AI Summary
5 min readIn June 1968, a 19-year-old Protestant secretary named Emily Beattie was allocated a council house in the village of Caledon, County Tyrone, even though more than 250 Catholic families had been on the waiting list, some for as long as a decade. Her fiancé was a member of the reservist B Specials, and she worked for a solicitor prominent in the Unionist Party. The local Nationalist MP, Austin Curry, broke into the house with a poker to protest. The police threw him out within hours—one of the officers was Emily Beattie’s brother, armed with a sledgehammer. Nobody was killed. But the incident lit a fuse.
A Civil Rights Movement with Complicated Roots
Curry was part of a new generation of Catholic activists who had grown up with television and watched the American civil rights movement. They were impatient with the system that had denied Catholics votes in local elections, fair access to housing, and top jobs for forty years. In early 1967, they founded the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). But the movement had a hidden complication. The IRA had largely abandoned armed struggle after its failed border campaign and shifted to left-wing politics, setting up "Wolfe Tone Societies" as radical Republican talking shops. At NICRA’s first meeting, the attendees included communists and the commander of the IRA’s Belfast Brigade. Ian Paisley and his supporters were no
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:50) **Terence O'Neill's December 1968 Plea** - Prime Minister O'Neill gives a televised speech warning Ulster is at a crossroads between a respected province and a place torn apart by riots.
- 2 (05:56) **The Caledon Housing Protest** - The story of the Troubles begins in June 1968 with a single council house in County Tyrone, allocated to a Protestant secretary while 250 Catholic families waited.
- 3 (08:50) **The New Civil Rights Leaders** - Austin Curry, Gerry Fitt, and John Hume emerge as leaders of a movement demanding one man, one vote, fair housing, and an end to the B Specials.
- 4 (11:36) **The IRA's Hidden Hand** - The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was founded in 1967 and, while mostly middle-class Catholic activists, it had deep roots in the IRA's "Wolfe Tone Societies."
- 5 (14:40) **The Economic Trap** - The civil rights movement peaks just as Northern Ireland's traditional industries collapse, making it nearly impossible for working-class Protestants to accept concessions.
- 6 (18:25) **The First March and the Call for Violence** - Austin Curry leads 4,000 people on a peaceful march from Coalisland to Dungannon, but radical activists are disappointed because there was no violent confrontation.
- 7 (19:59) **The Derry March and the RUC Attack** - On October 5, 1968, a banned civil rights march in Derry is met by RUC baton charges, with Gerry Fitt (a Westminster MP) beaten and dragged away, his blood flowing for the cameras.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Why did the violence of the Troubles escalate as it did in Ulster? How did a series of marches from Belfast to Derry in 1969 result in terrible violence, and heighten the conflict? And, which terrible events saw the British army cross the border to intervene?
Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss the next tumultuous stage of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
*The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure*
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