‘Miracle on the Shankill’: the Peace March and Rally of 28 August 1976

Abstract

Mairead Corrigan was one of the three founders of the Peace People, the movement begun in Northern Ireland in August 1976. This was her description of the defining moment at the beginning of the march on 28 August 1976, when the two main groups of participants, Catholics and Protestants, met, merged as one, and headed up the Shankill Road in the warm afternoon sunshine into the Protestant heartland of Belfast. The marchers came from all over the city and beyond, including contingents from the Irish Republic. The majority were women, but there was a good sprinkling of men. People of all ages and circumstance took part, children in prams, youngsters holding their mothers’ hands, teenage girls arms linked together, housewives in summer dresses, old age pensioners, trade unionists, Catholic nuns and priests marching alongside Protestant clergy. The security forces, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army, grouped discreetly but in sizable contingents in the little side streets off the Shankill, estimated the numbers attending to have been between 20 000 and 25 000. David McKittrick, then Northern Editor of the Irish Times, noted the amazed comment of an elderly woman resident that ‘there must be 35 million of them’.² Perhaps this was indeed how it must have seemed to the onlookers as the march ‘flowed’ up the Shankill towards Woodvale Park, growing in size as people eagerly joined in at every street corner.

When the two groups met at the junction of Northumberland Road and the Shankill Road, there was a tremendous gush as people came together and the march formed up. There was a great surge of people which shocked those watching. It was historic. History was being made. It was as if people were saying, ‘We do not want to be divided’. It was not a march against loyalism or republicanism. It was not against any particular group. It was a cry from the heart. It was a rally for peace, for people, for their families. It was a beautiful day.

Mairead Corrigan¹