Teddy Boys with Tartans

A crowd of Belfast Catholics was watching an evening soccer game on the television set in Kellys Bar when a bomb exploded in a parked car outside, setting off a weekend of violence in which nine people were killed and 100 injured. The Catholics blamed the bombing on Protestant extremists; the British army concluded that it might have been caused by I.R.A. explosives that went off by accident. In a sense it did not really matter. The important fact was that after two months of direct rule from London, the Ulstermen were as close to anarchy as ever.

The new wave of terrorism was a setback for William Whitelaw, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the eight weeks since he had been sent to Belfast to replace the suspended provincial parliament at Stormont, Whitelaw had pursued a policy of conciliation and persuasion. He ordered the release of 306 interned Catholics who were being held without trial in prison camps under Ulster's Special Powers Act, and instructed British troops to avoid incidents in Catholic areas. He also allowed to remain standing the barricades set up and manned by the I.R.A. in the "no go" Catholic Bogside and Creggan districts of Londonderry.

Dour Mood. Perhaps inevitably, Protestant militants were infuriated by Whitelaw's strategy of restraint. They demanded that the barricades be torn down. To force Whitelaw's hand, masked members of the Ulster Defense Association, a militant Protestant organization, hijacked cars and used them to create a 24-hour barricade around the Protestant Woodvale district of Belfast. Unless Whitelaw sent his troops into the Bogside, declared the U.D.A., the Protestants would surround their areas with permanent barricades also.

Emphasizing the dour mood of Northern Ireland's Protestants, the leader of the militant Ulster Vanguard movement, William Craig, last week warned: "It would be prudent for loyalists not to ignore the possibility of civil war." Another cause of Protestant restlessness was a new I.R.A. policy of attacking targets in Protestant areas. Last week, for instance, from hiding places in Catholic areas, I.R.A. snipers killed a 15-year-old Protestant youth and wounded four factory workers. In the House of Commons, Whitelaw charged that the I.R.A. was deliberately trying to provoke the Protestants into counterattacks on Catholic areas, which would thereby strengthen the gunmen's hold on the ghettos.

If civil war does come, among those most eager to form the front lines at street-corner battles will be members of Protestant youth gangs known as the Tartans. Mostly boys between 14 and 20 years of age, they wear blue jeans and jackets and sport tartan scarves as symbols of their Scottish and Protestant ancestry. Their slogan, TARTAN RULES, is scrawled on gable walls in most of Belfast's Protestant ghettos.

Tacit Approval. Undisciplined and virtually leaderless, the Tartans roam the streets of Belfast eying strangers with suspicion, occasionally attacking Catholics with sticks, stones and fists. This month Tartan gangs set fire to stores, wrecked bars and rioted in East Belfast for four consecutive nights. In another era, the Tartan gangs would be written off as adolescents bored with the drabness of back-street Belfast, much like Teddy boys of London in the mid-'50s. But Ulster's political chaos has turned them into defenders of the faith who have the tacit approval of many adult Protestants.

A typical Tartan gang member is Jim Tipping, a long-haired lad of 18 who has a crest of Protestant banners tattooed upon his scarred right arm. The scar is a relic of an I.R.A. gunshot wound that Tipping suffered while walking down a Belfast street six weeks ago. Tipping's gang, the Shankhill Tartans, has hundreds of members, who spend much of their time lolling on street corners and shouting anti-Catholic slogans on Saturday afternoons. They were reared in an atmosphere of sectarian bitterness and bigotry, and their attitudes show it. "I hate them," Tipping says of the Catholics. "They're just murderers. They're all in the I.R.A., and if they're not they're sympathizers. If the army is not going to do anything to stop the I.R.A., it might as well move out and let the Protestants have a go."

There is a lot of youthful bravado in the gang members' words, but like their Protestant elders, the Tartans are gradually becoming more militant. Two weeks ago they marched to the local jail to demand the release of Protestant criminals. As a precaution some wore dark glasses to conceal their features. "If civil war breaks out and they start interning Protestants," explained Tipping, "they are going to remember your face and turn you in."

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