Saturday, October 04, 2008
It was forty years ago today…
It wasn’t Bunker Hill nor Bastille Day nor yet Easter Monday because there was no victory, not many were hurt nor was there a clear outcome. But October 5th 1968 has to be the landmark day of the death of a kind of innocence when the civil rights march in shabby little Duke St in Derry was batoned by the police, launching more or less continuous violence that never really stopped for thirty years. It was too an early example of the power of television. Northern Ireland was suddenly famous. We could all pile in and create our own nasty little Truman Show. The civil rights were to come tumbling in right enough, but too little too late, and disastrously dismissed as a sign of weakness in the State not only by the beneficiaries but by the State’s own supporters. Each side brought about the other’s worst fears. The best hummed and ha’d, the worst were full of divilment. The movement of “ too many chiefs” (right Edwina), they had tactics but no strategy and even worse, neither had the government, beyond affronted arrogance and total ineptitude.
Adds Bernadette is still in struggle, wants to remain a living icon not a celluloid one. “At the Cannes film festival this year a biopic of Devlin was announced, to be called The Roaring Girl. She will be played by Sally Hawkins, star of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, apparently. But not if Bernadette Devlin McAliskey (as she has been for years) gets her way. “The whole concept is abhorrent to me,” she says, revealing that her lawyers are challenging the film. “How dare anybody make a pretend life for me while I’m still living the real one?”
On the “might have beens”
“Lord Paul Bew argued that an opportunity was lost sometime between the October 5th civil rights march in Derry and the attack on the People’s Democracy march from Belfast to Derry at Burntollet the following January. He felt the then unionist prime minister, Terence O’Neill, had taken on his hardliners and was preparing to reform the Northern state. “Burntollet changed it all,” he argued, adding that the response to the challenge posed by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was amateurish.”
“Amateurish” is too kind. On the other hand, “the jackboot heel of the of unionism” is an absurd exaggeration. The RUC had only 4000 officers and the B Specials of the post war, post 1956-62 IRA campaign were barely in existence as a disciplined force. It might have been John Bull’s political slum, but it was a sleepy slum most of the time. And as for the downtrodden? Who am I to deny them, but as a student at the time I had learned the maxim of Tocqueville, the peerless early historian of both the French and American revolutions, that revolutions happen among people on the rise.
We all have our preferred version of the political reform that never was. My dream counterfactual question is: Had O’Neill gone into the February 69 election offering a temporary grand coalition with the nationalists or the young civil righters who became the SDLP, could he have gained a majority of the 52 Stormont seats? It would have been worth a try, better than hoping that his threadbare charisma could have pulled it off with “O’Neill Unionists” alone. Instead, incited by the paranoid Paisley, the unionist split opened wide and never healed. Nothing has so far taken its place, not even an empowered civil society.
And so today at an anniversary event, the former chief of staff posing as an inheritor of the civil rights movement, scolds the successors of the supposed unionist monolith for their pusillanimity.
Two last thoughts. Some lessons have been learned, at enormous cost. The governments whose agents attacked demonstrators in the US, France and Northern Ireland in that era all paid a heavy price. Governments are cannier now. And two: the superstructure of the Northern Ireland state collapsed quite quickly into the chaos of three decades, but the infrastructure proved surprisingly durable, surviving to be recast, albeit with painful slowness today. Nowhere better than NI provides a better example of the wisdom of political evolution over revolution. The terrible pity of it that it took nearly 40 years to learn it , and even now, not everybody has fully grasped the point. It wasn’t a terrible beauty. It was a terrible bloody waste of time and no one should dignify it as some great international object lesson for the sake of some politician’s ego.
Brian Walker @ 07:41 PM
Nevin - I admit the 1966 Dublin baton charge passed me by - thanks for the link.
Posted by on Oct 05, 2008 @ 11:09 PMNevin,
Certainly there was low-level sectarian violence, some of which had been stirred up by demands for British rights for British citizens, and some of which was the same old nonsense that had been going on, and continues to go on. But again. Is this really part of The Troubles? If it was, why was the phrase not in use, the way it became in use quickly after August 1969? Did people feel that there had been a definite change in circumstances, and they were in an era of unprecedented conflict? I don’t believe so. I could, for example, counterbalance the Insight report with Professor Marianne Elliott’s introduction to The Catholics of Ulster where she talks about her memories of how a peaceful country turned into a warzone after August.
There are a number of agendas at work in trying to push the Troubles back. One is to blame the civil rights marchers for what susbequently happened. This is an old story going back to classical times, where those who seek reform are blamed for the violence produced by resistance to it, and given more intellectual respectibility in the last century by Lewis Namier’s Revolution of the Intellectuals about 1848. Another is ulta-left elements of the civil rights movement who were and who remain egocentric, and would like to think they were engaged in events comparable to France in 1968. Another is the usual thing of historians to say they have revised everything and offered a new explanation, when in fact quite often they are saying old things in slightly new language. As I say, until someone explains how marching for civil rights in Derry in 1968 led the RUC to fire machine guns into houses in Belfast killing a child in August 1969, then I will refuse to accept this argument for anything other than it is. An attempt to rewrite history for less than credible reasons.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 09:13 AMGaribaldy, ‘Troubles’ is a fairly innocuous term, it fails to adequately describe the trauma inflicted and experienced.
It’s interesting to compare Liam O Comain’s reflections on the formation of NICRA [Graves should be Greaves] with Elliot’s understated: “In 1967 the McCluskey’s low-key efforts developed into the Northern Ireland Civil Rights association (NICRA)” [the Catholics of Ulster p412]
You can also set her dismissive remarks about Bill Craig alongside the words of Sean Garland, Liam O Comain and the earlier ones by Brian Lenihan in the Dáil in 1966:
“Home Affairs Minister William Craig was already making the usual Unionist assumption that NICRA was a front for the enemies of the state (a claim which Cameron utterly dismissed).” [op cit p413]
I think you’ll find that any time the constitutional question is raised guns have followed stones as sure as night follows day.
“Additionally, by raising the civil rights demands in Britain, and by directing these demands at the British government, the overall responsibility of Britain for the north was placed to the fore. This would inevitably bring into question the 1920 Westminster government of Ireland Act, which set up partition.
This was the strategy of Desmond Greaves, and he later explained it in his pamphlet The Irish Question and the British People, published in 1963...” Irish Democrat
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 11:47 AMNevin ,
‘I think you’ll find that any time the constitutional question is raised guns have followed stones as sure as night follows day.’
Are you suggesting that the constitutional question should never be raised and if not why not ? I mentioned 1912 as a starting point for the ‘present’ era. You countered with the Ribbinmen of the 19th century . I could push it further back to 1690 and you to 1641 and so on all the way back to 1169 ? But why stop there why not go all the way back to the emergence of the first africanus australopithecus who first picked up a heavy stone and used it as a weapon ?
The point is and this is becoming increasingly clear even to many Unionists is that the first partition was a failure both in design , execution and in follow through .
The only question is what will or can replace it? As the DUP and UUP withdraw via a ‘battle a day ‘from power sharing, they never wanted it in the first place that question will be developing a new sense of urgency in coming months .
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 12:21 PMWhy do you pluck 1912 out of the lucky dip, Greenflag?
Who really wants power-sharing, apart from, maybe, the Alliance Party? Unionists and Nationalists are well and truly hooked on their ‘aspirations’.
I’ve suggested devolution under shared sovereignty et al as a means of best accommodating the two opposing aspirations.
Do you suppose the Irish government will ‘do a runner’ in 2016 much as they did in 1966? Will they be able to blame the Socialists this time?
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 12:56 PMNevin,
Elliott is wrong to suggest that the initiative for NICRA came from the Mc Cluskey’s, who did play an excellent role in the struggle for civil rights. The initiative for NICRA came from The Wolfe Tone Societies and the Belfast District and Trades Council, although some form of NICRA - as Bob Purdie points out - was inevitable. So the initiative for NICRA came primarily from republican sources. The question is what the republican sources were at. The answer as far as I can see is that they were extending their programme of social and civil agitation for more rights that was flourishing in the south in the fish-ins, ground rent campaigns etc into the north.
NICRA was no more designed to overthrow the state than the Dublin Housing Action Committee. What both were intended to do were to achieve real reform that would improve people’s everyday lives, while at the same time build class consciousness both within and beyond the republican movement, which was trying to rebuild itself after the disaster of the Border Campaign by a turn to politics and peaceful methods. And gain support for the longer term republican project of a socialist republic. But the aims of NICRA and in of itself were extremely limited.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 01:12 PM“The question is what the republican sources were at.”
Garibaldy, Sean Garland provides a fuller view of (socialist) republican intentions:
“Therefore we should be leading the people by means of the civil wings in agitating for better working, living and social conditions, in agitating for land, showing them in all these fights that their enemies are their landlords, their bosses and their gombeen exploiters and finally get them to understand that all these opposing forces are banded together in an organisation called the establishment.This changes drastically our traditional line of tactics. There are no longer two different types of republicans; physical force men and politicians. We in the Republican Movement must be politically aware of our objectives and must also be prepared to take the appropriate educational, economic, political and finally military action to achieve them.”
It would appear that Lenihan and conservative Unionists were very conscious of this particular mindset.
O Comain also highlights the need for these Republicans to maintain a very low public profile but that’s probably impossible to do in such a small community as exists here.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 01:40 PMSure Nevin, but the question is what is meant by finally. It’s clear that this is envisioned not as a terrorist campaign, or an attack on NI, but a revolutionary situation, where the only way to secure the final victory of socialism is to be in a position to combat the forces of reaction. No violence is envisioned until then. This is clear from documents going back as far as 1964.
Conservative unionists were of the opinion that opposition of any sort to the existence of NI, violent or peaceful, invalidated the points about civil rights. This can be seen not only in the Paisleyites, but also in the Unionist Party itself.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 01:54 PMGaribaldy, Garland described some of the violence that had already taken place:
“He went on to enumerate the burning of eight buses and the E.I. Shannon dispute as the sort of activities in which the civil wing should be engaged.”
Wasn’t some German owned property attacked too?
I think Greaves’ strategy indicates that civil rights were going to be used as a smokescreen and that the real intent was to sweep away the conservative establishments in Belfast and Dublin.
The presence of militant republicans in the initiation of NICRA demonstrates a cynical contempt for civil rights. [see O Comain article]
In the light of historical experience, I’m not sure why leading lights in the CRM thought that there would be a coming together of the working classes on an all-island basis.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 02:19 PMNevin,
I guess it was the 1960s, the world was chaning, Vietnam, Cuba, US civil rights, people were hopeful, power of new ideas etc.
There was indeed some direct action in support of striking workers, and some attacks on holiday homes. But also a stated commitment to move away from violence (which is what happened of course).
I think that Greaves’ strategy can be read in another way, which is that unionism was too intransigent to inaugurate serious reform, and that by agitating in Britain it would convince Westminster that it had not only the right, but the duty to intervene. This was also the strategy of the Mc Cluskeys and the CSJ, who were neither republican nor communist. And Gerry Fitt for that matter.
People did hope to see the establishments swept away, but the civil rights campaign was a first step, not in itself a revolutionary strategy. In the same way that nationalising banks or creating a welfare state could be the first steps towards socialism. In and of themselves, not changing the system.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 02:53 PMGaribaldy, I don’t see how Unionists could have ‘reformed’ the Republic and I see no call for the latter’s territorial claim to be removed.
IIRC ‘military’ violence was the third phase proposed by Roy Johnston as part of the revolutionary strategy that you seek to gloss over.
It’s also fairly clear that ‘Irish unity’ and ‘civil rights’ were linked:
“Among the Irish, we were accused by some of ignoring partition. We therefore had to show the connection between national unity and civil rights. In the early 1960s, the Association began to hold an annual rally in Trafalgar Square, and while the demands made at these rallies were concerned with civil rights, they were always held close to June 20th and the event was called Wolfe Tone Sunday.” [Irish Democrat link]
I think it’s fair to say that the McCluskeys were mere pawns in the wider scheme of things. Their selective choice of acts of discrimination did little to inform the wider public.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 04:30 PMCivil rights and national unity may have been linked for the Connolly Association, but not for the unionist members of NICRA, and nowhere is there any reference to unity in NICRA’s programme.
Military violence in the programme adopted by the leadership was far in teh future - as I say, only in a revolutionary struggle. And remember they were trying to wean people away from violence slowly, and avoid a split.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 04:57 PM“nowhere is there any reference to unity in NICRA’s programme”
That was part of the deception, Garibaldy. It appears that some were conned.
I suspect Bill Craig would have agreed with Brian Lenihan’s 1966 comments, despite their opposing political aspirations.
Liam O Comain also refers to the formation of the Derry Citizens Action Committee within days of the October 5 march and it would appear that John Hume was in step with the Irish Catholic hierarchy’s reaction to the potential revolutionary struggle:
In response to a question that I put to John Hume in later years as to why the DCAC never affiliated to NICRA, he replied that he knew that the republicans controlled the latter with the help of the Communists and some independents, and for the DCAC to affiliate it would find itself under the control of the republicans, which he strongly opposed.
The republicans, at that time, were under socialist leadership unlike the later ‘Catholic Ireland’ PRM.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 05:21 PMNevin ,
‘Why do you pluck 1912 out of the lucky dip’
Because thereafter the only other possibility to accomodate moderate Irish nationalism’s political demands within the Union i.e Home Rule lost out to militant republicanism .
‘I’ve suggested devolution under shared sovereignty et al as a means of best accommodating the two opposing aspirations.’
I know . Music teachers and civil administration officials - fire safety department , in ancient Rome suggested things would improve if only Nero ‘fiddled’ a little more :(
‘ Do you suppose the Irish government will ‘do a runner’ in 2016 much as they did in 1966?’
I can’t recall 1966 but then I’d never heard of Northern Ireland before 1969 . It did not ‘exist’.
‘Will they be able to blame the Socialists this time? ‘
What ‘socialists ‘ ? The Irish Labour Party ? Sinn Fein ? Together both parties can’t even get 20% of the vote ? By 2016 I suspect we’ll be living in a different political world largely shaped by the outcome of the present world wide crisis of the Milton Friedman school of capitalism and the political response to present events .
Brave new world on the way ? We’ll see .
As for NI and it’s Assembly wrap it up and call in the cartographers for the ‘final carve up ‘ and lets all move on with our separate aspirations without having to jump through the convoluted hoops of a system of power sharing that just can’t work given the local history and lack of trust .
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 05:22 PMI thought Home Rule was still in position until 1916, Greenflag.
You can see from the political demographics that the cartographers would be on a mission impossible.
You don’t have to recall 1966; I posted Lenihan’s comments further up the thread.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 06:00 PMNevin,
You see the absence of reference to unity as deception. I see it as a way of ensuring that the maximum possible unity behind perfectly reasonable and constitutional demands could be achieved without needlessly clouding the issue. As for Bill Craig. It was the attitude displayed by him and others like him to the protestors that helped get us to the situation we are in today in terms of preventing timely reform. They ended up doing their own cause the most damage.
You are of course totally correct about John Hume’s motivations, and those of the church in Derry. They set up the DCAC in opposition to the Derry Housing Action Committee people who had formed the local branch of NICRA for the October 5th march. And for exactly the reasons you outline - to keep things sensibly middle class, and communalist. It seems to me that was the more reprehensible vision.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 06:24 PMYet, as we’ve seen, the essential issue was Irish unity, Garibaldy, and under a Cuban-style of government. Or, at least, that’s the impression conveyed by Brian Lenihan. His remarks do seem OTT but perhaps he was privy to information that we’re not.
Another destabilising factor at the time that we haven’t mentioned was ecumenism, a softening of the boundaries that was much influenced by the short-lived liberalism of Pope John XXIII and the formation of the Corrymeela Community. It certainly fed the Paisleyite hysteria and didn’t go down too well in ‘Catholic-Ireland’ republican quarters.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 07:23 PMWas unity the overriding issue? Does not the outcome of the peace process - never mind the political development of The Workers’ Party - show that for the majority of people who wanted unity in NI, the immediate and most important issue was fairness within NI, despite the longer-term aim of unity?
Ecumenism is an interesting one. I have a vague memory of condemnations of Paisley’s behaviour on this front emanating from NICRA but may be wrong. But while we’re on the subject, it’s a reminder that any movement that looked to be weakening the protestant and unionist nature of the state was liable to produce a nasty reaction, and from well before the foundation of NICRA as Paisley’s behaviour over the 1964 election showed, and before that the government and RUC attitude to the Wolfe Tone bicenntenial commemorations.
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 07:49 PMGaribaldy, the Alliance Party is about the only party that in any way is promoting unity here; the others, as I’ve already said, are hooked on their respective national aspirations.
I’ve also said on a number of occasions that the 1998 constitutional ‘settlement’ has reinforced a tug-of-war relationship between the aspirations.
Ray Davey, one of the founders of Corrymeela, was my inspiration and working the common ground, my strategy.
I don’t think you could easily argue that Paisley or the initiators of NICRA contributed to a sense of togetherness here.
Did you see the Eamonn McCann Show on BBC1 at 9pm? Where did they dig up all those old socialists? :)
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 09:58 PMAlliance defines itself as non-sectarian. I’m interested in anti-sectarianism. Which is the message that many of those involved in founding NICRA were promoting with The WP programme of peace, work, democracy, and class politics. As for those old socialists, from look of some of them, they got them from the golf clubs and country clubs of NI :)
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 10:38 PM‘Where did they dig up all those old socialists?’
Nevin its easy to find the reds now what with so many banks going under and the shine taken off capitalism. Red is the new black !
Posted by on Oct 06, 2008 @ 10:39 PM‘never mind the political development of The Workers’ Party’
Strange party the WP, after the Civil Rights movement they spent the next three decades counterfeiting money and running extortion rackets.
Maybe it was a socialist thing!
Posted by on Oct 07, 2008 @ 12:20 AMGaribaldy, class politics is just another expression of sectarianism ...
No sects please; we’re British and Irish.
Interesting that Prince and I have both drawn attention to Greaves yet he failed to get a mention on the Beeb.
Posted by on Oct 07, 2008 @ 06:38 AM“Red is the new black!”
Neither is in the pink (of condition), RS, and The Pink has disappeared into oblivion.
Posted by on Oct 07, 2008 @ 07:24 AM
