Let’s watch a short documentary and learn and discuss about the struggles in Northern Ireland past and present.
This Thursday 9th Dec at 19.00 in the Opstand
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey:
Irish revolutionary, Civil rights activist, Feminist
Politically active 1968 – present day
Brought up in a cathlolic working class home in Northern Ireland, she radicalized participating in the Civil Right’s movement and was subsequently excluded from university.
Aged 21, not intending to win the elections she became the youngest woman ever elected into parliament only to realize that “… by coming to the british parliament, I’ve allowed the people to sacrifice me at the top and let go the more effective job I should be doing at the bottom”
Involved in the famous “battle of the bogside” she helped organize a neighborhood to defend themselves against unionist paramilitaries and the police. They held the barricades 48 hrs and surrendered only when they brought in the military.
“it is of no relevance who starts the stone throwing in these occasions but what does matter is that it always ends up with an invasion of the catholic slum area by the police”
She subsequently spent 6 months in prison for inciting riots.
“I’m just one of a number of people who grew up in a society we didn’t want to grow old in.
It’s a sick society.
I just wish that other people would try top put themselves in my shoes.
Not as bernadette devlin but as one 22 year old girl from a working class background living in northern ireland.
there’s millions, at least hundreds of bernadette devlins in the North of Ireland.
who have no adress to the british public, aren’t newsworthy
they don’t know what to do either
they can’t live in the society they find themselves in
they don’t know how to change it
and in conscience they can’t leave it and forget about it
we’re the people they call extremists”
She never stopped organizing politically.