[7] Many sympathetic MPs were present at the civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968 when Fitt and others were beaten by the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

RTÉ's film, in which Fitt featured prominently, of the police baton charge on the peaceful, but illegal, demonstration drew world attention to the claims of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

[8] The following year, Fitt announced at a press conference subsequent to the August 1969 rioting in Belfast that disturbance were created by a decision to "take some action to try to draw off the forces engaged in the Bogside area.

The years of Unionist single-party rule had come to an end with the SDLP and Alliance parties joining the Executive alongside the Brian Faulkner wing of Unionism.

[citation needed] Within the nationalist community, the Provisionals condemned the powersharing agreement as falling short of British withdrawal and a united Ireland.

[17] In the aftermath of the collapse of the Executive, the British Government became less hopeful of achieving powersharing and, as a result, the all-Ireland dimension became the bigger policy priority for the SDLP.

Labour's Northern Ireland Secretary of State Roy Mason spent little time and effort on local political initiatives instead opting for a strategy of criminalisation and attempting to militarily defeat the IRA.

[23] He increasingly felt isolated within the party with Fortnight, a Belfast current affairs magazine, describing him at the time as the "only Labour man" left.

In April of that year, he contacted the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) to seek assurances that the British government would not give in to the hunger strikers' demands for political status.

[26] The following month, May 1981, Fitt lost his seat on Belfast City Council to Fergus O'Hare, a member of the left-wing Peoples Democracy group and a prominent campaigner for political status and rights for the prisoners in the H Blocks.

The loss of his seat on Belfast Council where he had been a prominent and long serving member, was to signal the beginning of Gerry Fitt's electoral decline.

)[28] His Belfast Antrim Road home, close to the republican New Lodge, was firebombed a month after he was made a peer and he moved to live in London.

[citation needed] Although Fitt was initially considered a nationalist politician, his career often defied the traditional terms used for the discussion of Northern Irish politics.

[30] Lord Fitt died on 26 August 2005, at the age of 79, after a long history of heart disease, a widower survived by five of his daughters, one having predeceased him.