Coiste Cearta Síbialta na Gaeilge

Coiste Cearta Síbialta na Gaeilge (CCSG) (Gaeltacht Civil Rights Campaign) was a campaigning organisation established in the Irish speaking Gaeltacht areas of Ireland in 1969 to highlight the decline of the Irish language and to campaign for greater rights for Irish speaking areas in the area of access to services, broadcasting and ultimately an elected assembly of their own.

Among the founders of the organisation were the writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain and the community and political activists Seósamh Ó Cuaig and Seán Ó Cionnaith.

The Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin under the leadership of Cathal Goulding and Tomás Mac Giolla played a role in establishment of CCSG as part of its policy of the Reconquest of Ireland following on the teachings of James Connolly which believed that the reconquest of Ireland required social and political reconquest as part of the campaign for an independent united Ireland.

The campaign was often of a militant nature, such as the placing of nails under the wheels of the car carrying the then Taoiseach Jack Lynch in Connemara during the 1969 general election campaign in Galway West. In that election a member of the campaign, Peadar Mac An Iomaire polled more than 6% of the vote in that constituency.

The campaign had some successes, including the establishment of a nationwide Irish-language radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta based in Connemara and of Údarás na Gaeltachta - an elected body responsible for the economic and social development of the Gaeltacht regions but with far less power than envisaged by CCSG.

See also

• Gaeltacht
• Irish language