End of the "No-Go" Areas

IT was one of the British army's largest operations since World War II. A force of 15,000 soldiers and marine commandos--backed by 600 armored cars bristling with artillery pieces and machine guns--last week invaded the Irish Republican Army's barricaded sanctuaries in Northern Ireland and reestablished the Queen's Writ throughout the province.

The invasion, swiftly and precisely done, ended the "nogo" areas, both Catholic and Protestant, throughout Ulster. It was a military success that had inescapably followed upon a political failure. Since he became Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland last March, William Whitelaw had attempted a policy of "reconciliation" toward the embattled province's Catholic minority, and had even entered into secret talks with the I.R.A. But when the I.R.A.'s militant Provisional Wing broke the carefully negotiated truce and unleashed a brutal bombing attack on Belfast last month--in which nine persons were killed and 130 injured in one afternoon--Whitelaw felt that he was forced to take a stronger stand in dealing with I.R.A. terrorism; he was now determined, he said recently, "to root out the I.R.A. and destroy their capacity for further acts of inhumanity."

Operation Motorman. To prepare for the assault, which was dubbed "Operation Motorman," the British government airlifted three additional battalions into Ulster from West Germany, thereby increasing British troop strength in Northern Ireland to half the size of Britain's entire NATO force. Armored Saracen and Saladin vehicles, still painted the color of sand for desert duty, were landed by Royal Navy vessels. On the eve of the operation, Whitelaw warned the populace that "substantial activity by the security forces" was imminent, and advised Ulstermen to stay off the streets. At 4 o'clock the next morning, as a drizzling rain fell, the first armored columns broke into Londonderry's Bogside and Creggan districts--which were known to Catholics as "Free Derry." Residents peered from behind blinds as troops with their faces blackened for camouflage in the darkness edged along the walls of the buildings, painstakingly scanning rooftops for snipers. On a plateau above the city, an I.R.A. siren began to wail--and continued until troops finally spotted its location almost three hours later and shut it off.

In the Bogside below, a huge combat bulldozer, its 76-mm. cannon shrouded in canvas and its turret turned backward (to avoid photographs reminiscent of the Soviet invasion of Prague), headed for its assigned target. It rammed through a barricade of cement blocks, twisted pipe and the hulk of a burned-out bus. Then, at the crossroads known as "Free Derry Corner," it halted--blocked by the Bogside's most formidable barrier, a truck chassis embedded in solid concrete. The bulldozer poked at it, broke the great blade that projected from its snout, and finally backed off and rumbled away. Two days passed before jackhammer crews finally dismantled the barricade.

Arms searches began immediately as troops fanned out to designated addresses. In Londonderry alone, they found nearly two tons of explosive chemicals, assorted bombs, 11,000 rounds of ammunition, and more than 50 guns, including three machine guns. Deep in the Bogside, armored cars roared up narrow Stanley Walk to a green-doored house that had served as the Provisionals' local headquarters. The troops ransacked the house and tore up the floorboards, but found only a radio, some maps and part of a Browning machine gun. The Proves had vanished. In the Creggan estate, weapons were found in hedges or buried, sometimes unwrapped, in the ground--obviously abandoned in haste. Whitelaw himself had broadcast the warning that allowed I.R.A. gunmen to escape, and received some criticism for doing so; but he made no apologies. "Reducing civilian casualties to an absolute minimum," he declared, "was my overriding duty." In the complete operation, only two people--a 16-year-old spectator who ran from his house and an I.R.A. private--were killed.

As always in Northern Ireland, one side's discomfiture was the other side's comfort--and in this case, the Protestants were overjoyed. Masked members of the Ulster Defense Association started pulling down barricades in their own no-go areas when word was flashed that the army was moving on Free Derry. Later, in Belfast's fiercely loyalist Shankill district, bonfires burned in celebration. Among Unionist Party politicians, who had recently been calling him "Willie Whitewash" and accusing him of appeasing Catholic terrorists, Whitelaw was suddenly immensely popular. One of his most bitter critics, former Ulster Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, promised the government his "full support and prayerful thought."

Most Catholics recognized that the Proves had forced Whitelaw's hand by their savage bombing attacks on "Bloody Friday." They were also angered by the explosion of three bombs --believed set by the Provos, despite their denials--at the tiny village of Claudy last week that took seven lives. Even the Dublin government endorsed Whitelaw's action. Said the Irish Republic's Prime Minister Jack Lynch: "Bombers and gunmen must be eliminated from the scene."

Buying Time. Many Catholics, however, were even further alienated by the army's action. "Limey bastards!" shouted one Bogside resident on the morning of the attack. Demanded another: "Why don't you go back where you bloody well belong?" The Bogside Community Association charged that residents were being "interned" in their own neighborhoods, and demanded to know "the duration of our sentence." The only immediate reaction from the I.R.A. Provisionals was a cry of defiance. The Proves' Dublin-based chief of staff, Sean MacStiofain, bragged that I.R.A. tactics had always been to "step aside when they try to hit us with a sledgehammer," and in Belfast the Provos vowed that they would continue their struggle "in accordance with the principles of guerrilla warfare."

William Whitelaw did not pretend that Operation Motorman was anything but an effort to buy some badly needed time. Such actions, he said, "are to provide the basic security upon which a political solution can be built." His policy of reconciliation, he emphasized, would continue. But by satisfying Protestant demands, Whitelaw ran the risk of once more alienating the entire Catholic community. With British troops as virtual occupation forces in the Catholic ghettos, the possibility of new flare-ups was all too apparent. One of the lessons of Ulster's bloody history is that Irish republicans and the British army cannot long remain at peace with one another.

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