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FREEDOMWAYS                              
SECOND QUARTER 1972
seen on the walls of many of the homes was for the purpose of silhouetting the white faces of citizens as they traveled about in their neighborhoods. Yet with all of the military presence of the British there was another expression that seemed to mark the faces of all the soldiers. The expression seemed to say that not only had "the sun set on the British Empire"-it has set right in her back door.
  At the end of our journey's first day, a group of about twenty to thirty women and children gathered about us, joined hands to sing "We Shall Overcome." All of us left the bogside deeply moved and to the wishes of "cheerio" and "we hope that you will get your civil rights too."
  Our next two days were spent in attending the NICRA Annual Conference. The conference gave us a chance to get a close look at the civil rights leadership in Northern Ireland. For the most part, the leadership is young but reflects a mass quality.
  NICRA is a membership organization with branches in twenty-six counties. The association is led by Ivan Barr, a house painter. Each branch has its officers and elects members to the "executive" which constitutes the dominant leadership of the movement. The individual leaders generally belong to one of the several political parties in Northern Ireland excluding the Unionist party which is highly sectarian. There are both Catholics and Protestants in NICRA. The members and leadership include Communists and Socialists.
  The only requirement asked of an individual is that he or she support the basic goals of NICRA, which are: 1. The immediate release of all internees; 2. The withdrawal of troops from all areas pending their total withdrawal and an immediate end to the policy of military occupation and repression of anti-Unionist areas; 3. Legislation by the Westminster Government to abolish the Special Powers Act in its entirety; 4. The dismissal of the Stormont Administration and immediate legislation at Westminster to guarantee the following: a) free elections under proportional representation; b) the rights of all political groups including those opposed to the present state; c) an end to discrimination; d) a recognition that it is as legitimate to work for an independent and united Ireland as it is to work for the maintenance of the Union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain and the removal of all legislative obstacles in the Government of Ireland Acts that stand in the way of this objective.
  More than thirty resolutions were brought before the conference as a means of setting down guidelines for implementing the program of NICRA. In my thirteen years of work with the civil rights move-

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CIVIL RIGHTS IN IRELAND                         FARRIS

ment in America, I never saw such thoroughness in debating proposals. Each delegate demonstrated a great sense of history. References were made to the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland during the 12th century. Some referred to the movement of the Peep-of-Day Boys, a Protestant group in the county of Armagh, who, around 1778, carried out raids against Catholics in the early morning hours, because the Catholics, who were newcomers, had rented farm land at a price higher than the Protestants would pay. The latter references were made to demonstrate how the division between Catholics and Protestants had never been sectarian. In other debates on the floor, delegates would evaluate the effects that the Jacobin Revolution in France(1792-4) had on movements in Ireland. Others looked at the importance of the American Revolution (1776), World War I and the United States civil rights movement of the '60s to their movement in Ireland. I was surprised to hear one delegate point out that Mrs. Abernathy and Mrs. Juanita Williams whose husband is Rev. Hosea Williams, who previously held an executive post with SCLC, were the first Afro-American women to visit Ireland to identify with the long struggle of Irish people for freedom. I was equally impressed when Miss Mullin pointed out that Frederick Douglass had once made a six month tour of Ireland. And again, several delegates recalled in private conversation with me that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had sent a message expressing solidarity with the Easter Uprising in 1916.
  In additional and extensive conversations with members of NICRA's Executive and individual people in the street I discovered what seemed to have been a consensus that the people of Northern Ireland will achieve their civil rights and that the poverty conditions of the people will finally be dealt with effectively by Ireland's entry into the Common Market of Europe.
  The most wholesome sign I noticed among the people of Ireland and the leadership of the movement was the fact that they never referred to their goals as being "Catholic," nor was there much emphasis on "Irish pride." They seemed to be saying that they would rather leave such sentimentality to their ancestors who emigrated to the United States and stage annual St. Patrick's Day parades on Fifth Avenue in New York. It was quite evident that the greatest source of pride for the Irish people is that they have never ceased to struggle for human dignity.
  Our next five days were spent traveling to Londonderry and across the border to Donegal located in the Republic of Ireland. There were

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