Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams, one of Northern Ireland's peace movement leaders in the 1970s, now questions the concept of 'non-violence'. Addressing young people at Mikhail Gorbachev's Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Australia, Mrs Williams now 64 and head of the World Centres of Compassion for Children International, said she had a "very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent."
"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush," she told the young people, adding "I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief."
Back in 1977 I published The Peace People of Northern Ireland - impressions of Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams and the Peace Movement (Widescope). Author Dairy O'Donnell, convinced me that her insights were approved by Corrogan, Williams et al, and it was an interesting and economically slim read.
Corrigan was supposed to launch the book in Sydney during her Australian speaking tour but cancelled after noting that the book's back cover blurb described her as "Mairead, the virgin martyr, sacrificing her youth and her personal desires on the altar of a higher destiny."
Sexual repression, you see, was part of Dairy O'Donnell's explanation for the vigorous origins of the peace movement in violence-dominated, Roman Catholic districts of Northern Ireland: "Married adults living a celibate existence build up energies which might otherwise be expressed in conjugal intercourse," she wrote.
This extended to Betty Williams. As her husband was often at sea, she may have been "denied this normal outlet for her sexual or procreative drive for several months."
As Dairy wonderfully surmised: "Could it have been this sublimated procreative urge that provided the impetus for the tremendous out pouring of energy that went into the conception of the Peace Movement?"
Thirty years later, one wonders the sub-sexual catalyst for Mrs Williams' "fiesty" and publically declared, impulse to murder.
"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush," she told the young people, adding "I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief."
Back in 1977 I published The Peace People of Northern Ireland - impressions of Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams and the Peace Movement (Widescope). Author Dairy O'Donnell, convinced me that her insights were approved by Corrogan, Williams et al, and it was an interesting and economically slim read.
Corrigan was supposed to launch the book in Sydney during her Australian speaking tour but cancelled after noting that the book's back cover blurb described her as "Mairead, the virgin martyr, sacrificing her youth and her personal desires on the altar of a higher destiny."
Sexual repression, you see, was part of Dairy O'Donnell's explanation for the vigorous origins of the peace movement in violence-dominated, Roman Catholic districts of Northern Ireland: "Married adults living a celibate existence build up energies which might otherwise be expressed in conjugal intercourse," she wrote.
This extended to Betty Williams. As her husband was often at sea, she may have been "denied this normal outlet for her sexual or procreative drive for several months."
As Dairy wonderfully surmised: "Could it have been this sublimated procreative urge that provided the impetus for the tremendous out pouring of energy that went into the conception of the Peace Movement?"
Thirty years later, one wonders the sub-sexual catalyst for Mrs Williams' "fiesty" and publically declared, impulse to murder.
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