Northern Ireland's University on the Eve of the Civil Rights Movement: Intimations and Influences

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when writers including Seamus Heaney, Stewart Parker, and Seamus Deane were students there, Queen's University Belfast was Northern Ireland's sole university. In this period it also proved a vital social crucible, as the first waves of working-class beneficiaries of the Education Act met and mingled there. For many, Queen's offered their first opportunity to meet and get to know people from the 'other side' of the North's sectarian divide, and they often concluded that they had more in common than not. For a few heady years, progress in Northern Ireland seemed almost inevitable, and the optimistic atmosphere that poets, playwrights, novelists, and critics imbibed there would shape their outlook throughout their careers. Outside the university, though, the old tensions remained relevant, as these students would discover to their shock a few years later . . . .