Northern Ireland: Travels of Bernadette

NORTHERN IRELAND

Her sponsors did not even know that she was coming until she was in the air over the North Atlantic, but no matter. Diminutive Bernadette Devlin, at 22 the youngest member of Britain’s House of Commons and a notable firebrand in Northern Ireland’s recent disorders, overnight became the biggest sensation to arrive in the U.S. from the British Isles since the Beatles and Twiggy.

Bernadette, whose visit is sponsored by the National Association for Irish Justice, hopes to raise $1,000,000 in donations, to be shared equally by Protestant and Catholic refugees in Ulster. Her lilting brogue was heard on NBC’s Today show, over dozens of radio stations, and in auditoriums and salons from New York to Los Angeles. She appeared in such odd corners as Garden City, L.I., where Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson—the grandson of an Anglican clergyman—hailed her as the “happy crusader,” and tacky Gaelic Park, a sometimes Irish hurling field in The Bronx, where she greeted the crowd in Gaelic and said that money was pouring in so fast “we haven’t had time to count it.”

In New York Bernadette made a point of posing with Mayor John Lindsay, who gave her the key to the city and declared himself a victim of “love at first sight.” But she reacted differently to two big-city mayors with less liberal qualifications. Of Chicago’s Richard Daley, Bernadette sniffed: “I don’t even want a donation from him,” and she did not meet Los Angeles’ Sam Yorty. Everywhere, she warned against oversimplifying Northern Ireland’s problems. “The press feels we’re either trying to kick hell out of the British or kick hell out of the Protestants,” she said in Los Angeles. “What we really want are our civil rights.”

Truth Squad. While Bernadette was making the heady round of U.S. cities, a sullen quiet prevailed back home. British Tommies still served as an efficient barrier between the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and Londonderry. Home Secretary James Callaghan flew over from London. On his arrival, he said: “I’m not here to dictate to the Northern Ireland government. I’ve come here to help.” To a crowd in Catholic Bogside, however, Callaghan said: “I am not neutral. I am on the side of all those who are deprived of justice and freedom. I will apply myself to your problem.” Among the first applications was a 40-minute tongue-lashing directed at the Rev. Ian Paisley, the extremist Protestant minister. Home Secretary Callaghan warned him to “desist from inflaming the situation and start defusing it.”

Paisley will soon be defusing the situation by his absence. He will visit the U.S. next month, presumably to counteract Bernadette. At week’s end a two-man Protestant “truth squad” arrived in New York for the same purpose and got off to a flying start by describing Bernadette as “Fidel Castro in a miniskirt.” The truth squad was also expected to emphasize Bernadette’s lackluster performance as one of Ulster’s twelve representatives at Westminster; since her election last April, she has turned up for very few sessions. What is more, Kenneth Lewis, a Tory M.P., suggests that Bernadette may have violated her parliamentary oath of allegiance in calling for a U.S. boycott of British products. “Obviously,” he said, “the British Parliament has got an M.P. who is a ‘Trojan filly.’ ”

A Big If. Surprisingly, Bernadette has achieved little rapport in the U.S. with the young or the New Left militants, or even with the mass of blacks with whose struggle Ulster’s Catholics have strongly identified. Further, her emphasis on civil rights seems to have confused at least some Irish Americans, who have so long been opposed to black militancy. Where Bernadette has scored most heavily is with the liberal wing of the U.S. Establishment, but it remains to be seen whether the basically conservative voters of Ulster will respond with comparable enthusiasm when —and if—she stands for reelection. That is a very big if, since Bernadette has hinted that she will call it a day when her term ends.