The connection between the GPO in Dublin and the former International Hotel in Belfast may not be immediately obvious. However, both share the distinction that they should have been several times their original size to accommodate all those who claimed to have been in them at a particular point in history.
For the GPO, that point was the Easter Rising. For the International Hotel, it was the founding of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of the civil rights campaign, the list of those who claim to have influenced it is growing rapidly. The most unsustainable claim for inclusion on the list comes from Sinn Féin, which has suggested that what became the Provisional IRA was inspirational in creating the civil rights movement.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Their claim has already been dismissed by those as politically diverse as People Before Profit's Eamonn McCann ("a blatant attempt to colonise the civil rights movement") and the SDLP's Bríd Rogers ("historically inaccurate").
I have some understanding of NICRA's beginnings, having been asked by the organisation in 1977 to write a short history of it for its tenth anniversary, using the organisation's files and other sources.
The evidence suggested three main influences on NICRA's origins. The first was the 1947 Education Act, which allowed working class children to attend university. There they learned to think, develop coherent arguments and compile statistical evidence exposing the state's institutionalised inequality.
Education influenced the creation of organisations ranging from the Campaign for Social Justice (1964) to the Derry Housing Action Committee (1968). This new challenge to authority fused with more traditional bodies, such as the Belfast Wolfe Tone Society, to create an innovative public mood of defiance, typified by the 1967 Caledon squat. (This was brilliantly described in graphic detail by Sinn Féin MLA, Colm Gildernew, in a letter to this newspaper on Monday.)
The second influence came from communism, mainly through the Connolly Association in Britain, which had organised marches in England throughout the 1960s, demanding democracy and a bill of rights. The campaign's influence over here was limited until the IRA adopted that same approach from the mid-1960s, thereby forming the third influence.
Following the failure of its border campaign (1956-62) the IRA opted for a new political approach based on socialism, ending abstentionism from the Dáil and a broadly-based, non-sectarian campaign for democracy in the north.
NICRA's first steering group in January 1967 reflected these influences. It included members of the Communist Party, the Campaign for Social Justice, the Wolfe Tone Society and the IRA.
Following the loyalist burning of Bombay Street in August 1969, the IRA split into those who supported the policies of the 1960s (later known as the Official IRA) and those who wanted to resort to traditional republican violence (later known as the Provisionals.) So while it is true that the SDLP did not exist before the civil rights campaign, neither did the PIRA.
The IRA leadership of the 1960s certainly influenced the formation of NICRA, but the PIRA was formed in direct opposition to that leadership's policies, including northern civil rights. (Only Seán Mac Stíofáin appears to have gone with the breakaway group.)
In today's language, the PIRA began life as a dissident republican organisation, devoted to violence and devoid of politics.
For example, following internment in August 1971, NICRA supported the rent and rates strike, using the slogan, "No talks until internment ends." In June 1972, the PIRA broke that pledge when a delegation, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, engaged in secret talks with the British government. The PIRA had a different agenda to the civil rights movement.
Rather than peacefully campaigning for democracy, the PIRA opted to wage war for a united Ireland. They lost the war, gave up their weapons, disbanded their organisation and now they argue for a rights-based society in the north. They are half a century too late.
Making false claims about the party's history does Sinn Féin a disservice. If the party does not know where it came from, it will not know where it is going. This helps to explain its uncertainty on what to do next in the north.
Many younger members of SF today may not know the truth about the civil rights movement. One of the few remaining pre-split, republican witnesses to it all is Gerry Adams, who retires today. Before he leaves, he could do his party a service by acknowledging the huge ideological chasm which existed between the PIRA and the civil rights movement and by accepting the truth of our very sad history.
