Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

The Northern Ireland civil rights movement was a proactive movement that demanded the expansion of civil rights and the end of the systematic sociopolitical exclusion of the minority Nationalist community in the region. The movement pressed for equality for the minority within the state rather than pursuing the traditional Nationalist and Republican aspiration to reunite Ireland and bring an end to the Northern Ireland state. The movement was a loosely organized coalition of ideologically diverse forces in which strong local groups played a central role. It enjoyed large‐scale support among the Nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, and broad popular support in the Republic of Ireland, but was strongly opposed by large sections of the unionist majority in Northern Ireland who saw it as a front for Nationalist and Republican opposition to the state. The Northern Ireland civil rights movement organized large‐scale marches, sit‐ins, and occupations that placed severe pressure on the state and provoked British government intervention to force the Northern Ireland government to make concessions. Many of the movement's demands were quickly granted, but its campaign was associated with increasing street violence and, as political violence escalated in 1969, the movement faded into the background, and militant Republican organizations came to the fore.