The Violent End of a Fragile Truce

IT was perhaps the most disastrous week in Northern Ireland in the past three years. First the Belfast leadership of the I.R.A.'s militant Provisional wing forced a showdown with the British army, thereby breaking the fragile cease-fire that had lasted for only 13 days. Then, in an effort to control the rising terrorism, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, ordered three battalions of soldiers to invade the I.R.A.'s "nogo" district of Andersonstown to put down gunmen who had been attacking an army command post for the past four days.

In the midst of the renewed fighting a potentially explosive event occurred. Defiantly risking the prospect of open civil war, some 75,000 Protestants marched in the traditional Orange Day parades to celebrate the victory 282 years ago of William of Orange over England's deposed Roman Catholic King James II. In cities and towns all over the province, bowler-hatted Orangemen in dark suits and orange sashes massed for the parades. General violence did not break out--partly because of the army's unusually severe security precautions and partly because of an unseasonable summer rainstorm that apparently dampened Protestant spirits--but eight people were killed nonetheless.

The cease-fire was broken by a dispute over housing--a subject that lies at the heart of Catholic grievances. Some 24 Protestant families, sick of living within range of I.R.A. gunmen on the edge of a Catholic district in Belfast, had abandoned their homes and moved to a wholly Protestant neighborhood. British authorities subsequently promised the empty houses to 16 Catholic families. But when the Protestants' troublemaking Ulster Defense Association (see box, page 32) protested, housing officials asked the Catholics to wait until the Protestant parades were over. If they refused, they would have to accept housing elsewhere.

Bottles and Bullets. That was exactly the kind of opportunity that Belfast's Provo leadership was waiting for. Early last week a procession of 1,000 angry Catholics marched down Lenadoon Avenue behind two trucks that carried the belongings of the 16 Catholic families. British soldiers barricaded the road in front of them, and a British officer begged them to turn back. Instead they rushed forward, throwing rocks and bottles as they advanced. The officer in charge responded by ordering his men to fire on the crowd with rubber bullets and water cannons.

"That's it," shouted a rumpled, middle-aged man triumphantly. "The truce has been violated!" The man was Seamus Twomey, hard-lining head of the Belfast Provos, who had bitterly op posed the cease-fire in the first place. Twomey was as good as his word. Within half an hour of the British action, the sporadic war of snipers' bullets and gelignite bombs had started up again. That night, six unarmed Catholics were killed after snipers halted their two cars. Among the victims were a man who tried to run for cover and another who ran to fetch a priest. Also killed were the priest and the 13-year-old girl to whom he had intended to deliver the last rites.

The resumption of fighting was a bitter setback for William Whitelaw. In London, M.P.S from both sides of the House of Commons last week expressed their confidence in the man who faces perhaps the toughest task in British politics since World War II. Whitelaw acknowledged the praise but declared sadly: "I deserve none of these things because I am not succeeding." Nonetheless, he emphasized that he would "continue to soldier through" to repair the truce. Accordingly, the British government sent in additional troops, bringing its strength in Ulster to 17,000, the highest ever.

Whitelaw also told the House of Commons that he had met secretly a few days earlier with six Provo leaders in London. He had taken the step, he said, because the situation had seemed "very dangerous," and he had wanted to "save lives in any way I could." He had hoped that he might talk the Proves into tearing down the Catholic barricades in Londonderry that the Ulster Protestants resent so deeply. Despite the I.R.A.'s demands that Britain move all of its troops out of Catholic neighborhoods immediately and withdraw all soldiers from Northern Ireland by Jan. 1, 1975--conditions that Whitelaw described as "unacceptable"--thft negotiations were expected to continue. The end of the truce also quashed, at least for the time being, this glimmer of hope for an eventual reconciliation. Whitelaw's announcement of the discussions infuriated Ulster's Protestants, not simply because he had negotiated with the Catholic terrorists, but also because he had previously said that he would not do so.

Three nights after Whitelaw's appearance in Parliament, the worst fighting of the guerrilla war broke out. I.R.A. terrorists stepped up their sniping attack on the army outpost in Belfast's Lenadoon Avenue by rolling a bulldozer laden with a 50-lb. gelignite bomb toward the sandbagged building. Though I.R.A. men fired on the rolling bomb, only a portion of the gel ignite exploded. The army responded by going on the offensive against I.R.A. strongholds, dispatching 700 troops to the Lenadoon Avenue area alone. Soon firing flared up in half a dozen Catholic areas, perhaps to divert troops from the Lenadoon hot point. The heaviest action took place in Belfast's Lower Falls area, where troops and gunmen exchanged 3,000 shots and the I.R.A. used rocket launchers for the first time. The toll: 24 dead (including six soldiers) since the fighting began--or 436 since Ulster's siege of unrest began three years ago.

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