3 JUNE 1955, Page 5

them; they have finally smashed the polite anti-Partition nationalists who

had run ward-politics in the Catholic sectors of the North. Only a fraction of their supporters in the election are really Sinn Fein sympathisers; most of them voted as they have always voted, and always will, against Unionism. Nor can Sinn Fein expect much sympathy from the South, where the idea of winning the North by force is now discarded. But the danger is that the new Sinn Feiners, realising this, will do what Pearse and Connolly did in 1916, and try to arouse the conscience of the people by a forlorn-hope rising, in the belief that their self-sacrifice will revive dormant Irish nationalism. A city like Derry would be ideal for such an enterprise, with its acid memories and its nationalist majority. As it happens, Sinn Fein is so riddled with agents of both governments that such an enterprise ought easily to be thwarted; but the history of the handling of such conspiracies in, the past does not inspire much enthusiasm for Irish administrations' ability to act in time.