The empire's last nervous twitch

...The lack of Catholics among the police and judiciary is now largely a result of the fact that Catholics who join them are almost certain to become targets for IRA assassinations...

...Spurred by mounting IRA and Protestant violence, the talks ultimately ted to the agreement mat Thatcher and LyncK's successor, Garret FitzGerald, signed in November 1985...

...of the second highest ranking judge and the execution of nine police officers — acts that appear to be part of an IRA strategy aimed at sabotaging the Thatcher-initiated accord...

...If she succeeds, historians may yet record, as her greatest achievement, that she stilled that last nervous twitch of a once powerful empire...

...and Ulster, in turn, would be protected from IRA terrorism...

...These will provide the back-up for closer cooperation between police forces on both sides of the border...

...But under the new dispensation.inaugurated by the Anglo-Irish, accord, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the IRA to maintain its protective role...

...In addition to reforms in housing, employment, and election laws, the notorious and predominantly Protestant B Specials, an auxiliary branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (police force) had been disbanded, and after successive failures to create a workable provincial government of Catholic and Protestant representatives, Westminister resumed the full control of Ulster that circumstances had first compelled it to assume in 1972...

...A recent decision, however, already has modified this policy so that jury trials can be allowed in cases involving firearms and kidnapping but not where terrorist crime is involved...

...As it now stands, the British Army and the RUC are charged with maintaining peace between the warring sides...

...There are indications that the police ambush, considered the IRA's worst defeat, may have been made-rossible by irtfonrption obtained by British and Ulster authorities from ! 563 intelligence...

...They would like to retain their British identity but their own actions have all but foreclosed that possibility, and they cannot identify^thenv Ireland...

...Justice Department's requirement that Noraid, the, Irish Nerthem Aid Committee, register as the American lobbying, and fund-raising arm of the IRA and to file financial statements to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act...

...Tobackitiup they formed the Ulster Volunteers, an army of nearly 100,000 men...

...Senate's ratification of a treaty last year making it easier for Britain to extradite wanted IRA terrorists from the U.S...

...And now that he's'head of his party and the government, Haughey has vawed to renegotiate the Anglo-Irish agreement on the grounds that it violates the Republic's 1937 Constitution which claims tjtle to all of Ireland...

...The Officials are at Gardner Street and the Provisionals are based at Kevin Street...

...It was made even more so by virtue of the IRA's small size, and the fact that in addition to the Official (Marxist) and Provisional (national socialist) main factions, it is further split into the Irish National Liberation Army (hardline Marxist) and Republican Sinn Fein (hardline national socialist...

...innocent shoppers have been maimed or blown to smithereens by bombs...

...Some Irish believe that if the Marxists triumphed, . Ireland would become a Cuban-type state, unsweetened by sugar, or a fascist-type dictatorship, embellished with bloodand-soil rhetoric and Celtic mysticism, if the rightists sueceeded...

...Immediately after Mountbatten's London funeral, Thatcher met with the Irish prime minister Jack Lynch to discuss, ways of ending^Irish violence, and this led to further Anglo-Irish talks...

...By far the most active are the Officials and Provisionals, and since 1969 each has had a legal Sinn Fein political organization headquartered in Dublin...

...By goading Ulster's almost exclusively Protestant law enforcement establishment into reverting to anti-Catholic behavior, the IRA could then restore its slightly diminished role as Catholic defender...

...His articles have appeared in publications in Ireland, England, Canada, the U.S., and Australia...

...Thatcher has made it clear A«t the agreement, allowing the Irish Republic an unprecedented role in *Sst^*safrBfc*;>vraB entered into "to defeat men> of Violence mdWbitfrqf&Q&Qti® stability (to Ireland...

...Since Garret FitzGerald of the Fine Gael party signed the agreement, he has been succeeded to the premiership by Charles Haughey of the Fianna Failptrty, and his leadership could swing government policies in a direction more to- the liking of the men of violence...

...Hesth'4 efforts also made him the target of ait IRA assassintoion attftfispt...

...Partition became effective iA 1921 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty that also called for the setting tip of a never implemented boundary commission...

...Haughey (some Irish call him "haughty"), a multimillionaire whose lifestyle and eighteenth-century mansion are suggestive of Louis Quatorze, is a bit of a maverick in Irish politics...

...The Official (Marxist) IRA is purportedly fighting a social revolution to remove the Irish Republic's government and British rule in the north on the grounds that both governments are capitalistic...

...This resulted initially in the murder...

...Young women have been bound to posts, tarred and feathered, and had their hair shorn for fraternizing with British soldiers...

...Meanwhile Ulster's militant Unionists, who have fielded their own paramilitary organizations, including the Ulster Defense Association, an undergoing a trauma as 1914 when Britain seenwdon the verge of granting to an Ireland in whichSey would supplant the minority population...

...The Irish Republican Army (IRA), fat one, has suffered some staggering setbacks, and Ulster's (PrpWtojlnt} Unionists have been effectively stripped of the poww that lot more than fifty years allowed them to maintain their own repulsive brand of apartheid...

...From his past statements and actions- it appears mat, like some-iother members of luVparty, Haughey subscribes to democracy in public while retaining an emotional attachment to the vielent efforts of the IRA (in his case the Provisional*) to bomb Ulster into Irish unity...

...The IRA Provisional wing carried out the attack and later acknowledged that it was a staggering loss...

...Now, with a Gallup Poll showing only 26 percent of British voters in favor of keeping Ulster in the United Kiagdoauthere is little chance of Britain^ aad^partkulariy,aThatcae* Britain,, allowing Ulster to, remain a part of the ,U.K...

...Given several chances to share power with the Catholics they had so long subjugated, Ulster's Unionists are now undergoing the torments of an acute identity crisis...

...562 But even before the Anglo-Irish accord, some important steps had been taken to assuage Catholic fears...

...Haughey also is likely to challenge the agreement's assurance that Ireland would not be united unless a majority in Ulster favor it...

...all in the same day...

...Ireland's future difficulties, however, may ultimately depend, not on whatever actions Ulster's Unionists or the various IRA factions take, but on whether the Republic's government adheres to the Anglo-Irish agreement...

...564 grams, including national health, on a level with those in Erigland...

...With about only 500 members who work full-time with the gun and the bomb, IRA leaders are acutely aware of the threat to their activities from Thatcher's determined policies...

...They will also go a long way towards removing one of the touchiest of Catholic grievances: the so-called Diplock courts that mandate trial by judge, instead of jury, ostensibly because of IRA intimidation of jurors...

...For eightienyears he was a member of the Los Angeles Times ecUtoHal staff...

...One terrorist accused of murdering a London policeman already has been extradited...

...But this Rhodesian-type solution of going it alone would be a sure prescription for disaster in a country with no, major natural resources and which historically has faced unemployment of chronic proportions...

...If not, even so, he would find himself bargaining with Thatcher whom the Soviets have labeled (and they ar6 certainly qualified to do so) the "iron lady...

...She will be aided in her efforts by conditions that make the CDTHBERTCAKSON mann is an Ulster-bomirtlter...

...as strictly Protestant-Unionist terms...

...Yet the smoke, from bombs and tear gas cannot obscure some dramatic changes that'could eventually lead to peace...

...Such a state also would risk losing $2.5 trillion in annual British subventions which, among othei things, maintain social welfare' proYour trouble Is, you does'nt know to be Irish in moderation...

...not those who are frenetically holding on to redundant privileges...

...Ulster's Catholic 1 Protestant oppression...

...Another is its response to the Anglo-Irish accord which has been marked by stepped-up attacks against Ulster' s police and judiciary...

...prospects for peace, however dim, better perhaps than they have been in the sixty-six years that Ireland has been jjaif-i' titioned...

...Martyrs fgrVe been scarce but there's a surfeit of ninnies as Catholics and'Protestants purge their tribal hatreds...

...1956, after a period of dormancy, their renewed violence was effectively ended by 1962 through Anglo-Irish cooperation, and they're aware that the new accord goes far beyond that...

...s Her resolve to achieve what Gladstone and other* cottldn't, was reinforced a few years ago by an IRA attempt o»W^ but apparently was fimstimdated by her revulsion eightyeanl ago at the IRA assassination of the queen's cousin and Woiid War II hero, Earl Mountbatten, three members of his family, and eighteen British soldiers...

...This was to have worked towards eventual Irish unity or at least to further constrict Ulster to counties with Protestant majorities while transferring predominantly Catholic counties to die Republic (then known as the Irish Free State...

...In overwhelming nmobere, Ulster's Protestante had then signed the Solemn League and Covenant that vowed to use "all means necessary to-defeat home rale...

...In some instances, the police stood by and did nothing or actively joined with Protestant hotheads in attacking Catholics, and they also brutally assaulted Catholics in Deity's Bogside...

...And while the Aflglo4ri8h agreement is partly responsible for some* changes, it is what the agreement still promises to accomplish tot may hold the ultimate key to tran^aiUity...

...But apart from some peaceful social protests in the 1960s, the Officials have almost solely concentrated their activities in the north, and neither of the two main IRA factions has ever spelled out the kind of social programs they would carry out if ever they succeeded in what, at the moment, seems to be their obsessive aim to get rid of the British presence in Ulster...

...ft established die Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference on Ulster's political, securit^, judicial, aiwl economaffair, and served notice on Protestant and IRA terrorists that neighter the British nor the Republic's government would allow' north or south, to be held hostage to the gun...

...sources as part of die...

...The'trialhad man^ of the aspects of the U.S...

...new Anglo-Irish cooperaIRA-aetivities have been further complicated by these other developments: • The Irish Navy's interdiction two yean ago of a trawler loaded with a year's supply of arsis for the outlawed organization...

...And the#e, ironically, were held within the framework of initiatives set in motion by Prime Minister Edward Heath, whom Thatcher defeated for the Conservative party leadership...

...And in recent months this test of army and police impartiality has proved successful as evidenced by attacks both have suffered from Protestant as well as IRA terrorists...

...It serves, nevertheless, as a quixotic symbol Of the tragically held view by the IRA, and its supporters, that you can unite Ireland without first uniting the Irish...

...565...

...Britain that, in addition to having already'firmly establkhed« place in history, Thatcher would greatly augment her htetoHcri status if she could but solve the' Irish problem" that «v«n tig* great Gladstone first attempted, but failed to do, at me turto of the century...

...Haughey was finance minUteVat the time...

...Under the circumstances^ the British government backed down and modified home rule in a. way that partitioned belaid into north and south...

...Now Sinn Fein members can run for parliamentary seats while their outlawed military groups (the Official and Provisional IRAs) continue fighting in what constitutes a surely singular Irish combination of ballots, bullets, and bombs...

...He was acquitted in 1970 of charges that he and other members of Prime Minister Lynch'^ government had been involved in smuggling arms tolfce'JRA in the north...

...And they received welcome support from the British Army high command...

...Indeed, the resurgence of IRA violence in 1969, after a seven-year hiatus, was made by the blatant bias shown by police against Catholics taking part in the then newly-formed civil rights movement...

...Significant voting gams last year by the moderate and Catholic-based Social Democratic and Labor Party in byelections for fifteen of the seventeen seats that Ulster holds in the British Parliament, and losses by Sinn Fein...

...From Us Curragh headquarters in Dublirivthe army made it clear mat it would not enforce an Irish home rule that excluded Ulster from the United Kingdom...

...And it is generally acknowledge* ft...

...Sinn Fein's decision was not without cost, however, since about thirty of its members walked out and formed their own Republican Sinn Fein, obstinately holding out for the hopedfor day of Irish unification under a national-socialist state...

...They remember that in...

...It's 'art odd position to take ^ince any future unified Ireland presumably would have to question the validity of a constitution mat was enacted without the consent of Ulster's 1.6 million inhabitants...

...The Roman Catholic hierarchy's persistent condemnation of terrorism, which was also denounced by the pope during his 1979 visit...

...fathers within sight of their children...

...And now that she has been reelected to a third five-year term as Britain's prime minister, and barring some unforeseen blunder s that could topple her government, it's likely she will assiduously work to see ,}hat the agreement is carried out...

...The gracer drunk with the dpun, The landowner shot in his, bed, the angry voices Piirtfing the broken fanlight in the slum : : . Louis MacNiece's Autumn Journal (1938) During the past two decades of Northern Ireland's.strife Ulster poet MacNiece's "land of ambush" has come perilously close to a Moody civil war...

...If, as Ulster's firebrand preacher-politician, the Reve'rend' Ian Paisley, blusteringly threatens, Ulster were to opt for independence, it would gain little sympathy (except perhaps from South Africa), for world opinion these days tends to favor those who are-fighting for long-denied human rights...

...t is likely that these, and other, developments caused , Ant Sinn Fein to abandon its sixty-six-year-old policy of abstaining from participation in the Dail, the Republic's parliament Historically, the IRA has taken the stance that the Dail is illegitimate since it represents only twenty-six out of Ireland's thirty-two counties...

...The.U.S...

...The remaining possibility would be to identify themselves as Ulstermcn under a state that would be independent of both Britain and the Republic...

...Not the (east of these is the Anglo-Irish agreement negotiated by Margaret Thatcher nearly two years ago...

...And despite a&the blather of politicians in the north and south, Ireland is bound to Britain by an economic umbilical cord which is one more reason in favor of Thatcher finding, for the Irish problem, a solution that evaded Gladstone and other more recent predecessors...

...The death toll is now more than 2,500, and in the volatile atmosphere that this represents it is risky to make predictions of any kind since belligerents on both sides have become experts at peacebreaking...

...Ixton-contra hearings...

...TheU.S...

...SCREEN CUTHBERT CARSON MANN THE LAND OF AMBUSH' The land of scholars and saints: Scholars and saints my eye, the land of ambush, Umi manifestoes, never-ending complaints, The born martyr and the gallant ninny...

...Consequently, the IRA was able to pose itself as the protector of the Catholic minority...

...The Unionists, who stand for continued union with Britain, even lost one seat to the SDLP...

...And the chances of a BritMharmy mutiny, as was threatened in 1914, are less than nil...

...husbands have been shot in front of their wives...

...an elderly couple quietly sipping beer in a pub have,been unaware that an explosive will make it their last drink...

...and young British soldiers, drawn from the ranks of the poorly educated and unemployed, have been sacrificed in a cause, whose complexities they never understood...

...fleeted, however, by a very slim margin, made possible by independent support, Haughey may delay carrying out his vow until his political position is stronger...

...They also realize that the same lady who moved .the British fleet thousands of miles across the broad Atlantic to win the Falkland Islands war will not be easily deterred by small bands of outlaws across the narrow Irish Sea...

...A severe setback to the IRA's strategy came in May, however, when eight of its senior activists, including two regional commanders, were killed in an ambush while bombing a police barracks about thirty miles southwest of Belfast...

...The IRA's bombing attempt on Thatcher's life during the Conservative party conference in 1984 is one measure of IRA Concern...

...In addition, Thatcher is committed to establishing mixed courts comprising judges from Ulster and the Republic...