The P.M. Resigns

No sooner was the Rev. Ian Paisley elected to Northern Ireland's Parliament as the spokesman of Ulster's right-wing Protestants than he turned his victory speech last spring into an attack on the head of the Protestant government. Said Paisley of moderate Unionist Prime Minister James D. Chichester-Clark: "I'll make it so hot for him that he'll want to retire." Last week Paisley achieved that goal when hard-liners threw Chichester-Clark out.

Under the guise of law-and-order, Paisley and the Protestant extremists demanded tighter controls on Ulster's Catholic minority. They wanted the weapons returned that Chichester-Clark's government had taken away from the dreaded "B Special" auxiliary police when British troops moved in. They also demanded that an internment order be invoked that would provide detention for suspected Irish Republican Army leaders. From the other side, the I.R.A., the guerrilla force of the extremist Catholic fringe, created even more trouble for the Prime Minister than Paisley. Chichester-Clark was also let down by the British, who are responsible for Ulster's security. The 8,500 troops sent to maintain order held back from a total crackdown on the I.R.A. in order not to antagonize the Catholic minority and drive them toward the I.R.A.

The 48-year-old gentleman farmer was finally pushed to his decision by the murder of three Scots soldiers two weeks ago (TIME, March 22). Protestants reacted to the deaths with anti-government demonstrations. Chichester-Clark responded by flying to London to request additional troops and to ask that soldiers occupy Catholic neighbor hoods in Belfast and Londonderry to guarantee order. Prime Minister Edward Heath gave Chichester-Clark only 1,300 more men and refused to allow the army to take the kind of stern measures that might have appeased the Irish Prime Minister's right-wing critics.

The Protestant majority must now form its third government in two years. Chichester-Clark's successor faces a dicey assignment: not only is Northern Ireland wrapped in its worst crisis in the 50 years since partition, but no one appears to know how to end it. Speaking in Parliament of the problems just before he stepped down last week, Chichester-Clark had only one scarcely reassuring word of advice for his successor. "Anyone who comes to this dispatch box," he said, "will have to face the problems just as I have done."

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