ABSTRACT
The disparate views on the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland may be explained not only by the wearing of sectarian lenses but also by the more objective difficulty of assessing the history of a movement made up of a number of different groups of varying size and with overlapping but not identical aims and objectives. O'Neill's accession to the premiership was not universally popular. His desire to appear to be a reforming prime minister appealed to those within the Unionist Party who favoured economic and political reform. Housing allocation, as highlighted earlier, continued to be a major issue of discord in Northern Ireland throughout the 1960s. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) is widely considered to have been the primary, though not exclusive, promoter of the civil rights movement. One ought also to mention that the introduction of internment in August 1971 further contributed to the movement towards emergency and militarisation.
