Betty Williams

Facts

Betty Williams

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Elizabeth Williams
The Nobel Peace Prize 1976

Born: 22 May 1943, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Died: 17 March 2020, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom

Role: Founder of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (later renamed Community of Peace People)

Prize motivation: “for the courageous efforts in founding a movement to put an end to the violent conflict in Northern Ireland”

Betty Williams received her Nobel Prize one year later, in 1977.

Prize share: 1/2

Peace Must Be Built from Below

In 1976, three innocent children were killed in a shooting incident in Belfast. The housewife and secretary Betty Williams witnessed the tragedy. She decided to launch an appeal against the meaningless use of violence in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Betty was joined by the dead children's aunt, Mairead Corrigan, and together they founded the peace organization the Community of Peace People.

Betty Williams had a Protestant father and Catholic mother, a family background from which she derived religious tolerance and a breadth of vision that motivated her to work for peace. Early in the 1970s she joined an anti-violence campaign headed by a Protestant priest, before she threw herself with full force into grass-root activities for the Peace People. By setting up local peace groups comprising former opponents who undertook confidence-building measures, they hoped to set a peace process in motion from below.

The Northern Irish peace movement disintegrated in the course of 1978. This was due both to internal disagreements and to the spreading of malicious rumors by Catholic and Protestant extremists.

To cite this section
MLA style: Betty Williams – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 19 Mar 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1976/williams/facts/>

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