Gerry Fitt

Gerry Fitt appears in 698. The Troubles: The Brink of Civil War (Part 2) as one of the Catholic civil-rights political figures present at the banned Derry march on 5 October 1968. The episode says the RUC beat and arrested him, and that television footage of the police violence helped internationalize the crisis.

Fitt is later named among the civil-rights figures who urged Westminster to send troops during the August 1969 crisis, showing how Catholic leaders initially saw the British Army as protection from loyalist violence and RUC hostility.

Connections

• Austin Currie, John Hume, and NICRA - civil-rights leadership context.
• Derry / Londonderry, Battle of the Bogside, and British Army - march, street battle, and intervention sequence.