The Bill of Rights Demand [July 1968]
[Extended Editorial Note: The passing of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland by the UK Parliament at Westminster was envisaged as a middle way between leaving the Stormont Parliament and Government unreformed and abolishing them altogether by imposing direct rule from London. The concept of a Bill of Rights as the sensible solution to the Northern Ireland problem at the time was first proposed by Desmond Greaves and the Connolly Association in a letter to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in July 1968, one month before the first Northern Ireland Civil Rights March from Coalisland to Dungannon.
The principal reason why violence exploded in Northern Ireland in August 1969, to be followed by the quarter-century-long Provisional IRA military campaign, was the failure of the British Government, which had partitioned Ireland by means of the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, to reform the place in time. Successive UK administrations, Conservatie and Labour, were happy to let Northern Ireland go unreformed for half a century, pursuing a bipartisan policy of “letting sleeping dogs lie”. In 1964 Labour leader Harold Wilson promised Mrs Patricia McCluskey of the Dungannon-based Campaign for Social Justice that he would institute reforms, but when he came into office he dithered on the issue, continuing with the bi-partisan policy of upholding the Belfast Unionist administration which the Labour leadership shared with the Conservatives.
WHO SUPPORTED THE CALL FOR A BILL OF RIGHTS BY THE UK PARLIAMENT?
If Harold Wilson’s Labour Government had adopted the Bill of Rights approach when the Connolly Association and others advocated it from summer 1968 onward, it is probable that the subsequent “Troubles” would have been avoided. Under Connolly Association influence the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF) held a demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of the Bill of Rights demand in October that year. The Labour-oriented Campaign for Democracy in Ulster (CDU) supported the call for a Bill of Rights at this time. So for a period did John Hume MP. The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) also endorsed it. The Wolfe Tone Societies in Dublin and Belfast pushed the idea in Irish Republican circles. It was adopted as its central policy demand by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and by the pre-1970-split Republican Movement which supported NICRA. In March 1969 at a conference under the auspices of the “Irish Democrat”, Greaves proposed that a Bill of Rights should desirably include a provision whereby a reformed Stormont would be empowered to develop closer relations with Dublin, and ideally be positively encouraged by the UK Government in that direction (see the text of his proposal in the April 1969 Irish Democrat). This conference was sponsored by 40 Labour MPs, five members of the House of Lords, various prominent trade union leaders and was actively supported by the Connolly Association, the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster and the Movement for Colonial Freedom. In the following year the Connolly Association and other Irish organisations in Britain organised a nation-wide petition for a Bill of Rights, which was in due course presented at 10 Downing Street. The Bill of Rights was the central demand of the more sensible elements of the Northern Civil Rights Movement between 1968 and 1972.
In his two-million-word Journal Greaves refers to the Bill of Rights as “my little invention to solve the problem of a conflict between immediate and ultimate aims (see Vol.20, 19 May 1969). Influenced by Greaves and the Connolly Association, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) adopted it, showing that on Irish policy at any rate Greaves and the CA had more influence on that party than it had on them. It was also supported by the two Irish communist parties, in Belfast and Dublin. Between 1968 and 1972 Connolly Association members and sympathetic organisations pushed the call for the Bill of Rights through various British trade unions. Left-wing influence was significant in British trade unions at this time, and that helped encourage trade union interest. Connolly Association member Charlie Cunningham induced his trade union, the National Union of Vehicle Builders, to get a motion calling for a Bill of Rights to the Trades Union Congress and in September 1971 the TUC adopted it as policy for the entire British trade union movement. In May that year Greaves personally drafted a Bill of Rights in suitable parliamentary form, and it was proposed as a Private Member’s motion on the same day, 12th May 1971, by Labour’s Arthur Latham MP in the House of Commons and by Lord Fenner Brockway in the Lords. This seems to have been the first time in modern British parliamentary history that a Bill was simultaneously presented in both Houses. In the House of Commons the Tories imposed a three-line whip to refuse the Bill a first reading. A reading was granted in the Lords, but the Bill was thrown out on its second reading there in June. By that time however, Labour had lost office to Edward Heath’s Conservatives, who had been elected in June 1970, and Harold Wilson had lost his opportunity of making a positive contribution to solving the Irish question.
THE ALTERNATIVE POLICY: THE CALL FOR “DIRECT RULE”
The Bill of Rights approach to the Northern problem sought to leave the Stormont Parliament in existence, with its power to do harm from the nationalist standpoint taken from it and its ability to develop in a progressive direction extended. The alternative course, which Greaves and the Connolly Association used all their influence to oppose but which eventually prevailed, was to abolish Stormont altogether and impose “direct rule” from London. Greaves and the Connolly Association saw such a step as likely to strengthen the union with Britain rather than weaken it, much as the abolition of the corrupt and discredited College Green Parliament in 1800 had strengthened the link with Britain then. The call for “direct rule” from London was first put forward by the Trotskyite leftists of the People’s Democracy – Michael Farrell, Eamon McCann, Bernadette Devlin and others – who saw the Unionist regime in Belfast rather than its principals in London as the main enemy. It was taken up by the newly formed Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein in early 1970, who made their call for “direct rule” as against the Bill of Rights one of the key policy differences between themselves and the Goulding-led “Officials”. John Hume and the SDLP went along with it in the early 1970s, when the call for direct rule swept like wildfire through the Parliamentary Labour Party. And in due course it was implemented by the Conservative Edward Heath in 1972 – as Greaves put it, “like a cat being driven into a dairy”.
When in February 1971, the left-wing weekly, “Tribune”, advocated “Shutdown Stormont”, Desmond Greaves wrote in the “Irish Democrat”: “This is Labour assuming the mantle of imperialism. Imagine the difficulty of getting a united Ireland if the whole administration of the North were fused with England. Does Tribune want a new fifty years of bitterness as anti-partition leagues, labour organisations and the IRA direct their energies to getting the direct rule administration removed? Every issue would be automatically transferred from Belfast to London. And a solution might wait years as successive English Governments fooled, vacillated and temporised, as there are able to do.” Nearly thirty years later, following several failed attempts to re-establish a devolved assembly in the North, the advantages of “direct rule” appeared more dubious to the interested parties. This experience led Greaves to comment in his Table-Talk that in politics he had rarely known a policy to be adopted on its intrinsic merits; other considerations almost always seemed to have more sway.
A Westminster-legislated Bill of Rights to permit the Stormont Parliament and Government to do progressive things and be prevented from doing reactionary things became largely politically irrelevant once the Conservatives introduced direct rule following “Bloody Sunday” in 1972. Ironically, that was when various campaigning groups in Northern Ireland and Britain who had previously been sceptical of it began to advocate it!
The Bill of Rights conception had analogies with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement of thirty years later. If the British Government had accepted and implemented it in 1968 or soon thereafter it would have brought about equality of treatment and parity of esteem between the two Northern communities in a relatively short period of time and provided the conditions in which Northern Protestants and Catholics, or significant numbers of them, could come together politically over time. The Bill of Rights was a brilliant conception and testament to the creative political genius of its originator. In the event the military campaign of the Provisional IRA, interacting with the hard-line security policy of the Conservative British Government post-1970, divided the two Northern communities as never before, laid down multiple deep layers of bitterness, and almost certainly postponed any realistic possibility of ending Partition peaceably for decades.
It is relevant to note that a central concern of UK Government policy during the 1960s was to join the supranational European Economic Community (EEC), then known colloquially as the “Common Market”. The Irish policy of successive British Governments’ over that decade needs to be seen in this context. In 1961 Ireland applied to join the EEC Six simultaneously with the UK and Denmark. For any far-sighted British policy-makers, the prospect of Britain and Ireland being future “partners” in the EEC meant that the situation in Northern Ireland could not endure as a permanent poisoner of good Anglo-Irish relations. In 1963 France’s President Charles de Gaulle vetoed Conservative Harold Macmillan’s application to join the EEC. In July 1967 Labour’s Harold Wilson revived this application, only to have De Gaulle veto it again five months later. Following De Gaulle’s resignation in 1969, however, French attitudes changed. In June 1970, the same month that Edward Heath’s Conservatives defeated Wilson’s Labour Party in a general election, Heath revived the UK’s application and, following lengthy negotiations, brought about UK membership of the EEC in January 1973, with the majority of Labour MPs joining the Conservatives in supporting that move.
MODERN ASSESSMENTS OF THE 1960S NORTHERN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
In the 2020s contemporary Sinn Fein has attempted to invent a respectable “myth of origin” for itself: namely, that the Provisional IRA campaign was in some way the continuation of the 1960s Northern Civil Rights Movement, that the civil rights campaigners of that time were “beaten off the streets” by the Paisleyites, the loyalist ultras and the British, and that the Provisional movement from which Sinn Fein derives came into being “to defend the people” and to advance further the reforms with the Civil Rights Movement had been seeking but which the British Government denied. This seeks to justify the Provisional IRA military campaign as being in some way necessary or inevitable in order to advance the political position of the Northern Nationalist community to where it is in the early 2020s.
A cursory examination of the historical facts will show that this contention has no factual basis. The Wilson Labour Government insisted on one-man-one-vote and various other civil rights reforms following the civil rights marches of August, October and November 1968, and it put pressure on the Northern Ireland Government of Captain Terence O’Neill to introduce these. The Provisional movement did not come into being until one year later, in December 1969 in the case of the IRA and in January 1970 in the case of Sinn Fein. Moreover, the Provisional movement when founded was under the leadership of Seán MacStíofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and others who were committed to a militaristic course from the start, and British Government policy post-1970 played right into their hands.
Unfortunately, most people nowadays either do not know or have forgotten the facts of those years, and it would be useful if the media would strive to enlighten them. One reason for this ignorance is that, at least up to 2024, there is no decent book on the Northern Civil Rights Movement, which preceded the Provisional IRA campaign, that would do justice to its diverse elements, including the important solidarity movement in Britain that had been pioneered by Desmond Greaves and the Connolly Association. Bob Purdie, Michael Farrell, Eamonn McCann, Bernadette Devlin, Dr Conn McCluskey, Niall Ó Dochartaigh, Simon Prince and others have all written books on aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, but none gives an adequate overall picture. One reason why journalistic treatment of the Movement is generally so inadequate is that it has relied excessively on the analysis of McCann, Devlin and Co. The fact that the former is himself a well-known journalist is possibly relevant here. These were of course significantly involved at that time, but in the People’s Democracy movement, which organised the Burntollet march of January 1969. Burntollet is generally agreed to have raised the sectarian temperature in the North significantly, contributing in turn to the anti-Catholic explosion of August 1969 – so that its participants have an interest in justifying that event. It is relevant to recall that the Burntollet march was held in defiance of the call by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in late 1968 to have a moratorium on provocative marches in order to give Captain Terence O’Neill’s reform programme a chance – a programme that he initiated under pressure from the Wilson Government – or to enable the Northern public to assess what it amounted to.
One way of answering the important question whether the Provisional IRA struggle was necessary or inevitable and who was primarily responsible for what happened as a result of it, is to look at the period like this: In 1969 British public opinion, and indeed opinion round the world, was overwhelmingly on the side of the Northern nationalists and the Civil Rights Movement. It was universally recognised in that year that Northern Catholic nationalists had been getting a raw deal, and in terms of public opinion Paisley and the Unionist ultras were in the proverbial doghouse. Just two years later however, in 1971, that situation was virtually completely reversed. The Northern problem was now seen primarily as one of containing IRA “terrorism”. What brought about such change in such a relatively short time? Clearly one factor was the Republican split in January 1970, the formation of the Provisional IRA and its embarking on a militarist course. The other factor was the change of British Government in June 1970, just six months after the Republican split, when Wilson’s Labour administration was replaced by Edward Heath’s Tories. From the start Heath’s Government adopted a hardline pro-Unionist policy which gave rise to the Falls Road curfew of July 1970, the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971, Brian Faulkner’s introduction of internment without trial that same month, and Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972 – four crucial events that gave massive momentum to the newly formed Provisionals. The Provisional IRA’s “armed struggle” and the British Government’s security policy mirrored one another from 1970 onward.
Any decent study of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement will need to do justice to the solidarity work in Britain which led to Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson being put under significant pressure from his backbenchers to introduce civil rights reforms in the North during the 1960s. In 1949, at the time of the Ireland Act, British Labour was overwhelmingly behind Ulster Unionism. In 1969, twenty years later, it was significantly otherwise. This was primarily due to the work of the Connolly Association, its monthly paper and that paper’s editor, Desmond Greaves. Writers on the Civil Rights Movement who have referred to the British side of things have tended either to ignore or downplay their work. This is probably because Greece was a communist, even if a very independent-minded one, and lingering Cold War attitudes require that he and his associates must be denied credit for any worthwhile political achievement. The material on this website gives the objective facts regarding this.
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[ On 25 July 1968, a month before the first Northern Ireland civil rights march took place from Coalisland to Dungannon, the Standing Committee of the Connolly Association sent the letter below to Prime Minister Harold Wilson. It was signed by CA General Secretary Sean Redmond but had been drafted by Desmond Greaves. Its text was carried on the front page of the August 1968 issue of the “Irish Democrat, which is also on this website.]
A Bill of Rights for the Six Counties – We tell Harold Wilson what to do
Dear Prime Minister,
All those who followed your reply to Mr Gerard Fitt’s question on the continuing disabilities suffered by the non-Unionist section of the community in the six north- eastern counties of Ireland defined by the Government of Ireland Act (1920) as “Northern Ireland” will have been encouraged by your statement that the situation in that territory cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely.
At the same time not everybody, and least of all the victims of Unionist oppression, will agree that there has been any improvement during the regime of Captain Terence O’Neill, for while there has been no trace of a lightening of the disabilities under which non-Unionists suffer, there has been a marked worsening in the position of the Republican sections who have been forbidden under the Special Powers Act to organise themselves into clubs for peaceful propaganda of their political opinions.
One-third of the electorate is still disfranchised in local Government elections. Derry City is still so gerrymandered that an overwhelmingly Catholic city has a predominantly Protestant council which denies equal opportunities of employment to the Catholic population. The Special Powers Acts still abrogate two-thirds of the provisions of the International Declaration of Human Rights which the British Government officially supports.
And the essential irresponsibility of the leaders of the Government party in Northern Ireland is shown strikingly in the recent threats made against your own good person by the leader of the Orange Order, who informed you, the Prime Minister of England, that you would interfere in the conduct of affairs by the Unionists “at your peril” and that they would resist “with the last breath in their bodies”.
How can people employing such language to the leader of the Government from which they derive their sole constitutional local standi complain if their opponents, learning from them, talk in terms of civil disobedience and extra-constitutional action? If the Unionists refuse to recognise the constitutional fact that under Section 75 of the Garment of Ireland Act (1920), the overall authority over every person and thing in Northern Ireland is vested in the Westminster Parliament, why should their opponents recognise that constitution?
The Unionist (and their friends at Westminster) want to see operated some parts of the constitution of Northern Ireland, and to ignore others. How can they logically deny the same right of choice to their opponents?
It is our earnest hope, Mr Prime Minister, that there will be no recrudescence of violence in Northern Ireland, despite the bellicose speeches of some of the Unionist leaders. But we venture to assert that should violence unfortunately develop, it will not be as result of the speeches of Mr Fitt or Mr McAteer, both of whom are gentlemen who have striven for many years for a settlement of the problems of Northern Ireland in accordance with the mutual interests of the British and Irish peoples. It will be in the first place as a result of the inflammatory speeches of the Unionists, and secondly, though we say it with a deep sense of regret and sorrow, it will be through the failure of Her Majesty’s Government at Westminster to use its powers through Parliament to right the wrongs which exists in Northern Ireland.
We are upon you, Mr Prime Minister, the need for action now, and not in the distant future. You spoke of the fullness of time. When is time full? The oppressed nationalists of Northern Ireland have waited long enough. And you have the means to your hand to solve this problem at once.
It has been suggested that you gave Mr Edward Heath a pledge that you would undertake no action in relation to Northern Ireland. If that pledge was given, we suggest that your first action should be to withdraw it.
Having made your position clear, that you propose to act in accordance with the wishes of the overwhelming majority of British democrats, we now suggest to you how you can do it.
You should introduce into the Westminster Parliament a Bill of Rights, guaranteeing the citizens of Northern Ireland civil rights of no less substance than those enjoyed by residents of England.
Such a Bill would amend the Constitution of Northern Ireland, which is the Government of Ireland Act (1920), in such a way as to offer an imperial guarantee that those in favour of a united Ireland would have a fair constitutional opportunity to present their case, as of course the Unionists would retain theirs. The ending of discrimination would remove the poison of sectarianism from social life, and make possible the greater unity of the working class and its increasing influence in all spheres of social life. That prospect should commend itself to all the leaders of a Labour Government.
The particular rights we would urge you to guarantee by legislation are equality of voting for all adults, the abolition of gerrymandering and other electoral malpractices, the ending of religious or political discrimination in the allocation of housing and employment, and drastic curtailment of the powers of the police.
We venture to suggest you, Mr Prime Minister, that in the event of your administration’s undertaking the legislation we have in mind, it would go down in history as having made the most constructive contribution of the century to the settling of outstanding differences between the Irish and British peoples, which can only be finally removed on the basis of national independence and mutual co-operation.
Very sincerely yours,
Sean Redmond
For the Standing Committee,
Connolly Association.
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[In the October 1968 “Irish Democrat”, page 8, Desmond Greaves elaborated on the theme of the above letter to Prime Minister Wilson in the following article:]
A ‘Bill of Rights’… Make Ulsterman free to free themselves
The Connolly Association has urged that there should be passed into law a bill of rights guaranteeing civil liberties in the six counties.
What do we mean by this?
We mean that the British Government, which occupies the area, should legislate for the protection of the inhabitants from the oppressive regime that Britain has instituted, protected, financed and encouraged.
What effect will such legislation have? It will give the nationally-minded people a chance to go forward unhampered by some of the biggest stumbling blocks that any political grouping could have put in its way.
For long enough we demanded a commission of enquiry into the situation in the six counties.
The British Government was afraid to institute such a thing. It was afraid the facts would come out.
But they came out anyway. There’s no need for a commission of enquiry anymore. Everybody admits there is a semi-fascist regime at Stormont. Now the question is how to deal with it.
Let us have no illusions. Britain has the power to sweep it away. All that is needed is first to repeal the Ireland Act 1949, which could be done in a Bill of a few lines. Then Britain would have discussions with Dublin on just what should be done – for example the reserved powers could be handed to Dublin, or all the powers, lock, stock and barrel.
Why then is the Connolly Association not agitating for that? The Connolly Association would be very pleased to see Britain hand back the six counties and remove her troops.
But there is at present not a snowball’s chance in hell of that.
Why? Because a big section of the British electorate and their representatives believe that there is a strong widespread feeling in the six counties in favour of Britain. Look, they say, at the massive Unionist vote.
Our reply? That vote is not a genuine democratic expression. It is got by gerrymandering, depriving adult citizens of voters’ rights, giving businessmen up to six votes, discriminating against Catholics and thus forcing them to emigrate, banning newspapers, clubs, gramophone records and operating draconic police powers.
The Unionist vote in the six counties may not mean as little as the 99 per cent Nazi votes of Germany under Hitler, but it is open to some of the objections that have been made to Hitler’s elections.
And so we say, give the people civil rights, end the abuses, and then see how the vote turns out. We are confident it could mean the end of the Unionist Party.
So if we can’t get to a united Ireland through one door, we’ll get through another.
Of course it may well turn out that the only way to get rid of the abuses is to get rid of the border.
Well, when people become convinced of that it becomes practical politics, not before.
And so we’re back at the bill of rights.
By a Bill of Rights we mean simply a legislative measure, a law made by Parliament, defining and guaranteeing the rights of citizens in the six counties, and providing remedies for their invasion.
What would be the provisions of such an enactment?
Drafting a Bill is a highly complicated expert proceeding and cannot be attempted here.
We merely name the rights we wish to guarantee.
They could be taken from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights if necessary.
Here are some of the points needed:–
First, let us mention adult manhood suffrage, without property qualification or test (i.e. an oath of allegiance taken before a candidate is allowed to go up).
Now, discrimination. It should be illegal for any public authority to refuse housing accommodation on grounds of the applicant’s religion or to refuse employment on the same basis.
Now for police powers. The Special Powers Act should be declared null and void, and in its place there should be provisions guaranteeing the right of assembly, peaceful picketing and procession, publication of literature and organisation.
And what basis are we suggesting for this? We are not expecting the British Government to introduce into one of its colonies legislation more progressive than exists in Britain itself.
We suggest that six-county practice be brought into line with British practice. Even that, bad as it is, would lift a shadow from over the nationalist and Republican organisations.
Sometimes people say to you, “Don’t do that. It will make people contented with British rule.” The answer is that if they are so easily contented by British rule they deserve to endure it.
But we take another view. We believe the restoration of ordinary democracy would free thousands of potentially patriotic Protestants from the fear of being odd men out and create a healthy political society which will be bound to go forward to a united Ireland.