THE SDLP has marked the 40th anniversary of a housing protest by Austin Currie in Caledon, Co Tyrone, with a call for the legacy of segregation to be recognised.
Then elected as a nationalist MP at Stormont, Mr Currie protested at the allocation of social housing to a teenage Protestant woman who worked for a local unionist representative. This was in preference to the housing application made by a Catholic family.
Commemorating the protest, seen as a precursor to the civil rights campaign, SDLP social development minister Margaret Ritchie said Mr Currie’s squat in Caledon showed “we must learn from the past if we are to enjoy the benefits of a shared equal future”.
Addressing a conference entitled Housing Rights For All, she added: “Just as Caledon was a catalyst for change 40 years ago, our new housing agenda today can bring about a new beginning, addressing hosing problems today and identifying solutions for tomorrow.”
She said, despite the dramatic improvements in housing provision in the 40 years since the protest, there was still a minority of people who oppose the provision of housing for those who need it.
“The Austin Currie-led protest in a quiet little village, deep in the heart of the Tyrone countryside, had a profound effect on our society, not just in 1968, but in each and every year since then.”
She continued: “Today there are over 40,000 people across the North waiting for social housing. Over half of them are in housing stress and the number of homeless nearly 10,000. The scale of the problem is clear. The need has never been more acute.”
Beginning in August, Ms Ritchie said she would announce the first five existing estates that would be branded as Shared Future developments.
These will offer the communities in each estate “the support and encouragement to live together, enjoying the benefits of a shared equal future”.
The conference, staged in Armagh at the weekend, was one of a number of events organised to mark the birth of the civil rights campaign in 1968.
The organisers included politicians and public figures from a range of backgrounds. In addition to Ms Ritchie and Mr Currie,speakers included former Ulster Unionist MP Lord Ken Maginnis.
Lord Maginnis said housing discrimination also adversely affected some Protestants as well as Catholics. He had had to wait five years to be allocated a house following his wedding.
He claimed housing policy was all down to local government and was not as centrally organised by the old Stormont parliament as some had thought.
The former Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP questioned the value of looking back to some key events.
He said he did not need to have hundreds of millions spent on a Bloody Sunday inquiry to know that what happened on that day was wrong.