DEATH IN IRELAND

...The one that gets attention now is the religious problem: the fact that Northern Ireland has one million Protestants and a half million Catholics and the Protestants want to be part of the United Kingdom and the Catholics want to be part of Ireland...

...Traveling in the ambassador's car and badly wounded in the attack, which also killed a young secretary, was the chief British civil servant for Northern Ireland...

...From the summer of 1921 until March 1972 Northern Ireland had its own Protestant government which controlled the region through the agency of the Unionist Party...

...In South Armagh a 12-year-old girl, killed by British troops lying in ambush 'in a cemetery, was said to have died in "cross fire" with Provisional IRA gunmen...

...What O'Connell sees as a struggle for national independence, Protestant Ulster sees as a campaign to bring diem under Catholic control-something they will never accept, a leading member of the Ulster Defense Association, who wants to be nameless, told me...

...Shortly after British troops took over in Derry and Belfast, the IRA split on strategy and tactics into an Official whig, which emphasized social goals, and a Provisional wing, which stressed the "national struggle...

...Some leaders of the Protestant para-military organizations have met with leaders of both wings of the IRA and have found common ground...

...For what is war, but that same time in which the will of contesting by force is fully declared, either by words or deeds...

...If they do not, Ireland's future will be more terrible than its past...

...He sees a solution only in a united working-class movement working for a Socialist Ireland...

...The attempted remedies have all been in vain," the British historian A.J.P...

...Britain says it is willing to shore up Northern Ireland indefinitely...

...Of course it is, but it indicates the extent of paranoia among otherwise rational people in Ireland...

...A short-lived attempt to put power-sharing into practice collapsed after a general strike (or lockout, depending on your point of view) in May of 1974...

...The purpose of the present' guerrilla campaign, he told me, is to force Britain to recognize the right of the Irish people to decide their own future...

...Who will shore up Britain...

...Why was he with the ambassador to a neighboring state...

...What's to be done about that...

...asked Thomas Hobbes...

...He believes peace between the two communities could be built through the trade union movement...

...They are completely at odds on the North of Ireland...

...In Ireland there are only questions, no answers...

...The Convention has been and gone...

...On the other hand there may come a time when both Brussels and London will grow tired of the burden of Ireland and its insoluble problems: national, religious, social and economic...

...By 1969, when British troops intervened, the two communities were polarized...

...Economically both parts of Ireland are in trouble...

...A British paratroop regiment has just pulled out to be succeeded by a regiment of Royal Marines...

...and O'Connell is-or was up to his recent arrest by the Dublin government-the chief spokesman of the Provisional IRA...

...His solution is: "troops out now...

...This government came-into being as the result of a threat of rebellion when the British Parliament was discussing Home Rule for Ireland back before the first world war...

...The European Economic Community may do the same for th& Republic...

...The chances are that they will not succeed...

...the British were exonerated...

...The violence of the early 1970s shows no signs of abating...

...The British ambassador to Dublin was ambushed and killed on a lonely stretch of road outside the city...

...President Cear-bhall O Dalaigh has resigned because of special legislation passed by the Irish Parliament making it easier to jail IRA suspects and supporters and imposing heavier sentences...

...One must stress the word "possible" here...

...They want their own local government restored and the link with the United Kingdom maintained...

...Then in the mid-1960s the young Catholics of the ghettos, who had received the benefit of a full education on the British model, began to organize civil rights marches...

...Both British political parties are committed to "power sharing," as between the Protestant and Catholic communities, as the only solution to the Northern Ireland problem, within the United Kingdom-with a united Ireland seen in the distant future if both groups desire it...

...The car crushed the children when it crashed, out of control, after its driver was shot dead by a British army patrol...

...No-Win Situation Some British officers have made it clear that they consider their government's handling of the Northern Irish situation inept...

...What other answer is there...

...This Provisional campaign, he believes, will widen the divide between Protestant and Catholic workers in Northern Ireland...

...More than 1,600 deaths later, Callaghan is Prime Minister and his troops are still trying to restore order, not merely in Deny, but in all Northern Ireland...

...Barrett FitzGerald, said Ireland was ashamed of this foul deed...

...Two recent stories, carried on television here, told of three children being killed "by a car hijacked by the Provisional IRA...

...Britain's elite counter-insurgency force, SAS, has devoted its full attention to South Armagh, with little success...

...The same commission found that the IRA, an underground revolutionary organization going back to the post-Easter 1916 independence struggle, had engaged as individual members in the civil rights marches, mainly as stewards: ". . . they were efficient and exercised a high degree of discipline on marchers or demonstrators," the Camden Commission noted...

...Looking back over its seven years of direct involvement in Northern Ireland's problems, the British government can hardly be confident about the future...

...As-quith...

...In South Armagh, a wild and hilly area that is strongly nationalist-which in the context of Northern Ireland means Catholic- they seem to be in full control and probably have detached it permanently from the United Kingdom...

...The situation in Northern Ireland is much worse now than it was seven years ago...

...The Foreign Minister, Dr...

...Two IRA volunteers died in the attack, Sean South and Fergal O'Hanlon, and songs were written about them and are still sung here as well as in Ireland...

...Nor, for that matter, does even a substantial section of the Protestant community want to join the Republic...

...I asked O'Connell about the charges of sectarianism made against the Provisionals, which come not only from the Unionists,, but also from the Catholic SDLP and the Official IRA, as well as the Dublin government...

...Prime Minister Edward Heath abolished it as a sop to the Catholics...

...David O'Connell wants to see what he calls "a New Ireland" emerging from the present strife...

...The Provos have a strong base in the Catholic ghettos of Belfast, Derry and other urban centers of the North...

...In consequence, it intensifies the sectarian bitterness of the North...

...Far-fetched...

...The attack on Brookeborough Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks on New Year's Day 1957 by an IRA column is an almost legendary event...

...The Provos took the blame and dishonor of the four deaths...

...The power-sharing agreement was signed at Sunning-dale in England by the Dublin government, the London government and the leaders of the two community parties -the Unionists and the Social Democratic and Labor Party-in Northern Ireland...

...As the Provisional Republican News of Belfast says: "Substitution of religious labels for political terms over-simplifies the situation and favors British interpretations...

...Today, Garland is the chief spokesman of the Official IRA, which is usually described as Marxist...

...Northern Ireland may be out of control and the Republic of Ireland could follow suit...

...The Protestant armed groups, for their part, are equally determined, and perhaps as well armed as the Provisional IRA...

...For everyone, Northern Ireland seems to be a no-win situation...

...Power-sharing has been aired to no avail...

...The government blamed the Provisionals and the new special repressive legislation is a direct result of the killing...

...Britain has won the propaganda war because of the religious sectarian aspect of the conflict, which is seen as a throwback to the wars of the Reformation...

...The Irish police are satisfied that the ambassador was assassinated by the Provisionals and the latter have indicated that they killed him because he was coordinating British intelligence activities in Ireland...

...The tragedy of Northern Ireland is harrowing, but it does not make it the less so by covering up responsibility...

...We do not want sectarianism or any part of it," O'Connell said...

...The time remaining is termed peace...

...Both men spent long terms of imprisonment in Belfast...

...Garland told me that the Official IRA is totally opposed to what he calls "the bombing campaign" of the Provisionals because the end result of it is that the Protestant people see it as being directed against them...

...In Ireland the time remaining is termed a truce...

...Of these, Edward Heath is of course no longer in power...

...A British Royal Commission of Inquiry found that Paisley bore "a heavy share of direct responsibility" for the disorders in Northern Ireland...

...Later they were assassinated by their own followers...

...These were countered by a political clergyman, Ian Paisley, who built up a strong Protestant following on the strength of his demagoguery...

...Killing the killers, however, hardly seems to be an adequate description of what is taking place in Ulster...

...It is not going to improve...

...This "New Ireland" would be a federal republic with four provincial governments...

...Much of the violence is caused by the British army, but because its role is seen as that of "peacemaker" it has been able to get away with it...

...The result is a fall-blown constitutional crisis to add to the State's other problems...

...But how do we deal with the killing of Catholics, just because they are Catholics, in Belfast, for example...

...The President is a figurehead chief of state but as a former Chief Justice and Attorney General, he submitted the bill without comment to the Supreme Court The Court ruled, rather reluctantly, that the bill is constitutional, and then a member of Liam Cosgrave's government attacked the President for his action...

...they seem sure that they have the resources and the support to maintain their level of "urban guerrilla warfare" (or "terrorism," depending on your point of view) indefinitely...

...The Tories of England organized the Protestants of Ulster, gave them financial, military and political help against the Liberal government of H.H...

...His second-in-command was David O'Connell, a tall, serious-minded Corkman, who was badly wounded in a later engagement with the Ulster Constabulary...

...In the meantime, he wants to see a Bill of Rights established in the North and the British army withdrawn from the streets...

...The Dublin government, whatever its protestations, does not want a united Ireland...

...There is no Irish solution, but they may find one if the British leave...

...Brian Faulkner, the Unionist leader and first and only Chief Executive of the power-sharing Belfast government, retired from politics the other day, while his deputy in that government, Gerry Fitt, the leader of the SDLP, had to use a revolver in his home recently after it was taken over by a mob and the British army was in no hurry to save him...

...This is too simple an interpretation...

...We do it by trying to kill the killers...

...With its own government in Belfast, and its own militia and special laws to terrorize and cripple the opposition, the Unionists had no real problem with the one-third of the population that felt betrayed and indeed sold by this British solution to the Irish question...

...Their chief demand is that the British government declare its intention of withdrawing from Ireland...

...The Catholic Church does not want one million Protestants thrown into the mix, either...

...It is possible that London may face a revolt of its officer corps on the lines of the Secret Army operations in Algeria if the present inconclusive business continues...

...Despite the emergence of a women's peace movement that began in Belfast in a Catholic ghetto and that has been holding marches in different Irish cities with thousands of participants, it is difficult to see peace returning to Northern Ireland soon...

...What exactly do we hope to achieve in Northern Ireland...

...All of that is academic now...

...DEATH IN IRELAND SEAN CRONIN Seven years ago the British Home Secretary James Callaghan responded to an official request from the Northern Ireland government for troops to restore order in the City of Deny with a two-word reply: "Permission granted...

...thus Ulster's Protestants would rule themselves, in effect, but without the link to the British crown...

...The attack was led by Sean Garland, a raw-boned, red-headed man who was badly wounded in the affray...

...The Provisionals are well armed and determined...

...First, the British must agree to a withdrawal: the time factor is a matter for negotiation...

...Maire Comerford, a woman veteran of the War of Independence and a great jail fighter in her day, is convinced that the ambassador was the victim of a British plot...

...The names include Tommy Herron, Sammy Smythe, Jim Hanna-all Belfast working men, and all socialists by their own definition...

...Both parts of Ireland erupted in violence and the British solution was to partition the country...

...Taylor says...

...it has enough trouble handling its present problems...