Politician, businessman discuss roles in Irish peace process
By Candy Czernicki

May 27, 2004 - (Catholic Herald) University professor and former Irish assemblywoman Monica McWilliams spoke to a gathering of Mount Mary College students, community leaders, and members of Milwaukee’s Irish community on Friday, May 21, about her role in the Irish peace process.

McWilliams and Thomas Moran, president and CEO of Mutual of America and a longtime economic advisor to the Irish government, were in Milwaukee to receive honorary degrees at Mount Mary College’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 22.

McWilliams told of growing up on a farm in a small village in Northern Ireland.

“There were two of everything, for Catholics and Protestants. (But) I didn’t meet anyone of a different religion until I went to college. I couldn’t get enough of Protestant boyfriends. I wanted to find out if they were different,” she laughed.

McWilliams, a longtime activist, participated in the civil rights and women’s rights movements in the 1960s and 1970s. She became involved in the Irish peace process in 1996, helping to co-found the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition.

“We gathered up all the women, bused them in from rural areas,” McWilliams said. “We said, ‘There are going to be peace talks in this country — should we do it ourselves?’ It was a huge risk to move into the political arena. We knew there would be lots of risks to us, that funding would be closed to us.”

McWilliams was a signatory to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which was signed by the British and Irish governments and provided for a new Northern Ireland democracy and the establishment of a Northern Ireland assembly with “devolved” legislative powers (transferred to a coalition of the main parties). The news of the victory was met with caution even by her own family.

“I went home and said, ‘We’ve negotiated a peace agreement,’” McWilliams said. Her youngest child wearily replied, ‘Oh, Mommy, you’ve been saying that for years.’”

“We need to give our children a future where violence is unacceptable,” McWilliams said. All parties involved in the Good Friday Agreement agreed to commit to “exclusively peaceful and democratic means.”

Moran credited his involvement in Irish politics to Bill Flynn, a work colleague, who asked Moran to support his efforts for Ireland. Flynn was visited by a group known as Northern Aid, but found that he didn’t agree with their approach. The group’s leader challenged Flynn to “tell us what you’re doing, and maybe we can join you” — motivating Flynn to get to work himself, as well as involve others.

Moran said “parity of esteem” was one of the peace process’s fundamentals.

“If you feel British or Irish, that must be respected,” Moran said. “The right to feel Irish is equal to the right to feel British.” He added the “principle of consent” also must be involved.

“Despite a sense of Irishness, this should still be a united Ireland,” Moran said. “(Things) can change only if a majority of opinion says it should be changed.

“It sounds so simple. We (Americans) think everything’s a vote, everything is democratic. But this is one of the most loaded issues in the peace process,” requiring a constitutional amendment.

Moran said the peace process constituted a “dramatic shift” in Irish politics because “this war was fought with politics instead of bullets.” He spoke of having attended a Sinn Fein convention where a South African woman who had been part of the African National Congress spoke. (Sinn Fein is an Irish Republican party seeking to end British rule in Ireland. It works for national self-determination and the unity and independence of Ireland as a sovereign state.)

The African woman said initially she had been against putting down weapons, but told the assembly that “I was wrong,” Moran said. “That changed the whole tone of the convention.”

“There’s still a lot of effort needed ... but the issues are being addressed with words, not guns. Debates are being handled in respectful, not violent, ways,” Moran said. “Someday this will be a model of conflict resolution.”

From: http://www.chnonline.org/2004/2004-05-27/newsstory4.html