On November 22nd, 1968, Capt Terence O'Neill had promised the Northern Ireland people he would wipe out unfairness and discrimination, which had done so much to fuel civil rights action on the streets.
The success of his colleagues and party members in holding up that promised change played a large part in O'Neill's decision to resign on April 28th, 1969. It was left to his successor, Maj James Chichester-Clark, to begin the process of reform. In the Downing Street Declaration of August 1969 it was affirmed that "every citizen of Northern Ireland is entitled to the same equality of treatment and freedom from discrimination as obtains in the rest of the United Kingdom irrespective of political views or religion".
The Stormont cabinet sat down on January 29th, 1971, to consider proposals made by Mr Herbie Kirk, minister of finance, to include an "anti-discrimination clause" in government contracts.Should the clause be applied only to government and government-sponsored contracts or extended to other contracts backed by government grants?
If the clause was made obligatory in all contracts then legislation would be required along "the lines of the Race Relations Act in Great Britain". The ministers shrank from such a prospect. Should sanctions be imposed on those who refused to comply?
Here there was no doubt: "It was agreed that it would be inadvisable to have mandatory suspensions of offending contractors."
As cabinet ministers were reminded at their meeting on February 16th, there had been a public declaration from 1969 that "the Northern Ireland government practises impartiality in its employment procedures". This was now a little embarrassing. The Cameron report had proved the declaration to be incorrect, and international conventions on employment practices could not be ignored. Ministers agreed "complete inactivity on the part of government would be an indefensible position but that, at the other extreme, a decision to legislate would be ill-judged". The proper course was "to explore very cautiously . . . the possibility of a limited initiative".
The clause, with all its limitations, was eventually accepted, and ministers were informed on June 8th that "the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration has agreed to police this undertaking on an extra-statutory basis".
In October Mr William Fitzsimmons, minister for health and social services, submitted a paper which had been approved by the minister of community relations, Dr Robert Simpson, before his resignation. After all this time it was clear the government had not got beyond the process of consulting.
"Overt discriminatory practices," the paper asserted, "are probably rarer than is often alleged."
The paper reported "general agreement on all sides that penal legislation would be entirely out of place, it might be argued in at least certain trade union quarters that there should be declaratory legislation and that it should extend to the public as well as the private sector". Ministers agreed to further consultation. By the end of 1971 no practical steps had been taken to tackle the acknowledged social cancer of discrimination in employment.
A possible exception is that Bradford got his colleagues on December 14th to agree that in future local government officers need no longer take an oath of allegiance but take instead an innocuous declaration of acceptance.
Dr Jonathan Bardon is a historian and author