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From Socialist Worker, No. 118, 26 April 1969, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
DERRY:– The moderate leadership of the Civil Rights movement was swamped last weekend as the people of Bogside fought to defend their area against the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Appeals to ‘go home in peace’ from John Hume, MP for Foyle, and members of the Citizens Action Committee were howled down as the residents fought off the riot police with sticks, stones and petrol bombs.
The attack developed after the government banned a march from Burntollet Bridge, scene of last January’s ambush of the People’s Democracy march by B-Specials in civvies. Ulster’s new Police Minister, Porter, visited Derry on Friday and was told by the local Tories that they would use firearms to stop the march. Porter then banned the march.
To protest this partisan order, young civil rights supporters held a spontaneous sit-down in Guildhall Square.
An ugly police riot ensued when the RUC moved in with baton charges, water cannons and armoured cars. At 3 a.m. on Sunday morning an armoured car entered Hamilton Street. It was set on fire. A RUC sergeant jumped out and fired five or six shots at random.
The resistance of the people, was so great that the cops got out of control, the police rank-and-file were unwilling to go into the Bogside and their officers were virtually beating them with batons to force them in.
After several hours’ fighting the riot squad took the Bogside.
When the police bat one a their way into the area, serious outrages occurred. In one house the door had been left open. Children running to escape the police charges ran through the house and out of the back door.
The police entered and brutally batoned the innocent people in the front room. The father, the father’s friend and the father’s 15 year old daughter – who was just out of hospital – all had their heads split open and were taken to hospital. The younger children were covered in blood but unhurt because the adults had lain over them.
On Sunday morning the Bogside was evacuated and men, women and children moved to the Creggan heights. Reinforced by over 10,000 people from the Creggan Estate, a mass meeting was held and the RUC were given two hours to leave the Bogside.
With only 15 minutes to go the cops withdrew after a hastily negotiated agreement to take out the riot squad in return for an assurance that the barricades would not be re-erected.
This laid the foundations for the present brittle peace which could be shattered at any moment by the simmering rage of the general populace. The street defence committees set up in the wake of the PD march last January have been reactivated.
Defence plans are being laid and any further police attack will be met with organised and disciplined resistance. The fact that the police used guns on Sunday morning has led to discussion of the formation of a citizens’ army – a demand put forward by the new MP for Mid-Ulster Bernadette Devlin and Eamonn Melaugh.
Meanwhile Wilson has agreed to send in troops ‘to guard key installations’.
In the long term it is an assertion of the fact that British capitalism will intervene more and more directly if O’Neill fails to maintain ‘law and order’.
This is certainly on the cards. As O’Neill’s position grows less credible every hour, as the antiquated brand of effete liberal-Toryism neither serves adequately the needs of the system nor satisfies the aspirations of the people, he will go very soon.
After him we will get a ‘strong man’ with the slogan ‘Here’s your one man, one vote – and the next Popehead who opens his mouth in public will be up and against the wall’.
British socialists must organise to struggle for the withdrawal of British troops, who are being used to release RUC and B-Specials to suppress Derry. Only a major and immediate mobilisation to this end can have any real meaning.
Socialist and civil rights supporters in the Six Counties must mount a campaign to lift the pressure on Derry by drawing off as many police as possible.
Comrades in the South should raise the demand that the Green Tory government arms Derry. Their refusal to do so can be used to expose their complicity in the oppression and their role as commission agents of British imperialism.
If it comes to civil war, then only the united action of all the Irish working people and their allies can provide the material base to resist Orange reaction and their Westminster supporters.
A demonstration has been fixed for this Friday (April 26) to the London Ulster Office in Berkeley St W1. For details of times ring 01-808 4847 on Thursday and Friday.
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Last updated: 15 January 2021