 Increasing student activism and a desire for more democratic forms of student involvement in the late 1960s led to a moving away from a model of Student Representative Councils (SRCs) as a system of governance towards the creation of students’ unions and more participatory "general meetings", accessible to all students.Students’ unions also took on a more campaigning role and inspired by the experience of American student organisations, Northern Irish student activists such as Michael Farrell, Eamonn McCann and Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey) led campaigns for "civil rights" in Northern Ireland.During this period, students' unions in Northern Ireland separately affiliated to each national union, depending to a large extent on the religious/political disposition of their members.