pursued the policies that he felt were in the best interests of Northern Catholics. But McAteer occasionally had to make tactical deviations to protect the party against potential rivals and to defend his Derry fastness. However, he was also able to exploit the challenge posed by the National Unity critique to help justify change to the old guard.
The decision to embark upon a major shift in strategy was finally taken during mid-1962. The timing was influenced by a combination of international, national, and local developments: the Second Vatican Council, London and Dublin’s joint application for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), the formal end of the IRA’s failed campaign, and Nationalist successes in the Stormont election. Doherty later recalled that Nationalists felt that this would be an opportune moment to offer the Unionists the ‘hand of friend- ship’ in the hope of winning concessions – to adopt a policy of normalisation.58 Senator James Lennon explained the party’s position at a rally staged in Omagh by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Orange Order’s Catholic counterpart: ‘faced with the present terrible unemployment conditions in this area and the unknown consequences of the advent of the Common Market we owe it to our country as a whole to make every effort within the framework of our National aspirations to find … solutions’.59
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