The Peace People

Máiread Corrigan Maguire by John Dear, S.J.

"If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present."

Along the busy Lisburn Road in war-ravaged Belfast, Northern Ireland, stands a wee house dedicated to peace. A bright yellow banner hangs outside the second-floor window: "Campaign for a Gun-Free Northern Ireland." Inside, ordinary women and men, young and old, believers from all faiths and nonbelievers, carry on a steady, persistent witness for peace and justice. Pictures of peacemakers and heroes, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi (the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Burma), line the house walls, an ever-present "cloud of witnesses" watching over their shoulders. One picture in particular catches my attention. Above the mantelpiece in the spacious front room hangs a large picture from a 1976 Belfast demonstration featuring thousands of women with banners calling for an end to violence and a new day of peace for Northern Ireland. While living and working in Northern Ireland in 1997-98, I used to visit Peace House and look in amazement at that picture.

Belfast, 1976! The height of "The Troubles." From 1969 to 1998, over thirty-four hundred people were killed in a brutal war stemming from British colonial interests, revolutionary republicanism, and age-old, oppressive religious bigotry and fanaticism. But after a year of tumultuous political negotiations, a breakthrough settlement was reached on Good Friday 1998, bringing Northern Ireland to the Easter dawn of peace. Suddenly, what was once deemed unimaginable, unthinkable, indeed impossible, is now indeed possible and probable. A new future stands on the horizon of Ireland -a vision of peace.

As that 1976 photograph testifies, thousands of ordinary people throughout Northern Ireland, mainly women, have been calling for an end to the killings and a future of peace since the Troubles began. The 1976 "Peace People" movement organized the largest nonviolent demonstrations in the history of Northern Ireland -at the time of the greatest number of killings. At the heart of this courageous peace movement stood a young woman named Máiread Corrigan Maguire.

Máiread was thrust into a leadership position in the wake of tragedy. On August 10, 1976, two of her nephews and one of her nieces, all little children, were killed on a Belfast street comer. A British army patrol shot and killed an IRA gunman, Danny Lennon, whose car then plowed into the sidewalk, killing the children, and severely injuring Mairead's sister Anne, who died several years later. In a land soaked with blood, their deaths came as a severe shock. Suddenly, thousands of people began to say, "Enough is enough. The killing and violence have to stop." With Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, Máiread organized weekly peace marches and demonstrations that instantly brought out over half a million people throughout Northern Ireland, as well as in England and Ireland. They also co-founded the Community of the Peace People to continue their peacemaking initiatives.

The following year Betty and Máiread were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize. (In 1976 the prize was not awarded. In October 1977 Betty and Mairead were told they had received the 1976 prize, while Amnesty International received the 1977 prize. Both prizes were awed at the same ceremony in Oslo, Norway, in December 1977).

But just as quickly the media interest evaporated, the peace demonstrators went back home -and the war raged on. With quiet determination, Máiread continued her work for peace. While all about seemed possessed with violence, she spoke the unpopular word -- nonviolence. Since 1976, Máiread has 'insisted "that a peaceful and just society can be achieved only through nonviolent means and that the path to peace lies in each of our hearts." That means no more violence, no more killings, no more injustice, no more death. With prayerful conviction, she stood on the streets of Belfast and said No -- No to the IRA, No to the UDA and LVF (the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force, unionist/ loyalist paramilitaries), No to the British government's emergency laws and interrogation centers and human rights abuses, No to injustice, bigotry, discrimination, No to any desecration of human life and dignity.

With her friends, Máiread organized nonviolent actions, spoke out against war, reconciled peoples on both sides of the dividing wall, and said Yes to a vision of peace for Northern Ireland and the whole world. Everywhere she went, she spread her gentle, life-giving, disarming spirit.

In Belfast, where Catholics and Protestants still walk on opposite sides of the streets, where the long memory of past bloodshed keeps the demonic spirit of vengeance alive, where retaliation is too often the principal topic of conversation over a pint of Guinness at the comer pub, Máiread's vision of nonviolence was not well received, particularly in the 1980s and early 1990s. She was dismissed, ridiculed, and ignored, while those who called for vengeance and violence found an audience. But Máiread has remained faithful. She continues in her quiet, gentle way to announce a vision of peace, even in the face of violence, resentment, and rage. Right from the beginning, long before the Good Friday 1998 peace agreement, she understood that such a vision had to stretch beyond the narrow boundaries of the six counties of the North and embrace a nonviolent future for all humanity.

"I believe that hope for the future depends on each of us taking nonviolence into our hearts and minds and developing new and imaginative structures which are nonviolent and life-giving for all," Máiread writes. "Some people will argue that this is too idealistic. I believe it is very realistic. I am convinced that humanity is fast evolving to this higher consciousness. For those who say it cannot be done, let us remember that humanity learned to abolish slavery. Our task now is no less than the abolition of violence and war .... We can rejoice and celebrate today because we are living in a miraculous time. Everything is changing and everything is possible."

"If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future," Máiread says, "we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present." Since 1976, Máiread has been sowing seeds of nonviolence throughout Northern Ireland and the world. This book gathers together for the first time her story and her message of nonviolence for Northern Ireland and the world.

As Northern Ireland emerges from its bloodbath and commits itself to a future of peace, the rest of us do well to ponder the wisdom of this persistent, gentle visionary, a wisdom born out of pain and bloodshed, in the hope that we too might learn to see the way to peace. In a time of widespread blindness, when people cannot see clearly because of the wounds of violence and division, Mairead offers a new vision, the possibility of nonviolence. For Máiread's faithful nonviolence, we can only offer our gratitude - and our pledge to pursue this vision into the future.