McIntire Tags Bernadette A “Miniskirted Marxist’
From the Camden Courier-Post of August 30, 1969

Courier-Post Photos by Bob BartoszRev. Dr. Carl McIntire of Collingswood said yesterday he is bringing the leader of Ulster Protestants to the United States to combat the efforts of Bernadette Devlin.

McIntire labeled Miss Devil a “miniskirted Marxist” and a stone-throwing, police-defying revolutionary,” charging she is using the religious tensions in Northern Ireland to help bring about a Communist revolution there.

The arch-conservative preacher, who returned early yesterday from a tour of Northern Ireland, said he has arranged for Rev. Ian Paisley, militant leader of Ulster Protestants, to arrive here Sept. 6 to begin a fund-raising campaign for relief for victims of the conflict in that country.

ICCC Head

McIntire said he went to Ulster in his capacity as leader of the Fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches, of which Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church is an affiliate.

One function of the ICCC, he said, “is to defend the liberty and interests of our people in any part of the world.”

Speaking at his Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, McIntire said Miss Devlin, youngest member of the British Parliament, is a “revolutionary in the activist sense – using religious tensions under the title of civil rights to bring about revolution.”

‘New Left’

He quoted paragraphs from a pamphlet entitled, “New Left” which he said substantiated his charges that she is a “self confessed member of the People’s Democracy, the militant New Left.”

“She is being promoted by the Communists, puffed by the propagandists and idolized by the hippies,” he declared. “I call here a miniskirted Marxist. Over there they call here a Communist.”

Branding the pint-sized MP a “lip-service Catholic,” he said she is on record as saying both the Protestant and Catholic churches in Ulster should be eliminated. She and “Communists elements,” he said, are using the Roman Catholic hierarchy “to make another Cuba out of Ulster.”

Fund Raising Trip

They want to establish a “Socialist People’s Republic,” he said. He added Miss Devlin, who began a relief fund-raising campaign here this week aimed at a $1 million goal, is in America “to take Capitalist money to promote radical socialism.”

“She has duped many Roman Catholics,” he said.

Paisley will be accompanied by his wife, a member of the Belfast city council, and two other Protestant clergymen on his trip to the U.S., according to McIntire. International Christian Relief, the ICCC’s relief arm, is sponsoring the effort.

‘Complete Backing’

The ICCC, he said, has given its “full and complete backing” to Paisley “to end the fighting and preserve the liberty of Protestants in Northern Ireland.”

McIntire said he will accompany Paisley on visits to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities. “We shall confront Bernadette wherever she has gone and goes,” he declared.

He said funds raised in the campaign will be used to relieve human suffering and repair property damage in Ulster. Funds also will be used to help Protestants in Eire move north, and Catholics in Ulster who want to go south.