August 9 launch for new book on university scandal

Journalist Garrett Hargan’s new book, A Scandal in Plain Sight, which investigates the 60-year refusal to set up a university in northwest Ireland, is to be launched in Creggan’s Ráth Mór Centre next month.

Longtime Derry Journal editor Pat McArt, who has provided an epilogue for the book, will preside at the event, which will take place at the Hive Studios on August 9 at 6pm.

Hargan’s research, which exposes massive regional inequality in the North’s university sector, has been used by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and others to support the case for a new, independent North West University. 

His debut book revisits the scandalous decisions which denied a university to Derry and became the catalyst for the North’s civil rights movement in the 1960s. It also charts the failure of successive governments and university administrations to develop Magee over the decades since. And he explores how new proposals, developed by the RIA and the Shared Island Initiative, could at last deliver justice for Derry.

Other contributors to the book include Derry academic Killian Ó Dochartaigh of the University of Edinburgh Architecture School, Amie Gallagher of the Focus Project, and the Derry University Group (DUG).

DUG campaigner Conal McFeely commented: ‘This book features at its core the voices of four generations of Derry commentators, from the late, great Frank Curran [another former Derry Journal editor] to Hargan himself. 

‘All these voices tell the same abiding truth: the North West will flourish again as soon as it has its own university. It is time for us to build it.’

Publisher Garbhán Downey of Colmcille Press said: “While barely into his thirties, Garrett is very much an old-school investigative journalist; he is thorough, determined, principled and insightful - and will certainly go far. His work is already making an impact. This is a landmark book - one that should never have had to be written, but one which could not have had a better or more integrous author.”

A Scandal in Plain Sight is available from the Colmcille Press website for £5, plus postage, and will be available from shops after the launch. The ebook can be purchased for £1.

About the Author

A former staff reporter with the Derry News, Garrett Hargan joined the Belfast Telegraph as its North West multimedia journalist in 2021. He previously studied at St Joseph’s Boys’ School Creggan, the North West Regional College and Queen’s University, Belfast.

For interviews, contact Colmcille Press: 00 44 2871 616 055 or info@colmcillepress.com.

The Belfast plans are ‘astonishing’...

In this short extract from his new book A Scandal In Plain Sight, GARRETT HARGAN investigates how Ulster University and its friends in Stormont put the wheels in motion to deprive a new Derry generation of its own university.

IN FEBRUARY 2012 news broke that the University of Ulster had bought up  a large swathe of land in Belfast’s north inner city to house a new ‘£250m’  campus. 

An Outline Business Case for the redevelopment of the University’s  Jordanstown Campus (approved in March 2010) had recommended  relocating the majority of the activities and students from Jordanstown to a  significantly expanded Belfast campus. 

A similar £250m expansion plan for Magee had been proposed and  considered at the same time but was shelved by UU. The university could  not serve two cities. 

Around 15,000 students were to be relocated from Jordanstown to the  new Belfast campus. The building programme was hailed as the largest  single investment in the university’s history. 

Yet over that period there appears to have been no great pressure exerted  by the government or the civil service on Ulster University to move any  students from the County Antrim campus to Derry. This was despite  Magee’s long-established need and the fact that Belfast already had a colossal  percentage of the North’s students. Significantly, there had been no call for, campaign for, or demand for a new Belfast campus, as there had been in  Derry. 

Back when the Lockwood Report was being drawn up, there was a  recommendation that, to ensure regional balance, the second university  should be sited at least 40 miles outside Belfast. There were, however, no  such safeguards in place when UU decided, by itself, to move into the capital  in the early 2000s. There does not appear to have been external scrutiny of  the plan by any independent HE oversight commission. 

Detailed plans for the development were submitted to the Department  of the Environment, and the Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee  at Stormont was briefed on the plan. 

Committee chair Basil McCrea, who previously couldn’t envisage any  expansion at Magee, now seemed to have resolved his concerns about the  shortfalls in the HE budget, describing the plans as “astonishing”. 

He enthused: “It’s fantastic, it’s great. Breathtaking is what you’ll see  when you see the plans unveiled. It’s a really good thing for north Belfast  and the whole city.” (BBC NI report) 

He said, in theory, the plans could be approved in six months, with work  beginning by the end of the year. 

If only the same urgency had been applied to investment at Magee.  And like that, the ball was rolling to inject life into what has become a  neglected part of Belfast City Centre. 

A Scandal in Plain Sight, priced £5.00, is now available from Colmcille Press and will be in bookshops soon. The eBook can be downloaded from colmcillepress.com for £1.00.

Another Story - Teachers in Need...

So this woman here fetched up at the Tech one day in the early 80s to teach a subject she knew damn all about.  Architecture?  Not a clue.  Not only that, but the day-release students in my group all worked in town planning or construction or architects’ offices, so they had a head-start on me and most were around the same age.  I don’t remember much about the syllabus I was given, but I do recall one of the topics was cubism.  I decided there was no point in winging it, so I came clean – sort of.  I didn’t know, and hadn’t been told, why the original, qualified lecturer was no longer available, so I just killed him off.  (Sympathy vote, you see.)  I then went through the syllabus with the students and established who already knew how much about what area.  Suggesting that we learn from each other, allocate specific topics to different people to research and try to get guest speakers in from their places of work, I soon had an enthusiastic and well-motivated group.  We ended up having a ball, had no bother getting volunteer speakers and I spent more time in the body of the class than I did in front of it.  I even ended up with an ardent admirer who handed me a letter at the end of the course, asking that I contact him if my marriage ever hit the rocks.  I could have been doing with that letter further down the road. ☺

The architecture course was a collaborative effort, but I also exploited my students shamelessly in another area, namely Media Studies.  The Tech was just across the road from Radio Foyle and neither organisation had a problem with me ferrying students back and forth to further their skills.  I showed them how to edit – on my material, I taught them how to research – for my programmes, and I encouraged then to come up with ideas for local coverage – which I later used.  Good, eh?

I also taught a couple of young men who were big into pub quizzes and I had cause to call upon their services at one stage.  The BBC had not long started supporting Children in Need and staff were all encouraged to do their bit.  And did so willingly.  When I was asked how I wanted to contribute to the Foyle effort, I airily replied, ‘Put me down for whatever you need.’  And that’s how I ended up on the radio quiz team and why I went running in a panic to my two student quiz whizz kids.  My general knowledge was, and still is, appalling, especially when it comes to geography, so the guys decided to concentrate on capital cities of the world.  They coached and questioned me for hours and hours and hours, mainly in the pub.  Did I get one question on capital cities?  No.  In a pub in Muff, with Anita beside me and Paddy Quiz (Doherty? Has to be….) heading up the opposition, my first question was, ‘What’s measured in hands?’  Bear in mind the fact that my father was a greengrocer, so my confident response was, ‘Bananas’.  Both audience and quiz-master thought I was playing for laughs, so I was allowed another go.  ‘Gloves?’  And by the time this supposed court jester’s final answer was called upon, Anita had hissed, ‘Horses’ in my ear.  And, do you know what, my friends?  We won.  In large part due to the fact that Paddy had over-imbibed and fell asleep in the middle of proceedings.

Another year, another Children in Need event and I was assigned a much more appropriate role – collecting the buckets of money and cheques from those who had  gathered outside Broadcasting House in Belfast.  That was the night a very famous person tore into me and told me to f*** off.  But that’s another story……………………