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From Socialist Worker, No 98, 23 November 1968, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
DERRY’S WALLS were stormed on Sunday by 13,000 of its citizens who held a meeting in the Diamond area in the city centre in defiance of a government ban.
At first the armed police riot squad tried to seal off all approaches to the city centre by blocking the archways of the old city walls with armoured cars, tenders, Jeeps and portable wire barriers, but it was no use.
Despite attempts by middle-class elements in the Citizens Action Committee to keep the marchers outside the banned city centre area, vast throngs of people surged through the ancient city gates at various points to hold a mass meeting.
The right-wing in the Civil Rights movement are flying a kite to sound opinion for a move to call off all demonstrations for one month to give Wilson a chance to put ‘pressure’ on Prime Minister O’Neill.
This is logical for these people, whose perspective is lobbying bourgeois parliaments, not mass struggle. They are being supported to the hilt by the tiny Communist Party of Northern Ireland.
Socialists must oppose this, and demand that the struggle be kept on the streets.
On Monday, police charges against Eamonn McCann and 45 others, including three MP’s, were adjourned until December 4. The charges range from incitement to riot to unlawful assembly and breach of the Special Powers Act on the Civil Rights march on October 5.
In McCann’s case the possibility of justice being done is slight. After he had been charged, and before the case was heard, Ulster Police Minister ‘Adolf’ Craig denounced McCann as being the chairman of the Irish Workers Group who Craig claimed were behind the revolt of October 5.
Last updated: 26 October 2020