Devil's Own Timing

In its eighth day of power, the Heath government was confronted with its first real crisis. London had already decided to bolster the 8,000-man garrison in Northern Ireland with 3,000 more British troops. Its decision followed a threat by Ulster's Protestant militants, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, to hold a series of Orange Order parades of the kind that provoked last year's violence between Protestants and the Roman Catholic minority. The extra soldiers were needed sooner than anyone had expected.

The trouble was touched off by the jailing of Catholic Spitfire Bernadette Devlin, 23, who was re-elected as an independent to Parliament only two weeks ago. Bernadette had been sentenced to six months in prison for her part in last summer's riots, but was free pending a petition that her case be appealed to the House of Lords. When the petition was denied by a Belfast court, she was arrested on her way to a political meeting and taken to jail.

That did it. In three cities--Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry--Catholics took to the streets in protest. In the ensuing riots, four men were killed and at least 200 injured, including 100 soldiers. "If I'd been the devil himself, trying my best to cause more trouble here," said a Belfast journalist, "I couldn't have chosen a better time to jail Bernadette." The specter of more open fighting loomed once again over Northern Ireland's tense cities.

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