Free Derry - Background

Background

Derry City lies near the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It has a majority nationalist population, and nationalists won a majority of seats in the 1920 local elections. Despite this, the Ulster Unionist Party controlled the local council, Londonderry Corporation, from 1923 onwards. The Unionists maintained their majority, firstly, by manipulating the constituency boundaries (gerrymandering) so that the South Ward, with a nationalist majority, returned eight councillors while the much smaller North Ward and Waterside Ward, with unionist majorities, returned twelve councillors between them; secondly, by allowing only ratepayers to vote in local elections, rather than one man, one vote, so that a higher number of nationalists, who did not own homes, were disenfranchised; and thirdly, by denying houses to nationalists outside the South Ward constituency. The result was that there were about 2,000 nationalist families, and practically no unionists, on the housing waiting list, and that housing in the nationalist area was crowded and of a very poor condition. The South Ward comprised the Bogside, Brandywell, Creggan, Bishop Street and Foyle Road, and it was this area that would become Free Derry.

The Derry Housing Action Committee (DHAC) was formed in March 1968 by members of the Derry Branch of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the James Connolly Republican Club, including Eamonn McCann and Eamon Melaugh. It disrupted a meeting of Londonderry Corporation in March 1968 and in May blocked traffic by placing a caravan that was home to a family of four in the middle of the Lecky Road in the Bogside and staging a sit-down protest at the opening of the second deck of the Craigavon Bridge. After the meeting of Londonderry Corporation was again disrupted in August, Eamon Melaugh telephoned the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and invited them to hold a march in Derry. The date chosen was 5 October 1968, an adhoc committee was formed (although in reality most of the organizing was done by McCann and Melaugh) and the route was to take the marchers inside the city walls, where nationalists were traditionally not permitted to march. The Minister of Home Affairs, William Craig, made an order on 3 October prohibiting the march on the grounds that the Apprentice Boys of Derry were intending to hold a march on the same day. In the words of Martin Melaugh of CAIN "this particular tactic...provided the excuse needed to ban the march." When the marchers attempted to defy the ban on 5 October they were stopped by a police (Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)) cordon. The police drew their batons and struck marchers, including Stormont MP Eddie McAteer and Westminster MP Gerry Fitt. Subsequently the police "broke ranks and used their batons indiscriminately on people in Duke Street". Marchers trying to escape met another party of police and "these police also used their batons indiscriminately." Water cannons were also used. The police action caused outrage in the nationalist area of Derry, and at a meeting four days later the Derry Citizens' Action Committee (DCAC) was formed, with John Hume as chairman and Ivan Cooper as vice-chairman.