Back in the 1960’s you’d need to have been blind or wilfully ignorant not to notice the poverty, mass unemployment, awful housing conditions and the palpable sense of despair that things were ever going to get better. I clearly remember on afternoons during the week you’d have hundreds of young fellas playing football on any vacant patch of ground as there was no work , the unemployment rate for the age group 17 to 24 was over 40% and as they say idle hands throw stones, it was this sense that if the state doesn’t want any part of me then the state has to go and so the demonstrations started. I remember as a teenager coming up Bishop street passing the “ broo” and seeing Eamon Melaugh standing on a window sill trying to organize the unemployed into an action group, his photos from that time are a great historical record and his contribution to the Derry underclass at the time was immense. Economic apartheid is what brought about the Troubles, there were less than 20 members of the Republican movement in Derry when trouble broke out in ‘69 and any equipment available you could put into one bag. The Unionists by their intransigence and commitment to the supremacist society of keeping the Catholics in their place actually brought about the years of civil strife with the great loss of life , injuries and loss of property and businesses.
Back in the 1960’s you’d need to have been blind or wilfully ignorant not to notice the poverty, mass unemployment, awful housing conditions and the palpable sense of despair that things were ever going to get better. I clearly remember on afternoons during the week you’d have hundreds of young fellas playing football on any vacant patch of ground as there was no work , the unemployment rate for the age group 17 to 24 was over 40% and as they say idle hands throw stones, it was this sense that if the state doesn’t want any part of me then the state has to go and so the demonstrations started.
I remember as a teenager coming up Bishop street passing the “ broo” and seeing Eamon Melaugh standing on a window sill trying to organize the unemployed into an action group, his photos from that time are a great historical record and his contribution to the Derry underclass at the time was immense.
Economic apartheid is what brought about the Troubles, there were less than 20 members of the Republican movement in Derry when trouble broke out in ‘69 and any equipment available you could put into one bag.
The Unionists by their intransigence and commitment to the supremacist society of keeping the Catholics in their place actually brought about the years of civil strife with the great loss of life , injuries and loss of property and businesses.
Patsy Gillespie was blown off the streets . don't forget to mention that .now will you