NORTHERN IRELAND
Soft words from the south
MARTIN WALLACE Belfast—The Twelfth has passed, the Twelfth has still to come. After the peaceful Orange celebrations last week, Northern Ireland faces its next major set-piece in the Apprentice Boys' parade in Londonderry on 12 August.
Last year's march set off rioting which spread to other parts of the province, and already there is pressure for cancellation of this year's demonstration. However, the successful security operation mounted last week has encouraged the Northern Ireland government and the heads of the army and the police to believe that the Derry situation can be contained. To begin with, the security forces—even reduced in numbers, as they are likely to be—will be less widely spread. Secondly, the parade follows different routes on alternate years, and will not pass through Waterloo Place, where the marchers were stoned by Bogside youths last year. No one could be sure that Bogside will not again be gripped by the self-destructive hysteria that has broken the city's peace so often during the past two years, but there is unlikely to be any Protestant-Catholic clash and the troops rather than the police will bear the brunt of any disturbances.
The Apprentice Boys, for their part, are likely to march with discipline—as they did last year, even under attack. Like the Orangemen, they are determined not to abandon a traditional march, believing there has been enough appeasement of unruly and disloyal elements. At the same time, they will be on their best behaviour, conscious that the world is watching.
The Orange processions last week were less obviously a demonstration of the Pro- testant ascendancy than at any time in the fifty years of self-government in Northern Ireland. In two districts, parades were actually banned, and elsewhere the Orange leaders had accepted re-routing of parades away from potential flashpoints. The political alliance between the Orange Order and the ruling Unionist party looked distinctly shaky, and few members of the government appeared on Orange platforms; the Prime Minister, Major Chichester-Clark, must have welcomed the excuse of remaining at army headquarters during the day, for he is not wholly popular in his own area.
This year, the Orange resolutions passed at demonstrations throughout Northern Ireland pointedly omitted the traditional expression of support for the government. There were fewer political speeches than usual, for the recent tendency has been to emphasise the religious side of the order by holding ser- vices. But, among the speeches that were made, there was a good deal of criticism of the government on law and order issues— the disbandment of the B Specials, the dis- arming of the regular police, the 'no go' areas of Belfast and Derry where troops and police tread very carefully if they tread at all.
All this is familiar stuff, and the govern- ment is not yet in real danger. It still has the support of the Unionist parliamentary party, and Major Chichester-Clark has not yet faced the sort of crisis within the Unionist party at large that led to Lord O'Neill's resignation. The fact that the Orange cele- brations caused no major disturbances must strengthen the administration's position, and the recent discovery of arms and ammunition in the Falls Road area of Belfast will alleviate some Protestant discontent. Right- wing forces are probably still gaining strength, but at least the province is momen- tarily quiet.
Quiet, that is, except for the continuing wave of bomb explosions. There have been more than fifty of these since the beginning of the year, and the police have made no apparent progress in discovering who is re- sponsible, despite offering a £10,000 reward. Most of the explosions have occurred at night and there have been remarkably few injuries. But last week's mid-afternoon ex- plosion in a city centre bank in Belfast could well have had more serious results, and there is an emerging pattern of attacks on commercial premises rather than the tradi- tional targets—police stations, army bar- racks, customs posts, water and electricity supplies.
Who is responsible for the explosions? The latest theory, gaining currency as newspapers attempt to outdo each other in a pretence of knowledgeability, is that professional revolu- tionaries are at work—commuting to Nor- thern Ireland when they are not fomenting trouble in the car industry, the docks and elsewhere. It makes a change from blaming the IRA, but there is no evidence that the security forces are any better informed than they were when the Ulster Volunteer Force helped to bring down Lord O'Neill with a series of explosions at first instinctively attributed to Republican extremists.
The explosions are an irritant, but they seem not to be having much effect on the public's mood. One reason for this is that there is no popularly accepted theory about who is responsible, and no section of the community is being blamed. If there are revolutionaries at work, then they are not readily identifiable. But, of course, the pro- vince's industrial and commercial prospects will not be enhanced by the climate of un- certainty which now exists. The statutory prison sentences for rioters are rapidly filling up the available prison space, but there is need for a breakthrough against the terrorists.
One by-product of recent tension was the appeal for peace by the Prime Minister of the Republic, Mr Lynch. This was par- ticularly welcome in the North after the secret visit of his Minister for External Affairs, Dr Hillery. Mr Lynch also referred to the Ulster Protestants' great tradition', and the message out of Dublin is—to quote the political correspondent of the Irish Times —that 'Territorial unity is a very long-term aim; today the aim is unity of minds and hearts'. The Republic has set up an 'inter- departmental unit on the North of Ireland' to examine all matters affecting North-South relations; Anglo-Irish relations would be a factor in the situation, and Mr Lynch is clearly presenting himself as head of an administration which is friendly to Britain and wants to 'settle the last remaining dis- agreement between us by peaceful means'.
It is a persuasive approach, and Major Chichester-Clark could find it embarrassing.
The Unionist right wing distrusts all advances from the Republic, and opposition to Lord O'Neill had its main source in his meetingi with Mr Lynch's predecessor, Mr Sean Lemass. A hostile Republic is easier to handle. A friendly Republic poses prob- lems, particularly at a time when Unionists sense that people in Great Britain are becom- ing impatient with Northern Ireland's failure to solve its problems. The fear is that, just as Mr Lynch has acknowledged a British responsibility in 'this Irish quarrel', so the British government (even a Conservative one) might acknowledge that the Republic has a legitimate interest in what goes on north of the border.
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