Oct 5th 1968 Bernadette Devlin. Off our knees 40 years ago

Sceala Philosopher Location: Glasgow

Saturday 5 October 1968
Civil Rights March in Derry
Considered by many as the start date of the current Troubles.
A civil rights march in Derry, which had been organised by members of the Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) and supported by the the north of Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), was stopped by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) before it had properly begun. The marchers had proposed to walk from Duke Street in the Waterside area of Derry to the Diamond in the centre of the City. Present at the march were three British Labour Party Members of Parliament (MP), Gerry Fitt, then Republican Labour MP, several Stormont MPs, and members of the media including a television crew from RTE. Estimates of the number of people taking part in the march differ. Eamonn McCann (one of the organisers of the march) estimated that about 400 people lined up on the street with a further 200 watching from the pavements. The RUC broke-up the march by baton-charging the crowd and leaving many people injured including a number of MPs. The incidents were filmed and there was world-wide television coverage. The incidents in Derry had a profound effect on many people around the world but particularly on the Catholic population of the north of Ireland. Immediately after the march there were two days of serious rioting in Derry between the Catholic residents of the city and the RUC.

1988 Documentary on Civil Rights in the north of Ireland, presented by Bernadette Devlin.

Off our knees.

Thanks to Damo for the video playlist. Excellent work big man. If this playlist is anything to go on, then what you are working on will be the best ever.

A transforming moment in Irish history, 40 years on
Analysis: Events in the North will mark the anniversary of the iconic civil rights march in Derry in 1968, writes Gerry Moriarty
Stalwarts OF the the north of Ireland civil rights movement - older, greyer, perhaps even wiser - are currently reminiscing about October 5th, 1968, a Saturday 40 years ago that turned out to be a transforming moment in modern Irish history. Some believe it was the day the Troubles officially began.

It was a heady, exciting time for sure in many corners of the world, what with the Vietnam War protests, the US presidential election, Martin Luther King and the American civil rights marches, the rioting in Paris, and let us mention too the music: Dylan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Cream.

Even the dreary steeples couldn't escape the hope and exhilaration of the period. As Barack Obama might say, it was a time for change. In the north of Ireland in 1968 the change was real and dynamic.

The memories this weekend will be of Duke Street in Derry when the RUC turned on the marchers, a place that is rather like the GPO on Easter Week 1916: if all the people who said or thought they were there were there you would cram Croke Park, or the Brandywell in Derry, several times over.

The agitators are 40 years older now. Some are dead.

You'll be familiar with the names who were there or thereabouts on October 5th, 1968, or on other key dates around that frenetic time: John Hume, Austin Currie, Ivan Cooper, Bernadette Devlin, Eamonn McCann, Nell McCafferty, Michael Farrell, Paul Arthur, Paul Bew.

Some are taking part in events marking the anniversary this weekend, the biggest of which is a three-day commemoration in the Guild Hall in Derry, which President Mary McAleese will address.

A conference, Civil Rights - Then and Now , is taking place in Queen's University, Belfast, tomorrow. The Workers' Party will also reflect on October 5th, 1968, at their Northern regional conference in Belfast on Saturday. Other events are also taking place recalling the day.

Glasses will be lifted to former Irish Times journalist Mary Holland, who reported from Derry on the day for the Observer , and to the RTÉ cameraman Gay O'Brien, whose footage of the RUC batoning marchers was flashed across the world, and to former West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt, the image of him with blood streaming down his face after he was truncheoned being part of the iconic impressions of October 5th. All dead now.

The the north of Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in early 1967 to protest against discrimination of Catholics and to campaign for five key demands: "one man, one vote"; an end to gerrymandering of council boundaries; an end to housing discrimination; an end to discrimination by public authorities; and the abolition of the B Specials police reserve.

The following year nationalist MP Austin Currie, later an SDLP minister and later still a Fine Gael minister, staged a sit-in in Caledon, protesting that Catholics were being discriminated against in the allocation of housing.

That August he was the central figure behind a march from Coalisland to Dungannon. Some 4,000 participated but it did not gain significant coverage. The world was more concerned with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia a few days earlier.

October 5th in Derry attracted some 300-400 marchers. Currie remembered the day as being like "The Charge of the Light Brigade: policemen to the front of us, policemen to the back of us, no way out".

Historian Paul Arthur, then a 23-year-old just back from an Israeli kibbutz, had a similar memory of being hemmed in on both sides by the police. "There was a huge innocence about the day," he said, recalling the prevailing youthful fervour of 1968. "Beforehand no one had any sense that the police would attack us," he added.

Arthur said similar incidents had happened previously "on a much more minor scale" with the RUC wading in with batons when, say, Irish Tricolours were displayed at St Patrick's Day parades. "But the huge difference was that Gay O'Brien captured what happened. His presence was what made the 5th of October."

The reports by Mary Holland also had a significant impact. Previously the British government, to its great relief, left what happened in the north of Ireland to the unionist Stormont administration, as was the Pontius Pilate political protocol of the day, but not any more.

At the debates this weekend in Derry and Belfast the likes of Farrell, Currie, Arthur and fellow historian Lord (Paul) Bew will discuss that past. One can expect that the predominant opinion will be celebrating the civil rights movement but there will be other views. Gregory Campbell will be there.

Paul Bew had just begun college in Cambridge in October 1968, having been involved in the socialist movement in the north of Ireland with the likes of Farrell and McCann. At the Belfast event he may also offer a cautious divergent take on the period.

He missed the Derry march but was marching at Burntollet when it was attacked by loyalists in January 1969, precipitating a period of rioting and disturbances across the north of Ireland that culminated in the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969 and the arrival of British troops on the streets of Derry to try to restore civil order.

Subsequently, there was the IRA split and the formation of the Provisional IRA, and all the toxic history and 3,700 deaths that came afterwards.

Bew wonders was an opportunity lost between October 5th and Burntollet. If Burntollet could have been avoided, could unionist prime minister Terence O'Neill have succeeded with his moderate and modest programme of reform when he appeared willing to take on his hardliners?

Bew, with a raft of caveats, may enter his "what if" into the debating mix this weekend and no doubt will be politely but robustly challenged by the likes of Currie and Arthur, who argue that O'Neill was just too weak to implement reform.

Currie said O'Neill was regularly warned of the inevitability of the floodgates opening if Catholics were not accorded civil rights, but that he just didn't have the political strength to prevent the damburst.

He feels too that more precipitate action by the British government could have prevented a hopeful enterprise being overtaken by a violent sectarian conflict, which was the antithesis of what civil rights was about. There will be plenty to talk about.

• Gerry Moriarty is Northern Editor of The Irish Times

© 2008 The Irish Times

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Oct 5th 1968 Bernadette Devlin. Off our knees 40 years ago