Shoot Them Down Before Tea

The British military patrol froze in momentary disbelief. Down one street in the Belfast working-class district around Newtownards Road came the funeral procession of James McCurrie, one of six Protestants killed during a weekend of fighting between Ulster's two religious factions. Down an intersecting street came the coffin, weeping widow and keening friends of Henry McIlhone, the riot's only Catholic victim. The British soldiers quickly detoured McCurrie's cortege, but not before the two groups of mourners had caught sight of one another. There were jeers, fist shakings and muffled epithets like "Bloody Prods" and "Dirty Papists."

Learn and Listen. That no blood was shed was remarkable, since a pall of anger hung over Ulster last week following the fiercest battles between Catholics and Protestants in eight months. In addition to the seven dead, at least 250 people were wounded or injured, stores and pubs were fire-bombed and buses overturned to make barricades. Arriving in Belfast for a "learn-and-listen" visit, British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling heard enough to convince him that the new Tory government had inherited a cankerous problem. In the Protestant area around Shankill Road, a housewife cried out to Maudling: "Shoot them down in the Falls Road [the city's principal Catholic area], and we'll give you all a nice tea!"

All that held Northern Ireland together, it seemed, was the British army. Eleven thousand tommies under General Sir Ian Freeland patrolled Belfast and Londonderry and enforced a strict nighttime curfew. After the riots, General Freeland ordered his men to shoot to kill civilians carrying weapons. For a few days, such strict measures helped avert fresh outbursts in Belfast, even though 12,000 Protestants marched there in parades commemorating the 1916 Battle of the Somme in which 5,000 Ulstermen died. At week's end, however, pitched battles erupted between Catholics and troops who had discovered a cache of hidden weapons off the Falls Road. One civilian was crushed under an armored car and four died of gunshot wounds; at least a score of people were wounded, including ten soldiers, as the rioters hurled rocks and homemade hand grenades and the tommies replied with clouds of tear gas and nausea gas.

Well Prepared. Last summer's riots broke out as a result of a Catholic civil rights struggle. The latest explosions seemed to augur a resumption of the religious war that raged in Ireland a half-century ago at the time the Irish Free State was created. Irregulars on both sides--the proscribed Irish Republican Army and the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Forces--have been running guns into Northern Ireland. When the current round of riots began two weekends ago, ostensibly over the jailing of Catholic Leader Bernadette Devlin for six months on charges of rioting and inciting to riot, both sides were very well prepared.

Snipers roamed the rooftops while rioters tossed fire bombs into buildings to decoy British troops. For the first time, British-owned companies were calculated targets. The arson appeared to be a Catholic effort to force the government in London to take more power away from Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark's provincial government at Stormont Castle. In that they failed. "There is an impression in some quarters," said Maudling in Belfast, "that a change of government would mean a change of policy. This is not so."

Maudling left it to the Ulster government to crack down on rioters. In an all-night session at Stormont, Parliament debated a bill--probably aimed at Catholics--that would impose mandatory jail terms of up to five years for rioting and firebombing. Another measure proposed two years in jail or a fine of $2,400 for "inciting to hatred." This appeared to be directed at Protestants, and it hit one mark. "It will be a bill against me," bellowed the Rev. Ian Paisley, who leads Ulster's extremist Protestant forces and won a seat in the House of Commons--as did the re-elected Bernadette Devlin--in the recent British elections.

The Ulster Parliament was in a tough mood. "If this goes on," said one Cabinet Minister at Stormont, "this province will be reduced to a dunghill with only Ian Paisley crowing on its summit and Bernadette Devlin scuttling like a hen around its foot."

Both measures were approved. One reason for their hasty enactment was the 280th anniversary this weekend of the Battle of the Boyne, in which Protestant troops loyal to William of Orange defeated James II and his Catholics to preserve English rule over Ireland. The day is traditionally marked by a huge parade of Orangemen--and by the taunts of belligerent Catholics. Last year's parade precipitated battles all over Northern Ireland that finally led to fatal riots and the arrival of British troops.

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