![]() ![]() The Derry and Strabane council area has the highest poverty rate in Northern Ireland, furthering the case for investment in the area. Such historic and long-standing political discourse for the higher education sector in the city is compounded by the poverty rates and lack of opportunities for many who call Derry city home. The Magee college was later merged into Ulster University in 1969. Describing the events, SDLP MLA Sinead McLoughlin states: “It was a body blow for the second city in Northern Ireland that the university wasn’t placed here, particularly when we had the Magee campus already established in the city.” In spite of such prominent protests, the government followed through on the report’s recommendations and the new Ulster University campus was established in Coleraine. They subsequently led a convoy of over 1,500 cars to the government buildings at Stormont in protest at the report’s recommendations. The Mayor of Derry and Ulster Unionist Party politician, Albert Anderson, and leader of the Nationalist party, Eddie McAteer, noted how the issue had united both communities in the city. ![]() ![]() Large-scale protests emerged in the wake of the report’s conclusions. The report controversially recommended that a second university should be located in the majority Protestant town of Coleraine. However, in February 1965, protests began to develop following the conclusion of the Hooper Report, an investigation into the provisions for higher education in Northern Ireland. The men proposed the North’s putative second university should be located in Derry. Garbhán Downey, a spokesperson for the Derry University Group, recalls in an email statement to The University Times that “the campaign for a Derry university effectively began in 1960, when the issue was first raised by two city MPs, Edward Jones, Unionist, and Eddie McAteer, Nationalist, at Stormont. The central red brick facade of the main entrance harks back to the Victorian era and highlights a past chequered by lack of investment and controversy that heralded in the beginnings of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Located not far from the banks of the River Foyle in Derry city, the slowly expanding Magee university campus is a key presence in access to higher education for those in the north west. ![]()
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