Chilling Statement

During all the shooting, bombing and terrorism perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army, the Protestants of Northern Ireland have exhibited considerable restraint. Last week their cumulative anger seemed on the point of boiling over--and at the worst possible moment. Just one day after the beginning of a complete I.R.A. cease-fire --the most hopeful event in troubled Ulster in many a month--militant Protestants reaffirmed an ominous plan that, if carried through, would almost certainly send the I.R.A. to its guns again.

Impatient with William Whitelaw, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, for what they regarded as undue concessions to the Catholics, the Protestants were particularly angry that Catholic barricades had been allowed to remain in place around the "nogo" areas in Londonderry's Bogside and Creggan districts. There, some 30,000 Catholics live in an I.R.A.-patrolled enclave called "Free Derry."

So leaders of the militant Ulster Defense Association announced that at week's end they would force a showdown with both the British Army and the I.R.A. Until Whitelaw ordered the removal of the Catholic barricades, they declared, they would create no-go areas of their own. More important, they would throw a Protestant blockade around the Catholic enclaves. "We intend to turn them into real no-go areas," said the U.D.A. in a chilling statement. The U.D.A. also threatened to cut off the areas' heat, water and power, but later was persuaded to abandon the notion. Had they gone ahead, Catholics could have retaliated by shutting down the whole city's gasworks, which are located in the Bogside.

Under pressure, Londonderry Catholics offered to knock down three of their 40 barricades, but U.D.A. leaders dismissed the concession as "too little and too late," and proceeded with their plans. Protestant extremists have made such threats before--then retreated from a direct collision with the army. But at the very least, the threat pointed up the tenuous nature of Whitelaw's peace. As one moderate Catholic leader put it, "If the U.D.A. is serious about this proposal, its action will lead to total war."

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