Unionists still in denial
By Mary Nelis
I heard a prominent journalist state on the radio that we should
forget 5 October 1968 and move on. But what nationalist can
forget this anniversary of an event which is still influencing
our present through the sightless eyes of unionist leaders who,
like then, are still looking darkly through the glasses of
history.
Those unionist leaders who were invited this week to comment on
the events in the north 30 years ago are still denying that there
was anything wrong in their 6 county statelet. There was no
discrimination, no gerrymandering, no special powers legislation,
and if Catholics were poor and had no jobs, they asserted,
``Protestants were not well off either''.
The Civil Rights Movement they describe now, as they did in 1968,
as a republican and communist plot. This repetition of the myth
that prior to 1969 Protestant and Catholic lived by consent in
some apartheid utopia seems to suggest that to acknowledge
inequality in the past is incompatible with promoting change in
the present.
Unionist spokespersons, who deny what was the reality of life for
the people in the north since 1921, also deny the reality of
British strategy, which the unionist government delivered, and
which was built on an unequal balance of forces, strongly
weighted against the Catholic community.
The Civil Rights Movement dispelled the myths by focusing
attention on all that was rotten and corrupt in the unionist
regime.
It exposed the poverty, powerlessness and hopelessness of a
community who by unionist definition had been ``born guilty''.
Guilty of what, we did not know, when in our innocence we took to
the streets in 1968 to ask for simple justice, the right to vote,
to a job and to a roof over our heads.
The nationalist people of the north would have been the first to
concede that poverty and bad housing and poor wages also existed
in the Protestant working class community.
Yet this community, whose social situation was not entirely
different from that of their Catholic counterparts, voted into
power for 50 years a regime of unionist aristocrats - ``the
Captains and the Kings'' - who kept them controlled by exploiting
their fears and ignorance. The fomenting of sectarianism was a
weapon to be used if it ever became apparent that the working
classes might unite.
The watchdog of unionism, which gave the Protestant working class
a notion of superiority over their Catholic neighbours, was the
Orange Order, which the late Brian Faulkner, leader of the
Unionist Party, described as the cement uniting the Protestant
rich and poor.
The demands of the Civil Rights Movement for social justice had
the potential to reconcile the working classes of both
communities on the issue of equality. This was recognised by
Craig when he ordered the RUC to attack the marchers. It was a
case of ``beating the croppies'' down before they even got up.
In the nationalist community, the Civil Rights Movement unleashed
a wave of pain, anger and frustration. It also produced intense
activity and a great excitement, which could find no creative
channel because of the reaction of the unionist regime. In the
months following the 5 October march, the reaction by the
unionist government became more extreme, and the RUC, the B.
Specials and Protestants joined forces to attack the civil rights
demonstrators at every opportunity.
1969 began with a ferocious attack on the People's Democracy
march from Belfast to Derry. The nationalist community in Derry
were outraged at the sight of young students being carried into
the city, blood pouring from wounds sustained by being beaten
with clubs studded by nails. The rest of the world watched the
event on TV.
In London, the Labour government headed by Harold Wilson was
getting a bad press on the north. Wilson directed the unionist
Prime Minister, the ``moderate'' Terence O'Neill, to introduce
reforms. O'Neill set up the Cameron Commission to enquire into
the civil unrest and nationalist grievances.
The Commission, which reported in September 1969, found that
Catholics were discriminated against in housing allocation, abuse
of power by the B Specials, gerrymandering of local government
boundaries for voting control and generally that they had no
rights within the state. O'Neill's attempts to reform unionism
were doomed even though Wilson warned the ``rednecks'' that if
O'Neill was overthrown, the Labour government would consider a
serious reappraisal of relations in the north. O'Neill resigned
and Wilson, like Jack Lynch, stood idly by and did nothing.
The Civil Rights Movement died with the people on the streets of
Derry on Bloody Sunday 1972. By then we had lost our innocence
but found our determination, that never again would nationalists
accept anything less than equality. It is this continued quest
for equality which placed unionist spokespersons in the continual
cycle of denial, but more significantly has Trimble still looking
darkly through the glasses of history. Denial and decommissioning
really prevent us all moving on.
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