Mairead Corrigan

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Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, 2018

Mairead Corrigan-Maguire (born January 27, 1944 in Belfast , Northern Ireland ) is the co-founder of the most influential peace movement in Northern Ireland, the Community of Peace People . For this, she received together with Betty Williams the Nobel Peace Prize in the year 1976 .

Life

Childhood, youth, employment

Mairead Corrigan grew up as the second of seven children in simple Catholic circumstances in Belfast; her father was a window cleaner, her mother a housewife. When she was 13, her family moved to Andersonstown , an entirely Catholic, socially disadvantaged neighborhood in Belfast. She attended St. Vincent's Elementary School and then a year of commercial school, Miss Gordon's Commercial College . From the age of 16 she worked as a secretary, mostly as a stenographer. In the 1970s she became chief secretary at the Arthur Guinness & Co. brewery . She initially remained single and lived with her parents.

Since her youth, Mairead Corrigan has been privately involved in the Catholic lay organization Legio Mariae , which mainly does youth and marginal group work. Together with a friend, she founded the first kindergarten in Andersonstown, collected donations for the establishment of an event house and finally headed the center of her lay organization there. She also founded a facility that offered disabled children in the district play and relaxation opportunities.

In 1972 she attended the ninth World Mission Conference of the World Council of Churches with a Protestant pastor from Belfast and stayed in Thailand for three weeks . On behalf of the Legio Mariae, she traveled to the Soviet Union in 1973 to make film recordings of Christian communities; afterwards she gave lectures in schools to report on her experiences.

When, between 1972 and 1974, the Legio Mariae was the only lay organization permitted to have contact with prison inmates, it visited Catholic prisoners every Sunday and maintained contact with their families.

In 1973 one of her friends, who ran another Legio center, was killed; After his death, she also took care of the youth groups in his neighborhood. On Saturdays she regularly went out with her two nephews , her sister Anne's sons; one of her nieces was killed in a car accident in 1968 - the driver was trying to escape a riot.

There is nothing in these neighborhoods, absolutely nothing for children. There are children playing in the street, they live only a few miles from the sea, but they have never seen it. In the summer we often took our disabled children to the beach and those were the only moments when they were at the sea. We once took a couple of teenagers from Turf Lodge to Bangor - a small beach near Belfast - and they thought it was great. Sometimes we would go for a walk at Turf Lodge in the evening. There was no lighting because of the military patrols. We heard dogs barking; then suddenly we heard gunshots. Everyone took cover. We didn't know who was shooting who, the IRA or the others. Our boys and girls from the Legio knew where to hide. It really was a different world out there. (Interview with Mairead Corrigan)

Foundation of the Community of Peace People

When a young IRA terrorist fleeing the British Army was shot and killed by British soldiers in his car on August 10, 1976, Mairead's sister Anne was walking nearby with her four children and her sister Ellian. The now driverless car caught the group. Six-week-old Andrew and his eldest sister Joanne died instantly, while two-and-a-half-year-old John died after a few hours. The mother, Anne, was seriously injured and was in a coma for weeks . The only survivor of the family was the seven-year-old Mark. Mairead Corrigan was on her way back from vacation at the time of the events; At first she only heard about it on the radio news; on the same day, she accompanied her brother-in-law to identify his three dead children.

The violent incident was neither the first nor the last in the seven-year conflict in Northern Ireland ; however, he caused far more reactions than others. The usual recriminations - was the 19 year old IRA fighter the culprit or the British soldiers? - were replaced by a tiredness of the spiral of violence felt on both sides of the front. The children's father and Mairead also declined in front of the media to name guilty parties. Mairead Corrigan said:

It doesn't matter if they were Catholics or Protestants, Anne and Jackie kept telling their children that, and now they're dead.

One day after Corrigan spoke on television and two days after the incident, Betty Williams , who was an eyewitness to the accident, made her spontaneous appeal for peace and reconciliation to the people of Northern Ireland. Days later she and Mairead Corrigan met; the result was a demonstration on August 14, 1976, in which around 10,000 men and women, Catholics and Protestants, took part and protested against violence.

The organized movement of the Peace People was founded a few days after the funeral by the two women and the journalist Ciaran McKeown . Your basic message was short and memorable:

  • We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society.
  • We want a life full of peace and joy for our children, as well as for ourselves, at home, at work and in the playground.
  • We recognize that building such a life requires hard work and courage.
  • We recognize that there are many problems in our society that are sources of conflict and violence.
  • We recognize that every single bullet that is fired and every bomb that explodes makes this work more difficult.
  • We reject the bomb and the bullet and all techniques of violence.
  • We pledge to work with our neighbors near and far, day and night, to build this peaceful society in which tragedies as we know them will be a nasty reminder and a constant warning.

This was followed by the so-called Peace Rally , in which peace demonstrations took place week after week all over Northern Ireland. A total of up to 500,000 people could be motivated to take part, which was considerably more than in all Northern Irish peace movements up until then. The main activists of the Community of Peace People , which the Woman for Peace had become, traveled from city to city in buses. The highlight was an action in Trafalgar Square in London in October 1976 , in which the American singer and peace activist Joan Baez also took part. Due to the international interest, an amount of almost 300,000 British pounds could be collected, with which the building of a headquarters, the association newspaper Peace by Peace and some community projects were financed. Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan traveled through Europe, Australia and the USA to demonstrate for their goals.

In October 1977, the two women were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 1976 for their commitment to the Peace People retrospectively (in that year the prize was initially not awarded), and they were presented with it in December 1977 as part of the great Peace People campaigns were already completed. The organization was dedicated to more sustainable peace projects, such as youth and reconciliation work.

When Corrigan heard of the Nobel Committee's decision, she said:

To me, the Nobel Prize means we can change the world through nonviolence, and many people have that vision just like me .

After the Nobel Prize

For Mairead Corrigan, non-violence continued to be the common thread in her work. The Northern Ireland conflict continued unabated despite the peace activities; media interest in the Peace People soon petered out. Corrigan continued her work, supported by her deeply felt Christian conviction, as it did before the Nobel Prize. In December 1976 she had given up her job in order to devote herself fully to political work.

Mairead Corrigan's sister Anne, who was severely traumatized physically and mentally in the accident and had never recovered from the death of her children, emigrated to New Zealand in 1977 with her husband and their remaining son Mark. The attempted new beginning failed and the family returned to Belfast in 1978. Although Anne had given birth to two more children, her depression deepened and after several suicide attempts, she cut her wrists and bled to death in January 1980. In September of that year, Mairead Corrigan married her widowed brother-in-law and adopted her nephew and two nieces. In 1982 and 1984 their two sons John Francis and Luke were born.

A logical consequence for Mairead Corrigan-Maguire in her Christian-motivated peace work was the commitment to ecumenism . She completed a postgraduate course in ecumenical studies at the Irish Institute for Ecumenism and is a senior member of the International Union and the UK branch of Pax Christi . She is also honorary president of the Hands Off Cain initiative , which works for the abolition of the death penalty, and one of the initiators of Child Right Worldwide , a child protection organization.

One of the Irish Peace People projects, which Mairead Corrigan-Maguire played a key role in, is the establishment of interdenominational schools in Northern Ireland. As a consequence, she became the patron of the Northern Ireland's Council for Integrated Education.

To represent her cause, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire traveled to the USA , Australia and New Zealand , Korea , India , Bangladesh and Japan , to Africa and Iraq and Israel . In Burma she campaigned (in vain) for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi ; She also visited the civil rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel in Argentina , whom she herself had proposed for the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. She met with Pope John Paul II , Queen Elizabeth II and US President Jimmy Carter .

In 2002 she became a council member of the World Peace Council in Canada.

She was a member of the Honorary Protection Committee for the International Coordination for the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World (2001-2010).

A few days after the start of the Third Gulf War , she took part in a Pax Christi protest outside the White House in Washington and was arrested by police for crossing a cordon. When she was arrested, she said: "In Northern Ireland we have been encouraged to solve our problems through dialogue, and I would like to see that here too."

During an international protest against the construction of the wall in the Israeli- occupied Palestinian territories in April 2007, Mairead Corrigan was injured by the Israeli military with a rubber bullet in the leg and tear gas. She said afterwards: “Contrary to what the Israelis say, this separation wall will not prevent attacks and violence. What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I am sure that the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, want peace. "

In May 2010 Corrigan took part in the Ship to Gaza 2010 campaign of the Free Gaza Movement .

Together with the two Nobel Peace Prize laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel , she wrote an open letter in November 2012 in which Bradley Manning is named "a courageous informant who has uncovered crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq". The US Army Corporal deserves mercy rather than prosecution, wrote the three Nobel Peace Prize winners in a letter published on December 3, 2012 in The Nation magazine.

Awards

literature

  • Christiane Grefe : We are there to persevere, not to be successful. In: Charlotte Kerner : Not only Madame Curie - women who got the Nobel Prize. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim / Basel 1999, ISBN 3-407-80862-3 .
  • Mairead Corrigan-Maguire: The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in Northern Ireland. 1999, ISBN 1-57075-251-6 .
  • Ciaran McKeown: The Passion of Peace. Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1984, ISBN 0-85640-325-3 .
  • Richard Deutsch: Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams. Two Women Who Ignored Danger in Campaigning for Peace in Northern Ireland. Woodbury, NY 1977, ISBN 0-8120-5268-4 .
  • Sarah Boucher, Bettina Ling, Charlotte Bunch: Máiread Corrigan and Betty Williams: Making Peace in Northern Ireland. 1994. (For children aged 9 to 12)

Web links

Commons : Mairead Corrigan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Peace laureate hit by baton round. The NI peace activist was hit by a plastic bullet Nobel prize winner Mairead Corrigan has been hit in the leg by a plastic bullet. ” , News.bbc.co.uk, April 21, 2007.
  2. ↑ "This separation wall, contrary to what the Israelis say, will not prevent attacks and violence. - What will prevent attacks and violence is a peace agreement between the two peoples, and I am sure the Israeli people, like the Palestinian people, want peace ", on news.bbc.co.uk
  3. ↑ Ulrike Putz: It's a shame that we didn't sink all ships. In: Der Spiegel . May 31, 2010 (query date: June 1, 2010)
  4. ^ Nobel Laureates Salute Bradley Manning. In: The Nation . November 14, 2012 (query date: November 16, 2012)
  5. ^ Nobel laureates stand up for Wikileaks informants Manning. In: The world . November 15, 2012 (query date: November 16, 2012)
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 24, 2005 .
personal data
SURNAME Corrigan, Mairead
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Corrigan-Maguire, Mairead
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British activist for the Northern Ireland peace movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Belfast