Civil Rights in Ulster takes to streets again

FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IN BELFAST
THE Civil Rights Association in Ulster is to take to the streets again with the slogan "Civil Rights; Not Civil War."
With the end of Stormont and the introduction of direct rule from Westminster many people felt that pleas for justice would subside or take a new form.
It is almost certain that Mr.
William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State, will lift the ban on parades but he had not done so when the Civil Rights decided to stage their next big parade in Belfast on May 7. So they are still prepared to risk their leaders being jailed.
What are the new remedies for which the association feels justified to campaign?
FEWER COMPLAINTS Complaints made to the Commissioner for Complaints, Mr. John Benn. in which
religious or political discrimination in housing, jobs, etc., was alleged last year were fewer by far than in the previous year.
Mr. Benn found that two Unionist-controlled councils were guilty of maladministration — Dungannon Urban Council and Omagh Rural Council.
But in only one case did Mr. Benn find that the action of the public authority had been motivated by religious discrimination.
Mr. Benn observed: "It is to be regretted that there should be grounds for even one such finding, but it is clear that the result of two years' work, investigating complaints about housing allocation, provides very little evidence of discrimination by housing authorities."
The fact still remains that in the Belfast shipyard, heavily subsidised by the British Government, roughly only 300 of the labour force of 8,000 are Catholics. The same imbalance still applies to other big employers.
OVERSHADOWED Examples from the dossiers of the Civil Rights Association show that everything in the garden is not so lovely and the effectiveness of the Ombudsman has been overshadowed.
Some examples are: Fermanagh (52 per cent Catholic.) County council employment figures up to 1971, from Secretariat down to welfare — 338 Protestants, 32 Catholics.
Tyrone (55 per cent Catholic). From County Surveyor's Department, down to Education offices — 300 Protestants, 52 Catholics.
There are many more such illustrations. In the face of these facts Mr. Benn acknowledges that he stands accused by some of failing in his task.
But he has no power to investigate "generalised allegations" and he has commented: "Such criticism is based on a complete misconception of my functions . . . "
The Civil Rights Association is concerned with much more than jobs and houses. The one thing which the people of Ulster, in their view, have in common — Protestant and Catholic alike — is that they lack democratic liberty.
The association claims: "There is still in existence a category of second-class citizenship in the United Kingdom which includes the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland." It is on this premise that their demands are made.
They want a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland which would render Stormont's repressive legislation null and void. It would close the loopholes in the reforms which they say Stormont managed to distort. And it would grant political freedoms which were not included in the former minimum programme.
POLICE The association also claims that the police force, despite what the Scarman Report says, is still partial. Executive and administrative officers of the police are seconded civil servants from the discredited Ministry of Home Affairs and the association alleges that partisan high-ranking police officers have been promoted, not dismissed or pensioned off.
The Civil Rights leaders are also concerned about the judiciary. Their case is that many of those who hold positions on the bench owe their offices to party-political services or connections.
The majority of these come of course from the sectarian Unionist Party, and the Civil Rights Association concludes that the administration of justice has been blatantly biased in Ulster.