Austin Currie

Austin Currie appears in 698. The Troubles: The Brink of Civil War (Part 2) as the nationalist MP whose June 1968 occupation of a council house in Caledon made housing allocation a symbol of Catholic second-class citizenship in Northern Ireland. The house had been assigned to Emily Beattie while hundreds of Catholic families were waiting, and the RUC removed Currie and the others from the property.

The episode groups Currie with Gerry Fitt and John Hume as part of a younger Catholic political generation shaped by civil rights language and focused on housing, local voting, electoral boundaries, and policing reform.

Connections

• Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement, NICRA, and State Policing Legitimacy Crisis - civil rights and policing context.
• Derry / Londonderry, Gerry Fitt, and John Hume - later protest and leadership network.