The death of Gerry Fitt.

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Friday August 26, 2005 17:26 by obit.

Gerry Fitt born 9th April 1926 died today 26th August 2005.

A former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party SDLP in Northern Ireland he defined himself as a socialist.

A Belfast man by birth he grew up in Beechmount area of the Falls Road district and after a career in the merchant navy, first entered politics when he stood for the Falls as a candidate for the 'Docks Labour Party' in a city council byelection in 1956 but lost to Paddy Devlin of the Irish Labour Party.

n 1958 he was elected to Belfast City Council as a member of the Irish Labour Party.

In 1962 he won a Stormont seat from the Unionist Party. (Stormont was the then "home rule" parliament of the Northern Ireland statelet from its creation at the partitiion of Ireland in 1922 till its disolution and the start of direct rule in 1972 it had a permanent unionist majority)

In 1966 he won the West Belfast seat in the Westminster parliament on the UK.
He represented the people of his constituency asa "Republican Labour Party" member. That party had been founded in 1964 and had two members of parliament Harry Diamond being the other.

Thus he became a spokesperson for the oppressed catholic / nationalist / republican minority in the northern ireland statelet in the UK parliament at Westmnister.

At a civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968 organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) Fitt was wounded by police as they attacked the demonstration which had been declared "illegal". The NICRA founded on 29 January 1967campaigned for

# the repeal of the Special Powers Acts of 1922, 1933, and 1943
# the disbandment of the B Specials paramilitary police force.
# an end to the gerrymandering of local electoral districts, which ensured unionist control over local government even in towns with nationalist majorities.
# an end to discrimination in the awarding of local authority housing.
# an end to discrimination in government employment.

They had organised the march with the Derry Housing Action Committee but the Unionist, Protestant fraternal organization, the Apprentice Boys of Derry, had announced their intention four days before, to march the same route on the same day and time, in an attempt to get the civil rights march banned. William Craig, the Northern Ireland Home Affairs Minister, obliged them and had banned the civil rights march from the city centre.

In 1969 Fitt Fitt supported the candidacy of Bernadette Devlin in the Mid Ulster by-election who ran as an anti-abstenstionist 'Unity' candidate.

In the following year Fitt became the first leader of a coalition of civil rights and nationalist leaders who created the Social Democratic and Labour Party. The party rejected abstensionism and contained a number of prominent protestants who had become involved in the NICRA and other allied movements.

At the collapse of Stormont, in 1974
Fitt became deputy chief executive of the short-lived Power-Sharing Executive created by the Sunningdale Agreement.

The Sunningdale Agreement was signed on December 9, 1973, as an attempt to end the Northern Ireland troubles by forcing unionists to share power with nationalists.

The Agreement had three parts —
#an elected Northern Ireland Assembly,
# a power-sharing cross-community Northern Ireland Executive
# a cross-border Council of Ireland.

& had found one if its roots when on March 20, 1973, the British government had published a white paper which proposed a 78-member Northern Ireland Assembly, to be elected by proportional representation. The British government would retain control over law and order, and a Council of Ireland would give the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland a voice in each other's affairs. This assembly was to replace the suspended Stormont parliament, but it was hoped that this assembly would not be dominated by the Ulster Unionist Party in the same way, and would thus be acceptable to nationalists.

The Northern Ireland Assembly Bill resulting from the white paper became law on 3 May 1973, and elections for the new assembly were held on 28 June. The agreement was supported by the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, the unionist Ulster Unionist Party and the moderate unionist and cross-community Alliance Party. The pro-agreement parties won a clear majority of seats (52 to 26), but a substantial minority inside the Ulster Unionist Party opposed the agreement.

Unionist opposition, Provisional IRA violence and finally a loyalist general strike caused the collapse of the Agreement in May of 1974.

By which time Fitt was felt by many to be isolated from the "nationalist" wing of the SDLP who increasingly were led by John Hume. Fitt had left the "republican labour party" in 1973 the year of Sunningdale and was credited with bringing most of its membership to the SDLP.

Fitt's isolation from wider republican and nationalist concerns continued and he was specifically targetted in 1976 when his house was attacked.

1979 an increasingly disillusioned Fitt played a part in the collapse of the then Labour party government in the UK by abstaining in a crucial commons vote.

The result was a general election which brought the conservative party and Margaret Thatcher to power.

The following year he lost the leadership of the SDLP to John Hume.

He claimed that the SDLP had ceased to be socialist voice, and it is worth noting he saw himself as a socialist, and in his earlier days had unveiled a plaque in memory of James Connoly who had lived on the Falls Road, in Belfast.

In 1981 the northern ireland situation had deteriorated and the hunger strikes had begun facing the notorious Thatcher, Fitt voiced opposition to the hunger strikes and lost his West Belfast seat in 1983 to Gerry Adams the then and current leader of Sinn Fein.

After his loss of the seat, which had been contested by a SDLP candidate as well Adams, Fitt was named a UK "life peer" being offered the tile "Baron Fitt, of Bell's Hill in the County of Down".

Life peerages are an honour bestowed by the UK state and were created in 1958, the entitle the recipient to sit in the House of Lords or higher chamber of the Westminister British parliament but there is no heriditary right.

Gerry Fitt accepted the honour to the dismay of many of his city and wider community, becoming one of 200 life peers created under Thatcher's tenure. From that point on he sat in the House of Lords and became a resident of London where he died after a long illness this morning.

Irish and UK state media reports :-

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0826/fittg.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1673279.stm

{ i'd really like to know what people now, in 2005 in Ireland north and south, and beyond think of the man's legacy, I hope people comment and add thoughts and/or corrections}