Outrage Over the I.R.A.

Londonderry's Roman Catholics were on the march again last week--for once not in protest against the British army or Protestant domination, but in massive revulsion over a particularly brutal murder by the Irish Republican Army.

The victim was Willie Best, 18, a Catholic who had been serving with the British army in Germany. While home on leave, he was kidnaped, apparently beaten, and shot twice through the back of the head; then his body was dumped in a nearby field. The Official wing of the I.R.A., which admitted killing Best, declared that his death was retaliation for "the ruthlessness shown by British forces against the people of Derry."

The explanation did not convince Londonderry's Catholics. Some 5,000 marched in the cortege at Best's funeral, the largest such turnout in Derry since 13 people were killed by the British army in last January's Bloody Sunday. The next night, 2,000 local residents crowded into a school hall, shouted down an I.R.A. leader who tried to speak, and roared their approval of a resolution demanding an end to both I.R.A. and British army violence. Best's death, cried a local Catholic priest, "was murder, and it was done by our people."

Seldom since the troubles began have the gunmen been less popular with Ulster Catholics. The soldier's death, moreover, seemed to deepen the split between the I.R.A.'s Marxist-lining Official wing and their rivals, the militant Provisional wing. The Proves publicly demanded that the Officials get out of Londonderry; the Officials responded that the Provisionals were "just an extra battalion of the army."

Meanwhile, Britain's proconsul in Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, persuaded four prominent Catholics to join an eleven-man advisory commission. Earlier in the week, he received a delegation of women from a Derry ghetto. They were the first delegation of Catholics to meet with the govern ment since the British began interning terrorist suspects without trial last August. The biggest issue preventing a Catholic reconciliation with the govern ment is internment, even though Whitelaw has released 377 of the 929 men originally held in prison camps. Last week Gerry Fitt, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, accused the Proves of trying to prolong internment by escalating their bombing cam paign. Said he: "There are still violent men in Northern Ireland who would be lost but " for the fact that internment continues.

As if to prove his point, there were more bombings of shops, garages and factories last week. On a single day in Belfast, more than $1,000,000 worth of damage was caused in four explosions.

Other bombs injured at least 20 people in Belfast and destroyed a three-story building in the center of Londonderry.

For all the signs that the Catholic population is sick of violence, there was little hope last week that an end to Ulster's troubles is in sight. Ominously, on the other side, militant Protestants were building up toward a potentially explosive demonstration this week. The right-wing Ulster Vanguard planned a protest march in Londonderry to demand that the British army and Ulster police reassert their rule over the barricaded "no go" areas of Bogside and Creggan, where I.R.A. gunmen have been roam ing at will.

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