Gospel of Devlin

On a platform, she appears slightly hunched, her reddish-brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, gray-blue eyes flashing. She speaks in a rapid monotone. The words that tumble out are impassioned, provocative and to her fervent followers not a little messianic.

The campaigner is 21 -year-old Josephine Bernadette Devlin, who six short months ago was a psychology student at Belfast's Queen's University, and a scruffily dressed one at that. She still wears her clothes "back to front or upside down." But in predominantly Protestant Ulster, she has become the spokesman and symbol of a Roman Catholic minority fighting discrimination in jobs, housing and voting rights -- and against the policies of the ruling Unionist Party. Last week she triumphed over a Unionist opponent in a by-election, and on her 22nd birthday this week she will walk into Britain's Commons as the lady M.P. from Mid-Ulster, the youngest woman ever to sit in the House.

She is the most colorful and delightful newcomer on the British political scene in a long time.

Her arrival will probably be a more traumatic experience for the august chamber than for Bernadette. Says she: "I'll just walk into the House of Commons and say that the peasants have come into their own."

Bernadette is no peasant, though she comes from a poor family. She is in fact a remarkably poised and savvy political leader to whom activism is nothing new. As a schoolgirl, she recalls, "I organized little filibusters and things like raiding the library in protest against book-loaning rules that we thought were unreasonably strict. We would remove whole shelves of books at a time." Her talent found a larger stage during street clashes between Roman Catholics and Protestants last fall, and she could be seen organizing marchers and pleading eloquently against violence. The pleas were in vain, as evidenced by last week's clash between Roman Catholic marchers and police in Londonderry; 30 demonstrators and 40 policemen were injured.

When student civil rightists decided last winter to form a political movement called People's Democracy, Bernadette was one of the founders. During Ulster's February general election, she ran against the minister of agriculture. She lost but drew a surprising third of the vote and "learned from the experience that you can succeed in getting through to people if you try hard enough." Her second opportunity came in last week's by-election, made necessary by the death of one of Northern Ireland's twelve M.P.s. The Unionists, following tradition, nominated the M.P.'s widow, Mrs. Anna Forrest, who politely declined to hold public meetings. In what was immediately headlined as "the petticoat election," Ulster's rival Roman Catholic parties united behind one candidate, Bernadette.

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."

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