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Up for sale a RARE "Nobel Peace Prize" Mairead Maguire Signed 4X7 Embossed Envelope Limited Edition #36/500 Dated 1976.
1944), also known as Mairead Corrigan Maguire and formerly
as Mairéad Corrigan, is a peace activist from Northern Ireland. She co-founded, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, the Women for Peace, which later became
the Community for Peace People,
an organization dedicated to encouraging a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maguire and Williams were awarded the
1976 Nobel Peace Prize. In
recent years, she has criticised the Israeli government's policy towards Gaza, in particular to the naval blockade. In June 2010,
Maguire went on board the MV Rachel Corrie as part of a flotilla that
unsuccessfully attempted to breach the blockade. Maguire was born into a Roman
Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland,
the second of eight children – five sisters and two brothers. Her parents were
Andrew and Margaret Corrigan. She attended St. Vincent's Primary School, a
private Catholic school, until the age of 14, at which time her family could no
longer pay for her schooling. After working for a time as a babysitter at a
Catholic community centre, she was able to save enough money to enrol in a year
of business classes at Miss Gordon's Commercial College, which led her at the
age of 16 to a job as an accounting clerk with a local factory. She volunteered
regularly with the Legion of Mary, spending
her evenings and weekends working with children and visiting inmates at Long Kesh prison. When she was 21 she began working as a
secretary for the Guinness brewery, where she remained
employed until December 1976. Maguire told The Progressive in
2013 that her early Catholic heroes included Dorothy Day and the Berrigan brothers. Maguire became
active with the Northern Ireland peace movement after three children of her
sister, Anne Maguire, were run over and killed by a car driven by Danny Lennon,
a Provisional Irish
Republican Army (PIRA) fugitive who had been fatally shot
by British troops while
trying to make a getaway. Danny Lennon had been released from prison in April
1976 after serving three years for suspected involvement in the PIRA. On 10
August, Lennon and accomplice John Chillingworth were transporting an Armalite rifle through Andersonstown, Belfast, when British troops, claiming to have
seen a rifle pointed at them, opened fire on the vehicle, instantly killing
Lennon and critically wounding Chillingworth. The car Lennon drove went out of
control and mounted a pavement on Finaghy Road North, colliding with Anne Maguire and three of
her children who were out shopping. Joanne (8) and Andrew (6 weeks) died at the
scene; John Maguire (2) succumbed to his injuries at a hospital the following
day. Betty Williams, a resident of Andersonstown who happened to be
driving by, witnessed the tragedy and accused the IRA of firing at the British
patrol and provoking the incident.In the days that followed she began gathering
signatures for a peace petition from Protestants and Catholics and was able to
assemble some 200 women to march for peace in Belfast. The march passed near
the home of Mairead Maguire (then Mairead Corrigan) who joined it. She and
Williams thus became "the joint leaders of a virtually spontaneous mass
movement." The next march, to the burial sites of the three
Maguire children, brought 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women together. The
marchers, including Maguire and Williams, were physically attacked by PIRA
members. By the end of the month Maguire and Williams had brought 35,000 people
onto the streets of Belfast petitioning for peace between adopting the name
"Women for Peace," the movement changed its name to the
gender-neutral "Community of Peace People," or simply "Peace
People," when Irish Press correspondent
Ciaran McKeown joined. In contrast with the prevailing climate at the
time, Maguire was convinced that the most effective way to end the violence was
not through violence but through re-education. The organization published a
biweekly paper, Peace by Peace, and provided for families of prisoners a bus
service to and from Belfast's jails. In 1977, she and Betty Williams received
the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. Aged 32 at the time, she was the
youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate until Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
2014