40th anniversary of police attack on civil rights marchers

TODAY is the 40th anniversary of the vicious attack by state paramilitary police on peaceful civil rights marchers in Derry City, in the North of Ireland, in 1968.

'Northern Ireland' is an artificial statelet carved out of the nine counties of Ulster in 1921 and made up of six counties with an in-built unionist (pro-British) majority to guard against any momentum towards reunification with the rest of Ireland and British withdrawal. It was, as unionists boasted, "A Protestant state for a Protestant people," (i.e. pro-British people).

In 1968, drawing their inspiration from student protests around the world but particularly from Martin Luther King and the black civil rights movement in the USA, marchers took to the streets to end unionist state discrimination against Catholics.

Speaking today in Derry City at a rally to mark the anniversary, Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, a former commander in the Irish Republican Army and now the joint First Minister in the power-sharing government in the North of Ireland, said:

"Forty years ago on the streets of this city, men and women from different backgrounds, from different generations, from different political roots came together as equals and we demanded our rights.

"Some unionist voices courageously spoke out. They knew what was happening was wrong and that the writing was on the wall for unionist misrule. But political unionism wasn't listening. They weren't interested in change.

• Unionism controlled the parliament
• Unionism controlled the cabinet;
• Unionism controlled the police force;
• Unionism controlled the justice system;
• Unionism dominated business and controlled local government;
• Unionism dictated housing policy and allocation.

"And unionism would try and cling to all of this and use violence and intimidation in defence of its interests."

On 5th October 1968, the Royal Ulster Constabulary viciously batoned peaceful civil rights marchers who had been singing We Shall Overcome. But this wasn't Alabama or Kent State University; this was part of the United Kingdom, supposedly under the control of and answerable to the 'Mother of Parliaments' in Westminster.

London had turned a blind eye to almost 50 years of government-approved and enforced sectarian discrimination against Catholic citizens. On 5th October, though, the eyes of the world were opened when TV cameras caught the state police in action.

Things would never be the same again.