Michael Canavan (politician)

Michael Canavan (born October 1924) is a former Irish nationalist business owner and politician. Born in Derry, Canavan studied at St Columb's College in the city before entering business.[1] By the 1960s, he owned a chain of bookmakers, a salmon-processing factory and a pub in the city.[2] He was treasurer of the University for Derry Committee in 1965,[1] and worked with John Hume to try to attract industry to the area.[3]

An advocate of credit unions, Canavan founded the Derry Credit Union with Hume and chaired it from 1963 to 1966, following which he spent a year as a director of the Irish League of Credit Unions.[1] In 1968, he was elected as Chairman of the Derry Citizens' Action Committee, and was subsequently prominent in the Derry Citizens' Defence Association and chaired the Derry Citizens' Central Council.[1]

Canavan entered electoral politics as campaign manager for Hume at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. Hume stood in Foyle as an independent and was elected.[4] The following year, Canavan was a founder member of Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and served as its security spokesman for many years.[5]

At the 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election, he was elected for Londonderry, and he held his seat in 1975 on the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention.[6] However, he decided not to stand in the 1982 Assembly election, instead calling for the party to boycott to vote because there was no power-sharing in the proposed assembly.[7] He remained active in the SDLP for some time, and chaired Derry's civic committee during the mid-1980s.[8]

Canavan's brother Ivor was a prominent member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland.[9]

Canavan had a life long interesting the promotion of the university at Magee in Derry. He had been treasurer of John Hume's University for Derry Committee in 1965 but the university was placed in Coleraine instead. In 1985 he headed the Derry civic committee which saw the reopening of Magee with provost professor Robert Gavin and was granted an honorary degree in 1999. Today Magee has some 4,300 students and now has plans to await a government grant of 11 million pounds plus to launch a medical school which all parties support. The first students of the medical school should commence work in 2019 rising to 120 students after 5 years. Canavan was elected to Stormont parliament in 1979.

In 1974-1982 he was the SDLP spokesman for law and order. After the civil rights march was beaten and brutalised on Derry streets, a meeting was called in Derry on October 5, 1968 to fight back peacefully. At the meeting he was elected as secretary of the Derry Citizens Committee, but he refused to serve until the word 'action' was inserted after the word citizens. The Derry Citizens Action Committee got 20,000 marchers to call peacefully for civil rights and were opposed by 3000 RUC. In the end the marchers found a byway which they used to get within the city walls, and thereafter myriad groups peacefully breached the Stormont ban which lay in ruins.

Canavan was elected a founder member of Derry Credit Union and of Pennyburn Credit Union and served a 3 year term on the Credit Union League of Ireland. Credit unions are the people's bank, and the Derry Credit Union is one of the largest in the country.

The defence association Free Derry was set up in July 1969 to protect the bogside public against the gas fired by the orange attackers and became Free Derry. From August 1969 it took control of Free Derry which was then run by Paddy 'Bogside' Doherty and Canavan. In the end the defence association consisted of 880 acres and 25,000 souls, within which only the writ of the defence association ran. The British army col Milman said of the defence committee that the citizens' association were the real peacemakers. The reforms obtained were the end of Stormont and the B Specials, and finally reform of the RUC.