out in 1968, Derry’s economy was languishing and unemployment was rife (particularly amongst Catholic men). A major investment by US manufacturer Fruit of the Loom provided the city’s textile trade with one last swansong in the late 1980s, until those jobs were transferred to Morocco some years later. In 1990 Derry had 18,000 manufacturing jobs. Today it has only 3,000. Crucially – alternative employment sources neither grew locally nor were introduced externally to fill the void it left. Derry’s economy has not adapted to its post-industrial reality – and the disappearance of its shirt industry has had a similar impact as the closure of mines did on communities in Britain (though over a longer period of time, and not at the behest of government). In hindsight, it was probably unwise for Derry to bet its proverbial shirt so heavily on any single industry. But no-one could have foreseen partition and the impact it and other dynamics would have upon the city’s economy. And no-one could have expected that the decline of the city’s textiles industry would be left largely unmanaged without alternative employment introduced. Which brings us to a more controversial contributor to the city’s current economic predicament.

3. Discrimination

Industrialisation triggered a migration of labour into Derry from surrounding areas at the turn of the 20th century, with a significant impact on the city’s demographics. By the 1960s two-thirds of Derry’s population was catholic, and the Unionist Party was alarmed at the prospect of losing a city that held a central place in the Protestant psyche. It responded at a local level with gerrymandering to ensure the council remained in unionist hands, and at a Stormont-level by stifling the city’s development to stop the growth of its Catholic population. A period of chronic under-investment in the city therefore followed, in which the basic tools Derry needed to prosper (e.g. infrastructure, skills and employment) were largely denied it, with economic investment heavily skewed towards the east of the Bann instead.

Derry’s railway lines (the city had four at one stage) were wound down. Its cross-border rail services were scrapped, and only the Belfast line remained (thanks only to a last minute reprieve). In common with many other towns in the west which also saw their railways scrapped, promised motorway replacements never materialised. The city also missed out on a number of key public investments that it rightly felt entitled to. The first of these came via the 1963 Matthew’s Report – tasked with creating an economic and population counter-balance to Belfast. It recommended that a ‘new city’ of Craigavon be built between Lurgan and Portadown, despite being less than 30 miles from Belfast. The report also recommended a number of other towns for development, all of which were located in the east (Antrim, Ballymena, Bangor, Carrickfergus, Downpatrick, Larne and Newtonards). Despite Derry’s appalling shortage of housing and employment at that time, and the impoverished state of the west of the province, Craigavon became the focus of a £140m Stormont investment (approx £2bn in today’s money) before the Troubles brought the project to a premature end. The Derry Journal remarked in February 1964 that “There is a deep political motive behind the Belfast government’s eagerness to implement the grandiose project of a brand new city in North Armagh. It seems significant that the new city, a lesser Belfast, so to speak, is to be planted where there is the most solid support for the Unionist government”. The Englishman who led the design team for the project, Geofffey Copcutt (previously chief architect for the new town of Cumbernauld in Scotland) resigned – informing the press that the project was unwise, and that in his view Derry should be developed instead. Critical of the Northern Irish government, Copcutt stated “I have been disenchanted with the Stormont scene…. Stormont has showed signs of a crisis-ridden regime, too busy looking over its shoulder to look outwards”. And he remarked that “religious and political considerations” were hampering plans for the New City. Copcutt confirmed in later years that he resigned because he had been asked to ensure the new city did not upset the area’s religious voting balance.

The insult of Derry being overlooked as the preferred counter-balance to Belfast was trumped two years later with the 1965 publication of a report into the creation of a second university for Northern Ireland. The committee which prepared the Lockwood Report did not contain any Catholic members and had not been asked to recommend where such a new university should be located. It nonetheless chose to make clear that the Protestant town of Coleraine was its preferred choice of location, rather than NI’s second city. This proved to be an indignity too far for Derry and led to the formation of a huge cross-community campaign, led by a young teacher called John Hume. It was to be in vain, however, as the Stormont parliament voted for Coleraine. Derry unionist MP Robert Nixon claimed that the Stormont Cabinet had “directed Lockwood” towards Coleraine, and he complained that “nameless, faceless men” within his own party had been campaigning against the city as part of an “anywhere but Derry” strategy. The Lockwood Report added further insult by recommending the closure of Derry’s small Magee College (a pre-partition remnant of Trinity College Dublin), but it was reprieved as a sop to the city. Fifty years on, the award of NI’s second university to Coleraine still rankles in Derry – and the city still awaits a proper university of its own.