News

Housing Rights for All - Commemorating Caledon 1968-2008

Tuesday 17 June 2008

The Conference is being held to commemorate the incident, (regarded by many as the start of the public Civil Rights Campaign,) when a young MP in the old Stormont Parliament-Austin Currie-squatted in a house in Caledon, Co. Tyrone, which had been allocated to a young unmarried girl in preference to a number of needy families in the area.

Austin Currie had been invited to act as the "front-man" in the protest by some local activists who were protesting at unjust housing allocations by Dungannon Rural District Council. The "squatting" achieved widespread media attention, and brought the spotlight of publicity to bear upon the injustices in housing policy under the old Stormont regime. Austin was later fined £5.00-the "best value for a fiver I ever had", he declared.

The Conference will be led by Austin Currie and Lord Ken Maginness, giving alternative Nationalist and Unionist perspectives on the housing problems of those times, and hopefully will be joined by a representative of the Caledon families involved in the protest.

The Conference will then move on to consider the problems of social and affordable housing today, and will be addressed by Housing Minister Margaret Ritchie, Professor Paddy Hillyard, Duncan Morrow and Rev Peter McVerry. Tom Arnold from Concern, Paddy McGuinness, from the Niall Mellon Township Trust and a delegation from housing projects from South Africa will highlight housing issues internationally.

The conference is open to all.

For further information contact Denis Haughey, Chair 07884237062 or Tim Attwood Secretary 07802 279939 E:civilrights1968@yahoo.co.uk