much wider international and internal support than traditional nationalist protests had done. NICRA's innovation (drawing on the approach adopted by the Campaign for Social Justice) was to rely on and seek to vindicate civil rights, i.e. rights adhering to all citizens of Northern Ireland as British citizens under the existing constitutional settlement, rather than base its demands on the nationalist goal of reunification in a republic comprising the whole island of Ireland. For many supporters of NICRA, that did not mean accepting the constitutional settlement or entail any obligation of loyalty to the UK: assertion of those rights was a device by which the condition of the Catholic minority could be improved. However, from the outset there were tensions within the association between those advocating militant and confrontational methods, in particular the socialist and republican elements of the movement, such as Eamonn McCann, Michael Farrell and Cyril Toman, and those who remained wedded to the pacifist American civil rights model. Toman later joined Provisional Sinn Féin. Allegations against NICRA and ties with republicanism The Northern Ireland government accused NICRA of being a front for republican and communist ideologies. Unionists suspected that NICRA was a front for the IRA. The involvement of republicans, such as IRA chief of staff Cathal Goulding, and groups like the Irish National Foresters, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Wolfe Tone Societies would only further fuel their suspicions. After the failure of the IRA's Border Campaign, republicans had been seeking peaceful ways of advancing their cause by joining Trade Unions and the Northern Ireland Labour Party, and then NICRA when it was formed in 1967. On 4 October 1968, a day before NICRA's Derry march, the IRA admitted that it was infiltrating the civil rights movement as well as trade unions. NICRA arose from a meeting of the republican Wolfe Tone Societies. The republican movement was influential in getting NICRA to participate in protest marches, however, due to the various different groups that made up NICRA, it could not control the organisation's direction. The radical views of individuals within NICRA were highlighted by a commission of inquiry set up by the British Government following the spread of civil unrest in 1969. The report by a Scottish judge, Lord Cameron stated, "certain at least of those who were prominent in the Association had objects far beyond the 'reformist' character of the majority of Civil Rights Association demands,