PDF Version Included on Caln with the Permission of the Author the NORTHERN IRELAND CIVIL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION

Politics in the Streets The origins of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland by Bob Purdie (1990) Originally published by The Blackstaff Press, Belfast PDF version included on CAlN with the permission of the author http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crightslpurdiel THE NORTHERN IRELAND CIVIL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION To Deny we went on October the fifth, to march for our rights, but oh what a myth! They beat us with batons, they beat us with fists, they sprayed us all over with water. fnmz 'October the Fifth' (civil rights song) NICRA was the best-known civil rights group but it was neither the first nor the only organisation to agitate on civil rights demands. It was, however, the most important group within the civil rights movement and it initiated the events that led to the creation of a mass movement. For a time it provided an umbrella beneath which the other organisations came together. It began life as a counterpart to the NCCL, but even in this it was not original; in 1962 a Northern Ireland Council for Civil Liberties (NICCL) was set up. In June 1962 the NCCL had adopted a resolution from the Connolly Association calling for an inquiry into civil liberties in Northern Ireland; the NICCL seems to have been set up in response and as its first action, in July, it held a meeting to prepare a memorandum on civil rights to present to Mr Justice Bose of the International Commission of Jurists, who was visiting Belfast. Martin Emals of the NCCL visited Northern Ireland in Septem- ber 1962 to investigate the situation but he was rebuffed by the Nationalist leader, Eddie McAteer, who told journalists that an inquiry at this stage would be inadvisable. This was a considerable about-turn; in March a delegation of Nationalist MPS and council- lors had met Home Secretary Rab Butler to present a dossier of complaints about discrimination. But now McAteer said that 'no matter what truths might be revealed by such an investigation they could only be interpreted as weapons of war at this stage'. He was anxious, he said, to create the best possible climate for the Orange- Green talks. Following the visit, Sean Caughey, secretary of the NICCL, issued a statement which said that his council had told Ennals that an impartial inquiry by an independent body in Britain could do much to redress the grievances of the minority. It said that the Special Powers Act was preventing British standards of justice from prevailing in Northern Ireland, and went on: The mass disfranchisement of thousands of citizens in local government, the disgraceful manipulation of constituency boundaries, the enforced political tests for government jobs and legislation, such as the Flags and Emblems Act, were some of the shackles on individual freedom which would never be tolerated in England. Yet the British Government was responsible under Clause 75 of the Government of Ireland Act for everything that goes on in Northern Ireland.' Caughey's statement paralleled the ideas about 'British standards of justice' and the responsibility of the British government under the Government of Ireland Act which were later put forward by the csj and the CDU, but in Caughey's case they were able to coexist with a strong commitment to republicanism. Shortly afterwards the NICCL disappeared from public view and Caughey resurfaced as secretary of the (republican) Political Prisoners Release Commit- tee. He was an example of the contradictory crosscurrents of nationalist and republican politics in this period. Although in 1962 he had appealed to the Government of Ireland Act, in 1963 he described it as a 'constitution of bondage'. In July 1964 he was fined for singing the Irish national anthem, 'A Soldier's Song' (in Irish) at a republican rally in Ballycastle, County Antrim. In 1965 he resigned from Sinn Fkin, of which he had been a vice-president, because of its refusal to recognise the legitimacy of both governments in Ireland. In the early 1970s he was editor of the Provisional republican newspaper in the north, Republican Naos. Following the winding up of the Political Prisoners Release Committee, Caughey became secretary of a small group called Irish Union, which, in its personnel, provided a link between the NICCL and the later Wolfe Tone Societies and NICRA. The chairman was Jack Bennett, a former member of the CPNI; he came from a Protestant background and had led a campaign in the late 1950s to get the CPNI to return to the pro-republican line of the Irish Communists in the 1930s. Another prominent member was Fred Heatley who, like Bennett, was a member of the Belfast Wolfe Tone Society and later of NICRA. NICRA itself originated at a conference of the Wolfe Tone Soci- eties held in Maghera, County Derry, on the weekend of 13-14 August 1966. The societies had been created in 1964 out of the committees which were set up to organise the 1963 commemor- ations of the bicentenary of the birth of Wolfe Tone, the leader of the United Irishmen and martyr of the 1798 Rising. Their 'primary objective was a united, independent and democratic Irish Republic in accordance with the principles of the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of the First DBil'. Fred Heatley described them as 'an autonomous adjunct of the Republican Movement', and Roy Johnston called them 'a Fabian Society to the Republican Movement'. The intellectual leaders of the Wolfe Tone Societies were two Dublin academics, Roy Johnston and Anthony Coughlan. John- ston had been a founder member of the Irish Workers' League (the Communist Party in the Irish Republic), and both were involved with the Connolly Association during periods spent in England. Johnston was important as a systematic thinker who put together a package of ideas on the links between Marxist and republican politics. He had the distinction of being viewed with deep suspi- cion by SehMac Stiofhand William Craig, who both saw him as being responsible for leading the republican movement in a Com- munist direction. It is clear, however, from examining some of his writings, that by the mid-1960s his nationalism was far stronger than his Marxism. In an article published in 1966 Johnston identified the failure of Irish governments in the 1920s and 1930s as one of not having acted to 'assume full control over the reinvest- ment of the economic surplus'. The article advocated a policy of economic autarchy, with the exclusion of foreign investment and legislation to ensure that 'gombeen capital' was invested in Ireland. The state 'could have developed along managed capitalist lines, such as a small nation occasionally can do, for example, as Nor- way'.' In 1968 he advocated a 'national revolutionary programme' which would seek to unite 'workers in industries threatened by "monopolistic rationalisation" ', small farmers, emigrants and 'technically qualified intellectuals'. This programme would have 'social objectives appropriate to the contemporary situation, and quite distinct from the classical European path of nation-building. This programme may be successful in helping a small nation to emerge from the grip of imperialism even though under considerable economic d~mination'.~ Johnston7sCommunism, therefore, had been transmuted into a nationalism which emphasised economic independence, state planning and the unity of a wide range of social groups in the tasks of nation-building. When Johnston joined the republican movement in 1965, at the invitation of Cathal Goulding, IRA chief of staff, he was probably some distance to the right of some existing members of the movement and he was responsible not so much for leading the movement to the left as for crystallising a more coherent political strategy. Through the Wolfe Tone Societies, Johnston and Coughlan initiated projects such as a Co-operative Development Trust which assisted in the creation of co-operative enterprises along the lines of those started by Father James McDyer of Glencolumbcille in County Donegal. They also agi- tated against the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement of 1965 and argued for a strategy of building republican support through involvement in agitation on social and economic grievances, as well as by a principled stand for a united and independent Ireland. The republicans were active in influencing the direction taken by NICRA as well as in its creation. Goulding himself was present at the Wolfe Tone Societies meeting in Maghera in 1966. To under- stand the significance of their involvement, however, and the direction in which republican influence took the civil rights movement, it is necessary to examine carefully the political strategy of the republicans in the mid-1960s. The abandonment of the 195-2 IRA military campaign was highly ambiguous and from outward appearances it was possible to interpret republican actions as either preparation for a renewed onslaught or as a delicate operation to keep the movement together while its direction was fundamentally changed. It is clear, however, that important inno- vations were being made in republican political activity. A document taken by the Garda Siochha (the Irish police force) from a leading republican, Sean Garland, in May 1966, and later published as an appendix to the Scarman Report," contained a good deal of evidence of plans for intensive military training, but it also outlined some of the new political initiatives being taken by the movement. It began by stating the need for an organisational form which could attract trade-unionists and for a 'radical Social and Economic programme'. Committees should be created to deal with such issues as housing and co-operatives, which would work with other radical groups and with individual members of the Irish Labour Party and trade-unionists. There would have to be extensive education within the movement: here the document indicated that social and economic agitation would be given a much higher priority than purely military activity: The present form of recruit training will be changed.

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