Derry City by Margo Shea

Author:Margo Shea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2019-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLE FOR THE FLAG

In 1951, Derry’s Catholic leaders decided to test the new Public Order Act ban against displaying the Irish national flag within the city on St. Patrick’s Day. In their insistence to display the Tricolour, the nationalists were invoking a long tradition in Catholic Derry and drawing on a much older republican tradition. The Irish Tricolour, like almost all republican flags, was based on the French Tricolore and was originally presented as a gift to Thomas Francis Meagher, leader of the Young Ireland movement in 1848. Its colors reflected inclusion of Catholic and Protestant traditions in the Irish state. The Journal reported on the use of the flag as an Irish national symbol since 1916. Since 1922, flying it had been an offense inciting political unrest and was punishable by law in Northern Ireland. After 1945, the flag appeared sporadically in Derry, including on the Journal’s flagpole in 1950.

Political leaders, including Eddie McAteer; Alderman Frank McCarroll; city councillors James Doherty, James Hegarty, Jack Harvey, Joe Canning, and Michael Coyle; Anti-Partition League member James Lynch; and four other men gathered at the Diamond on St. Patrick’s Day in 1951. They slowly walked down Shipquay Street towards Guildhall Square. Lynch led the small entourage, holding the Tricolour high.85 They had walked approximately twelve yards when the contingent was stopped by two uniformed police officers and one in plain clothes, who tried to take the flag out of Lynch’s hands. Lynch was not about to let go without a fight, however, and as his fellow marchers marshaled around him “there was a sharp, exciting struggle.”86 In the midst of the melee, the flag separated from the flagpole, and as one of the marchers stooped low to get it, a police officer landed on top of him.

By now, more than a dozen officers had arrived on the scene, and the spectacle of officers wrestling the Irish flag away from marchers animated a gathering crowd of Catholic bystanders. The Journal reported the play-by-play, describing the police’s determination to stop the group and the flag from entering the public square: “Amid a deafening burst of cheering, and in what resembled a gigantic rugby scrum, the Anti-Partitionists swept through the gate and into Guildhall Square.”87 Their flag now tattered, the men fought off the police reinforcements who had been waiting in the square. Jack Harvey’s arm was dislocated in the scrap.88 James Doherty found himself flanked by two constables who forcibly led him to their van by hooking each of his arms.89 James Lynch had not fared well either; photos show his face covered in blood as he was physically carried away into police custody.90 As the van pulled away, Derry Catholics filled the square. Heeding their leaders’ calls for calm, the crowd remained peaceful. Taking off their hats, they sang the Irish national anthem.

The crowd headed towards Victoria Barracks on the Strand Road, lodging a protest outside the jail and waiting for the men to be released. When the instigators emerged, they told the crowd of several hundred that they had been charged with assaulting police officers.

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