All Children Together, a group formed in Co Down in 1973 to seek official support for integrated schools, requested government backing for a conference on "shared schools".
Senior civil servants in the central policy review group at Stormont rather liked the proposal and decided to test the waters by consulting the hierarchy.
On July 30th, 1976, they drove to Armagh to meet the primate, cardinal William Conway, bishop William Philbin of Down and Connor, and bishop Cahal Daly of Derry. They were clearly startled by the response.
"Cardinal Conway's attitude was one of complete intransigence. He dismissed the idea as trivial, irrelevant, and without popular support; he would not participate in any conference on the matter which would be set up by liberals for liberals and would be so constructed as to put the Catholic hierarchy 'in the dock'.
"He thought that to take a child from a Catholic home and educate that child in a non-Catholic school would create tension between the home and the school environment which could only be harmful to the child."