By Michael Motes

In a keynote address to the Fourth Annual Institute on Nonviolence held July 31-August 2 in Atlanta, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan, co-founder of Peace People of Northern Ireland, challenged her fellow pacifists to “make the iron of peace hotter” and expressed her hope that “we can inspire one another to continue our work for peace throughout the world.”

Sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Social Change in co-operation with The National Educational Association, the meeting had as its overall theme “Building Networks for Nonviolent Social Change.” The topic of Miss Corrigan’s August 2 address was “Global Dimensions of Nonviolent Social Change.”

Her voice filled with emotion, Miss Corrigan recalled how three years ago, on August 13, 1976, she attended the funeral of the three children of her sister who were killed in a bomb explosion in Belfast. At the time her sister was not expected to live. Following the children’s funeral, she met with Betty Williams, like Miss Corrigan, a secretary in Belfast, and Irish journalist Cairan McKeown and together they founded the Irish Peace Movement. For their work, Miss Corrigan and Mrs. Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.

“My sister’s beautiful babies are only three of the thousands dead in Northern Ireland,” she said. “We have suffered 10 years of war and can tell the world that violence does not work.”

“Seeing the death and destruction day after day, we recall the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘An eye for eye and you become blind.’”

Miss Corrigan said that the people of Northern Ireland “carry the enormous responsibility of rushing to find the cure to the great illness of the war.”

The Peace Movement, she said, “challenges the people of the world to look at the institutions of violence under which we live. In Northern Ireland, for example, in addition to the Berlin Wall type barriers which divide us, we have the awful barriers of superstition between Protestant and Catholic and of hate and fear.

“Peacemaking must begin at the grassroots level with people working with people, regardless of background, day and night. I no longer limit myself to being a Roman Catholic from Northern Ireland, rather I am a person hoping to work with another person for non-violence. We believe that the churches must encourage people from different backgrounds to go out and share together.”

She added, “It was such a beautiful, simple message that Christ delivered: ‘Love one another. Do not kill.’ He did not add, ‘P.S. If it’s for the unification of Northern Ireland go ahead -- blow someone’s head off!’”

“We must use the inspiration of men like Christ and like Martin Luther King, Jr., men who wept, men who turned the other cheek, if we are to reach our goal of creating in one small corner of the world a non-violent political structure. We have got to work to make the profession of being a peacemaker an honorable one.”

Following her address, Miss Corrigan was presented with a personal contribution from Coretta Scott King, widow of the slain civil rights leader, for the Irish Peace Movement. On behalf of the King Center for Social Change, Mrs. King also presented Miss Corrigan with a copy of the documentary film, “KING -- From Montgomery to Memphis,” which Miss Corrigan said had been shown on the BBC just before she left Ireland and which is considered “extremely inspirational” by members of the Irish Peace Movement.