Thousands Call for Peace in North Ireland
LONDON — Thousands turned out in London and Belfast and across the Irish Republic on Sunday to call for an end to violence in Northern Ireland and support a peace movement formed after two British boys were killed in an IRA bombing.
“This is an ideal day for all of us to join together and once more show that we want a cease-fire; we want peace, and we want it now,” said Irish housewife-turned-peace campaigner Susan McHugh.
Thousands in Irish towns and villages joined the peace rallies.
They wore white ribbons as a symbol of McHugh’s “Peace 93” movement--formed in outrage at the Irish Republican Army bombing of a crowded shopping street in Warrington, northern England, on March 20, in which two boys died and dozens of people were injured.
The carnage galvanized peace initiatives in both Britain and Ireland.
“The IRA does not speak for me,” read one of hundreds of banners held aloft by campaigners in London’s Hyde Park. The crowd, estimated by police at up to 4,000 people, chanted for the violence to end.
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