Origins
Since Northern Ireland's creation, the Roman Catholic minority community had suffered from discrimination under the unionist and wholly Protestant government. While some historians regard the ethos of the Northern state as unashamedly and unambiguously sectarian, there are some who argue that discrimination was never as calculated as nationalists maintained nor as fictional as unionists claimed. The security forces in particular were identified with the Protestant and Unionist majority.
The civil rights campaign which began in the mid-1960s attempted to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, and lobbying for an end to abuses in areas such as housing, unfair electoral procedures, discrimination in employment and the Special Powers Act.
NICRA had five main demands:
- "one man, one vote" which meant extension of the local government franchise from ratepayers to all men and women over 21
- an end to gerrymandering which meant unionists were elected even in districts with Catholic majorities
- an end to discrimination in housing
- an end to discrimination in jobs
- the disbandment of the B-Specials, the Ulster Special Constabulary, which many viewed as sectarian.
In a conscious imitation of tactics used by the American Civil Rights Movement, and modelled somewhat on the National Council for Civil Liberties, the new organisation held marches, pickets, sit-ins and protests to pressure the Government of Northern Ireland to grant these demands. Internationally, given the widespread concern in the late 1960s with civil and minority rights, NICRA secured much wider international and internal support than traditional nationalist protest.
The Northern Ireland government accused NICRA of being a political front for Republican and Communist ideologies.
Read more about this topic: Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)