Last thing 1968 commemorations need is a unionist v nationalist row

In an article in the News Letter ('˜Debates about civil rights era should include unionist input,' March 28) Dr Andrew Charles writes: 'The Civil Rights Movement consisted of '˜unionists', among them Professor Lord Bew of Donegore and Prof Henry Patterson who are all but forgotten as it is now seen as an exclusively '˜nationalist' event.'

I had offered to contribute a paper to a conference proposed by Dr Charles on the Civil Rights Movement and the Fall of Stormont.

In the summary I sent to him I explained that my paper would be based on my experience as a student from a Protestant, working class background who joined the Queen’s University Labour Group in 1966, was a member of the Young Socialists and later of the Peoples Democracy.

My father was a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and took part in the campaigns of NILP candidates in the 1964 and 1965 elections.

Like him I welcomed the victory of Harold Wilson and the Labour Party in the UK general election in 1964.

It is a travesty to suggest I was a unionist involved in the civil rights movement.

I have provided an analysis of the civil rights movement in my book, ‘Ireland since 1939’. This is not a ‘unionist’ analysis but that of a professional historian and I object to the implication in Dr Charles’s piece that any contribution I would make to the discussion of the civil rights movement would be a ‘unionist’ one.

I have already informed Dr Charles that I was withdrawing from his proposed conference because I believed an all-male panel was unacceptable especially given the number of women who were involved in the civil rights movement.

The last thing this year of commemorating 1968 needs is a nationalist versus unionist row — something that most of us in the Queen’s student movement were trying to consign to history.

Henry Patterson, Emeritus Professor of Irish Politics, University of Ulster