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And here’s to you Mrs Mary Robinson

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By Susan McKay Irish News Columnist
26/08/08

There’s something about Mary Robinson. As one of the world’s leading human rights activists, she is a formidable woman and an outstandingly brave one. She moves among world leaders and is a personal friend of Nelson Mandela’s. But she has not lost her belief in the importance of the local and the power of the individual to change the world. She has, above all, a rare ability to inspire.

After the former president addressed the McCluskey Summer School in Carlingford at the weekend, a young woman in the audience spoke about how she’d taken part with thousands of others in marches in Dublin against the war in Iraq but felt that these protests had just been ignored. “I feel helpless and disillusioned as a young person,” she said.

Mrs Robinson urged against despair. The marches had been an important corrective to what the majority of Americans now recognised as “a huge mistake”, she said, a mistake for which we would be paying the price for decades. It had never been more important or necessary for young people to be politically aware and active, she said.

Referring to a forthcoming Oxfam report called ‘Climate Wrongs and Human Rights’, the former president said that a sense of urgency was required.

“Our world is hurtling towards destruction,” she said. “By 2055 we may have 100 million environmental refugees fleeing desertification and flooding.” We had at most two decades before climate change became irreversible.

“All we’ve learned about human rights will be challenged as never before,” she said. “That is the way I will be moving forward.”

The personal is the political.

Mary Robinson has been looking after her grandchildren in Mayo this summer, and said that in 2055 they will be in their fifties.

She was speaking at the McCluskey Summer School to mark the 40th anniversary of the civil rights movement, with a focus on challenges to civil rights in Ireland today.

Mrs Robinson explicitly criticised the Irish government for its plans to “pare down on the cheap” bodies set up to fight inequality and poverty. There was still much to be done. The Travelling community in particular was “still suffering”.

When Austin Currie raised the issue of those who were “disappeared” by the IRA, she agreed that this was a “terrible crime against international humanitarian law”. Then she broadened it out from the local, likening it to the use of “extraordinary rendition” by the current US regime. This involves the abduction of those deemed to be terrorist suspects who are then taken to countries where they can be tortured with impunity.

Mrs Robinson said she was concerned about “European complicity” in rendition. Amnesty International has recently reported that Ireland is engaged in such complicity, by allowing CIA planes involved in rendition flights to use Shannon airport for refuelling.

A young northern man asked Mrs Robinson if she felt the Special Criminal Court in Dublin was engaging in “a form of internment”. He referred to the remand of northern republicans who were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement.

“I am very sympathetic to the critique of the Special Criminal Court given,” the former president said.

She said there was a potential for corruption in the powers given to the court which needed serious analysis.

Inevitably, given her past association as a lawyer with the cause of Irish women campaigning for the right to choose abortion, there was a question about the “pre-born”. She replied that too little attention was paid to the thousands of women who die across the world each year because of “botched abortions”. It might be better if women always felt in a position to proceed with pregnancy, she said, “but at least women should have the right to safe terminations.”

She was diplomatic in response to a comment from civil rights veteran Anne Carr, who said that in her work with “the Protestant unionist loyalist community,” she was finding it difficult to convince people of the need for a bill of rights. Mrs Robinson said that she had “sensed that the early vibrancy of the movement for a bill of rights had gone” and urged further dialogue.

She praised the courage and passion of those who were regarded as “troublemakers” when they set out to fight discrimination and to get civil rights here. At this end of the “long, anguished road to where we are today” there was still a compelling need for “concerted citizen action” and for passionate belief in human rights. She’s brilliant, this woman.

Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson.

s.mckay@irishnews.com

Robinson criticises plan to merge human rights bodies

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Robinson criticises plan to merge human rights bodies
Mary Robinson: human rights bodies “need to be invigorated”

SUSAN McKAY IRISH TIMES 25 AUGUST 2008
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT COMMEMORATION: FORMER PRESIDENT Mary Robinson has sharply criticised a Government proposal to merge a number of human rights agencies.
Speaking yesterday, she said bodies like the Equality Authority were set up to fight for and defend human rights in Ireland and “need to be invigorated, not pared down on the cheap”.
“There should be no erosion of the powers of these bodies,” she said. “They should never be reduced by merging or in any other way.”
She was responding to a Government proposal to merge the Equality Authority, the Equality Tribunal, the Irish Human Rights Commission, the office of the Data Protection Commissioner and the National Disability Authority into a single agency.The bodies have been given until September 12th to respond to the proposal.
Ms Robinson said human rights “belong to the people and are to hold those in power to account”.
The former president, who was the UN high commissioner for human rights until 2002, and is one of the world’s leading human rights activists, was speaking at a commemoration for the 40th anniversary of the North’s civil rights movement.
The conference, the Civil Rights Challenges in Ireland today – Tackling Poverty, Sectarianism, Racism and Inequality, took place in Carlingford, Co Louth.
Ms Robinson said the Belfast Agreement made a “solemn commitment” to upholding human rights and to maintaining human rights commissions in the North and the South.
“This was agreed and sanctioned by the British and Irish governments and accepted by the international community,” she said. Such bodies represented an “extraordinary gain that must be preserved. We still have many struggles for human rights,” she said. She said Travellers in particular were “still suffering”.
During question time, a young Northern man suggested that the Special Criminal Court in Dublin was operating “a form of internment” in its treatment of remand prisoners, including anti-Belfast Agreement republicans.
“I am very sympathetic to the critique of the Special Criminal Court given,” Ms Robinson said. “There is a need for serious analysis of the potential for corruption in the powers given to the court.”
She agreed with Austin Currie, the former civil rights activist, and politician for the SDLP and Fine Gael, that the use of “disappearance” as practised by the IRA in the North, was “a terrible crime against international humanitarian law”.
Ms Robinson compared it with the use by the US of “extraordinary rendition” – the illegal and secretive transfer of persons suspected by the US of involvement in terrorism to be tortured in countries that permit such practices.
The UN was taking this “very seriously”, she said, adding that she was “very concerned about complicity in the European context” with such abuses. The Iraq war was now recognised by the majority of US citizens as a “huge mistake,” she added.
The most urgent human rights issue today was climate change, she said. “Our world is hurtling towards destruction. By 2055, we may have 100 million environmental refugees fleeing desertification or flooding.”
Her grandchildren would just be in their 50s by then, she said. She said she was a “full-time grandmother” in Mayo this summer. “In just under two years, I will be back in Ireland and I won’t move again.”
Ms Robinson paid tribute to former SDLP leader, John Hume, who introduced her, and to other leading figures from the civil rights movement present. “I am very proud of these courageous men and women who were seen as troublemakers but had a passion and knew what they were about,” she said.

Former President Praises The Pioneering Civil Rights Activists

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Remembering 1968 – 40th anniversary of civil rights movement
By Ashleigh McDonald Irish News 25 August 2008

FORMER president Mary Robinson has paid tribute to those who took part in a Civil Rights march 40 years ago, saying their actions “took us out of the shadows and into the sun”.

She was speaking yesterday at the McCluskey Civil Rights Summer School in Carlingford, Co Louth, which commemorated the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Civil Rights movement.

The two-day event was held at the weekend in Carlingford’s Heritage Centre, where a number of guest speakers including Bernadette McAliskey and former SDLP minister Brid Rodgers – who both played active parts during the campaign – addressed issues of civil rights both past and present.

Mrs Robinson, who now lives in the US, was key speaker at the summer school and was introduced by Nobel Peace Laureate and former SDLP leader John Hume as a woman known for her “unflagging and tireless commitment to human rights and social justice”.

The former president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was fitting to speak on the 40th anniversary of the first ever civil rights march when people took to the streets and walked from Coalisland to Dungannon.

“If I look back at 40 years ago today, I think of 2,000 people beginning a tidal sea of change that would lead to the fact that we are now out of the shadows and in to the sun,” Mrs Robinson said.

Thanking the Civil Rights 1968 Commemoration committee for highlighting the importance of what happened 40 years ago, she said: “There is a need for memory and for reflection.

“I believe we must always remember to pay appropriate tribute to the men and women who for many years fought in the shadows for rights and dignity.”

Mrs Robinson also addressed the issue of racism against migrant workers in Ireland – a subject which Mrs McAliskey spoke about during Saturday’s session of the summer school.

The McCluskey Civil Rights Summer School was named after the Dungannon doctor Dr Con McCluskey and his wife Patricia who formed the Homeless Citizens League in Co Tyrone in the early 1960s.

The work they undertook recording and compiling statistics highlighted the nature of discrimination in jobs and housing against Catholics under the then Unionist regime.

Also present at yesterday’s event was former Stormont MP Austin Currie, who said the “worst violation of human rights” during the Troubles were those of the Disappeared.

Telling those gathered he was a friend of one of

the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, Mr Currie said: “His mother went to her grave having spent 30 years mourning for Columba.

“Her headstone has Columba’s name on it, without the appropriate final date.

“We should take every opportunity, when human rights are being considered, to remember this category of people who have been denied a Christian burial.”

Memorial Stone Commemorates March

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By Ashleigh McDonald – Originally Published: Irish News 25 August 2008

A MEMORIAL stone to commemorate the first ever civil rights march in Northern Ireland was unveiled this weekend in the centre of Coalisland.

Around 300 people attended the unveiling, which took place in the Co Tyrone town on Saturday afternoon.

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the march, when people took to the streets and walked from Coalisland to Dungannon to highlight civil rights abuses against Catholics.

Speakers at the event were Mid-Ulster MLA Francie Molloy and Bernadette McAliskey.

Mr Molloy, who acted as a steward in the 1968 march, said the memorial stone was a tribute to all those who have played a part in the civil rights movement in the last four decades.

“Forty years ago Coalisland was at the birth of the civil rights movement,” the Sinn Fein politician said.

“It is fitting that we commemorated the original march in the town.

“In 1968 there was a huge optimism that here in Ireland we would challenge the corrupt unionist state and bring about real change.

“Sadly the civil rights movement and its basic demands for housing, jobs and democracy were met with all the violence of the unionist state.”

During Saturday’s event Mrs McAliskey spoke of the problems of racism against migrant workers in Ireland today.

“People who campaign for human rights should also recognise the issues around racism,” she said.

“Migrant workers have the right to live and work here and people should not be discriminated against because of their race or nationality”.

Caledon was about forcing British to address injustices in the north

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PLATFORM – Austin Currie
Irish News 21/06/08

AT our meeting in the House of Commons in January 1968 Paul Rose MP, chairman of the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, confirmed what I had believed for some time when he said to me, “No British government – including this Labour government – will intervene to remedy injustice in Northern Ireland unless you people there force it to do so”.

That was the thinking and the motive behind what I did in Caledon 40 years ago – on Thursday June 20 1968 – and my subsequent proposal to the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to organise civil rights marches.

There was also the recognition that in concentrating on housing discrimination and other injustices we were attacking unionism in its Achilles heel.

The unionists asserted we were British so we were therefore entitled to the same rights as other citizens elsewhere in the UK.

Unionism had no answer to that demand.

So that house in Kinnard Park, Caledon, allocated to a 19-year-old single girl became the symbol of denial of basic civil rights and Britain’s failure to accept its sovereign responsibilities.

Dungannon and Derry had been focal points for housing protest for a number of years. In Dungannon the Homeless Citizens’ League, which was later broadened to become the Campaign For Social Justice (CSJ), had been formed by Conn and Patricia McCluskey.

The CSJ produced pamphlets and fact sheets detailing injustices perpetrated on the Catholic population, particularly in the allocation of council housing and vote
rigging.

The allocation of local authority housing was a central element in unionist control of a number of councils.

‘One man one vote’ did not exist for Stormont and council elections, unlike elections to Westminster.

For council elections the vote was confined to householders and their spouses. The granting of a council house was therefore effectively the provision of two votes.

In places like Derry, Dun-gannon, Co Fermanagh, Ar-magh and Omagh the allocation of council houses along with the gerrymandering of ward boundaries were the measures employed to translate a Catholic majority into a minority on the council.

I had been elected MP for East Tyrone in 1964 and from the beginning I had cooperated closely with the McClus-keys and two Dungannon councillors, Michael McLoug-hlin and John Donaghy.

I campaigned for a points system for the letting of houses without success.

The hope of the early days of Terence O’Neill’s premiership began quickly to erode and by 1967 was being re-placed by disillusionment, frustration and anger.

By late 1967, with Gerry Fitt MP, who was continually frustrated in his efforts to raise at Westminster matters de-volved to the Stormont government, I was publicly calling for a campaign of civil disobedience and supporting those who squatted in council houses as a protest against unfair allocation.

The allocation of No 9 Kinnard Park, Caledon, in May 1968 was for me the final straw.

A 19-year-old single girl, Emily Beattie, employed by a solicitor who was the prospective unionist candidate for West Belfast, was given the house in preference to 269 other applicants on the waiting list in Dungannon Rural District Council, including some in the Caledon area, living in dwellings designated unfit for human habitation.

Even by the standards of Dungannon council it was a blatant and provocative example of injustice.

To add injury to insult was the humiliation of the eviction in front of TV cameras and photographers from the house next door of a Catholic family, Mr and Mrs Goodfel-low and their three children, who had been involved in a squatting protest for the previous eight months.

I had supported the family and helped to publicise their case to the extent that the Unionist Party had passed a censure motion on me at Stormont.

Now this brave family were dragged from the house by bailiffs while next door a 19-year-old girl with no dependents was in legal possession of a three-bedroom house.

For me this was the ideal test case of the professed reform intentions of the O’Neill government.

I had used all the avenues open to an MP to expose injustice. Finally in the debate in Stormont, when John Taylor MP attempted to justify the Beattie allocation, I deliberately used the unparliamentary expression guaranteed to have me ordered from the House – “It is a damned lie.”

That night I called a meeting at my home, informed those present, including the Good-fellow family, of my intention to squat in the house allocated to Emily Beattie and requested as many as possible to accompany me.

The following morning my wife drove me to Caledon where I was joined by Phelim Gildernew, a brother of Mrs Goodfellow, and a local farmer, Joe Campbell.

At my suggestion, to signify our joint commitment, the three of us jointly used a poker to break a window, enter the house and barricade ourselves in. The media arrived within an hour.

To our relief after three-and-a-half hours Emily Beattie’s brother and others arrived armed with a sledge hammer. Having to stay in that house in that area during the hours of darkness was a disturbing prospect!

It was rumoured that the UVF intended to get involved.

The door was smashed in and we were ejected none too gently – into the lenses of the waiting media.

An MP breaking the law was good copy. That night the main BBC News from London for the first time carried a report on injustice in North-ern Ireland.

The process of forcing the British government to intervene to remedy civil rights abuses in Northern Ireland had begun.

Two weeks later Michael McLoughlin and I put a proposal to the executive of the Civil Rights Association for a civil rights march between Coalisland and Dungannon. We did indeed make history in Caledon 40 years ago.

- Austin Currie was MP for East Tyrone at Stormont and later TD for Dublin West. He is the only person elected to both parliaments on the island and served as a minister in both jurisdictions. His autobiography, All Hell will break Loose, is published by O’Brien Press.

Time for mixed housing estates

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Irish News Editorial – 23/06/08

The debate over housing in Northern Ireland has changed beyond recog-nition since the injustices which forced Austin Currie and others into a dramatic intervention 40 years ago this week.

Back in 1968 many unionist-controlled district councils were able to routinely discriminate against Catholics during the allocation of public authority homes.

The turning point came when 14 out of 15 newly built houses in a development in the mixed village of Caledon, Co Tyrone, were handed over to Protestants.

In the most ludicrous single case a 19-year-old single Protestant woman was given a three-bedroomed home ahead of entire Catholic families on the official waiting list.

Mr Currie, who was then a Nationalist MP at Stormont, joined two other campaigners in an occupation of the house at Kinnegard Park and created international headlines when they were unceremoniously evicted.

The issue was at the heart of the civil rights movement of the era and eventually led to wide-ranging reforms which est-ablished the Housing Executive and ensured that new homes were allocated on a fair and accountable basis.

Tragically, and without any justification, wider tensions resulted in the appalling violence of the Troubles which lasted almost 30 years and claimed thousands of lives in all sections of the community.

However, after the enormous progress of recent years and establishment of a power-sharing executive, social development minister Margaret Ritchie was entitled at the weekend to highlight a different aspect of the housing debate.

Most Housing Executive estates are still divided along religious lines, with com-paratively few shared neighbourhoods.

If an increasing number of Catholics and Protestants can agree to live together we will have a mature, forward-looking society.

This is an objective which will provide us all with major challenges, particularly in urban areas, and will undoubtedly be a long-term project but it is one which we have a basic responsibility to pursue.

It is now up to the international community in general, and neighbouring South Africa in particular, to insist that the rule of law and the basic principles of democracy are maintained in Zimbabwe.

Gerry Fitt – Brave man of politics had hatred of injustice

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Opinion by Austin Currie
Irish News 14/03/06
A tribute to Gerry Fitt, delivered by Austin Currie at a Memorial Service last Friday at Belfast City Hall
Gerry Fitts contribution to public life must, of course, be assessed in the context of the political conditions of his time.

When Gerry was first elected to Belfast Corporation in 1958 and then to Stormont in 1962 there had been one-party rule for 40 years in a state deliberately established to maintain permanent unionist rule and with the power to discriminate and gerrymander in order to consolidate it.

The unionist stranglehold on power seemed unbreakable.

But Gerry recognised at an early stage the Achilles heel of unionism. This weakness was not their opposition to a United Ireland but their professed loyalty and commitment to British standards while refusing those same standards to those they ruled over. Gerrys simple demand, backed by the Civil Rights Movement, which he supported from the beginning, for the same rights for his constituents in Belfast as were enjoyed by British citizens in Birmingham had unanswerable logic.

Gerrys major achievement at Westminster, to which he was elected in 1966, was to break the convention which had built up since partition that any matter under the control of the devolved Stormont parliament could not be brought up in the mother of parliaments.

With the assistance of MPs such as Paul Rose, Stan Orme and Kevin McNamara, in the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, he smashed that convention and made the Westminster Parliament accept its sovereign responsibilities.

Without that victory further progress would not have been possible.

His ability to seize every opportunity to embarrass unionists, his capacity to highlight the intransigence of the unionist government and a personality which enabled him to win friends and influence people in the Labour Party, were the crucial factors. It was an outstanding and crucial achievement which, on its own, was
history-making.

In 1970, along with five other Stormont MPs he founded the SDLP. As one of those MPs, committed to the formation of the new party, I had to contend with Gerry�s strong initial reservations. By nature he was an individualist. The idea of a party whip and party discipline did not appeal to him.

In 1970 as an MP at Westminster and Stormont and a Belfast city councillor he was at the top of the greasy pole which was the highest a non-unionist politician could aspire to in the one-party state. To his credit Gerry, despite his strong personal inclinations, took up the challenge and the responsibility of providing an alternative to one-party unionist rule.

Within four years of helping to form the SDLP he led the party from being on the periphery of politics with six MPs to the heart of government, with Gerry himself as deputy chief executive. It was an outstanding, almost unbelievable achievement. The Sunningdale experiment unfortunately lasted only five months but it established for the future the necessary architecture for a lasting agreement, the template which even those who had helped to bring down the power-sharing executive of 1974 had eventually to accept 25 years later. How much happier Northern Ireland would be today if the system of partnership government, which he had helped to establish, had survived and prospered, the tragedy of 2,000 additional deaths had been avoided and generations spared the blight of intensified sectarianism.

Gerry was a brave man, displaying his physical courage as a teenager on the convoys on the North Sea and later on an almost daily basis when he and his family came under threat from extreme republicans and loyalists. He displayed moral courage too. He predicted that he would lose his Westminster seat because of his strong denunciation of the violence of the IRA and the Provisional IRA hunger strike but this almost inevitable outcome did not deter him. The particularly savage murder of his close friend and confidant, Senator Paddy Wilson, by the UVF had a lasting effect on him. Nor did he play the sectarian card, so endemic in Belfast politics. When I approached him to approve the draft first constitution of the SDLP he insisted on changing non-sectarian to anti-sectarian.

Gerry was a personality politician who responded to his gut feelings. Policies came second. Not for him the carefully crafted words of a speech writer. If he had any notes they were on the back of an envelope. He was probably the best orator of his generation at a time when the ability to perform on the back of a lorry was an essential attribute.

Gerry has not been, up to now, given the credit he deserves, particularly for fighting injustice and intolerance.

A hatred of injustice was the fire in Gerrys belly. It was not flags or borders or seeking after power. He was a true disciple of James Connolly. Ireland without its people meant nothing to him. Gerrys concern throughout his life was the eradication of injustice whether based on religion or politics or on class. That Northern Ireland is today a fairer place with the potential for greater improvement is at least partly a testimony to the efforts and commitment of Gerry Fitt.

This is an abridged version of the tribute to Lord Fitt delivered by SDLP founding member Austin Currie at last Fridays City Hall memorial service.

Family’s bid for justice that changed the north forever

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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 front door of No 11 Kinnard Park in the sleepy village of Caledon in Co Tyrone in October 1967 she had no idea that her actions would lead to the birth of the civil rights movement and signal the beginning of the end for the Stormont government.

With two young children and a third on the way the 26-year-old and her husband Fran had until then been crammed in to her parents’ two-bedroom home along with her six brothers in the townland of Brantry near Dungannon.

When the area’s council built 15 houses in the nearby village of Caledon, a gentleman’s agreement was reached between unionist politician William Scott and local curate Fr Michael McGirr that the houses would be divided equally between Protestants and Catholics.

However, on October 13 1967 the unionist-dominated Dungannon council decided that all but one of the 15 houses was to be allocated to Protestants.

Today, for the first time in 40 years, Mrs Goodfellow has chosen to speak about the events many believe changed Northern Ireland forever.

“We were absolutely livid,” the 66-year-old re-called.

“There were 12 of us living in my parents’ two-bedroomed house and now we were being told we weren’t entitled to any of these houses simply because we were Catholic.”

Angry at the overt discrimination, a number of Catholic families vowed that they would squat in the Caledon houses until the council agreed to a fair allocation.

That night the Goodfellow and McKenna families moved into empty houses at numbers nine and 11 Kinnard Park in the predominantly Protestant village.

“Some other families were supposed to move into the other houses but in the end they were too afraid,’’ Mrs Goodfellow said.

“We didn’t blame them. It was one of those things.

“But we had no choice. We had to move into number 11 because we simply had nowhere else to go.”

Fran Goodfellow insists his family did not break into the house but simply walked through an open front door.

“This was nothing to do with politics. It was a matter of us being in desperate need of a house and deciding that we had to stand up and say that this discrimination was wrong.”

The father-of-three admits that he had mixed emotions when he found himself sitting on the living-room floor that night with his pregnant wife, four-year-old daughter Dawn and son Brian, aged two.

“I remember the RUC arriving the next morning and searching the house but leaving when they found that we hadn’t actually broken in.

“In one way we were delighted just to have somewhere to live but on the other hand we always knew they weren’t going to let us stay there without a fight.

“Over the next eight months we were visited by lots of media and I remember [BBC presenter] WD Flackes helping us to light the fire in the living room.”

The family soon discovered that Dungannon council was not going to give up easily.

“We were afraid to leave the house in case they just came in and changed the locks and threw us out on the street,” Mrs Goodfellow said.

“They tried turning off the water and then the electric but every time they turned something off we found a way of turning it back on.”

Within weeks the family found themselves standing in court charged with squatting.

“We were fined £1.50 but the judge said we could stay in the house for six months in the hope that the council would see sense and allocate us a house on the basis of our need.”

However, the protest had bigger implications than a simple dispute about a council house.

“People forget that unionist gerrymandering was still very much the order of the day,’’ Mrs Goodfellow said.

“If you didn’t have a home, you didn’t get a vote.

“If unionist councils had to give houses to homeless Catholics they would also have to give them the vote and that wasn’t going to happen.”

The ‘Battle of Caledon’ came to a head on the morning of June 19 1968 when bailiffs broke down number 11’s door.

“We’d been dreading this day coming for a long time but nothing prepared us for an RUC man coming through the front window and them breaking down the door with sledgehammers,” Mrs Goodfellow said.

“When they smashed their way into our front room I was sitting on the floor with Dawn and Brian and my 10-week-old baby Mairead.

“My mother Anne and sister-in-law Geraldine, who was three months pregnant, were also sitting on the floor with her one year-old son Emmet.”

Geraldine Gildernew – whose daughter Michelle is now MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone – recalled how the three women sat huddled on the floor with their children.

“When I told them I was pregnant it put them off for a while but eventually they just dragged us out of the house by our feet,” she said.

“The media were all there and the images of heavily armed police dragging pregnant women out of a house was seen around the world.

“The injustice of it all was seen right around the world.”

Hours after the family had been evicted it emerged that the house next door had been allocated to a single Protestant woman who happened to work as a secretary in the office of a prominent local unionist politician.

In protest Mrs Goodfellow’s brother Patsy Gildernew, Nationalist MP Austin Currie and family friend Joe Campbell decided to squat in number 9. Within hours images of them also being dragged from the house by bailiffs were being beamed around the world.

However, while the Goodfellows found themselves homeless once again their decision to squat in Kinnard Park began a chain of events which would lead to the eruption of the civil rights movement, the establishment of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and the eventual collapse of Stormont.

“Weeks after we were evicted the civil rights movement tried to march from Coalisland to Dungannon to protest against what had happened to us.

“That march was blocked from entering Dungannon.

“When the civil rights tried to march to Derry they were attacked at Burntollet bridge and the rest is history.”

However, the personal repercussions for the Goodfellows and Gildernews did not end with their eviction.

“During the eight months we were squatting in number 11 the UVF threatened to march on Caledon,” Mrs Goodfellow said.

“While the majority of people in Caledon supported us we did receive a number of loyalist death threats.

“In August 1969 there was a gun attack near the family home and the RUC told our extended family that we were going to be shot by loyalists.

“We were told to take the threat seriously and had to move to an Irish army camp in Gormanstown in Co Meath for four months.

“It was hard on the families but a lot of other people had been forced over the border in similar circumstances so we just had to get on with it as best we could.”

Looking back on those historic events 40 years on, Mary Teresa Goodfellow insists she has no regrets about her actions.

“It highlighted the injustice and the discrimination that was taking place at the time.

“I’d like to think that it signalled the beginning of the end for gerrymandering.

“I remember on the day we were being evicted a neighbour innocently asking my mother if we weren’t making hay that day and my mother saying that we were making history instead.

“We were just making a stand and saying that enough was enough.

“We never dreamt that it would lead to the civil rights [movement] and the beginning of the end for Stormont.

“The sad thing is that none of the last 40 years might have happened if people had been treated fairly in the first place on the basis of need and not religion.

“I often wonder how many lives could have been saved and how much untold misery could have been avoided if people had been allowed their civil rights in the first place.”

An exhibition to mark the 40th anniversary of the Caledon evictions will go on display at the Cornhill Heritage Centre in Coalisland from Friday until June 18.

On Saturday a special questions-and-answers discussion will take place with former loyalist spokesman Glenn Barr, former civil rights leader Ivan Cooper, Irish News columnist Roy Garland and Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP Michelle Gildernew at the Craic Theatre in Coalisland (8pm).

Protest at Caledon was a ‘catalyst for change’

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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.

Former Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP Lord Magennis and representatives of the South African Housing Corporation also spoke at the event.

Addressing delegates, Ms Ritchie described Caledon as a “catalyst for change”.

She said that while the challenges in the housing sector were different today, they still remained a priority.

“Happily we have come a long way from those times,” she said.

“We have equality of citizenship, a power-sharing government and the allocation of housing is no longer controversial.

“However, we do have some very significant challenges in housing.”

The minister said her department’s new housing agenda would be “addressing housing problems today and identifying solutions for tomorrow”.

The conference heard how the Ms Ritchie intends to address the legacy of 40 years of segregated housing by making ‘Shared Future Housing’ a central theme in all her endeavours.

“We must demonstrate what can be achieved when people choose to live together rather than apart,” she said.

“We must learn from the past if we are to enjoy the benefits of a shared equal future.”

The minister said there was still a minority of people who opposed the provision of housing for those who needed it.

“Inspired by the courage of Austin Currie back in 1968 we will confront those who would deny proper housing to others – we will build wherever there is need,” she said.

Ms Ritchie noted that her party had a strong record of campaigning on housing issues.

“Austin Currie showed the way with his courageous leadership in Caledon,” she said.

“Others like John Hume showed great vision, setting up the credit union movement, without which many thousands of ordinary people would never have got to enjoy the benefits of home ownership… the SDLP has always been, and remains, the party of housing.”

The conference was organised to mark Mr Currie’s 1968 protest against housing segregation.

The nationalist MP squatted in a house in the Co Tyrone village Caledon in protest at Dungannon council’s refusal to allocate homes to Catholics.