Council to a 19 year old unmarried Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who was the secretary of a local Unionist politician, there was large Catholic families in tiny crap houses waiting for new houses to be allocated to them, so the protest was very popular among Nationalists/Catholics.

And a lot of these big marches by NICRA & People's Democracy were attacked by Loyalists & off-duty "police" officers. Like the Burntollet bridge ambush in January 1969, the NICRA march on the 5th October 1968, which was broadcast all over the world.

So yeah a lot of similar things happened with the Irish Civil Rights Movement that did in America with the Black Civil Rights Movement.
A lot of people when talking about the greatness of MLKjr forget to mention that he was also a Democratic Socialist which until recently was a "evil" thing to be in America. Along with the CRM in America there was also, the Prague uprising, the Vietnam protests in London, the PLO in Palestine and the students protest in Paris which inspired a lot of the Irish CRM organizers & leaders like Bernadette Devlin, Gerry Fitt, Paddy Devlin,Eamonn McCann and people like that.

Interesting talk here by McCann on the CRM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMvpNGJLu0

Always wondered what a VDP was.

Things are very much better in the sense that there isn't actually a war going on.

And - this is connected, obviously - things are better in the sense that constitutional, legal, administrative arrangements recognise the reality that there are two distinct communities in Northern Ireland, and both of them need to be engaged with the institutions of the state if the state is to be viable. It was the marginalisation and alienation of the minority community that was the underlying cause of the troubles.

But there are still two distinct communities, and some degree of mistrust between them. And there are still politicians who have an instinct to see the relationship between them as essentially adversarial, a zero-sum gain - that everything which improves the situation of one community must damage the situation of the other. Which can make the actual business of governing fairly difficult.

"MP" is a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, in London. 18 (out of 650) MPs represent districts in Northern Ireland.

A member of the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland is "MLA". There are 108 MLAs.

For completeness, a member of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland is a "TD" in the lower house, a "Senator" in the upper house.

AmericanMocha wrote: »

Thank you both for the replies. The situation sounds pretty tense still, under the surface. Symbolic agreements, longer periods without sustained violence, etc. seem to be signs of progress but seems like there are still complicated. As I said in the first post, I would imagine that the situation over in NI about religion is how it is in America with race. We're a large country with a checkered history (America founded on genocide and slavery has yet apologized/made atonement for these things) and I don't think there will ever be a time when 300 million people will all be immune from the ugly history that predates all of our arrivals here on Earth...
Now here's a naive question, and I apologize if I'm coming across as naive or oversimplifying a complicated topic but I've always wondered something. A person can change which sports team they cheer for, they can change jobs, they can change their religion, but their race is something that cannot change and it's the same their entire lives and is something that you get by virtue of the roll of the dice. It's completely out of your control. But with religion, can't you change that? If Protestants get better treatment, couldn't you just change your religious affiliation?
Thanks everyone for remembering that I am writing questions because I'm not very knowledgeable of the situation there.

Yeah I think it still is tense under the surface.

Although the vast majority of people in NI are law-abiding and just want to get on with their lives, there is still an element who don't want to see 'the other side' get ahead of them. There will always be an 'us and them' attitude in the North. I had thought that this would have died out as the older generation died and the younger ones came through, but it doesn't appear to be panning out like that so far.

Add to this the fact that education and housing is still mostly segregated in NI, and you aren't creating conditions for the communities to mingle. IMHO it needs this to cure the problem. And although the society in general is becoming less religious, with declining numbers attending both churches, 'religion' will always be seen as a reason for division, although its not really religion thats causing it if you aren't religious,is it?

Times are a-changing in NI though because the % gap of population betweem Protestant and Catholic is closing, and time itself will eventually bring about a Catholic majority, as they have a higher birth rate than Protestants. What happens then remains to be seen, as if it came to a vote, you'd have to hope that every Catholic or Nationalist would vote for a United Ireland, when in theory that wouldn't happen. Many are happier as part of the UK than the Republic of Ireland. BREXIT might change peoples attitudes in future of course, should the UK suffer as a result of leaving Europe.

And as for your other question, change religion? Sounds like an idea, but would never happen in NI. Its too indoctrinated. Even if you wanted to change, I don't think you'd get any benefit as you'd always be seen as from 'the other side'.

AmericanMocha

Hey!

Thanks for educating me on this. It never ceases to amaze me how all over the world, there are certain conflicts that are centuries-long that still cause tension and strife. Would you say the situation in N. Ireland has improved or is everything just "under the surface"? I think a lot of people in America like to think our problems with race are long gone and in some "distant past" but that couldn't be further from the truth. The current President is a prime example of this.
That's an interesting video. What's the reason the folks didn't appreciate the mention of Gerry Adams? I don't know much about him so I didn't quite get it.

Sorry for the late reply.

There is still tension under the surface. Loyalists/Protestants have basically been upset about something since they got here in 1603.
The Ireland-British conflict is a strange one, there's never really been a united national resistance to British rule.

At various times there has been a small band of revolutionaries dedicated to overthrowing British control of Ireland. 1641 was possibly the largest attempt but these "rebels" were not separatists, they wanted to put the natives in power of internal affairs in Ireland but they were to the British King, they set up a Confederate Ireland that controlled large parts of Ireland but this rebellion was quickly put down by Cromwell.
Then 1798, the leaders of that rebellion had some success in in Wicklow & Wexford but was quickly put down by superior pro-British forces, soon after in 1803 Robert Emmets rebellion failed very quickly.
1848 was basically the takeover of a garden for 20 minutes.
1867 the Fenians failed pretty quickly. Their dynamite campaign in the 1880's created anti-Irish sentiment in Britain which Karl Marx even criticized.
1919 - 1921 was probably the most unified attempt.
IRA campaigns in the 30's, 40's & 50's failed miserably.

The reason the left-wing in Ireland is hostile to Gerry Adams is for a number of reasons. They see him as a sellout, and they see him re-writing history saying the Provo campaign was for equal rights and for Catholics to get the vote instead of it being for a United Democratic Socialist Republic which was what it was really about, which they failed. French TV in 1992 did an interview with a IRA volunteer who said he was part of the IRA GHQ Staff and said the IRA would not stop until Britain got out of Ireland, two years later the IRA called a ceasefire & in 1997 ceased attacks on British forces for good. You can find the vid on YT easily.

I should also point out the likes of Malcolm X & the sort of Black militant groups were also an inspiration to young people in Northern Ireland. Bernadette Devlin infamously gave the gold key of the city of New York to the Black Panthers "as a gesture of solidarity with the black liberation and revolutionary socialist movements in America".