“After 50 years, I had hoped it might be possible to sit down and enjoy myself and not still be out marching,” says lifelong human rights activist Michael Farrell. “It’s depressing, but not so depressing that you give up.”

When he was a student at Queen’s University Belfast in the 1960s, Farrell marched for civil rights for nationalists in the North, nuclear disarmament and in opposition to the US war in Vietnam and the apartheid regime in South Africa. He has taken to the streets for many other causes, including the release of the wrongly convicted Birmingham Six and, more recently, protesting against the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

Marching can be dangerous. A cane-wielding police officer beat Farrell to the ground in Derry during an October 1968 march over housing discrimination against Catholics. Months later, he was knocked unconscious when struck by a brick during another civil rights march, one attacked by loyalists at Burntollet Bridge in Derry.

Change does not happen overnight but Farrell, now aged 81, is grateful to have seen some enormous achievements, including the Belfast Agreement and enactment of anti-discrimination and equality laws in the North, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and the release of the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Maguire family and Judith Ward.

While admitting to sometimes feeling despair over the destruction of Gaza, the Trump administration in the US and the growing far-right influence across Europe, he is not one for giving up. “It just has to be all done again.”

“For a long time, we thought we were in a period of progress, we had the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the international UN Convention on human rights, and effective human rights and equality bodies set up in a lot of countries.