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No sectarian motive to civil rights march

Tuesday 28th September 2004

The Socialist Environmental Alliance totally rejects any effort to impose a sectarian motive on the civil rights march in Derry this weekend.

The idea for the march came from the SEA. Since attacks on gays are at the top of any current civil rights agenda in Derry, the SEA took the idea to the Rainbow Project, who immediately agreed to join with the SEA in organising the march. Since then, a number of other political organisations have expressed support for the march. The SEA welcomes this support.

Three of the organisers of the original October 1968 civil rights march agreed to act as main sponsors of Saturday's demonstration. All three are socialists. None of them is a nationalist.

The suggestion by Gregory Campbell that the 1968 march was a nationalist event is untrue. Today, of course, it frequently suits both nationalists and unionists to pretend that it was. Both have a vested interest in maintaining the Orange-Green pattern of politics here.

Does Gregory Campbell suggest that people from a Protestant background shouldn't speak out against homophobia? Does he suggest that Protestants shouldn't take a stand against racist attacks? That Protestants should ignore gross abuses of the legal system, as in the case of Seamus Doherty? Is he saying that no Protestant should raise his or her voice against the internment without trial of Muslims in Britain?

These are the issues being highlighted on Saturday. None is an issue particular to either of "the two communities."  The SEA deliberately set out to raise issues and slogans which are relevant to civil rights and which are in the interests of working class people irrespective of their religious background or whether they have any religion at all.

We are pleased that these remain the issues which will be at the head of the march. As far as the SEA is concerned, anybody who isn't supporting the march on this basis should stay away. But anybody who does support this approach, irrespective of other affiliations or allegiences, should join the march Saturday to oppose hatred and oppression and to support civil rights for all.





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