Still Probing for Peace in Ulster

...At the Maze Prison south of Belfast it interviewed Danny Morrison, a convicted IRA killer and one of the movement's incarcerated living martyrs, as well as several Protestant prisoners...

...But there are no grounds for believing that they, or any of the other parties involved, are anywhere near charting one...

...AFTER THE DECLARATION Still Probing for Peace in Ulster BY NORMAN GELB LONDON LAST DECEMBER the British and Irish governments joined in the most determined effort yet to end the strife that has plagued Northern Ireland for the better part of the 20th century—most violently during the last 25 years...

...The IRA's strategy is therefore coming to be seen as futile and reprehensible by ever growing numbers of war-weary Catholics in whose name it claims to be fighting...

...Furthermore, a poll commissioned by the Dublin Sunday Independent has found that 94 per cent of the people in the South believe the IRA should stop all intimidations and do not want Northern Ireland absorbed into the Republic against the wishes of its majority...

...Its program of trying to blast the British out of Northern Ireland with guns and explosives causes occasional havoc on the mainland, but most of its victims have been members of the Protestant civilian community at home...

...They are appalled by Major's having said Britain has "no selfish strategic or economic interest" in their province...

...What has happened since it was announced, though, demonstrates that no matter how worthy the intentions of the two governments or how energetic their efforts, the future of Northern Ireland doesn't really lie in their hands...

...Among the Northern Irish Protestants, who generally consider themselves more British than the British, the conviction has been growing that London is preparing to abandon ship...

...Not one to shun onerous duty, he participated in negotiating the agreement with the British government, predicting that he was signing his own death warrant...

...Meanwhile, beyond the basic issues of the highly-charged conflict, peace itself poses problems—or, more accurately, would exact costs—and this, too, has affected the reception of the Downing Street Declaration...

...The Protestant prisoners were equally scornful of the Major-Reynolds peace initiative...

...When Britain agreed to the establishment of an Irish Free State in 1921—minus six northern Protestant-dominated counties that were to remain in the United Kingdom—Collins reluctantly accepted partition of his country as the best deal available at the time...

...The former favors retaining the status of a British province...

...As it is, reports circulating here say those hard men consider him a renegade for having asked for clarification of the Downing Street Declaration instead of rejecting it out of hand as a British trick...

...It is recognized, too, that Ireland's already severe economic difficulties would be compounded, because the North's manufacturing industries have been in decline for several years and it has the highest unemployment rate in the United Kingdom (14 percent...

...After all these years, the British, although anxious to depart, show no sign of quitting the province without the approval of the Protestant majority...

...And they are not persuaded by his repeated assurances that he won't do anything without their consent...

...Even the most moderate Republican militants are haunted by the ghost of Michael Collins, the movement's preeminent personality earlier this century...

...Should "the troubles" actually be brought to an end, the hard-pressed British Treasury would cease pumping vast sums of money into the North to support its economy and public services...

...Norman Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Reverend Ian Paisley, the ferociously anti-Catholic leader of Northern Ireland's smallish Democratic Unionist Party, contends that the British government has been plotting such a move for a while, and warns that he and his followers do not intend to be ruled by "papists...

...Similarly, if Northern Ireland were to become part of the Irish Republic, Dublin authorities would have to cope with massive, lucrative protection rackets that by now have been almost institutionalized in the North, and often operate through territorial arrangements between rival paramilitary organizations otherwise out for each other's blood...

...The Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defense Association, they said, would continue their terrorist activities against Catholics until the IRA called off the fight...

...the latter seeks ultimate unity with the 90 per cent Catholic Irish Republic...

...Ethical questions aside, the prospect of Irish police and troops having to cope with Protestant insurgents in Dublin if a forced marriage took place is horrifying...

...He was right...

...Considering an alternative to armed struggle, however, is not easy...

...Indeed, a recent IRA bombing incident in Britain, at a point when a favorable Sinn Fein response to the Downing Street Declaration was hoped for, is suspected of having been a warning from one wing of the organization to another not to contemplate yielding to the British in any fashion...

...Each firmly condemns the use of violence to bring about a settlement of the matter, yet murder, maimings and bombings remain staples of the militant activists on both sides...

...Finally, the denials of any split in Republican ranks by Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, have been rather transparent...

...Undeterred, the British and Irish governments are persisting in their efforts to find a path out of the longstanding impasse...

...Had he said he favors so much as a cease-fire, his credibility with the IRA's hard men would have been shattered...

...For his "betrayal" Collins, erstwhile hero of the Irish militants, was assassinated by them...

...Later it was revivified...

...In addition, through a process of dialogue involving Northern Irish political parties, the two governments pledged to help "create institutions and structures which, while respecting the diversity of the people of Ireland, would enable them to work together in all areas of common interest...

...The IRA's present leaders know a compromise peace with the British would also be viewed by many of their followers as a betrayal and could again split the movement into fiercely conflicting segments...

...To be sure, the situation is not totally devoid of promise...

...The partition that he accepted, and that exists to this day, led to a civil war in which the IRA was splintered and crushed by the government forces of the new Irish Free State...

...Despite its defiant public stance, the IRA faces a dilemma in its "armed struggle" to unite Ireland...

...Differences between Northern Ireland's two largest political organizations, the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party led by James Molyneaux and the mainly Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party led by John Hume, are deep-rooted...

...In their so-called Downing Street Declaration, British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds set out mutually acceptable, and unprecedented, terms for a solution: London agreed that Northern Ireland could secede from the United Kingdom to join the Irish Republic, while Dublin agreed to the amalgamation provided a majority of Northern Ireland's citizens voted for it...

...Protestant paramilitary organizations, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defense Association, insist that their terror campaigns—which include the random killing of individual Catholics—are undertaken strictly as a counterweight to the IRA...

...Perhaps the best picture of where things stand at the moment has been provided by BBC Television's Panorama...

...As many as 50,000 Protestants employed in the security industry that has mushroomed in the province would be made redundant...

...On the contrary, they fear that if the IRA merely announced it was prepared to end its campaign of violence—the condition Major has set as a first step toward talking with Sinn Fein about the province's future?the British would hastily begin cranking up the machinery for disengaging Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom...

...Morrison, whose words cannot be lightly dismissed by the IRA's command, said he saw no reason for a change in tactics until the British offer a rapid, unqualified withdrawal from Northern Ireland —and that is not about to happen...

...Thus it was naive to expect, as some did, that Gerry Adams would announce an end to IRA violence during his February New York visit...

...The historic declaration raised hopes that a way out of the quagmire might finally have been found...

...Not until the relentless mistrust separating the Protestant majority (61 per cent of the population) and the Catholic minority (39 per cent) is mitigated, and the ongoing terrorist activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Protestant paramilitary groups are permanently halted—as opposed to a tactical, temporary cease-fire—is peace likely to be more than a pipe dream...

...Clearly, Sinn Fein and the IRA's top command are reviewing the possibilities opened by the Downing Street Declaration...

...He participated in the Dublin Easter Rebellion against British rule in 1916 and subsequently led the IRA's guerrilla campaign against the colonial authorities in Ireland...