Northern Ireland: The Children's War

THE Irish Republican Army, wrote Playwright Sean O'Casey in 1967, has "always had two divisions--those who carried bread in one hand and a gun in the other: and those who carried a gun in one hand and a lily in the other--the realist and the romantic." In Northern Ireland last week, the most militant members of the outlawed I.R.A. were carrying neither bread nor lilies, but only guns. Worse, they were using small children in their battles. As Belfast erupted in its worst violence since the 1969 riots between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority, as many as 40 children were arrested --some under twelve years old.

Often urged on by their mothers, youngsters baited bewildered British troops with cries of "Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!" and then threw rocks, bottles or even bombs, while I.R.A. gunmen lurked in the background. Perplexed by this youthful onslaught, one soldier asked: "How do you arrest a ten-year-old? How do you hit him back?"

Still, some were badly injured or killed. A 14-year-old Catholic boy in Belfast's Ballymurphy district had his hand blown off as he was about to hurl a gelignite bomb at a British patrol. A five-year-old Catholic girl, Denise Dickson, was killed in the New Lodge Road district when a British scout car ran her over while chasing a gang of youths.

In all, at least ten lives were lost in Northern Ireland last week. Five men were killed when their Land Rover struck a terrorist mine in County Tyrone. On the Ulster-Eire border, a bomb destroyed a customs post. Belfast suffered the greatest destruction. There have been more than 160 bombings during the past year; one suspected fire-bombing lit up the night sky as nearly $4.8 million worth of cut timber burned in a lumberyard.

Brutal and Bullying. Much of the current violence can be traced to a militant splinter group of the I.R.A. known as the Provisionals. Unhappy with the official I.R.A.'s inability to protect Catholics from Protestant attacks and its failure to make any headway toward uniting Ulster's six counties with the 26 counties of the Irish Republic, the Provisionals split off from the old guard after the 1969 riots. About five months ago, they began stirring up the Catholics against the 6,900 British troops sent to Ulster to restore peace. It was not difficult to do so, given British domination and often abuse that goes back 800 years.

In an interview with TIME Correspondent Lansing Lament, a leader of the Provisionals who insisted on anonymity said that the soldiers have "acted in a most brutal and bullying manner. They've carried out arms raids, searched our homes without warrants, broken and entered them while their owners were out, even ordered families out on the streets in order to commandeer their homes. They've slept in our beds and pilfered our ornaments." The new violence, he claimed, is in reprisal against the British raids. Not that these raids have been unjustified; they have turned up some 500 Ibs. of explosives, 185 grenades and gasoline bombs, ten machine guns, 82 rifles, 106 pistols and 50.000 rounds of ammunition in the past year.

But why the violence at this time, when Ulster's Protestant-dominated government has begun to move toward meeting the legitimate demands of the Catholics? The militants apparently have three objectives: 1) to curtail the frequent Protestant demonstrations and, particularly, to alter official plans for this year's "Ulster '71" celebration, marking the 50th anniversary of Ireland's partition; 2) to provoke the army into overreacting against Catholic rioters, particularly children, in order to win over Catholic moderates who have been increasingly alienated by the militants' bloody tactics; and 3) to prod the populace into a general uprising that would eventually lead to a united Ireland.

Anarchic Slum. With the I.R.A. Provisionals bent on escalating warfare --against Protestants, the British troops and even the Marxist-oriented members of the "official" I.R.A.--London faced some difficult decisions. The British could round up terrorist leaders and intern them under the Special Powers Act, but this might swing the Catholic moderates to the militant cause. The British could withdraw their troops, but then there would be no buffer between Protestants and Catholics. Or London could impose direct rule from Westminster, but this, too, would unite the Catholics and lead to greater violence.

At week's end, as Prime Minister lames Chichester-Clark flew to London to discuss the deteriorating situation with Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath, Belfast was rapidly becoming one great anarchic slum. The "terrible beauty" that, in the words of Poet William Butler Yeats, characterized the 1916 Easter Rebellion has become in 1971 a terror without beauty.

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