In the 50 years since she and her family were evicted from a house in Caledon, Co Tyrone, Mary Teresa Goodfellow has watched the moment on television many times since.
“We were dragged out. There’s the baby in my arms and we’re being trailed out.”
The Goodfellows’ eviction – on June 18th, 1968 – was the last straw for Austin Currie, a Nationalist Party MP. Two days later, he and two others – Ms Goodfellow’s brother Patsy Gildernew, and a local farmer, Joe Campbell – broke into the house next door, which had been allocated to an unmarried Protestant woman, 19-year-old Emily Beattie.
Regarded as marking the beginning of the North’s civil rights protests, their action at Caledon was followed two months later by the first civil rights march.
Among the demands of the civil rights movement was an end to discrimination in the allocation of housing by removing it from the hands of local councils, which tended to be unionist-dominated.
Hopeful
By October 1967, the Goodfellows had been living with Ms Goodfellow’s mother for two years. But they were hopeful a chance might come their way of one of 15 houses under construction in Kinnard Park in Caledon.
Instead, only one was given to a Catholic family.
So Ms Goodfellow, her husband, Francis, and their two children decided they would squat in No 11 Kinnard Park; another family, the McKennas, did the same in No 9.
The Goodfellows walked right in – “the door was open”, recalls Ms Goodfellow – and they were sitting on the floor, their children on their knees, when workmen arrived the following morning.
“Then the police came,” says Mr Goodfellow, “and they inspected the house and said they could do nothing because there was no damage.”
He was taken to court and an eviction order was issued, though it was suspended for six months.
Gave birth
The Goodfellows stayed; Ms Goodfellow, who had been pregnant when they moved in, gave birth to a girl.
In No 9, the McKennas had become too frightened and had left.
“At the time we did get a letter, get out or be burned out,” says Mr Goodfellow.
“You were always sort of scared, in case somebody would come in the night and you were there,” adds Ms Goodfellow.
“We wanted to tell people exactly what was happening but at the same time I was scared. And I was scared for my baby.”
Next door, the McKennas’ house had been allocated – to Emily Beattie.
“Can you imagine that could happen?” asks Ms Goodfellow.
“A family with three young children were there and they handed it to an unmarried girl. It just shows you what they could do in those days. It was such an injustice – there’s no two ways about it.”
Dragged outside
The morning the police and bailiffs arrived Ms Goodfellow was given time to feed her children before being dragged outside, her seven-week-old daughter in her arms; inside the house their furniture and crockery were broken.
The family were eventually given a house outside Dungannon, where they have lived for the past 48 years.
“I think we’ve come on a long way,” says Ms Goodfellow. “Our children have all got jobs, they didn’t have to emigrate and they can all get homes, which we couldn’t. We’re glad that we were part of it. We feel that we did do something.”
