Power in Derry

Ever since 1689, when its Protestant citizens cried "No surrender!" and withstood a 105-day siege by the Catholic armies of James II, the city of Londonderry has been the symbol of Protestant triumph and Catholic humiliation. For nearly three centuries after the siege, Catholic residents of the city were forbidden by custom to live within Derry's six-foot-thick, lichen-green stone walls; the "Catholic area" was a nearby swamp appropriately called Bogside. Nor were Catholics--even when they became a majority in Derry--ever allowed to play any major role in the city's administration. When, in 1968, Catholic civil rightists did the unthinkable by marching through this Protestant inner sanctum, their defiance touched off a tragic tribal war that has engulfed all Northern Ireland. Yet after ten years of bloodshed, the city that served as the fuse for war may have found the balm for peace, as Derry Protestants and Catholics set an example for the rest of Northern Ireland by attempting to share power.

The Derry accommodation began slowly with the termination in 1969 of the Protestant-controlled municipal corporation that administered the city. Four years later, after direct British rule had begun, Westminster set up elections for a new city council, whose 27 members are chosen on a one-man, one-vote basis. At first none of the three major factions--the Protestant Unionists, the Catholic Socialist Democratic Labor Party (SDLP) and the nonsectarian Alliance Party--won a clear-cut majority, and by common agreement the office of mayor alternated every year between Catholics and Protestants. Then last year, for the first time, the SDLP won a working majority in the council. But the SDLP permitted power-sharing arrangements--including the mayoral rotation--to continue.

The power that is shared is limited.

Westminster still controls most important functions, notably the assignment of families to public housing units, which was a major issue in the civil rights campaign. But even with its limited jurisdiction, the council has to reach agreement on such everyday civic responsibilities as park maintenance and refuse collection. It has also headed off some potentially explosive political problems. Last March, for example, the Irish Independence Party, a Catholic group, began pressuring to have the precolonial "Derry" reinstated as the city's official name, a move certain to have aroused widespread Protestant hostility. The council, guided by the SDLP, voted to consider the matter but to take no action, thus defusing the threat.

Interestingly, as this nascent political partnership matured, the Protestant Jerusalem that was once the epicenter of sectarian strife has become, almost silently, Catholic turf. With the exception of a single neighborhood, called the Fountain, the old walled city of Derry today is almost exclusively populated by families who would have been excluded ten years ago. The change is hardly a tribute to any growing spirit of tolerance, however, since a prime reason most Protestants left was to seek more modern housing in the newly developed--and heavily Protestant--district of Waterside.

Certainly Derry is far from free of its ancient demons. Protestants still take to the streets every Aug. 12 to celebrate the lifting of the Derry siege, and Irish Republican Army guerrilla activity continues sporadically. But Derry residents are proud of their progress and believe it relevant--to some degree, at least--to the rest of the troubled province, "Derry is a microcosm; Derry is what the whole thing is about," says John Hume, 41, a founding member of the Catholic majority party. "What we want to show is that the boot is not on the other foot--that whatever power you've got should never be used against a minority."

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