Bernadette Becalmed

Militant Protestants paraded with placards urging the state to CONTINUE DEVLIN'S UPBRINGING IN THE ARMAGH GAOL. Partisan Catholics punctuated her defense in Londonderry's squat Victorian courthouse with foot stomping and applause. Moderates on both sides feared a new outburst of violence when the trial of Bernadette Devlin, the 22-year-old British M.P. and civil rights firebrand, came to an end last week. To their relief, the fragile peace that has prevailed between Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants since last August's rioting was preserved.

That was true partly because the trial's outcome was not clear-cut. Charged on 13 counts, including assault and inciting to riot during the summer eruptions, an uncharacteristically subdued Bernadette denied everything--save for having organized a defense brigade and having thrown "one stone." Throughout the trial, she never wore her blue jeans-and-boots barricade uniform, preferring fur-trimmed maxi outfits instead. Her language, too, had changed. During last summer's rioting, the prosecution charged, she had roared out: "The black bastards [police] are beaten --they're out of gas!" Said Bernadette demurely: "I imagine if I used such language in public, even fewer people would pay attention to what I say." Despite her denials, Bernadette was convicted on four counts. Freed on $600 bail, she plans to begin appealing the verdict in February--a process that could eventually take her case to Britain's House of Lords. If the appeal fails, her punishment will be six months in jail--half the maximum sentence.

Another factor in Londonderry's continued calm was the presence of 6,000 British troops. Most important, however, is that the Catholic minority, outnumbered 2,000,000 to 1,000,000, is well on the way to winning most of its civil rights goals--at least on paper. A rule that gave property owners extra votes has been eliminated. A nonpartisan commission has been appointed to study Londonderry's public housing, long allocated on the basis of political patronage. The "B-specials," an almost exclusively Protestant force of part-time cops, have been disarmed. They will eventually be replaced by an "Ulster Defense Regiment" for which Catholic recruits will be sought--though probably with scant success.

Normalcy was all the more noteworthy for the trial's timing. It started just before Lundy Day, named for the Londonderry governor who in 1689 ordered the city's gates opened to the Catholic army of James II. Lundy's command was defied by a group of apprentice boys who slammed the gates shut. In past years, members of the politically powerful Orange Order have burned 60-foot effigies of Lundy from the highest column in town, illuminating the Catholic slum of Bogside and exacerbating Catholic tempers. This year Lundy stood only four feet high and was burned in a Protestant residential area, unseen by Bogside's inhabitants.

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