ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a number of nonsectarian social movements in Northern Ireland in the decade leading up to the outbreak of ethno nationalist conflict, which began in 1969 and then intensified as a protracted insurgency in the early 1970s. These movements created rich networks that refused to correspond with the region's ethnic divisions and they advanced projects that embraced all citizens, regardless of identity. Social movements are major instruments in the dynamics of contentious politics of divided societies. The Northern Ireland Committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was formed in 1958. In 1961 CND members waged a campaign outside the United States (US) consulate against the establishment of a US naval nerve centre in the region. The radicalism of CND increasingly became replaced by the emergence of the civil rights campaign. The development of the civil rights campaign in the late 1960s changed the context through which issues involving public housing were expressed.
