Housing allocation in Northern Ireland was systematically rigged to prevent Catholics from gaining votes, with Protestant councils refusing to build homes in Catholic areas because each new household meant two additional voters they couldn't control.

25:04like building homes in Catholic areas, right? Yeah. The chairman of Enskillan Housing Committee 1963. We're going to see that the right people are put in these houses. We're not going to apologize for it. Now it does work the other way round. So in nationalist councils like Nuri, they built lots of new houses in the early 60s and they gave only a tiny handful of them to Protestants. But the big losers from all

25:27this are the Catholics. And one place above all becomes emblematic of this. And this is the second city of Northern Ireland, a city in the far west of the country. It was originally a settlement called Derry. Then in 1613 a consortium of London guilds basically was set up to colonize the area. They built a new walled city and because they were London guilds they called it London

25:53Derry and hence you have the name controversy which actually in this period the 60s isn't really is it? Everyone calls it dairy. >> Everybody calls it dairy. >> Yeah. It only really became a big controversy once the troubles kicked off and then it became a kind of um a point of pride to call it either Derry like Paul Rouse our former guest or London Derry as you did in the general post

26:16office in in Dublin. So So we'll just call it Derry for short. Derry in 1965 or so is a 2:1 Catholic city. So 36,000 Catholics are 18,000 Protestants, but it's always been controlled by Protestants through gerrymandering. So they're always redrawing the boundaries of the wards to give themselves a majority on the council. So when I was when I was thinking about this, I wondered whether you would say surely

26:44the British government wouldn't stand for this. This is outrageous. But the truth, as we shall see, is the British have absolutely no interest in what happens in Northern Ireland at all. I appreciate that. I'm just wondering if it is under British law illegal. Uh, good question. I don't think it is. Some Catholic solicitor would have undoubtedly taken its court. It's not illegal, I think, because the councils

27:02set the boundaries. The councils decide the ward boundaries. >> So, this is the devolution that Andy Bernammont's the right of councils to gerrymander. >> Right. Well, we shall see. Anyway, so to go back to Derry, basically almost every Protestant family who wants a house gets one, but there are 2,000 Catholic families on the waiting list for housing. And we will come back to this in the next episode because it is no

27:27accident that this is where the troubles really kick off in earnest against this background. So just to um finish by talking about the Catholics before we go to the break. Imagine Tom, you're a young Catholic in the early 60s in Northern Ireland. What is your name? >> Sheamus A. Murphy. >> Yeah. Sheamus whatever. Exactly. So you're identifiable by your name. You have no flat. You have no vote in local

27:51elections. You maybe don't have a job. You feel that the system is stacked against you and it has been for the last 40 years. Where do you look for hope? The Virgin Mary. Yeah. You probably Well, you may be to the Virgin Mary. Exactly. You You might look to the sort of Northern Irish Nationalist Party, but they are very small. They're very ineffective. I mean, in 1962 and 1965 in