The spark that lit the Troubles is still smouldering in the embers

AN Irish Press reporter was watching a police water cannon vehicle moving into position. He had never seen one in action before.

A heavy woman was looking into a shop window. Suddenly her legs were taken from under her by a blast of the water cannon. She was left sitting on the pavement with her hands up in the air asking, “what happened?”

Forty years on we might all ask the same question: what happened? Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the civil rights march in Derry on October 5, 1968. It turned into a police riot and, in the words of John Hume, this was “the spark that lit the bonfire”.