The DUP’s intransigence over Brexit leaves Northern Ireland once again at the crossroads

In February 1969 I was in County Fermanagh reporting what was billed as a “crossroads election”, in which Northern Ireland would choose between limited reform and a one-party Protestant and unionist state. I remember the campaign well because it was the subject of an article I was producing for a university magazine, the first I ever wrote for any publication.

The election was considered particularly important because the Northern Irish prime minister, Terence O’Neill, was seeking endorsement of his policy of moving towards granting civil and political rights to the Catholic minority – a policy over which his own unionist party was split.

I had a sense early on that it was already too late for compromise because institutionalised anti-Catholic discrimination had cut too deep for change to come without violence.