Death Cycle

The rhythm quickens

By now the mournful drama had taken on all the predictable ritual of a Passion Play. First came the terse announcement that Raymond McCreesh, 24, an inmate of the Maze Prison, had become the third Irish Republican Army hunger striker this month to take "his own life by refusing food and medical intervention," as the British government officially put it. Then came the rioting through Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and Londonderry as women banged dustbin lids in the early morning darkness and gangs of youthful I.R.A. sympathizers attacked army and police patrols with stones and fire bombs. At week's end the grim cycle began all over again as Patrick O'Hara, 24, became the fourth hunger striker to die. The rioting left one man and a twelve-year-old girl dead--apparently victims of plastic bullets--while six British soldiers were injured. But neither last week's casualties, nor the possibility of more to come, seemed likely to force the British to yield to the protesters' demand that they be treated as political prisoners rather than common criminals.

Indeed, British resolve seemed firmer than ever in the wake of a spectacular bombing earlier in the week that left five soldiers dead near McCreesh's home village of Camlough in Armagh County. The 1,000-lb. device, planted by the I.R.A. in a culvert and detonated by remote control, pulverized a passing ten-ton Saracen armored car, scattering fragments and bodies around a 300-yd. radius.

Responding to the attack, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared bitterly: "I hope that when [the soldiers'] murderers have been tried and convicted, no one will claim that they are entitled to special privileges . . . for having done cold, callous, brutal murder." Though opposition M.P.s have begun calling for a more flexible approach to the Northern Ireland problem, Thatcher's tough stance on the prison protest still had strong backing from the British public: in a recent poll, only 4% believed that the prisoners should have political status.

A growing and ominous polarization in Northern Ireland was reflected in last week's local elections. The Rev. Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party doubled its seats with a show of Protestant militancy, making Paisley Ulster's dominant politician, and candidates backing the I.R.A. hunger strikers fared well among Catholics. The results were no comfort for Thatcher or the Irish Republic's Prime Minister Charles Haughey, who called a national election for June 11, partly to win a fresh mandate for his attempts to mediate with London some solution to what he called the "tragic situation" across the northern border.

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