Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Bernadette Devlin emerged during Northern Ireland's “Troubles” as a leading activist and spokesperson in the struggles to defend the civil rights of the Catholic community and to demand a Northern Ireland free from British influence. In 1969 she was elected to the British parliament, where she served until 1974, utilizing every opportunity to speak out against injustice and oppression. For many decades she has been Northern Ireland's most prominent proponent of socialist-republican views. According to her own autobiographical account, her political awakening occurred in October 1968 when, as a 21-year-old student, she was participating in a legal demonstration of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and witnessed the police savagely beating protesters with batons. Devlin was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on April 23, 1947, 31 years after the Easter Uprising of 1916. At that time the Catholics of Northern Ireland lived a tenuous existence, as exemplified by the fact that her father, John Pat Devlin, was unable to work because his insurance card had been stamped “political suspect.” She credits the origins of her republicanism to her father, who told his children stories “not about fairies and pixies, but the whole parade of Irish history from its beginnings … the battles and invasions, the English oppression and the risings, the English-Irish trade agreement that ... log in or subscribe to read full text