Leadership Quote by Bernadette Devlin

"It wasn't long" lands like a taunt: Devlin compresses a whole political scandal cycle into a shrug. The line is built to needle both her enemies and the respectable center that pretended to be shocked. "People discovered" is doing double duty. On the surface it suggests revelation, as if the public stumbled onto an unpleasant truth. Underneath, it implies they were always waiting to be appalled, eager to confirm that the system had been "lowered" by admitting the wrong kind of person.

"Final horrors" is scalpel-sharp sarcasm. Devlin is mocking the melodrama of establishment panic: the idea that a young, working-class, radical Irish woman entering Westminster is not merely controversial but apocalyptic. The phrase parodies the language of moral emergency that polices who gets to speak in official rooms, and it exposes how often outrage is really a class reflex dressed up as concern for decorum.

Then comes "urchin" - a self-description that refuses the usual defensive posture. Devlin takes the slur before it can be thrown, weaponizes it, and flips the status hierarchy. It's not an apology for misbehavior; it's an indictment of a Parliament whose legitimacy depends on excluding those who look like trouble because they come from trouble.

Context matters: Devlin arrived in Westminster as a symbol of a different Ireland and a different generation during the Northern Ireland crisis, when "order" was the prized political commodity. The quote’s intent is to make the audience admit what the "horrors" really were: not chaos, but inconvenience - the sudden presence of someone who wouldn't flatter the rules that kept her out.