Word: iras
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nearly four months after it was launched-in response to the death of three children crushed by the runaway car of an IRA militant shot through the heart by a British soldier-the peace movement has grown into a potentially powerful political force. Braving death threats, verbal abuse, and occasional violence from extremists, tens of thousands of Ulster Protestants and Roman Catholics have joined weekly marches and rallies calling for an end to the bloodshed. More significant, the movement is sprouting organizational roots. Enjoying broad support from Ulster's churches and with a flourishing magazine, financial backing...
Hume seeks to correct what he says he believes is a popular international misconception--that the provisional Irish Republican Army contributed to Ulster violence from the very start of the civil rights movement. He emphasizes that it was not until a full year after Bogside that the IRA reappeared and began to recruit members in the Catholic ghettoes of Ulster and Belfast. "At first, the IRA claimed only that they wanted to defend the Catholic community. But it wasn't too long before the IRA was off on the attack with its bombing and shooting...
...Irish-American leaders who want to help "are careful about what they say." Some Irish-Americans, however, are even more extremist than the native Irish themselves. "Their fanaticism grows with their distance from their homeland," Hume says, and their monetary support of the violent tactics of the IRA "contribute to an already deep and intractable problem...
...Protestant and Catholic women's peace movement in Northern Ireland began this fall in the wake of the tragic death of three children hit by an IRA member-driven car being chased through Belfast streets by British army vehicles. Hume says the movement is a "completely spontaneous outcry for peace" which may lead to an atmosphere in which political negotiations can resume. Hume believes as much as 95 per cent of the Ulster population now abhor the violence of the extremists...
...IRA feels that the British should simply get out of Northern Ireland. We think that's a dangerous view," says Hume. "Everybody wants troops removed. No one likes soldiers on their streets. But the people who are prudent and wise want troops removed in the context of a political settlement so that there's something left behind to insure that there's peace and order." A short year ago, Leon and Jill Uris wrote, "There is no way that the British could continue as a respected people after a desertion that could bring civil war." Today, Hume claims, that desertion...