On This Day / July 12, 1971

Summary: On This Day – 12th July 1971, the SDLP threatened to quit Stormont over the Derry shootings as bomb attacks and political tensions intensified across Northern Ireland. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Opposition – We Quit | On This Day – 12th July 1971

UNLESS the Stormont Government agrees by Thursday to set up an impartial inquiry into the killing of two young Derry men by British troops, the SDLP will withdraw from Parliament and set up an alternative assembly to deal with the problems of the minority.

This ultimatum was given to Mr Brian Faulkner, the PM and the British Government following a meeting in Derry of the SDLP Parliamentary Party.

A statement issued by Mr John Hume, MP said events in Derry had outraged their constituents.

Minutes after the SDLP statement, Mr James O’Reilly (Nationalist) said he, too, would withdraw from Stormont if the demand was not met and added that he could not see many Opposition MPs remaining.

The men who died – Seamus Cusack (28) and Desmond Beattie (19) – were shot by British Army marksmen during disturbances in Derry last Thursday.

Nine Hurt in Midnight Blast

NINE persons were injured, city centre stores and a restaurant were wrecked, a telephone kiosk was demolished and an Army Land Rover was blown off the road by a landmine in a series of explosions that rocked Belfast soon after midnight.

Several of the casualties were in the city centre, the other two in Bryson Street in the East End.

One of two explosions in Pomeroy wrecked the telephone exchange, another damaged an electricity sub-station at Finaghy and one, untraced, was reported from Newry.

The British Army post at Bligh’s Lane in Derry again came under a long siege yesterday and last night. Troops used rubber bullets and blue dye from a water cannon against the stone-throwers.

Lynch Renews Call for Unity

MR BRIAN Faulkner, the Stormont Premier, last night described as ‘quite extraordinary’ the unification speech by Mr Jack Lynch, the Taoiseach.

In his speech to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Truce in the Anglo-Irish War [in 1921], Mr Lynch called on Britain to gradually run down her military and financial guarantees in the North and to encourage the eventual reunification of Ireland.

The Taoiseach said that the decision that could lead to a united Ireland rested with Britain.

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: THE decision of the SDLP and Nationalists to withdraw from Stormont in protest at the Derry shootings came as a bolt from the blue.

Only days earlier the SDLP had given a guarded welcome to Brian Faulkner’s belated offer to involve the minority in a new committee system.

Once again, history repeated itself, recalling the old Nationalist Party’s final abandonment of Westminster in 1918 over Conscription.

John Hume and his colleagues would never return and within six months the Unionist Parliament had been dissolved by Westminster.)

On This Day – 12th July 1971

Further Reading on Irish History:

List of other On This Day columns

Other resources: National Library of Ireland Irish News CAIN Archive

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