December 28 1974
WE the people of this area in the past six days have seen a vision, our vision, begin to take on a shape, a form, a beginning of reality. We owe the first glimpses of this tangible reality to those men in our community who have shared our vision, and who had sufficient courage and sufficient desire for the welfare of their people to cross the man-made barriers of fear and suspicion, of bitterness and inculcated hate, and to meet with and listen to those on the other side, beleaguered in the old strongholds of prejudice and price and obduracy.
The leaders of the four main Churches of this area and of this island, and the four Protestant clergymen who went to Feakle, were the main instruments of the peace making for which we all long, but they were but bringing to fruition the persistent, brave, untiring efforts of hundreds of men and women over a long period. Such people have always known that in the end the differing viewpoints must come to accept and tolerate each other. But amid the appalling tragedies and horrors of the past six years they have often laboured under a burden of almost hopeless odds; except that they never gave up hope.
They never gave up hope because they knew their fellow countrymen, and they knew that the overwhelming majority amongst us had no wish to advance our viewpoint over the dead, or maimed, or terrorised bodies of our fellow citizens. And that they knew that this was true of all people of this island, north and south, Protestant and Catholic.
As far as the political problem was concerned the Irish Government has categorically stated that the Irish aspiration for an Ireland in which all the people of the island could see themselves as belonging to one nation would never be achieved, or attempted, by force.
Insofar as this political aspect is, blasphemously but historically, entwined with the religious denominations of the mixed population of the island, and especially of Northern Ireland, the Catholic people have stated their attitude, openly, bravely and incontrovertibly in the innumerable elections to which this area has been subjected in the past twelve months. They have voted with vigour against violence as the method for obtaining any of the objectives, political, social or economic, which they desire and have the same right as every other citizen to vote for.
Irish News editorial commending the efforts of Protestant church leaders in engaging in talks with the IRA in Feakle in County Clare that helped to broker an IRA ceasefire that lasted for much of 1975.
