Local authority representatives, MPs and Senators from the SDLP and Nationalist Party meet in an alternative Northern Ireland Assembly at Dungiven Castle, County Derry.
The ballroom of Dungiven Castle in County Derry is the location for the first meeting of Northern Ireland's alternative assembly, representing the non-Unionist community.
One hundred and thirty delegates had been expected, but just sixty are in attendance, as representatives from Belfast and Newry are attending funerals of those killed in the violence of the past days. The first item on the order of business was to adopt a constitution under which,
They agreed to work for the equality of all by non-violent means.
President of the Assembly of the Northern Irish People John Hume proposed a motion that, pending the peaceful reunification of Ireland, assembly members should work for the social and economic good of the whole community.
In a speech where he quotes the Unionist Sir Edward Carson's refusal to accept the then proposed Home Rule parliament in 1912, John Hume declares that
We do not recognise the authority of the Stormont Parliament, and we do not care tuppence whether it is treason or not.
John Hume maintains that the system adopted by the British and the Brian Faulkner led government in Stormont has failed the people of Northern Ireland. He calls on them to abandon their military solution, which as Irish history has shown has failed repeatedly,
We suggest instead that they try changing the system, and…that that would produce the solution, the peace and justice and the stability that we all require.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 26 October 1971. The reporter is John McAleese.
