The Word Is Dastardly

WE WANT OUR HOMES, WE WANT

PEACE, proclaimed the banner at the head of the procession. The marchers were 3,000 war-weary Catholics from the Lenadoon Avenue district of West Belfast. After the two-week-old cease-fire broke down, Lenadoon Avenue became a no man's land between British troops and I.R.A. guerrillas. The marchers, blankets and belongings in hand, had finally decided to evacuate their homes and bed down in nearby public schools until the fighting eased. Long before they had a chance to consider returning home, all talk of peace was shattered by the worst bombing attack in Ulster's history.

Throughout the week, the almost endemic violence sputtered on in Londonderry (see following story), and in Belfast the night sky reddened with a huge fire in a lumberyard where there was an army post. To keep the I.R.A. from leaving bombs in cars parked outside department stores and office buildings, several major downtown Belfast streets were closed to all traffic except buses and emergency vehicles.

Bitterly disappointed by the breakdown of the ceasefire, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw tried patiently to put it together again. To calm the anxieties of the Protestant community, ever fearful of being swallowed up by the Irish Republic, he emphasized that the province would remain a part of the United Kingdom "as long as the majority of the Ulster people want to keep the connection." He added flatly that he was not "out to let the gunman and the bomber win the day."

While Whitelaw was conferring with the Protestants, British Opposition Leader Harold Wilson talked to I.R.A. Provisional chiefs in London in hopes of working out a new ceasefire. But the government and the I.R.A. were nowhere near a compromise. The British insisted that Catholic "nogo" areas be opened gradually. The I.R.A. ambitiously demanded release and amnesty for political prisoners, a promise of British troop withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975, and some sort of British declaration that would not rule out the possibility of eventually merging Ulster into the Irish Republic.

At week's end, in any case, all thought of negotiation was blown away by a volley of I.R.A. bombs. First a freight train was blown up near Lurgan, 20 miles southwest of Belfast. Then a bomb went off in a Belfast bus station, killing at least four civilians and two British soldiers. Soon, in what was obviously a carefully planned operation, explosions were going off throughout the city. Among the targets: three bus terminals, a railway station, a garage, two highway bridges.

William Whitelaw rushed back to Belfast from London, condemning the I.R.A. attacks as "dastardly." A member of his staff added bitterly: "It looks like being a bloody Friday." In 21 bombings in Belfast that day, at least eleven people had been killed and 130 injured.

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