On This Day / October 8, 1971

Summary: On This Day – 8th October 1971, civil rights pioneer Dr Conn McCluskey warned that nonviolent minority opinion was losing influence as militancy increased, while concerns emerged over loyalist defence associations. Edited by Éamon Phoenix.

Civil Rights Pioneer Warns | On This Day – 8th October 1971

ADDRESSING a meeting called by the Campaign for Social Justice in the North at the British Labour Conference in Brighton, Dr Conn McCluskey said that at present nonviolent minority opinion was taking a back seat in the North.

‘We early Civil Righters have watched our influence with the people diminish steadily. The militants now are setting the pace.

We are convinced that the responsibility for this lies with the Unionists who have held the initiative since 1921.

More recently they have failed to honour the spirit or the letter of the Downing Street Declaration [declaring equality for both communities and issued from Downing St on 19 August 1969].

Of course, the Westminster Parliament has been a party to all that went wrong with the subordinate administration of Stormont.

You must now face the very daunting fact that the man in the street in the North of Ireland is convinced that no advance in social reform is possible without violence…

The British Labour Government had not the moral courage to do what they knew was right.’

Dr McCluskey reminded the meeting that in August 1969, when the Stormont forces turned their guns on the defenceless people of Belfast, there was only a handful of active Republicans.

‘I can tell you that there are now a further, not one but two generations of militant Republicans around.’

The Defence of Rathcoole

LETTER to the Editor

SIR,- Since October 3, people calling themselves the ‘Rathcoole Defence Association’ have been operating unarmed road barriers at the main entrances to the Rathcoole, Rathfern and Rush Park estates in Newtownabbey.

Peace has reigned in these estates throughout all the troubles since August 1969, but this entirely Protestant force can only serve to provoke and raise fears unnecessarily in the community as a whole.

A ‘Peace Committee’ would be more apt in the circumstances…In any case, an organisation wishing to protect the community must be seen to be drawn form all sides of that community.

It is only by such united effort that a lasting peace can be secured in NI.-

Yours, Concerned, Rathcoole

(Éamon Phoenix editor’s note: Dr Conn McCluskey, a Dungannon GP, and his wife, Patricia, had highlighted the denial of civil rights in the north among British MPs in the 1960s.

In this speech at the British Labour conference, he blamed the rise of the IRA on the failure of the Wilson government to impose reforms on its subordinate government in Belfast.

These days also saw the rise of sinister loyalist ‘defence associations’ in mixed housing estates. By 1972 these vigilante groups would fuse into the UDA.)

On This Day – 8th October 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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