Betty Williams & Mairead Corrigan
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Watch the video about Nobel Prize-awarded peace activists Betty Williams
and Mairead Corrigan and then answer the questions.
Two young women who’d had enough of the violence in Northern Ireland started a peace movement.
Ireland became independent of Great Britain in 1922, but in the north of the country the population voted to continue being part of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland was formed. The conflict in the North between Catholics and Protestants, which had been going on for several hundred years, worsened in the 1970s. It was then that two young women from opposite sides of the conflict decided they’d had enough and were going to do something about the violence. In 1976, Protestant Betty Williams and Catholic Mairead Corrigan started a peace movement that inspired men and women from both sides of the conflict to demonstrate against the violence and the terrorism. After just six months, the violence in Northern Ireland had declined by 70 per cent.
The following year, 1977, Williams and Corrigan were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.
Correction in video: Williams and Corrigan were awarded the 1976 Peace Prize in 1977. According to the by-laws of the Nobel Foundation, a Nobel Prize can be reserved or deferred until the following year, as it was when no Peace Prize was awarded in 1976.
1. Who was Betty Williams? And who is Mairead Corrigan?
2. What was it like in Northern Ireland in 1976?
3. What did Williams and Corrigan want to achieve? How did they go about their struggle?
4. What human rights do you see as connected to the situation in Northern Ireland in
1976?
Start by looking at the image below and decide what kind of rights she
was fighting for. Then use Amnesty’s summary version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to identify one or more specific articles.
Additional resources: Northern Ireland
5. What is it like in Northern Ireland today compared to 1976? Search for information
on the Internet. Use evidence from at least two sources in presenting your answer.
Some recommended sources of information:
• https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/14/northern-ireland-conflict-50-years-on-willa-no-deal-brexit-threaten-the-peace
• https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/euaffairs/
20170925STO84610/brexit-the-impact-on-ireland
6. What do you think is needed to put an end to the tensions in Northern Ireland?