A concert will be staged in Derry later this year to mark the 40th anniversary of Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement.
The concert in November, whose bill is still being planned, is part of a series of events throughout Ireland and Britain announced by the Civil Rights 1968 Commemoration Committee in Belfast tonight including conferences, panel discussions, lectures and a summer school.
Denis Haughey, chair of the committee, explained: “The civil rights movement here modelled itself very much on the civil rights movement in the United States.
“Those of us who were involved in the civil rights movement were hugely impressed and hugely struck by the dignity and courage, the integrity of purpose and the non-violence of the United States movement.
“That motivated us to take the same approach and put the spotlight of publicity on the injustices we saw around us here and it was our intention to generate peaceful pressure on the authorities here and in London to take responsibility in their hands and deal with the injustices over jobs, housing and electoral matters.
“At that time a lot of very ordinary people showed a lot of extraordinary courage in peacefully confronting and challenging injustices and showed change could be brought about by peaceful means.
“Unfortunately the potential of creating a normal democratic process of gradual and peaceful change was lost in the tragic events which followed but it is important to reflect and learn from these events as we work to create a stable democratic society today.”
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former SDLP leader John Hume, Queen’s University Professor Lord Bew and University of Ulster Professor Paul Arthur will kick off the programme of events with a lecture at Magee College in Derry on April 15th.
In June, a conference on housing will be held in Armagh marking the 40th anniversary of the Caledon protest against bias in the allocation of housing and will feature the nationalist politician who staged the squat-in Austin Currie. Dublin homelessness campaigner Fr Peter McVerry, Niall Mellon of the Township Trust in South Africa and Stormont Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie have also been lined up.
Former Irish President and ex UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson will deliver the keynote address at the McCluskey Civil Rights Summer School in Carlingford in August commemorating the Coalisland to Dungannon march. An international civil rights conference will take place in Derry on October 4TH to commemorate the Duke Street march in the city.