Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict

by David McKittrick

The house at the centre of the controversy was allocated, by a local Unionist party councillor, to a nineteen-year-old unmarried Protestant girl. She was secretary to the councillor’s solicitor, who was also a Unionist parliamentary candidate. The girl was given the house in preference to two Catholic families, who had squatted for a time in the district, and who had complained that the same councillor had opposed the building of houses for Catholic tenants in the Dungannon area. A few days after the girl moved in, Catholic squatters in the house next door were evicted by police, with full television coverage. Currie, an energetic MP who was to have a long political career, raised the matter unsuccessfully both with the local council and at Stormont. Following a heated debate he was ordered to leave the Commons chamber. He then symbolically occupied the girl’s house, remaining in it for some hours before being evicted by the RUC.