By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Reading about historical events is one of my favorite hobbies. In March especially, I enjoy reading about all things Irish. In this spirit, I recently read a fascinating speech that was delivered in Oslo, Norway in December of 1977, over forty years ago.
The speaker in Norway told how on August 10, 1976, a remarkable incident occurred on one of the streets of Belfast in Northern Ireland. A man, involved in sectarian violent activities, came tearing down the street in his car, trying to shake off pursuers also involved in the violence. Suddenly, a shot rang out. The mortally-wounded driver slumped over the steering-wheel. The vehicle swerved into a fence and knocked down a mother and her three children, who unfortunately were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The badly-injured mother survived, but her three young children were killed on the spot. Four years later, the young mother lost her own life too, committing suicide after battling depression related to the deaths of her children.
The understandable anger and grief resulting from this tragic event in Belfast could easily have spawned more tragedy, more anger, more mayhem, and more death. Instead, it gave rise to something entirely different. In the area near where the three children were killed lived a housewife. She heard the thud as the car crashed into the fence, hurried to the spot, and she took in the whole horror of the scene. The aunt of the three murdered children similarly also soon took in the aftermath of the horror.
The two women came together and acted intuitively, as their hearts dictated. They started to go from door to door on the actual street where the tragedy had occurred and nearby streets, going to the homes of Protestants and Catholics alike. They also organized marches, one of which was to the burial sites of the three dead children mentioned above. About 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women made that march together. Their message was clear…The cup of horrors had now run over: the time had come when the ordinary man and woman must rise in protest against such senselessness. It was no longer a question of political attitudes or religious convictions. There was only one remedy: the people themselves must cry halt.
In the speech I read, the Norwegian speaker also tells how these two women started at what he called the “wrong end” – not at the top, among the shrewd heads that were filled with so much political insight. No, they approached the ordinary men and women of every day, with a clear and simple message: “we must put an end to the use of violence and to acts of terrorism. We must build our future on peace and cooperation.”
First the street, and then the neighborhood, and then the city of Belfast, and then the surrounding cities and towns, and then the counties of Ulster, and then the nations of Ireland and of the United Kingdom, heard their simple, heartening message of reconciliation. As a result, neighbors and countrymen started to shake hands and started to talk together, to live together, and to build together.
Soon the entire world heard the message too, because the two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a ceremony in Olso, Norway some forty years ago. The speech I read was the speech awarding them the prize. It ended with these words: “The two women who share the Peace Prize for 1976 have refused to bow to bleak scepticism: they simply acted. They never heeded the difficulty of their task: they merely tackled it because they were so convinced that this precisely was what was needed. There was no talk here of ingenious theories, of shrewd diplomacy or pompous declarations. No, their contribution was a far better one: a courageous, unselfish act that proved an inspiration to thousands, that lit a light in the darkness, and that gave fresh hope to people who believed that all hope was gone.”
This is a remarkable story, but not for the obvious reasons. These women were ordinary folks. One was a housewife and part-time office receptionist, and the other an accounting clerk. They were not people endowed with any special wisdom. They were not learned scholars from an acclaimed school of diplomacy. They were not lofty, divinely-inspired saints awaiting canonization. Their actions are remarkable because they were average ordinary people, just like you and me, who came to understand this very basic principle: the solution to each and every human conflict is to be found in the simple act of someone taking the first steps on the road to reconciliation and cooperation.
Anyone of us can do this. When we do, even forty years after the awarding of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize, we are walking on the same important path taken by Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams. We may not ever get to celebrate our important works in an exotic location such as Oslo, Norway, but our efforts are no less noble in my mind, and in my book, they make us all peace prize winners.
