Authors, Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, of “Northern Ireland 1921-1994, Political Forces and Social Classes” claim that although industry suffered some decline, Farrell, as a founding member of the Peoples Democracy and key organiser of the Belfast-Derry march of 1969, is writing from an anti-imperialistic and socialist stand-point and leads readers to “accept a distorted view…by concentrating solely on the gross decline of employment in the linen industry.” They argue that the “contraction of agriculture and a relatively high birth rate” meant unemployment “averaged 7.4 per cent.” However, other factors such as housing and the electoral system can be used to measure the working-class’s standard of life.
The 1961 Population Census shows that housing was “grossly inadequate” with 19.3 per cent of houses having no piped water supply and 22.6 per cent of houses with no flushing toilets. Between 1945 and 1967 the local authorities in Fermanagh built 1,048 houses of which 18 per cent were allocated to Catholics and 82 per cent were allocated to Protestants. This is an example of the discrimination Catholics faced in the allocation of council housing, showing that at this time Catholics were considered second-class citizens. Voting in Northern Ireland was determined on the basis of property. Elections were gerrymandered so that the government was not proportionally representative as those that did not own a property could not vote, and those that owned several properties were granted several votes. The working-class population, which had a Catholic majority, therefore suffered misrepresentation. For example, in Londonderry, 8 Nationalist councillors represented 14,000 Catholics whereas 12 Unionist councillors represented 9,000 Protestants.
With the free education offered to all in post-World War II Britain, an independent generation of middle-class educated Catholics were looking for better lives than that offered to their fathers who suffered political, social and economic discrimination in the form of gerrymandering, unemployment and housing. Agitation grew until in 1967, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed to “demand liberal reforms, including the removal of discrimination in the allocation of jobs and houses, permanent emergency legislation and electoral abuses.” The Civil Rights Movement initially took the form of peaceful protests, marches and sit-ins, relying heavily on the use of media to publicise “what Unionism meant to those who lived under its tyranny.” However, the Provisional IRA preyed upon the repression of the Catholic’s and the presence of the British Army sent to preserve the peace, and sought to use violence to establish equality, and later, to remove any British presence in Northern Ireland.
Inequality in Northern Ireland is rooted in the Plantations of 1609, through which Queen Elizabeth confiscated land owned by the native Irish and offered it to Protestant colonists, in an attempt to annex Ireland. By 1703 “less than 5 per cent of the land of Ulster was still owned by the Catholic Irish.” Catholics in Northern Ireland, to this day, resent Protestants, not for their religion, but because they seized their land and made them live in poverty and inequality for Centuries, under Penal Laws, enforced to reduce the threat that Catholics posed to Protestant ascendancy and prosperity. By 1968, Catholic frustration peaked and, influenced by the civil rights campaign in the United States, refused to tolerate second-class citizenship and discrimination.
Austin Currie, the Nationalist MP for East Tyrone, staged a sit-in protest in a council house in Caledon. A 19 year old woman had been allocated a council house, qualifying ahead of Catholic families with children on the priority housing list. He aimed to highlight discrimination by the local council in the allocation of council housing. From 1968 onwards, Catholics politics changed and different tactics were applied. Both the Dungannon, Londonderry and People’s Democracy marches displayed non-violent protest from the marchers, made violent by outraged Loyalists, who saw the marchers as Republicans, eager to reconnect to the Republic. The Marches attracted mass media attention and portrayed Northern Ireland as an oppressive, intolerant state; this embarrassed the British government and forced them to take action. In August 1969, the British Army arrived on the streets of Belfast, unaware that their presence would still be required 30 years later.
Many Protestants saw the Civil Rights Movement as a plot to destabilise Northern Ireland and were reluctant to become involved. Gusty Spence, leader of the UVF paramilitary group acknowledges that “with hindsight, everyone should have been in the civil rights movement...to bring enlightened policies which would make life better for all.” Many working-class Protestants resented Catholics as the media gave the impression that only they suffered hardships while a privileged Protestant community looked down on them, a Protestant housewife argued “it was always the Catholics... living in poverty and us lording it over them... with the damp running down the walls and the houses not fit to live in.”
