WAYS OF CHANGE RECONSIDERED:
AN OUTLINE AND COMMENTARY
ON WOMEN AND PEACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND
SARAH CHARLESWORTH
Compared to the devoted and laborious build-up that
took place before all the other peace rallies that I have at
tended in Belfast — the advertising, the canvassing, the care
fully balanced composition of the platform party —here
there was apparently no planning at all. No platform, no
loudspeakers, no stewards, no prepared order of service. Just
a vast throng of women, gathered at the spot where shortly
before, the war between the terrorists and the army had cost
the lives of three children.... One had a gnawing uneasiness
that nothing more was going to happen
What did happen was a sudden burst of derisive yells
and taunts from a band of youths defiantly brandishing the
tricolour flag from a vantage point on the roof of a nearby
garage. At that moment perhaps nothing could more effec
tively have rallied the rally." Suddenly it seemed we knew
what we were there to do. From one to another the word
threaded like quicksilver through the crowds: “We’re goin
to walk down to the Falls." And walk we did—pushchairs
and all —along the road that has become so notorious for
violence and anger. Here and there spectators jeered ana
flaunted the slogans of hatred, but calmly and steadily the
column of women — in the most casual fashion — walked on.
As we walked, we talked. “They say," said the woman
beside me, "that there's Protestants walking with us."“That's
right," said I... "Tm one of them." The response was im
mediate: hands shot out to grasp mine, heart-warming
ejaculations of welcome fell on my ears. I felt simultaneously
the reality of the division and the unity.
In August 1976, there emerged in Belfast, Northern Ireland
apparently quite "spontaneously,” a movement, which althougl
it was later to be dubbed “The People for Peace” movement, was
quite without a doubt a women’s movement, initiated, supported
and sustained primarily by women. From the perspective of cla
sic political forms, it was and is both extremely traditional and
profoundly radical, and it is particularly within the context o
Irish politics that it becomes so.
My initial interest in the peace movement grew out of a feel
ing of solidarity and empathy with both the frustration and the
positive vision these women revealed. As I followed its progress
my interest began to turn increasingly to its larger political and
social implications, not simply in relation to the situation of
Northern Ireland, but also in regard to basic issues posed by femi
nism in relation to traditional patriarchal political analysis an
practice. What became increasingly apparent as I continued my
research was the fact that the peace movement could not be
understood and evaluated either on the basis of the primar,
social-political traditions of Northern Ireland or from the per
spective of an abstract marxist or feminist analysis. These model
must themselves be continually measured against the social reali
ties which they presume to appraise.
The peace movement, to the extent to which it can be called
a "women’s movement,” is interesting precisely because it is not
in any sense "sophisticated.” Its values and the forms of its
organization are a direct manifestation of the attitudes of womer
Peace women hit Ulster streets despite threats
BELFAST, Northern Ireland
(AP)- The Peace Women of this
turbulent British province take
to the streets of violence-scarred
Belfast Saturday, defying
terrorist death threats in their
campaign to end seven years of
sectarian bloodshed
“There’s no way we’re going
to give up now,” declared Mrs.
Betty Williams, the Roman
Catholic housewife
launched the burgeoning
movement 10 days ago after
three children were killed by
Irish Republican Army gunmen
fleeing British troops.
Thousands of Catholic and
Protestant women, setting aside
the centuries-old hatreds that
have separated Northern
freland’s feuding communities,
were expected to gather for a
rally in Ormeau park in
Protestant East Belfast
The attendance at the rally
will be a crucial test of the
strength of the campaign, the
latest in a long string of peace
movements in Ulster. All the
earlier campaigns fizzled out
Last Saturday, more than
10,000 women and a handful of
men attended a peace rally
organized by Mrs. Williams in
Belfast’s staunchly Catholic
Andersonstown suburb at the
spot where the three children
were slain.
Mrs. Williams, 32, and many
other Catholic women at that
rally were branded “touts
terrorist parlance for informers
and pro-British collaborators -
by the IRA’s “Provisional
wing
Young IRA supporters last
week tried to burn Mrs.
Williams’ house down. She and
other women received death
threats from the mainly
Catholic “provos” who are
fighting to end British rule and
Protestant domination in Ulster
Despite the threats, the peace
movement has spread.
Williams said groups in other
parts of the province have
voiced support and local peace
committees have sprung up in
both Catholic and Protestant
quarters
But the violence has continued
unabated. At least six persons
have been killed since the peace
campaign began and dozens
have been wounded by gunfire
and bombings
Government
officials
community
leaders
experienced observers who have
seen earlier movements fail are
still sceptical that Mrs.
Williams campaign will change
anything.
The sad truth is
said
Catholic community leader Tom
Conaty, a onetime adviser to the
British administration in the
province, “that the IRA and the
Protestant paramilitary groups
do not depend on popular
support for their survival
“They have shown this in the
past and, despite
courageous display by
women, I believe they will be
around for a long time.
However, IRA sources said
the guerrillas' leaders are
taking the emotion-charged
campaign “seriously.
provisionals have cracked up
their well-oiled propaganda
machine in a bid to counter the
movement’s growing support.
The Republican news, the
provisionals' mouthpiece in
Ulster, Friday vowed: “the
struggle goes on.” The headline
was printed over a big photo of a
hooded
gunman
brandishing a U.S.
made
armalite automatic rifle
The Andersonstown news, a
flourishing newssheet that has
supported the provisionals in the
past, stridently attacked the
peace-at-any-price brigade.
Both papers published articles
and letters denouncing the
peace campaign as pro-British.
However
Mrs.
Williams
stressed that her movement is
not just opposed to the IRA, but
Protestant
terrorist
organizations as well as Ulstei
police officers and British troops
who “commit cowardly acts.
sympathizers
Provisional
have
organized
counter-demonstration in south
Armagh, an IRA stronghold, at
the spot where a 12-year-old
Catholic girl was killed,
apparently by army fire, last
Saturday.
bistorically isolated from one another within a social structure
over which they exercise minimal control. Within the context of
American feminism, the questions posed by the peace movement
are relevant to the extent to which they underline and elaborate
some of the more complex issues pertaining to the gender bias
inherent in the very “logic" of commonly accepted politica
norms. As Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo points out:
Since women must work within a social system that ob-
scures their goals and interests, they are apt to develop
ways of seeing, feeling, and acting that seem to be "in
tuitive” and "unsystematic"—with a sensitivity to other
people that permits them to survive. They may, then, be
"expressive." But it is important to realize that cultural
stereotypes order the observer’s own perceptions. It is
because men enter the world of articulated social rela
tions that they appear to us as intellectual, rational, or
instrumental; and the fact that women are excluded
from that world makes them seem to think and behave
in another mode.
The Province of Ulster was born in conflict. The partition of
lreland was a highly artificial solution to an age-old problem. The
question of whether the current crisis is a religious war, a class
war, or a war of national liberation is in many ways a false one. It
is all of these at once. The peculiar complexity of the situation
stems from the fact that the political and religious identity of each
community is coincident in broad terms, and it is with these poli
tical and religious groups that individuals have from birth learned
to define themselves.
The sources of bigotry in Ireland as well as the mechanisms
of its maintenance are ancient. In the Protestant community,
patriotic songs and yearly festivals celebrate the siege of London
derry and the assent of Protestant rule. These are matched in
Catholic culture by a heritage which stresses the heroism and
glory of national revolt as well as an almost mystical alliance
with the church. According to the Irish Republican tradition to
which the modern Provisionals are heir, “Ireland unfree shall
never be at peace.
The Catholic population in general has tended traditionally
to identify with a united and independent Ireland and was in fact
instrumental in winning support for the Home Rule Bill by which
the Republic of Ireland was established in 1922. The Protestants,
who form a minority within Ireland as a whole, had been success
ful in their violent opposition to what they termed "the papist
state, which led to Britain’s partition of Ireland in an attempt to
pacify loyalist Protestants in the North. The long-term and
blatant suprematism of the Protestants concentrated in Northern
Ireland, their overt domination of political and civil institutions,
is countered by a Republican commitment to “victory through
physical force” — a form of patriotism which finds its most ex
treme manifestation in the IRA tradition of blood sacrifice, in
which each death only serves further to legitimize the unques
tioned heroism and “justice” of the nationalist cause.
With the outbreak of widespread and violent sectarian riot
ing in 1969, the collapse of the repressive Protestant-controlled
Stormont Government was achieved only through the further
intervention of the British, “justified" at the time by continuing
paramilitary violence and the threat of civil war. This was to
mark the beginning of a period of intense segregation and eco
nomic disintegration in Northern Ireland, during which a climate
of hostility, combined with a complete lack of dialogue and a
military standoff, has made the possibility of further political and
social development virtually impossible.
When the IRA split in 1969, the Official IRA (increasingly
concerned with developing economic and class consciousness)
apparently dwindled in effectiveness. The "Provisionals, on the
other hand, with their more traditional focus on militarism and
nationalism, were able to take advantage of the already tense
political climate, playing into and further aggravating sectarian
hostilities. They became self-appointed "people’s protectors,” like
the Protestant paramilitaries in their own districts. The British
policy of internment and torture of IRA militants only served to
further escalate guerrilla activities. The vicious circle was com
plete.
During the last seven years, continued paramilitary and mili
tary violence have all but wrecked large sections of both the resi
dential and commercial areas of Belfast, Derry and Armagh.
Industry has declined and unemployment is soaring. Meanwhile,
among the general population, apathy, fear, frustration and
poverty have begun to flourish. Amid invariably righteous claims
to the representation of “justice, hatred and despair have in
creasingly come to dominate “political" life in the Northern State.
While numerous "brave and valiant" soldiers have lost their lives,
countless ordinary citizens, often women and children, have also
been the victims of this ancient and unending cycle of fear,
recrimination and violence. The deaths of the three McGuire chil
dren, killed on August 10 by an IRA getaway car in Belfast's
Andersontown district, were just another "accident." It was, how-
ever, to have a resounding effect. Betty Williams, an Anderson
town resident who had witnessed the incident, and Mairead
Corrigan, the children’s aunt, “had had enough." Within hours
they began organizing their neighbors to protest the senseless
violence of a war which had long since become a way of life.
The peace movement was from the start fueled by an emo
tional commitment which was not without its own particular
rationality. To the skeptics who denied the possibility of a peace-
ful resolution to a feud stemming from deeply ingrained attitudes
and opposing loyalties, the women replied that three hundred
years of warfare had likewise accomplished nothing, that the
Northern Irish people had been for too long divided against them-
selves.
Thank God l’m still angry enough to do this, because
l’d march anywhere in Northern Ireland. I don’t give
a darn what the fellow’s beliefs are. Everybody has
got a right to believe in exactly what they want to be-
lieve in, but there is no one in this whole wide world has
any right to kill for it. So, when l’d seen the children die
or the awful accident—my daughter also witnessed this
—she has screamed about it since, my five-year-old
daughter who was unfortunately in the car with me at
the time—I went home and sat down. Did you ever get
sick inside, so sick that you didn’t even know what was
wrong with you? I couldn’t cook a dinner. I couldn’t
think straight. I couldn’t even cry, and as the night went
on I got angrier and angrier. And my sister came up
She lives quite close to where I live, and I had a cousin
in the house at the time. And I just said—and I don't
mean to swear, l’m very sorry—I said, "Damn it, we
have got to do something. And my husband was at sea,
and I an air-mail writing pad, and I went right
up into the heart of provisional IRA territory in Ander
sontown and I didn’t knock at that door very nicely, by
the way, I didn’t say, "Excuse me. Would you like to
sign this? We all want peace." I was spitting angry, and I
banged the woman’s door and she came. I frightened the
life out of her. I really did.
When she came out, I said, “Do you want peace?" She
said "Yes!
"Yes, then sign that." It sort of started off like that,
and it went on...further down the street, every door
you knocked. All the women felt that way. I just lifted
the lid. They all poured out. I mean, I ended up rather
like the Pied Piper of Hamlin because I had a hundred
women in provie territory collecting signatures for
peace.
We had 3,000 or 6,000 signatures in three hours. We
went back to my home. They were in the lounge. They
were in the living room. They were in the kitchen. They
were in the hall. They were lined up the stairs. They
were in the bathroom, the two bedrooms. There just
wasn’t enough room to hold them all, and they were all
just as angry as I was...that we had let this go on for so
long.
(Betty Williams4
You see, unfortunately, in a long time in Northern
Irish society and, indeed, in the world we have glorified
the man with the guns. Do you know we sit in our clubs
and we sing about the brave man who took life? Now,
we’re going to say in Northern Ireland, we want a com
plete new change of society. The hero in Northern Ire
land is going to be the guy who stands up against the
man with a gun in his hand and said, "You’re not speak
ing for me. I haven’t got a gun. l’m not prepared to take
your life, but you’re most certainly not speaking for me.
The guy who gets involved with the man next door,
with the old-age pensioner; the guy who recognizes the
Protestant and the Shankhill to be his brother or the
black man across the road to be his brother. The man,
who, in society, acknowledges his brother. ..the man
next door to be his brother. This is the kind of whole
new society that we want to create in Northern Ireland,
Indeed, we want to say that we have led the world in
guerrilla warfare for years; we are going to lead the war
in peace and we say to the people of the world, “Watch
us." Because we are going to do it, and not only watch
us but imitate us because the whole world is led by vio
lence and it doesn’t pay. One thousand six hundred
people dead in Northern Ireland.
My sister was lying in a hospital after losing three
babies, and do you know her major concern? There was
a bomb the previous week in a bar where a guy had
gone out to have a drink—and he was lying across the
ward from her—one of those open plan wards, and he
had no legs, seventeen years of age—he had no legs and
he kept squealing all day, "Please take my hands off. My
hands hurt so much." That is only one awful incident of
what’s going on in Northern Ireland with guns coming
into Northern Ireland. That’s got to stop. That’s no an
swer, but to the gunman we say, "We acknowledge that
the gunman in Northern Ireland has taken guns perhaps
because of their political ideals, perhaps because they
were never offered a way, but there’s a new way. There’s
another way, and we say to them, "Put up your guns,
and if you really care for the people, come into society.
Let’s talk about it." We’re not telling them to "get lost
or go under the carpet because it’Il fester in thirty years,
but let’s talk about it. Let’s hear what you are saying,
but not by the gun.
Mairead Corrigan 5)
During the weeks that followed the initial demonstration at
the site of the McGuire children’s death, Betty Williams and Mai
read Corrigan continued to publicize the incident and organize
for an all-out assault on violence. This took the form of massive
demonstrations for peace. The first demonstration (August 14)
drew 10,000 women, both Protestant and Catholic, to the Catho
lic Andersontown district. Provo supporters jeered the rally and
denounced Williams as a traitor, but she was not dissuaded and
the following week brought 20,000 people together in one of Bel
fast’s few remaining “mixed" neighborhoods. The third weekend
the peace movement returned to the hard-core Protestant Shan-
kill Road area where close to 30,000 demonstrators showed up.
The fourth rally was held in Derry, Ulster’s second largest city,
on Craigavon Bridge, which connects the Protestant and Catho-
lic sections of town. Again approximately 30,000 people turned
out. By this time the Provos were saying that they did not oppose
the peace movement, but supported “Peace with justice." Mean-
while, in Dublin, the capital of the Irish Republic, a march by
20,000 was organized in support and smaller marches were held
in Corm, Galway, Carlon and Castlebar.
The unexpected popularity and energetic style of these initial
marches contributed to their dramatic impact. Both support and
criticism abounded. Within weeks of the first rally, smaller com
munity "peace” groups began to spring up throughout the pro
vince, with no apparent orientation other than a commitment to
peace, to furthering dialogue within the community and to con
structive non-sectarian local action.
Provisional "support," however, was to prove short-lived.
The weekly marches were disrupted on October 2 by small IRA
counter-marches in which several of the peace marchers were
assaulted. Death threats against Betty and Mairead were occa
sionally found scrawled on Belfast walls. The Provos, claiming
that there had been an increase in British army raids, arrests and
harassment, issued a statement warning that if any women from
the peace movement cooperated with security forces, they would
be treated as informers and shot.
From the onset there has been confusion in the press about
the attitude of the peace marchers toward the British and the RUC
(Royal Ulster Constabulary — the “legitimate” police who have
been theoretically neutral but effectively on the side of the Pro
testants). While the peace leaders have been extremely outspoken
in their criticism of the Provisionals and of the UDA and the UVF
(Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force, the Pro
testant paramilitary equivalents of the Provisional IRA), they
have been less direct in their denunciation of the British and of the
legitimate" Ulster security forces. Though they have consistently
condemned all “men of violence, their position on “legal” mili
tary forces is more ambiguous. While this is a crucial issue and
one on which the peace leaders are perhaps most vulnerable to
criticism, IRA supporters have consistently twisted its signifi
cance to imply that they are pro-British — unlikely, as the move
ment is both Catholic-led and strongly backed by non-violent
Catholic Nationalists. There is in fact a simple and rational ex
planation for their hedging on the question of British interven
tion. Since one of the main thrusts of the movement is its anti
sectarian character, and since it is the first major popular grass
roots movement uniting both Catholics and Protestants, its very
existence is dependent on widespread support from both camps.
The vast majority of Protestants (two-thirds of the population in
Northern Ireland) for the most part do not favor British with
drawal, and many Catholics, including the Official IRA Sinn
Fein° do not advocate an immediate withdrawal, so that any
public position in regard to either imperialism or British "secur
ity" forces is indeed difficult and problematic. Due to this fact, as
well as to the general diversity of political sentiment within the
movement, the leaders have confined themselves to taking gen
eral positions against violence, encouraging local initiative
toward peace and speaking in very broad terms about the need
for the "Northern Irish" people to resolve their own differences
"from the bottom up.
Although heavy criticism from both the Provisionals and
extremist Protestant groups may have slightly affected the move
ment’s popularity, demonstrations, rallies and meetings through-
out the fall of 1976 continued to draw wide support. Several sup
portive demonstrations were organized by feminist groups in
Germany and the Netherlands; a rally in London on November
28 drew a crowd of approximately 15,000.
The movement now has a magazine (Peace by Peace), a
small office in Belfast, and over 125 local groups “organizing for
peace” in Northern Ireland. "Support,” however, is not what the
movement is all about. In terms of opening up effective channels
of discourse and creating a climate in which constructive non
sectarian political development can occur, there is no way at
present to estimate its success.
The current peace movement is not the first of its kind in Ire
land. Two others in the recent past have attempted to dispel sec
tarian violence by non-violent and non-sectarian means. Both
times they were eclipsed by British military escalations which ral
lied Catholics to the IRA. In 1971, an organization called "Wom
en Together” gained considerable support, but lost ground when
the British introduced internment. Another movement sprang up
in Derry in 1972. After a British soldier had killed a Catholic
youth, the IRA "executed" a young man from Derry who had
joined the British army. That was the last straw for Margaret
Doherty, who organized her neighbors to demonstrate their
anger. This was effective to the extent that the Official IRA de
clared a cease-fire which they maintain to this day. The 1972
movement collapsed however, when the British invaded the
Catholic no-go areas in what was known as “Operation Motor
man. Once again the Provisionals were vindicated by British
actions. With the rebirth of the peace forces this year, Margaret
Doherty, who had been viciously harassed for her peace activities
in 1972, again came forward and has participated in the organiza
tion of the present campaign.
Even these recent interventions on the part of women are not
unique in Irish history. In 1921, during the struggle for Home
Rule, the British section of the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom, headed by Jane Addams, sent their own
commission to study Irish self-rule, clearly opposing the interests
of their own government. The Irish section of the WILPF, led by
Louie Bennett, was active in organizing women to employ
passive-resistance techniques in a struggle against the British.
Their view as women was that human life was precious and that
war was an outmoded way of dealing with imperialist rivalries.
While the women supporters of the 1921 struggle were largely
middle-class suffragettes organized internationally behind a paci-
fist ideology, the current peace campaign is indigenous, widely
supported by both middle- and working-class people, and rela
tively "unorganized."
The peace movement, as Bernadette Devlin has pointed out,
is not a feminist movement. There is in fact virtually no feminism
in Ireland in the sense in which we as Americans understand it.
While there have been several notable female political activists in
the Republican movement (Bernadette Devlin, now associated
with the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Marin de Burca, joint
general secretary of Sinn Fein, and Maire Drumm, the recently
assassinated Provisional IRA spokeswoman), the vast majority of
Irish women, oppressed as they are by poverty, war, extremely
discriminatory employment and pay practices, and perhaps most
importantly, by a strong religious and patriarchal family struc
ture, have, by and large, remained unorganized as women.
For Catholic women, a very intense religious indoctrination
which places a strict taboo on birth control, abortion and divorce
is still a major obstacle. While as citizens of a Commonwealth
nation, Northern Irish women are technically entitled to equal
pay, and according to an anti-discrimination law passed at West
minster in December 1976, they are protected against job dis
crimination, the fact is that women’s employment opportunities
lag far behind not only those of men, but behind those of most
European women as well. While the legal status of Ulster women
is superior to that of women in the Catholic Republic of Ireland
where women still have almost no independent legal rights, a
very strong patriarchal ideology still prevails throughout Ireland,
and Northern Irish women are for the most part still politically
subservient to their husbands as well as being educationally and
economically disadvantaged. While these conditions can ulti
mately be traced to the relatively low level of industrial and eco
nomic development of Ireland as a whole, and to the powerful
religious infrastructure, they do underline some of the reasons
why feminism has failed to develop, as well as the crucial impor
tance of independent women’s organizations.
How then can we evaluate the effectiveness of the peace
movement from a feminist perspective? While its prevailing atti
tudes are traditional, in that they are not activist from a feminist
or socialist perspective, the movement does potentially represent
an important step forward in both of these directions. The self
initiated emergence into the political sphere of a large sector of
the female population which has heretofore remained inactive, or
at best has existed in an exclusively supportive role in relation to
those very male modes of political activity which they are now so
explicitly criticizing, is not without significance to the develop
ment of either.
The rallies do help to get rid of a certain amount of
fear. You are going to such-and-such a place and at one
time you would have been frightened to go there. But at
the rally you’re a bit frightened but you just go on. Each
time you come back from a rally, you have more cour
age to keep going. It’s because you’re meeting with
people
Let’s face it, for seven years we went about the city
and sat in our homes, all the time wrapped up in our
own family and our own home and our own constant
worry that something would happen to them. You felt it
was just yourself had all this worry. Going out to the
rallies is making people realize that other people have
the same fears and the same worries. We are able to talk
to each other about it. It’s bringing a new closeness.
JJune Campion, member of a local peace group in Knok
nagoney'
It is also important to remember that the current peace
movement is at present not a political organization; it is perhaps
misleading to consider it as such. While plans for the future in
clude meetings designed to develop a more explicit form of
organization, the movement as yet has no formal structure and
no official platform. It is a phenomenon that can accurately be
termed "spontaneous” in that it has not been planned and the
form it has taken to date can be regarded primarily as a demon
stration of solidarity around a commitment to peace.
The three most visible leaders at present are Betty Williams,
Mairead Corrigan and Ciaran McKeown, a journalist who has
given up his newspaper position to support the women in their
struggle. The organizational network as a whole, however, is
neither centralized nor highly controlled by those who are
apparently most prominent. Indeed, there has been a consistent
effort by all concerned to systematically locate the basis for par
ticipation and direction within the numerous communities where
peace groups have been emerging.
While direct support for the movement is clearly widespread
(estimates range from 170,000 to 250,000 people in Northern Ire
land alone), it is extremely hard to gauge its size or class composi
tion on the basis of mass rallies and demonstrations. When I criti
cized the somewhat naive character of some of the statements by
movement leaders, an American woman who had gone to North-
ern Ireland to participate in one of their rallies told me that it was
precisely this tone that contributed to the movement’s popularity
among working-class women. It is certainly true that there has
been a very deliberate attempt by the peace people to avoid direct
affiliation with any specific political groups, and certain of the
more politically “sophisticated" women supporters have delib
erately remained in the background, not wishing to “take over’
or divert the movement from its primary focus, that is, bringing
an end to violence and encouraging local initiative toward non
sectarian community development.
Marin de Burca, a socialist and leader of Sinn Fein (Official
IRA) spoke of the peace movement in an interview during a re
cent tour of the U.S.: “We go to the marches as individuals. It
would be the kiss of death if we openly supported them. We have
issued statements supporting them, but I don’t agree with trying
to move in and take them over."
De Burca believes that if the British withdrew the Provos
would be politically undermined. She argues that unification of
the country is still the solution but that it can be achieved only
through unification of the various factions around initially mod
est reforms.
The demand for peace is not Marxist, but in the context
of Northern Ireland it is very revolutionary at the mo
ment... The reason we’re looking for peace is to allow
us to operate openly and intensively in a political way
to unite Protestants and Catholics. If we have to look
for something that sounds as reactionary as peace, then
we look for it. If people can’t see behind the facade to
the reality then it’s their problem.
When Marin de Burca speaks of working in a political way
to unite Catholics and Protestants, she is speaking as a marxist
attempting to organize working people to assume greater econo
mic control. While, as a member of the Official IRA, de Burca
definitely supports an anti-imperialist struggle, she feels that in
the long run the sectarian disputes dividing the Catholic and Prot-
estant working populations are perhaps an even greater obstacle
to the struggle for self-determination. As the situation exists now,
separate Catholic and Protestant labor unions render the labor
movement as a whole relatively ineffectual, and continued eco
nomic disintegration due to sectarian violence has left large sec
tions of the Catholic and Protestant population unemployed.
It is interesting to note the difference between de Burca's
marxist analysis, which views the entire Irish working class as the
oppressed class and the type of marxist analysis supported by
other Republicans, which views the Catholic minority in the
North as the oppressed class. The Provisionals, who are not nec
essarily socialists but prefer to think of themselves as consistently
on the left, persist in opposing both the British and the Protestan
paramilitary and are engaged in a constant struggle for unifica
tion with the Catholic South. Bernadette Devlin, a socialist and
an aggressive Republican, generally supports this form of analysis
where class—purely in economic terms—is secondary to anti
imperialism and a class analysis stressing the political and eco
nomic discrimination that the Catholic population as a whole has
suffered at the hands of a Protestant-controlled government and
industry.
The complexity of the situation and the relative inadequacy
of this approach is apparent when one considers, even in crude
terms, the economic composition of the Catholic and Protestant
population. While it is definitely true that the Protestant majori-
ty, as a group, has greater economic control, and that the high
est levels of unemployment in the North are in Catholic districts,
the large majority of the Protestant population is also working
class. It is, in fact, the youths of these two communities who are
fighting one another, while the small minority of Protestants who
are wealthy maintain an economic advantage and have an inter
est in continuing sectarian hostilities for precisely this reason.
It would be a mistake, however, to attempt to evaluate the
significance of the peace movement on the basis of its potential
effectiveness in furthering the cause of other political movements.
It is perhaps more useful to consider the way in which the peace
movement is indicative of an entirely different struggle for self
determination, as well as a profoundly different approach to these
issues. It is significant that what is being questioned by the peace
people is not the ends of political struggle so much as the means
by which ideas, opinions and interests are both culturally rein
forced and socially imposed.
The critical issue which is the historical source of internal
Irish conflict is that of the relationship between Ireland and the
British Empire. This has not only kept Catholics and Protestants
feuding for generations, but has also led to innumerable splits
within both camps. It is paradoxical that within this contex
British imperialism is the one issue on which the peace campaign
has most consistently refused to take a stand. This is not because
individual participants have no opinions on this question, but
rather because the movement locates the "solution” in people, in
a process of interaction and definition rather than in abstrac
"positions.
For the peace people, the question of the relative legitimacy
of opposing traditions is momentarily suspended. What is reveal
ed instead is the logical perfection of institutionalized conflict.
Military, political and even religious leaders are themselves to
blame, claim the peace organizers, not because of this or that
’position" in relation to government, but because they have kept
the Irish people divided among themselves. “Rationality” is for
them not merely a question of “right" and “wrong,” but rather
begins with the realization of how two non-dialectical visions of
"right" are sustained by a culture which is imperialist and author
itarian in its very mode of thought.
Problems arise, claim the peace workers, because we have
lost sight of a basic respect for the individual." "Solutions," they
assert, cannot be artificially constructed and then imposed but
must arise through a process of creative interaction in which gov
ernment does not exist to control people, to violently suppress
dissent, but rather as an extension of the more or less clearly arti
culated needs and desires of all the people.
These concepts, while they may reveal an element of political
naiveté which translates as liberalism, are not rhetorical. The
practical orientation of the movement to date, with its emphasis
on open and careful discussion and a decentralized approach to
developing democratic forms, is indicative of this fact.
From this perspective we might examine Bernadette Devlin's
claim that the peace movement is “dangerous" because it “dulls
consciousness. “We were stupid,” she claims, “never to have or
ganized the women."10 Both the truth and the potential fallacy of
this statement are apparent. From the standpoint of almost any
traditional political perspective, assertions of the sanctity of life,
of respect for the individual and of a genuine “creative form of
democracy" must appear naive without a "program” or a defini
tion of the specific conditions under which such values can be
realized. The peace people, however, do not qualify these condi-
tions; the values themselves must define the very process of po
litical interaction. If this is the case, how then can we interpret
Bernadette’s regret at not having "organized" the women? Is it
conceivable that the women supporting the peace movement are
not in fact organizing themselves, organizing in such a way as to
deny the legitimacy of those very political forms into which
others seek to recruit them?
A supportive statement by the Provisionals, in which the
peace movement is described as a "spontaneous overreaction led
by the photogenic Mrs. Betty Williams" reveals both the con
descension and lack of reflexivity which typify those attitudes the
women are most directly challenging.
We are not necessarily in opposition to the peace people.
But we want to explain to the people that there cannot
be peace without justice. We just want to explain to the
people turning out to these marches what the true posi
tion is and show them the road to real peace.1
This raises the most subtle and yet critical issue of the peace
movement’s significance. The whole notion of a “true position” is
what the peace movement calls into question—it is not the politi
cal views of the opposing factions that are being attacked; even
the "violence” the movement condemns is but a manifestation of
something far more profoundly significant. The peace people are,
in my opinion, not reacting simply to a specific incident of vio
lence, nor even to violence in the abstract. They are (perhaps
naively but nevertheless insightfully) challenging a whole tradi
tion. What is fundamentally being questioned is the legitimacy of
the imposition of the will of one group upon another. “Justice” is
not being challenged so much as how justice is socially defined.
imperialism, in this context, is not simply a question of national
or international conquest. Imperialism is the imposition of a so
cial order, whether through military force or political manipula
tion, by those with power on those without. The very question of
how Northern Ireland can be governed, says Ciaran McKeown,
"is an imperialist question” because it implies the imposition of
political forms by politicians on people who are for the most part
excluded from the process of a creative democracy. Thus all ex
tant political solutions are inevitably violent, whether the vio
lence is “legal"1 or "illegal," because they require military force
to secure them.
From this perspective, British colonialism, Protestant politi
cal suprematism and IRA military violence can be seen as identi
cal in their implicit attitudes toward the imposition of social or
der. In every case, whether justified or not, “justice” is an exten
sion of self-interest and democracy is a rhetorical, not a methodo
logical phenomenon. While it would be absurd to consider the
peace movement as a feminist or a socialist movement, it express
es values that are fundamentally in accordance with both socialist
and feminist thought, in that it addresses the whole issue of power
and questions the way the right of self-determination has been
eclipsed, not only by those in power, but by those who conceive
of power alone—economic, military or political—as the just de
terminant of social order.
Perhaps it’s been our fault, you see, because we have sat
back—as ordinary people—which is the fault every-
where—where the ordinary people sat back and let a
few extremists say, "We are speaking and we are work-
ing for the people." We should have long ago stood up
and said, “They’re not speaking for us." I mean, people
have been coming out from Ireland representing the
people—the ordinary people, perhaps people like our
selves, who never had the nerve. I mean, just to be here
takes all the courage one has got, you know. [Mairead
Corrigan 13
1. Margaret McNeil, “They Say That There’s Protestants Walking With
Us, The Friend (London, Sept. 1976)
2. Daily American (Rome, Aug. 22, 1976).
3. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, Woman, Culture, and Society, ed.
Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1974).
4. Betty Williams on Woman program, moderator Sandra Elkin (Buffalo:
WNEDTV, Oct. 1976).
5. Mairead Corrigan on Woman program (Buffalo: WNED TV, Oct.
1976).
6. Sinn Fein (means “we ourselves”), founded in 1916, has functioned
since the 1930s mainly as the political wing of the IRA. In the 1960s it
swung to the left as did the IRA and became involved in social and eco
nomic agitation and in 1970 split along the same lines as the IRA into
Sinn Fein, Kevin Street (Provisional) and Sinn Fein, Gardiner Street
(Official). The names come from the streets in Dublin where they have
their headquarters. Both groups use the name Sinn Fein, however, in
spite of the fact that their views are widely divergent. The Provisionals
are more militant and nationalist while the Officials are marxist and
not militant.
7. June Campion, quoted in Peace by Peace (Belfast, Oct. 16, 1976).
8. Marin de Burca, quoted by David Moberg, In These Times (Jan. 1977).
9. Ibid.
10. Bernadette Devlin, quoted by Lucinda Franks, “We Want Peace, Just
Peace,” New York Times Magazine (Dec. 19, 1975).
11. Irish Republican Information Service (Dublin, Oct. 14, 1976). Italics
the author’s.
12. Ciaran McKeown, “The Price of Peace” (Belfast, 1976).
13. Mairead Corrigan on Woman program (Buffalo: WNED TV, Oct.
1976).
Sarah Charlesworth is an artist and photographer who lives and works in
New York. Her previously published writings have dealt with art and social
theory. She was a founding editor of The Fox and is a member of the anti
catalog collective.