Divisions apparent among Peace People

Press, 26 February 1980, Page 16

Divisions apparent among Peace People

By

ANNE McHARDY,

, in Belfast, for the

“Guardian”

The seeds of the row tearing apart the Peace People were sewn in the heady autumn days almost four years ago when thousands were marching throughout Northern Ireland behind the smiling and weeping peace women, Betty Williams and Mairaed Corrigan. The two women are radically different characters. Miss Corrigan,-who was once described as a Roman Catholic Jehovah’s Witness, is the more idealistic, some say more naive; Mrs Williams the more practical, the woman of the world. They were brought together by a hideous tragedy: the death .of three Maguire children, killed by a car which ran out of control after its Provisional IRA driver had been shot dead at the wheel by British soldiers. Miss Corrigan was _ the children’s aunt. Mrs Williams saw them and their badly wounded mother, Mrs Ann Maguire, being taken to hospital. Sorrow united tire two women and persuaded them to start the peace campaign. But time was almost certain to push them apart because their characters are so different; From the start, as well as thousands of Locals prepared to walk through the Roman Catholic Falls district and the Protestant Shankill, of Belfast, the Peace Movement attracted a troupe of international journalists, delighted to find a summer story of such power. The children died in the first week of August when, traditionally, reporters are searching for “stories.” The over-enthusiastic media reaction, which was almost as strong inside Ireland as it was outside, helped create an over-enthusiastic international reaction. ; Too much was expected of the two women, too much money flowed in from abroad to fund them, and they came to expect too much of them-

selves and too much support from the world. The initial money — much of it from a Norwegian people’s collection — was spent ambitiously on a headquarters in Lisburn Roaa, South Belfast, and on helping outside projects, community organisations, and self-help industries. The flow of money dried up long ago. After the first sifts came grants from international charities, the biggest from America, and some help from Britain, including a grant to the man who became the third member of the peace triumvirate, Ciaran McKeown. He is now blamed for many of the rows. After those grants there was nothing. Mrs Williams and Miss Corrigan were awarded the N.obel Peace Brize in 1978, and kept that £BO,OOO to finance their own full-time work for peace. The intention was that the money should be invested to provide them with an income for life, but reportedly it was mostly bP At’ first all jthree tried determinedly to say they were above politics. _ Before they had time to recognise that this was impractical, especially in a place as politically sensitive as Northern Ireland, the limelight focused on them illuminated the weaknesses. All three are Roman Catholics. When they said they were against all violence — even gratuitous violence by the army and the police ’ — there came swift accusations that they were too sympathetic to the Provisionals. Some of the many Protestants attracted into the movement felt the police and The army should be given unconditional support, : and the. Provisionals . should be more strongly condemned. Once the peace leaders tried .to placate them, the other side reacted; it suffers more from the petty harassment that is inevitable with

the army presence in Roman Catholic areas. The Provisionals, of course, did their best from the first to disrupt the movement. In the early days a group of Shankill peace women formed human barricades to stop Loyalist paramilitary groups from hijacking buses, pointedly illustrating the mutual suspicion between Roman Catholics and Protestants that existed inside peace ranks. They had not, they said, invited Mrs Williams or Miss Corrigan to join their demonstration. “We don’t want any Fenians up here.”

Mr McKeown is a pacifist of many years standing. When the search began for a political programme to unite all the peace people and a way of keeping the finances in the black, he drew the two women after him into pacifist and community politics. The split now ’is essentially between Mr McKeown and Mr Peter McLachlan, who was brought in at that stage to organise the money. Supporters of Mr McLachlan, the now ousted chairman, described Mr McKeown as a manipulator. Miss Corrigan closely sup-

ports Mr McKeown. Mrs Williams is less enthusiastic. Her exact position is in some doubt because she has left the scene since the executive rows last Thursday. The McKeown policies that roused anger included criticism of emergency legislation and of the Government’s failure to find a compromise to end the Republican prisoners’ protest inside the Maze where they are demanding political status. Mr James Galway, who resigned as the movement’s treasurer when Mr McLachlan was ousted, said that the

problem was that there were too many people in control who were not ready enough to compromise with those for whom the emergency legislation policy “was a very sore point.” “Too many of us are stamped indelibly with the Northern Ireland disease. Too many people have very narrow views. Other people do not see things exactly as they do, and that causes clashes. I don’t think the art of compromise has been sufficiently practised with us.”