Jack HassardJack Hassard made the journey from Protestant member of the paramilitary B-Specials to being a key figure in the development of the civil rights movement in the North.
The first and only Labour member ever to sit on Dungannon Urban Council, he was one of a group which started agitation on the issue of the poor housing conditions and the unfair allocation of council housing in Dungannon from the mid-1960s. He was one of the organisers of the first civil rights march from Coalisland to Dungannon on August 24th, 1968, and spoke on the platform.
What made Hassard unique was that he was a working-class Protestant in a bitterly divided town who took a public stand for civil rights.
Many Protestants were involved in civil rights, but most were students or young people. Hassard was a mature man, with a relatively good job as a post office clerk, and a young family.
His stand made him a hate figure for Protestant extremists, but he continued to speak on civil rights platforms even as counterdemonstrators shouted death-threats at him. From 1968 he had to carry a licensed gun for his own protection.
Protestant extremists attacked him on his way to and from work. On one occasion a mob invaded the post office and attacked him.
On another, he was struck with a hatchet following a meeting in Dungannon's Square.
As the North slid into sectarian polarisation in the 1970s, there was less space for his non-sectarian socialist politics.
The Northern Ireland Labour Party also left him, as it refused to take a stand against internment when it was introduced in 1971. Although he strongly opposed the IRA campaign, he played his part in the rent and rates strike called to oppose internment.
A long personal journey took him to civil rights. He was born, one of six brothers, on a small farm at Churchill in the west of Co Fermanagh.
As a teenager during the second World War he joined the army and fought in north Africa and Italy, being twice mentioned in dispatches. He was wounded at Monte Cassino and carried a German bullet in his body till the day he died.
His parents received a letter that he was "missing, believed dead", but a Fermanagh girl found him in the military hospital where she was nursing. After nine years in the army, he became a clerk in the post office as well as a B-man.
At work, he became active in the union and, as was common at the time, union activism led him towards the developing Northern Ireland Labour Party of the 1960s. In 1964 he set up the Dungannon branch of the party and a year later fought South Tyrone at Stormont, against the Unionist John Taylor (now Lord Kilclooney), polling nearly 5,000 votes.
In the 1960s he was elected to the Unionist-controlled Dungannon Urban Council. Dungannon was an evenly divided town, where the local unionist establishment energetically discriminated against Catholics.
The Nationalist Party councillors offered no real opposition, and Hassard, a Protestant, was the first councillor to attack that unionist establishment.
Dungannon as much as Derry was the crucible of the civil rights movement, and that was because of the work of Hassard and others in local housing agitations.
While Hassard was a hate-figure for many Protestants, he wasn't universally supported in the Catholic community.
Once he was booed at a meeting in Dungannon's St Patrick's Hall when he suggested carrying a Union Jack on a civil rights march, because they were seeking British rights for British citizens.
Despite the worsening political situation, he flew the flag for non-sectarian working-class politics. In 1973 he polled over 2,000 votes as an independent in the Assembly election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, outpolling the DUP. He returned to Dungannon Council in 1977-81, serving one term as an independent before ill-health forced him to retire. He also served on the Southern Area Health Board and worked as a voluntary social worker.
In 1976 he was appointed to the Northern Ireland Police Authority, resigning 2½ years later frustrated by repeated unsuccessful attempts to get inquiries into allegations of police maltreatment of people in custody. "That bloody police authority is the most non-independent body I know," he told The Irish Times at the time. "They're as independent as a sausage without the skin."
His commitment to the rights of his fellow man enabled him to cross boundaries, to be elected with the votes of Protestants and Catholics in one of the North's most divided towns.
And as an ex-serviceman, he was a member of the British Legion, taking part in Armistice Day commemorations. He was a recipient of the British Empire Medal and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal, and was a justice of the peace.
His kindness in attending the wakes and funerals of several IRA men killed in the Troubles is still spoken of with gratitude by their families.
Former Workers' Party and Democratic Left councillor Gerry Cullen was a neighbour and credits Hassard with his own political development. "When I was growing up, if anything needed done, it was 'Go to Jack Hassard'," he remembered.
Such was the demand for Hassard's services that he explained to a journalist why, at the time, he refused to install a phone at home: "Sure with one of them in the house I'd never get a night's sleep."
He knew tragedy in his own life. He was predeceased by a daughter, Eileen, who died at a young age, and his son, Stephen, who left a young family.
He is survived by his widow, Jean, daughter Wendy, daughter-in-law Patricia, son-in-law Cormac, grandchildren Emma, Neil, Rachel, Grace and Eve, and brothers Mervyn and Jimmy.
Jack Hassard: born 1926, died July 18th, 2004