To End the Agony

"A reasonable deal for reasonable people." Thus William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, characterized the British government's proposals that were presented last week in an attempt to end the agony of Ulster. That was a reasonable appraisal. As Whitelaw, principal architect of the plan, conceded: "We knew we couldn't please everyone." Yet by being blunt in places and vague in others, the proposals offered almost everyone something. Reason, however, has repeatedly been a casualty in Northern Ireland.

Presented to the House of Commons in the form of a White Paper (a government statement of policy), the proposals assured the 1,000,000 Protestants in Northern Ireland that the province would remain part of the United Kingdom as long as the majority wished it. The White Paper also promised to raise Ulster's standard of living to the level of that in Britain. To Ulster's half-million Catholics, it pledged a bigger say in the affairs of the province than they have ever had before.

Stormont, the Protestant-dominated Ulster Parliament that was suspended a year ago, will never again open. It will be replaced by an 80-seat Northern Ireland Assembly, elected under a system of proportional representation that will ensure the Catholics a fair share of the seats. Instead of a Cabinet consisting only of members from the majority party, the Assembly will have an executive committee made up of both Protestants and Catholics, who will serve as chairmen of various departments of the provincial government. (Neither group will have responsibility for law and order, which will remain under British control indefinitely.)

Among further concessions to the Catholic minority, the White Paper proposed a broad charter of human rights, including a standing commission to act on specific complaints, such as discrimination in hiring. However, Catholics did not get their wish for the establishment of a joint council of Ireland that would unite Ulster and the Republic of Ireland on such matters as tourism and transportation. The White Paper simply suggested that both governments get together to talk about the idea.

Some Protestant groups vowed to fight the proposals, although like most moderate Catholics they seemed prepared to enter the Assembly elections. But the anarchist Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army denounced the White Paper, saying that it left "no choice but to fight on."

Sure enough, at week's end the bloodletting resumed with what Belfast police could only describe as "a fiendish crime." Two girls struck up a conversation with four off-duty British soldiers in a bar, then led them off to an apartment in a Catholic district. One of the girls left, ostensibly to get more girls for the party. Instead, she returned with two gunmen. They forced the soldiers to lie face down on a bed, calmly raked them with bursts of submachine-gun fire, then fled with the girls. One of the soldiers was wounded; the other three raised to 756 the total known to have died in Ulster violence since 1969.

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