Derry journalist Garrett Hargan’s new book A Scandal in Plain Sight’ focuses on 60 year campaign for Derry university

The new tome examines the continuing campaign for a full-scale university in Derry that has been ongoing for more than half a century.

The launch will take place at Hive Studios in Ráth Mór on August 9 at 6pm with former Derry Journal editor Pat McArt, who provides an epilogue to the book, presiding.

Hargan’s research exposes what he describes as ‘massive regional inequality in the North’s university sector’.

The book revisits the Lockwood Report and the decision to place a second university for the North in Coleraine rather than Derry, a move that catalysed the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

It also charts what he describes as the ‘failure of successive governments and university administrations to develop Magee over the decades since’.

Hargan also explores how new proposals, developed by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and the Shared Island Initiative, could ‘at last deliver justice for Derry’.

Other contributors 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.

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