NORTHERN IRELAND-2
The orange and the green
GEORGE GALE
Belfast The two extreme faces of Ulster are easy to see and to hear. Most nights bombs ex- plode, and the security people make the obvious interpretation that the side which threw the bomb is the opposite of the side which was hit. The Irish desire to excuse by complicating matters, and to see double and triple and quadruple bluffs in every bomb attack is discounted by the English army chiefs who, psychologically at any rate, clearly feel themselves to be in alien territory.
For the moment bombs against property have replaced rioting violence against people as the chief weapon of the IRA and the Sinn Feiners who, temporarily at any rate, appear to have lost the capacity to get their people on to the streets. They need—and want—an 'atrocity' to be committed against their people preferably by the army, but failing that by the extreme right-wing Protestants.
Last Saturday they attempted, unsuccess- fully, to fire several of Belfast's principal shops. With greater and more tragic success, incendiary bombs burned the shop belong- ing to the extreme Protestant leader in the Shankill Road area, John M'Keague, whose mother, living in the flat above the shop, was burned to death in the ensuing fire. This is the kind of provocation which could swiftly develop into massive and confused violence. The hatred, it is best always to remember, is always present. It is constant. The only question is whether it can be contained, or whether it will again and again erupt into activity.
Also during last weekend—an ordinary enough weekend, 'nothing much happening' they said at army headquarters, and they were right in a way : the English papers reported hardly anything—a bomb over- turned a jeep on the Donegal borders and three Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers were lucky to escape alive; the Bailey bridge carrying the direct road between Belfast airport and army headquarters at Lisburn was blown up: and there were further scat- tered gelignite bombing incidents.
Belfast's only Sunday newspaper, the Sunday News, contained the following stories on its front page—and nothing elsr: 'Woman Killed in Terror Blast', 'Man Shot in Cromac Square', 'Police probe girl's death', 'Mystery blast near Domore', Tour die, four hurt in crashes', 'Massive fire bomb plot is foiled' and 'Ulster '71 will not swing on Sundays'—this last a reference that the fair attached to the ground of the Ulster Show will not, after all, be allowed to open on Sundays 'after a protest from local resi- dents who complained that the noise would shatter the peace and quiet of the Sabbath'. From all this violence, who gains? OnlY the Sinn Feiners, who in their hatred of the present set-up, wish to see the impoverish' ment and the destruction of Ulster. The attitude of Sinn Fein and of the IRA is clearly enough demonstrated in the Sinn Fein oath: I swear by Almighty God, by all in heaven and upon earth, by the Holy and Blessed Prayer Book of our Church, by the BlesSed Virgin Mary and Mother of God, by her Sorrowings and Sufferings at the foot of the Cross, by her tears and wailings, by St Patrick, by the Blessed and Adorable Host, by the Blessed Rosary and Holy Beads, by the Blessed Church in all ages and by our Holy National Martyrs, to fight until we die wading in the fields of Red Gore of the Saxon Tyrants and murderers of the glorious Cause of Nationality, and if spared, to fight until there is not a single vestige and a space for a footpath left to tell that the Holy Soil of Ireland was trodden on by the Saxon Tyrants and the Murderers, and moreover, when the English Protestant Robbers and Beasts in Ireland shall be driven into the sea, like the swine that Jesus Christ caused to be drowned, we shall embark for and take England, root out every vestige of the accursed Blood of the Heretics, Adulterers and Murderers of Henry and possess ourselves of the treasures of the Beasts that have so long kept our beloved Isle of Saints, our Ireland, in chains of bond- age, and driven us from our genial shores to settle in foreign lands, and shall wade in the blood of Orangemen and Heretics who do not join us and become one of ourselves, Scotland, too having given her aid and succour to the Beasts we shall leave in her Red Gore and shall not give up the conquest until we have our Holy Father complete ruler of the British Isles as he was before Reformation. To all this, singly and collectively, I swear to fulfil as before mentioned with my eyes blindfolded not knowing whom to me administers this oath so help me God.
Previous page
