Northern Ireland civil rights movement

The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Protestant establishment (composed largely of Protestant Ulster loyalists and unionists). The Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was founded by Conn McCluskey and his wife, Patricia. Conn was a doctor, and Patricia was a social worker who had worked in Glasgow for a period, and who had a background in housing activism. Both were involved in the Homeless Citizens League, an organisation founded after Catholic women occupied disused social housing. The HCL evolved into the CSJ, focusing on lobbying, research and publicising discrimination. The campaign for Derry University was another mid-1960s campaign.^[1]

The most important organisation established during this period was the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), established in 1967 to protest discrimination. NICRA's objectives were:

1. To defend the basic freedoms of all citizens
2. To protect the rights of the individual
3. To highlight abuses of power
4. To demand guarantees for freedom of speech, assembly and association
5. To inform the public of its lawful rights^[1]