History Lessons

Austin Currie was elected as a nationalist MP to the Stormont parliament in 1964, took part in a house occupation in Caledon, Co. Tyrone, in 1968, which highlighted discrimination in housing, and was a founder member of the SDLP.  He was a minister in the short-lived power sharing Executive brought down by the UWC strike in May 1974. Here he talks of his experiences in some of the most momentous events of the Troubles, including the Civil Rights campaign, suspension of Stormont, the Sunningdale talks, the tense final days of the Executive - lightened only by the birth of one of his children - and the grim Republican and Loyalist violence, which claimed the lives of policemen near his home and some of his close friends and neighbours.