"Down the Road to Hell"

Even by Ulster standards, it was a crime of surpassing brutality. Early Monday evening a red minibus was routinely carrying twelve workers home from their jobs at the John Compton Ltd. textile factory in violence-ridden South Armagh (TIME, Jan. 12). Suddenly, just outside the village of Whitecross, the bus was stopped by a group of masked, heavily armed men. The workers and their driver were lined up against the vehicle, and the lone Roman Catholic among them was sent away. The rest, all Protestants, were then gunned down in a withering hail of automatic fire. Ten died instantly. At week's end the badly wounded survivor remained in serious condition at a nearby hospital. In its methodical ruthlessness and cold-blooded efficiency, the slaughter was one of the worst episodes in Northern Ireland's tragic history.

Gruesome Weight. The next day an anonymous caller telephoned the Belfast Telegraph and, in the name of the South Armagh Republican Action Force--a branch of the Provisional Irish Republican Army--claimed responsibility for the killings. They were carried out, the caller said, in retaliation for the assassination the previous night of five Catholics, apparently by Protestant extremists. In what constitutes sad testimony to the endless cycle of terror and reprisal in Ulster, those murders were, in turn, thought to be in retaliation for three recent pub bombings by the Provisional I.R.A. that killed three and injured 57. In all, 20 people have died in sectarian violence in Northern Ireland since New Year's Eve. The bloodshed added gruesome weight to recent warnings by political leaders that 1976 would see an increase in violence.

Responsible Protestant and Catholic leaders are pleading for restraint. "The blood lust which is ripping Armagh must be stopped before the whole of Ulster is engulfed by murder madness," said Thomas Passmore, Grand Master of Belfast's Orange Lodge. William Cardinal Conway, Ireland's Roman Catholic primate, described the Whitecross killings as "spitting in the face of Christ." Added a deeply pessimistic editorial in Dublin's Irish Times: "The headless horseman is driving Northern Ireland full tilt down the road to hell."

Seek and Destroy. Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees--the man responsible for maintaining peace in the province --called the murders "the worst single sectarian killing in Ulster history." Rees was immediately pushed to take action to halt the terrorism and restore confidence in the government's ability to maintain security. Glen Barr, a spokesman for the Ulster Defense Association, warned that Protestant paramilitary groups are under "intense pressure" from the rank and file to go on an all-out military offensive against the I.R. A.

London's response to the new violence was swift and decisive. Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that some 600 troops from the crack Spearhead Battalion would be dispatched from England to South Armagh. In addition, 400 men of the predominantly Protestant Ulster Defense Regiment were deployed in the county. In a more drastic move, some 150 men of the elite Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) will be sent to Ulster. The dispatch of this counter insurgency strike force, which is specially trained to conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines, indicated that for the first time since the troubles began six years ago, the British army will actively attempt to seek out and destroy the terrorists.

Protestants endorsed the tough new measures. "It shows that the government now really intends to do something about terrorism in the province," said William Craig, head of the Protestant Vanguard Party. Catholics, on the other hand, were wary; for years the I.R.A. has charged (and the British army has denied) that SAS units have regularly operated covert assassination squads in the province. A leading Catholic politician, Austin Currie, warned that some people will see the presence of the SAS as an anti-Catholic move unless soldiers are also sent in against Protestant terrorists. One clear danger was that the action will not intimidate the I.R.A. so much as inspire it to renewed violence. "Has Wilson thrown down the gauntlet to the I.R.A.?" asked Seamus Loughran, a Belfast organizer for the pro-I.R.A. Sinn Fein Party. "If so, he has made a terrible mistake."

London saw the hard-line policy as a necessary risk. With public morale and confidence sagging, Wilson wanted to present the image of an angry, fed-up government ready to take all measures necessary to contain the violence. This is particularly crucial since Parliament this week begins an important debate on the Ulster situation. The Government does not believe it can impose a political settlement in Ulster, since all previous attempts have failed. But it is prepared to support an emergency interim coalition government of Catholics and Protestants for the province during the present security crisis.

Ulster's Protestants, however, have rejected all previous proposals for sharing power with the Catholic minority. They will probably refuse to accept even an emergency coalition out of fear that Britain would try to convert it into a permanent power-sharing settlement. If Westminster does not accept the Protestants' rejection of power-sharing, warned Vanguard Party official Ernest Baird, it must face the "inevitable consequences of a final conflict."

Thus, on the eve of Ihe debates and after one of the worst weeks in Ulster's history, an enduring political solution seemed as far away as ever. Following the murder of the ten Protestants, two bombs exploded in Belfast (no casualties were reported), a youth was murdered in an alleyway in a Protestant area, and a 15-minute firefight was waged between gunmen in County Monaghan in the Irish Republic and British soldiers across the border in County Tyrone.

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