Madam, - Last week's highly successful John Hewitt Summer School in Armagh ended on a controversial note. During a passionate debate on the historic political events of 40 years ago, Prof Paul Bew, argued that the Burntollet march of January 1969 was the tipping point which denied Terence O'Neill's government the opportunity to implement the reforms demanded by the Civil Right Movement. He claimed O'Neill was then in a strong position, having dumped his controversial Minister of Home Affairs, Bill Craig, and enjoying the goodwill and support of the nationalist middle class and the Catholic Hierarchy. Prof Bew believes that the march to Derry in that New Year scuppered O'Neill's plans, aroused loyalism and alienated the nationalist bourgeoisie.
What he failed to acknowledge was the steadfast opposition of the then powerful Orange Order to any reform programme and the rising street power of Paisley and his followers, particularly after their successful blocking of the lawful Armagh Civil Rights march in November 1968. Most pertinent of all, he underplayed the attacks on the legal People's Democracy march to Derry and then on the people of the Bogside, led by both uniformed and off-duty forces of the state, which inflamed the North's nationalists while sidelining many people of a unionist persuasion who had supported the civil rights aims.
All these factors effectively snuffed out the non-violent campaign for equality under British citizenship, an aim that would not be realised for another 30 years,leaving more than 3,000 dead, North and South.
"Blame it on Burntollet" may have some appeal among the great and the good at Westminster, since ermined for service, but it surely cuts no ice among the vast majority of us, whatever our political allegiance, who lived through those momentous, turbulent times. - Yours, etc,
DERMOT KELLY, Milford, Co Armagh.