Thousands in Dublin Rally Against IRA Bombing in England

Thousands of people, dismayed by an Irish Republican Army bombing that killed two English children, rallied in central Dublin on Sunday to appeal for an end to sectarian warfare.

Shaven-headed singer Sinead O’Connor joined about 10,000 demonstrators to protest the IRA’s bombing in Warrington, England, March 20. Three-year-old Johnathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry died, and dozens of others were wounded.

O’Connor said she was at the rally “for Ireland, for Johnathan Ball, for what happened to the little boy in Liverpool. . . . For me.”

The biggest peace demonstration in the Irish capital for many years blocked Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, and swamped the area around the General Post Office, one of Ireland’s most sacred republican sites. It was there in 1916 that rebels declared their independence from Britain in a bloody rising.

Groups from Britain and the province joined the event, which followed a week of mounting anger in Ireland and Britain.

They were inspired by Susan McHugh, 37-year-old mother of two, who called a rally in Dublin last Wednesday to say the majority of people in the Irish Republic do not support the “men of violence.”

Clerics from many denominations, poets, singers and actors were on the platform Sunday to launch what they called the Peace ’93 Initiative “to channel public anger and revulsion into positive and dignified action.”

The aim is to mobilize ordinary people into nonpolitical activity for peace in areas affected by the Northern Ireland conflict.