New book examines Derry gerrymander

Population growth in Derry’s Shantallow following the breakdown of the unionist ‘gerrymander’ of the city is chronicled in a new book by one of the north’s longest serving councillors.

Tony Hassan served as a Sinn Féin member of Derry city council for more than 20 years. In that time, he watched the population of Shantallow leap from 4,000 to more than 40,000.

For many years, the Ulster Unionist controlled ‘Londonderry Corporation’ operated a gerrymander to maintain control of the overwhelmingly nationalist city.

By refusing to build new housing, the corporation forced many Derry families to live in abject poverty in tenement conditions. The gerrymander and housing in Derry became one of the main catalysts of the Troubles.

As a young man growing up in Derry’s inner city, Mr Hassan was forced to move to Shantallow after a bomb destroyed his parents’ home at Bridge Street. His personal account in From Old Streets to New Homes chronicles the rapid development in housing introduced with the reform of local government in the early 1970s.

The work also catalogues the impact of the Troubles on Shantallow as well as the deaths of people from the area.

Mr Hassan’s friend and former Stormont speaker, Mitchel McLaughlin described the abuse of housing as a “pernicious policy”.

In a foreword to the book, he said: “It outlines a city in the post-war era, whose economic potential had been strangled by the denial of civil rights and the gerrymandering of the electoral process, which enabled a minority of voters to dominate local government and obstruct educational and economic opportunity for non-unionists.”

Mr McLaughlin said Mr Hassan’s work outlined events which shaped his own life and the broader history of Derry.

Publisher Garbhán Downey of Colmcille Press said Mr Hassan’s memoir was a fascinating account of both Shantallow and Derry over the past half-century.

“It is a celebration of both survival and revival,” he said. “Our previous book, ‘A People’s History of Shantallow’, concluded in the late 1960s when the area was still a rural ward, prior to its rapid development. Tony’s very engaging, personal account picks up the mantle and takes the reader through the newer generations up to the present day.”

* Published by Colmcille Press, From Old Streets to New Homes: A Memoir of Derry, Bridge Street and Shantallow will be available from next week.

Urgent Appeal