A Hanging in Belfast

IRELAND In the wild glens of Antrim and in the villages, those who listened hard into the wind swore they heard the banshees wailing. On the turbulent streets of Belfast women knelt, keening and praying, and down in Dublin the Government of Eire proclaimed a day of mourning.

Symbol of the grief was an unperturbed lad of 19 with an English name, Thomas Williams, who had lived in mediocrity and who died (by the rope) in glory, saying he died for Ireland. By the murder of a Belfast policeman last Easter Sunday morning, Thomas and five friends, said to be members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, commemorated Eire's Easter Rebellion of 1916.

When a court sentenced them all to be hanged, Ireland broke out in a rash of protest. A reprieve committee formed in Dublin plastered the roadsides with posters showing a noose. Speakers at mass meetings scarified the British for their six-to-one justice, compared the scheduled executions to Nazi hostage killings.

When last week the Governor of Northern Ireland, the Duke of Abercorn, reprieved all but Thomas Williams, the Dublin reprieve committee was not consoled. Said the committee: "The reprieve of five of the men does not alter the position." Ireland, approving Thomas Williams' purpose, overlooked the law, added his name to its shield of defiance against the British.

Words and Bullets. In Belfast, whose Catholic minority is more anti-British than Dublin is, two underground newspapers came to the surface. One, titled Republican News, congratulated the people in Nazi-flavored phrases for "restraint and discipline in the face of unprecedented provocation"; hinted darkly: "The need for passive endurance will soon be past." The I.R.A. circulated a manifesto: "If in event of the resumption of hostilities between Britain and the Irish Republic, American troops are drawn into the conflict with Irish guerrilla forces, the responsibility must rest with those who presumed to use northeast Ireland as a military base without the free consent of the Irish people."

On the morning of the hanging, hundreds of women outside the jail ceased their lamentations and in procession through the streets sang God Save Ireland. As two American soldiers passed, the mob shouted: "Why don't you stay home?" (U.S. troops had been ordered off the streets for 48 hours.) A U.S. Army car was stoned. British loyalists assembled and sang: There'll Always Be An England. Millworkers and dockers stopped work for the day.

Harassed police ducked beer bottles and bullets, and in armored cars went on an I.R.A. hunt. In two days they jailed 200 suspects, most of them from the grim little streets of the Belfast slums. In the towns they found black flags of defiance dangling from lampposts. In the country they found two arms dumps. They killed a sentry in an Antrim County barnyard, discovered he was guarding ten beer kegs of nitroglycerin, 60 revolvers, eight rifles, seven tommy guns, 7,000 rounds of ammunition, hand grenades and tear gas. At a neighboring farm they found a second cache.

But the I.R.A. had other arms and ammunition. Two nights after Thomas Williams' hanging, gunmen fired on a police patrol car in Belfast, missed the police but wounded a child bystander and a man. At Belleek and Randalstown and Culloville, rifles cracked, and bombs burst.

Neutrality or Freedom? As the bullet bickering appeared to subside, no one could say what it had accomplished, or where it would lead. But there were grave dangers to ponder. It was true that the I.R.A. had received subsidies from Germany and had harbored German agents landed by parachute. It was more than ever evident that the Nazis, by occupying Eire, could put a stopper on the stream of supplies from the U.S. to Britain. It was a fact that the I.R.A. is as hostile to De Valera's Government as to the British. The facts : the Eire Government two years ago executed two I.R.A. men for shooting a Dublin policeman; at least 500 I.R.A. men are now political internees in Eire; in Eire it is a capital offense even to shoot at the police, and such political crimes are tried not by jury but by special military courts.

Frank MacDermot, a member of the Eire Senate, now in the U.S., wryly admitted: "We claim an overriding right for Irish nationals to commit crimes of violence in British territory that would be punished with the utmost severity at home. The I.R.A. declare that we are at war with Great Britain, and we apparently agree with them to the extent of justifying unofficial Irish acts of war, but it is to be a new and improved sort of war with the violence all on one side.

"Neutrality has displaced freedom as the highest good in our scale of national values."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.