A Way Out in Northern Ireland

...The SDLP, under the leadership of Bogside native John Hume, is the strongest voice for this sentiment...

...Westminster's priorities are not Ulster's, and many Unionists resent the preemption of Stormont...

...In an effort to move things off center, he has put forward an imaginative proposal...

...During the strike, the Ulster Defense Regiment and prison warders bore the brunt of nationalist violence, and a deep-seated polarization took hold that shows no sign of abating...

...It is all a graphic illustration of how the civil war here has destroyed the province's former autonomy and brought it under the direct authority of Westminster...

...The Hume proposal has the further virtue of allowing for considerable local autonomy...

...Cutoff from its natural surroundings in County Donegal by the border with Ireland, it looks like an occupied city...

...AFTER THE HUNGER STRIKE A Way Out Ulster BY JOHN P. McCARTHY Belfast A forlorn air surrounds the formidable, classical building high on Stormont Hill, southeast of Belfast, where the now-discontinued Parliament of Northern Ireland usedtosit.Not since l972 has it been the scene of legislative battles between the Unionist (Protestant) majority and the nationalist (Catholic) minority...

...But it would be wrong to suggest at the moment that informed observers here see the end of the strife close at hand...

...The majority of Northern Irish Catholics vote for the moderate, left of center Social and Democratic Labor Party (SDLP), while a minority follows the Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA...

...On the other hand, it should be noted that the prisoners' victories were something of a nuke...

...But the most promising power-sharing plan to date is opposed by the Official Unionists...

...The British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, they note, is responsible to a Parliament in which the provinces has only about 2 per cent of the representatives...

...The best they hope for is a gradual easing of tension that would permit Hume's plan, or some other promising notion, to receive a reasonable hearing...

...The SDLP opted not to field a candidate in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-elections because its hold on the district has always been weak...

...for symbolic reasons, it is important that all Eire vote as one...

...Indeed, a few years ago Belfast Catholic leaders Paddy Devlin and Gerry Fitt withdrew from the SDLP, accusing the party of being too "green," or nationalist...

...Nonetheless, no one doubts that unity would be accepted should it ever become a real option...

...Led by James Molyneux, the Official Unionists disdain Paisley's constitution-mongering and place their trust in the gradual evolution of new approaches to giving the Catholics their fair share in Ulster's public life...

...An economist and the son of an Irish Free State Cabinet member, Fitzgerald's unexpectedly critical stance toward Britain early in the hunger strike is now widely seen as a concession to hardline nationalists in his fragile coalition...

...Hume insists that the tradition of the Ulster majority voting for the status quo could be overcome if the British government issued a declaration of support for Irish unity-a possibility not as unlikely as it once was, now that many Britons are tiring of the prolonged conflict...

...To be enacted, a majority in both regions would have to opt for unity...

...Then, for reasons that are open to speculation, Maguire withdrew al the last minute, leaving Sands as the sole Catholic running against the intransigent Unionist, Harry West...

...Indeed, waving the Unionist flag to rally support against Catholic Even though the hunger strike is over, the Protestants in the largely Catholic counties have been more fearful than ever since the start of the seven-month ordeal that saw a total of lO young men die...

...The group is the relatively disciplined successor to the blatantly sectarian "B" specials, or police auxiliaries...

...Dogs and machinegun-toting guards today patrol the Parliament building and nearby Stormont Castle, headquarters for the current British administration of Ulster...

...demands was often a way of diverting attention from less melodramatic problems...

...One architect of the Sunningdale agreement was Garret Fitzgerald, the Foreign Minister of Ireland from '75-'77 and currently the head of the new coalition government in the Republic to the south...

...It continues to suggest various institutional solutions to the vicious conflict in Ulster, but its ideas have little chance of succeeding outside a civics classroom...

...The referendum would be held on the same day in Ireland and in the North...

...There is concern, too, that a unified Ireland would pose an enormous security problem for Dublin: If a few hundred IRA members can keep the British Army at bay, considerably more numerous Protestant militants might well prove more than the I rish civil forces could possibly handle...

...subsequently, he reiterated the Irish government's persistent condemnation of the IRA...

...Interestingly, though, for all their rhetoric about the North, most Irish citizens and politicians are primarily concerned with their feeble domestic economy...

...Army helicopters hover regularly over the riot-torn Catholic Bogside section...

...They also elected the independent hardline nationalist, Neil Blaney, who is a frequenter of the militant NORAID and Irish Caucus banquet circuit in the United States...

...Hume and the SDLP want the British to adopt a more liberal interpretation of their celebrated 1949 guarantee that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom as long as this is the majority of the province's wish...

...Small wonder, then, that many pay heed when such militant Protestant extremists as the Reverend Ian Paisley urge their followers to prepare for self-defense because the "constitutional" forces-the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary-may prove unable to protect them...

...Local inhabitants with CB radios have monitored transmissions between ground and air that provide damning evidence of the British military's misconduct...

...The moderate party sees a greater virtue in the British slowly handing over to local governments control of such matters as planning, environment and health, where partisan rages and the constitutional question ought to be irrelevant...

...There are cultural and temperamental contrasts between Belfast Catholics and their coreligionists in the border and Western counties, too...

...Confused by headlines about the terrorist attacks of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or the recently-concluded hunger strike of imprisoned nationalists, many outsiders fail to realize that the battle for Catholic civil rights-the source of the first disturbances in 1968— has to a large extent already been won...

...Catholic opinion on the subject is not monolithic, although underlying the differences is the fundamental Catholic desire to have all Ireland unified...

...Inflation, the balance of payments, the national debt, and unemployment weigh so heavily that few Irishmen really want to take over the heavily subsidized economy of Ulster...

...Especially galling has been his ability (in conjunction with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs) to steer such American political luminaries of Irish ancestry as Edward Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Daniel P. Moynihan, and Hugh Carey away from the Provo-irredentist line, leaving that to the unlikely trio of Paul O' Dwyer, Mario Biaggi and Alfonse D'Amato...

...The occasional plebiscites held in the past have confirmed what everyone already knew: The majority prefers the status quo...

...But it was these Ulster counties that voted to send Bobby Sands and another imprisoned hunger striker to Westminster in a recent Northern Irish parliamentary election...

...The moderate Official Unionist Party differs from Paisley's militant Democratic Union Party and the nondoctri-naire Alliance Party...

...John P. McCarthy, associate professor of history at Fordham University, recently returned from a three-month trip to Ireland and Ulster...

...That authority is especially evident in Derry, or Londonderry...

...The more nationalist Catholics of South Armagh, Fermanagh, South Tyrone, and Derry constitute a near majority of their counties, and they are in almost daily contact with compatriots in nearby Ireland...

...Moreover, the SDLP shared his position that some of the hunger strikers' demands could be granted without the British government losing face...

...Within a few months, growing Protestant opposition brought about Sunning-dale's collapse and the return of direct British rule...

...Hume would hold a plebiscite in all of Ireland on the question of whether Ulster should remain part of Britain or join the Republic, with local legislative assembly...

...This prompted Owen Carron, Sands' campaign manager, to become a candidate in the second election, scheduled for last August 20...

...Belfast Catholics are more inclined to democracy and socialism, and have a realistic perception of their position as the minority in a province that is60 per cent Protestant...

...In addition, Catholics now receive a more equitable share of public largess and have greater access to the middle and lower levels of the civil service...

...Some responsible Unionists, though, admit that the Stormont Parliament was inadequate...

...The nonsectarian, middle-class Alliance Party has been trying with decreasing effectiveness to build up a constituency that doesn't lie anywhere on the traditionalist nationalist / Unionist spectrum...

...Today the constitutional question-Northern Ireland's relation to the United Kingdom-has become the crucial issue...

...The political maneuvers that once kept Catholics disenfranchised have been stopped...

...his house is often firebombed...

...The Irish National Liberation Army and Irish Republican Socialist Party are minor rivals to the Sinn Fein, the leading revolutionary force: The IRA has always been the real problem for the authorities...

...At present Paisley, leader of the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church and of the populist Democratic Unionist Party, is the most vigorous exploiter of this method for keeping the Protestants on top...

...One must balance these iniquities against the likely performance of the mostly Protestant Ulster Defense Regiment, though, were it to have jurisdiction...

...The maintaining of civil order aside, the Unionists actually are not all that pleased by the British presence either...

...For most Ulster Catholics it remains the only option, and the vast majority of them would like to achieve their goal without violence...

...Fitt has since become the object of IRA anger because of his harsh words against the hunger strike...

...The local constituency of the SDLP voted by a very narrow margin not to put anyone up against him...

...And that, Hume contends, has allowed the Unionists to remain rigid...

...Most people on both sides of the border tend to shun the IRA, despite their strongly felt aspirations for Irish unity...

...The Official Unionists argue that the system made elections meaningless because the government was known in advance, and that the minority was still a minority, except with a pretense of power that simply frustrated it all the more...

...The Unionists always managed to effectively exclude the Catholics-one third of Ulster-from any real power, and they automatically treated Catholic protests against the lack of civil rights as a threat to the union with Britain...

...Anything less would almost certainly be doomed to creating new chaos...

...The remarkable successes of the brilliant Hume-dubbed by one commentator the Lech Walesa of Northern Ireland— have infuriated the IRA...

...They refuse to go back to the ill-fated agreement formulated in 1973 at Sunningdale(in England), whereby all parties were entitled to a proportionate number of Cabinet positions...

...Furthermore, it recognized that the independent but strongly nationalist candidacy of Frank Maguire, brother of the MP whose death had made the balloting necessary, was very popular...

...He is writing a book about the Irish Free State...

...When Sands died the British passed legislation prohibiting convicts from running for office...

...This would satisfy the British requirement of a consenting Northern majority, and would mollify the nationalists should the vote go against them...

...Fitzgerald also has done much to convince his countrymen that Unionist sentiment across the border is not a fabrication cooked up by the British in order to keep their grip on Ulster...

...Carron was presenting himself as a representative of the hunger strikers, rather than a Sinn Fein standard bearer, and was deemed sure to win-as he did...

...The center-around the famous Guild Hall and within the walls of the ancient enclave that withstood the Jacobite siege of 1689-is dreary and battle-scarred...

...What the Alliance Party does best-through articulate spokesmen like Oliver Napier, John Cushnahan and Seamus Close-is demonstrate that at least a substantial number of the Northern Irish are not hopelessly inflexible...

...Most mainstream parties in the North consider their neighbor's new taioseach, or Prime Minister, a decided improvement over the recently defeated Charles Haughey...