This week the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland released to the public, under the 30-year rule, some 800 Cabinet files, mostly relating to 1967.
A small number of files have been fully or partially closed on grounds of sensitivity. Under new "open government" guidelines, these files will be subject to a review after 10 years.
The minutes of two Cabinet meetings, those dated February 2nd and July 5th, 1967, have been partially closed for 10 years. The fact that the first Cabinet meeting immediately followed the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association is hardly coincidental.
Among other files closed is one relating to the publication of Thomas Jones's Whitehall Diary on Anglo-Irish relations in the 1920s. Also closed for 10 years is a file entitled "194867: Correspondence relating to the transfer of the Supreme Court to Northern Ireland".
1967 marked "the lull before the storm" in Northern Ireland politics. The year opened with the renewal of pressure from the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, on the Stormont government to accelerate political reform.
At a major conference between Wilson, his Home Secretary, Mr Roy Jenkins, Terence O'Neill, Brian Faulkner and William Craig, the hardline Home Affairs Minister, at 10 Downing Street on January 12th, 1967, the British Prime Minister warned the Northern authorities that Labour backbenchers were becoming more restive about aspects of Northern Ireland affairs.
Wilson was especially exercised about the absence of "one man, one vote" in Northern local elections and the obstructive role of Ulster Unionist MPs at Westminster. "It was impossible to stand pat on what had been settled in the past," Wilson impressed on a shaken O'Neill.
Within Northern Ireland, O'Neill's reforming intentions faced the relentless opposition of his own right wing, represented in Cabinet by Faulkner, Craig and Harry West, while outside, the Rev Ian Paisley, duly ennobled by a three-month prison sentence, commanded increasing Protestant working class support against the Prime Minister's perceived "betrayal of Ulster's heritage".
On the nationalist side, the painfully slow pace of change left the minority angry. The decision to deny Derry the North's second university fanned this sense of injustice. The "11-plus generation", products of the 1947 Stormont Education Act, was not prepared to settle for the secondclass citizenship provided for its forefathers.
In February 1967, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed. A broad-based movement, embracing republicans, socialists and radicals, it adopted a mould-breaking slogan, "British rights for British subjects", and the scene was set for the civil rights campaign of the late 1960s.
The Unionist Cabinet watched the rise of NICRA and the student-based republican clubs with mounting unease. In March 1967, Craig banned the republican clubs, provoking the first student protest march in Belfast.