Ulster's Unending Feud

THESE people--they're daft!" said a British Royal Fusilier private, at a Belfast checkpoint. No one from outside the six hate-scarred counties of Northern Ireland could disagree. Two weekends of rioting left a dozen dead, more than 300 wounded and at least 100 buildings destroyed. This week 100,000 Protestants are expected to march throughout the country in parades of the Orange Order, a religious-fraternal society that has been a seedbed of anti-Catholic sentiment for generations. More trouble seems virtually certain.

Canceled Leaves. Ulster has been a volatile quantity ever since King William of Orange's English troops crushed James II's Catholic legions in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. That victory established Britain's hegemony over the Emerald Isle, which continues in Northern Ireland even though the South broke away and formed the Republic of Ireland in 1921. The Boyne also set a pattern of religious hostility over which Ulstermen are still ready to spill blood. Though the prolongation of so ancient a feud may be a puzzle to the 1,000,000 Protestants and the 500,000 Catholics, it is the stuff of their everyday lives (see box, following page).

So it is with the Orange Order parades, which often seem less a remembrance of the Boyne than a rematch. Last week in Belfast, 1,500 British soldiers carried out a house-to-house search, collecting 130 pistols, rifles and machine guns, plus 25,000 rounds of ammunition. Young Catholics were said to be getting arms and advice from the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

At week's end many factories shut for the annual two-week summer vacation, leaving thousands with time on their hands, paychecks in their pockets and nowhere to spend either but Ulster's pubs. All leaves for hospital personnel in main cities were canceled through parade day. Many prisoners were moved from Belfast to jails elsewhere to make way for the expected influx of new inmates. Despite pleas from Westminster and the Ulster government to cancel the 18 parades scheduled throughout the land, the only concession made was to reroute some away from Catholic areas. Catholics, meanwhile, began organizing counterparades.

Bernadette Devlin, 23-year-old Catholie spitfire whose jailing on charges of inciting to riot was the immediate cause of current troubles, was out of action. But there was no lack of troublemakers. Protestant Extremist Ian Paisley and 30 followers demonstrated at England's Canterbury Cathedral, carrying placards that read JESUS SAVES--ROME ENSLAVES. At the cathedral, a Catholic mass was being conducted as an unprecedented ecumenical gesture. Meanwhile, the Republic of Ireland's Minister for External Affairs, Dr. Patrick J. Hillery, slipped quietly across Ulster's border to tour Belfast's battened-down Catholic districts. Though the visit was perfectly legal, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, branded it "a serious diplomatic discourtesy." The idea, said Hillery with a monumentally inappropriate smile, was just "to relax tensions."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.