Born: March 28th, 1936
Died: August 18th, 2026
Michael McLoughlin, who has died in his 91st year in his hometown of Dungannon, Co Tyrone, was one of the signatories of the application form for the North’s first civil rights march, from Coalisland to Dungannon in August 1968. His was the first name on the later police notice banning the march from entering Dungannon town centre.
In the preceding years, he was one of those who laid the basis for the civil rights movement, excelling particularly as a researcher. He made himself an expert in housing and spent one summer holiday compiling a housing census of Dungannon. This was as a member of the Campaign for Social Justice, which documented discrimination in the old Northern Ireland state.
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He also served as a local councillor for 26 years, first on Dungannon Urban Council; then on Dungannon and South Tyrone District Council. There he served a year as chair. There, too, he brokered responsibility sharing, at a time when many other councils were polarised.
For most of his political career he was an Independent nationalist. He had an interlude in the SDLP, but his independent mind did not suit party instruction.
He also played a big part in establishing two enterprise centres in his native west side of Dungannon.
Michael McLoughlin was born in March 1936 to Michael McLoughlin snr and his wife Mary Ann (née McCullagh). He was the second of three children, with an older brother and younger sister. Michael McLoughlin snr was a native of Co Mayo and former member of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).
After the RIC disbanded in 1922, he became an insurance agent. Mary Ann McLoughlin was a Tyrone woman, from central Sperrins.
Michael McLoughlin jnr knew tragedy early, his father dying when he was nine.
He was educated at the Presentation Brothers Primary School in Dungannon. He was part of the North’s first age cohort to sit the Eleven Plus. Passing, he received secondary education at the town’s St Patrick’s Boys Academy. He then trained as a primary teacher in St Joseph’s Teacher Training College, Belfast. From there, he returned to Dungannon to teach in his old primary school.
Dungannon was an evenly divided town. However, gerrymandering meant unionists controlled the urban council. They held 14 of 21 seats, comfortably winning two wards. Catholics were in the West Ward. They were only allocated council houses there. Even obtaining planning permission to build outside that ward was difficult. From the end of the second World War to January 1967, Dungannon Urban District Council had allocated houses to 264 Protestant families and 34 Catholic families.
At the time, there was appalling overcrowding in parts of the West Ward. Several families often shared one house. In at least one case, they were living nine to a room.
Many of McLoughlin’s childhood friends lived in a slum called the Back Pens. In later years, he recalled how 200 people were living in an area that is now a modest-sized car park.
In the North of the 1960s, only householders had a vote in council elections. However, businesses also had a vote in these elections.
Thus, Dungannon needed radical change.
In 1963, a teacher by the name of Patricia McCluskey, and her GP husband Conn, helped a group of young mothers to set up the Homeless Citizens’ League. Despite working, these women could not get housing. Some of the women and their families squatted in prefabs due for demolition. This forced the urban council to allow them to stay, then allocate them houses.
McLoughlin knew all involved. When the Campaign for Social Justice was set up in 1964, he joined. He helped write its pamphlet, Northern Ireland – the Plain Facts. For the first time, this detailed discrimination. He continued producing research on such topics.
He and co-thinkers were not just frustrated by unionists. They were also frustrated by the Nationalist Party, which was seen as inactive. This prompted him to stand for election as an Independent nationalist and he was elected to Dungannon Urban Council in 1967.
Squatting was re-emerging as an issue, which prompted people to hold some protest meetings on housing in Dungannon.
McLoughlin, with a group of others, decided to hold a march from Dungannon to Coalisland.
The group decided to approach the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (Nicra) and ask if they could use its name for the march. Up to this, Nicra, which had been established in 1967, was really only a name and was not active. Despite this, McLoughlin’s group felt marching under their banner would attract supporters from outside the immediate area. After a meeting, Nicra agreed to lend their name to the march.
The march was initially permitted. However, police then banned it from entering Dungannon’s Market Square and tried to divert it into a Catholic area. The organisers refused to comply, feeling this would make it a sectarian march.
McLoughlin was proud to have had friends on both sides of the religious divide. He remembered coming to the police lines, behind which were a group of loyalists. “I looked at the people on the other side [of police lines] and I wondered what was the difference between them people on that side and my friends,” he said. “I looked and strangely, one of the people on the other side had been my friend.”
He felt many on that side feared discrimination might be reversed.
After retiring from teaching and politics, he wrote extensively on local history. One work particularly restored the memory of his area’s Liberal MP Thomas Alexander Dickson, who had stood up to aristocratic domination.
People described him as a civic nationalist in the truest sense. He wanted nothing more or nothing less for his Catholic neighbour than for his Protestant neighbour.
Michael McLoughlin is survived by his wife Rose, daughters Roisín and Maeve, sons John, Michael and Rory, and grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son Brian, sister Maura and brother Martin.
