nicr BY Barry McCaffrey – Irish News 11/06/08 Forty years ago a family’s decision to make a stand over housing set in motion a chain of events that would give rise to the civil rights movement and thrust Northern Ireland into the international spotlight. Barry McCaffrey reports from Caledon As Mary Teresa Goodfellow walked through the … Read more
By John Manley Irish News 23/06/08 THE SDLP was always the “party of housing”, social development minister Margaret Ritchie told a conference to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Caledon protest. Entitled ‘Housing Rights for All’, the event at Armagh City Hotel on Saturday was addressed by the key participant in the protest, Austin Currie. … Read more
Report From the Irish News: Event to mark 40 years since Caledon protest By Claire Simpson – 21/06/08 THE 40th anniversary of the one of the pivotal events in the fight for civil rights in the north is being marked at a conference in Armagh city today. In 1968 Nationalist MP Austin Currie squatted in … Read more
By Eamonn McCann – Author “War & an Irish Town” et al. The obituary cliche that “He didn’t suffer fools gladly” was never more apt than for John McGuffin, which occasionally presented him with problems of an inter-personal nature, since McGuffin tended to regard a remarkably wide section of the earth’s population as fools. Anybody … Read more
Originally Published – Derry Journal, Tuesday 31st July, 2007 Ninety-nine-year-old Mary Ellen O’Doherty [nee Hegarty] described by prominent civil rights leaders as the”mother” of the movement – was laid to rest recently in Derry. Mrs. O’Doherty died peacefully at Altnagelvin Hospital, on June 16th, after a short illness, comforted by all her children, and son-in-law, … Read more
IT WAS with profound shock and sadness that the people of the Bogside district, and much further afield, learnt of the death of Mr. Vincent Coyle. He was a self-professed socialist, who became one of the best known and extremely popular figures of the civil rights movement from the mid-1960s’, including and beyond the tragic … Read more
Originally Published – Unity, 9th February 1991 MADGE DAVISON, Communist, feminist, activist and ardent Civil Rights campaigner died on Sunday 27 January 1991 at the tragically early age of 41. At her funeral the following Wednesday, the many people from all walks of life, who in her friend Anne Hope’s words came “to celebrate Madge’s … Read more
Mr. Gerard Fitt (Belfast, West) : On rising to my feet to address the House this evening, I would, first, ask the House to consider that I, as the new Member for West Belfast, had to overcome many obstacles before I had the opportunity of addressing this House. I take some consolatioh from the fact … Read more
[flv:http://space.freshideas.ie/storage/video/understanding-northern-ireland.flv 480 320] Originally shown on UTV this program will be you a good understanding of the background to the Northern Ireland conflict. Press the play button to start the video.
Originally Published Derry Journal, Friday, 6th June 2008. Local author and historian Fionnbarra Ó’Dochartaigh, a co-founder of NICRA in 1967, in this third exclusive article for the “Journal” traces the roots of early public agitations which led to the dramatic events on Derry’s Duke Street on October 5th 1968. Almost overnight the civil rights … Read more