e echoes m Belfast
Rawle Knox
Belfast They did not mourn, they uttered strangely little in the Catholic areas of Belfast, when they heard the news of the Birmingham bombings; but that should not be written off as callousness. True, they were people who might have laughed to watch a British soldier die — but they also have relatives in Britain. They might simply have been confused, since they were waiting, most of them, on the streets for the arrival of the coffin or James McDade, who blew himself up on that Coventry bomb. But the remains of McDade had gone instead to Dublin, to the embarrassment of the govern-, ment there, on the day they were burying Erskine 'Childers, the man who presided so briefly over an Irish Republic that was at last trying to put effective curbs on the IRA.
In fact, those Belfast Catholics were silent out of fear, fear of what they might suffer from the reaction of Belfast Protestants, fear for their friends and kin in Britain. On the nasty streets of this now terrible city there have been three 'sectarian murders' in twelve hours. They knew that for an indefinite future no man or woman could be considered safe outside his or her own warren.
Meanwhile the turgid IRA funeral machine was striving to produce McDade, a man quite unknown to Belfast, as McDade the hero, the man of military valour who penetrated with skill and daring into the non-defences of a non-enemy, and pressed home his attack in complete safety except for the inefficiency of his own bombing device. He was identified by the discovery of his national insurance card. In Northern Ireland your IRA man refused to recognise the British courts, but I have not yet heard of one refusing to recognise British national assistance. Indeed, Denis Healey's, latest Budget is expected to yield bonus funds for the IRA from the eightto ten-children families of areas like Londonderry's Creggan Estate.
When the full message of the Birmingham bombings is unscrambled, will the subscriptions continue to rattle in? Already the coin has a long drop into those collecting boxes — outside the church after Sunday Mass — for the families of the internees of Long Kesh. They are , making a hero out of Gerry Coney, too; shot while trying to escape from Long Kesh. They are making so many heroes, so many ballads about them that the faithful find it harder to be fully conversant with the Republican pantheon than to pass through a Catholic seminary. (I tried the other day to find a ballad about Martin McGuinness, the IRA leader who originally did a considerable guerrilla job in organising his Derry district. "Ah, there's none about him," I was told, "he's not dead yet.") Recently there have been notable defections from the IRA — from within the Long Kesh
internment camp — though the army, being its usual cautious self, is slow in processing the out of the place. In Belfast, the IRA's Ma? battle ground, 'the movement' can hardly u,e, said to have a military campaign going at all. it is concentrating there on the sins of diet Catholic community against the ProtestarK killer gangs, the IRA must face the knowledge that many Catholics are demanding rh°,/ protection from the British Army. That sti', doesn't mean that the Catholics accept thit` army. They get angry if a soldier is not doing 111,15 to restrain the Protestants, yet that Ina; mockery of David O'Connell's claim that British left the IRA would look after the CA' dies — especially when its only krl0val. defence plan is that discovered by the British, Irj visiting a 'scorched earth' policy that wou,,t finish Catholic Belfast as surely as Uni°n'il John Laird's ominous promises of what happen if the Catholics there do not cease tu0 support the IRA. Nevertheless, the IRA is 'dui' in' to the Catholic areas, and the British Aril will not dig it out, save by empl0y/11U ruthlessness that a British public probauL-1 would not tolerate.
This the IRA has always known, and traded upon to the utmost. If a Britisher takes a Pq.kte4 at you, bring him before the Human Rigri Court in Strasbourg; if you take a Poke,s Britisher, commemorate it in ballad as a fart° "A Irish victory. Che Guevara would have foam' things so easy in Belfast that he'd be runahlPt the place by now, providing he'd learnt lris Wasn't desperation for the effectiveness of Ulster campaign that turned the IRA t?, bombing in Britain, it was a decision — urged hY tired Northern guerrilla leaders — that thhe British themselves were so weary of the Irish attacking them that a decisive bloodYPLIs„ would make them give up altogether. That the what Ian Paisley meant when he Put responsibility for the Birmingham bombs on to Heath's and Wilson's policies. Merlyn Rees is now to go ahead with hi: £36 million prison, at a cost of F-300nt prisoner (the most extravagent employal'„i creation project in Northern Ireland to date
shall nee° helping to put up for a constitution, they a"," need only about £2,500 per job); we
it. The IRA decision is bound to prove wr03 and more than ever likely to provoke Brit's_ Parliamentarians into washing their haa?`", politely when the Unionists win their expecte!", . massive majority in next year's Ulster Constrin tutional Convention. The bulk of Not-thee. Irish Catholics instinctively know that alreaw .t,i Because they know more about what Crorn e,I,. did at Drogheda than what Merlyn Rees ..': fearful. You may have forgotten that long agu, olanstthweeseukb, jtehcetr.e was another solid 'green paper
helping to put up for a constitution, they a","
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