Northern Ireland: Gospel of Devlin

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Protestant Crossover. On the theory that "clinical efficiency never beats enthusiasm for a good cause," she proved a natural campaigner. Offstage, she was wholly unpretentious: "If they raise taxes, it doesn't bother me, because I don't have any money. But if they put up the price of cigarettes again, I'm done." Onstage, she talked of civil rights and social justice and handled hecklers with dispatch. Asked if her leftist views extended to abortion, she shot back: "I'm not quite sure what the questioner means by abortion, but as far as I am concerned, it means 50 years of Unionist rule in Northern Ireland."

After each meeting, her organizers urged listeners to "spread the gospel—the gospel of Devlin," in essence an appeal for workers to forget religious differences. On one occasion, Protestant extremists pelted her mobile platform with tomatoes, eggs and stones. She demanded and got police protection and returned on election eve to deliver her message, a display of courage that quite possibly clinched the result. In an astounding turnout of 91.78%, Bernadette won by a majority of 4,000, indicating that she had managed to bring out the entire anti-Unionist vote, including some 1,000-1,500 Protestants.

It was a heartening start on what she and the People's Democrats see as their main task: winning over Protestant workers and thereby advancing the destruction of the Unionist Party, "however painfully or painlessly." Ulster's tradition of voting along religious lines has stunted the development of conventional opposition, thereby keeping the bedrock conservative Unionist Party in power. In Bernadette's eyes, Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Captain Terrence O'Neill, for all his moderate stance, is as dedicated as anyone to maintaining that voting pattern and the status quo, with all its inequities for Roman Catholics. The threat she now presents to O'Neill and his followers is that in London she is bound to get an attentive hearing among British progressives for her views. She will also collect $7,800 a year as an M.P., though, as she says, "it will be some time before I can keep a straight face if they call me the honorable anything."