WHAT’S THE STORY?

AUSTIN Currie, one of the leading figures of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, has died at the age of 82.

His family have confirmed that Currie, the only man to be elected to serve in the parliaments of both Northern Ireland and the Republic, died early on Tuesday.

The Currie family said: “After a long and eventful life, he died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Derrymullen, Co Kildare. He had just celebrated his 82nd birthday.

“Austin was married to Annita for 53 years. They were a formidable team whose love for each other and their family saw them through some of the worst times in Northern Ireland’s recent history.”

CURRIE’S LIFE AND CAREER

BORN shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War in Coalisland in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, he was the eldest of eleven children of John Currie and his wife Mary, née O’Donnell.

Educated at St Patrick’s Academy in Dungannon he went on to Queen’s Unversity, Belfast, from where he graduated with a degree in history and politics.

He was one of a group of young Catholic activists pursing civil rights in Northern Ireland when in May, 1964, he was elected at a by-election as Nationalist MP for East Tyrone in the Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont.

He was the youngest-ever member at Stormont and held his seat until the Parliament was suspended in 1972 by Ted Heath’s Tory Government.

Currie was an early player in the civil rights movement and shot to prominence in June, 1968, when he squatted in a council house in Caledon in Tyrone. The house had been allocated to the secretary of a local Protestant and Unionist politician, despite there being 250 families on the waiting list for a house.

The squat only lasted a few hours but Currie’s stance made him famous at home and abroad. The event at Caledon is widely seen as the real beginning of the civil rights movement.

Currie had always rejected the violent approach of some Republicans, and in 1970 he joined with Gerry Fitt, John Hume, Paddy Devlin, Eddie McAteer and others to form the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).

In 1973, Currie was part of the SDLP team that negotiated the power-sharing agreement with the Unionists at Sunningdale.

His role as Minister for Housing, Local Government and Planning in the short-lived Executive gained him enemies on both sides of the divide in Northern Ireland - his house was attacked by Loyalists and his RUC guard was shot dead.

Internal rows within the SDLP saw him move south to Dublin in the late 1980s and join Fine Gael, winning a seat in the Dail for Dublin West in 1989.

In 1990 he was Fine Gael’s unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency, but he did become minister of state at the Departments of Education, Justice and Health during the Fine Gael-led rainbow coalition government from 1994 to 1997, thus becoming the only man to be a government minister in the parliaments of both countries on the island of Ireland.

He lost his seat in 2002 and said he was going to retire to Kildare and watch his potatoes grow.

HOW WILL HE BE REMEMBERED?

BLESSED with youthful good looks and his passion for special justice, he was often described as the poster boy for the civil rights movement.

Current SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said Mr Currie was a “titan”, adding: “His housing protest in Caledon in 1968 was one of the key sparks for the civil rights campaign that followed and he spoke for a generation of young nationalists when he refused to allow his constituents to be treated as second class citizens anymore.”

Taoiseach Micheal Martin described Mr Currie as a “peacemaker” and a Minister who had served with distinction.

Perhaps the best tribute came from his five children who described their father as “wise, brave and strong”, adding: “We thank him for the values that he lived by and instilled in us. He was our guiding star who put the principles of peace, social justice and equality first.”