The Truce That Failed

The extended truce of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's 26-day holiday cease-fire came to an end last week. It marked Northern Ireland's longest period of nonviolence since "the troubles" began five years ago. The truce also underscored 1) how even such a short period of peace had almost miraculously transformed life in Ulster; 2) how far apart both sides remained in failing to find a way to make it last.

Despite widespread optimism that a way had been found at least to persuade the I.R.A. to extend last week's deadline, perhaps indefinitely, the Provisionals' bitter rejection of the truce re-emphasized the basic problems of the conflict itself. Neither the British government nor the I.R.A. ever seemed prepared to concede very much. The British diplomatic moves during the truce were tempered by fear of triggering a violent Protestant backlash while being drawn into a trap by the I.R.A. The government was also counting heavily on its judgment that the Proves were mainly intent on arranging a face-saving formula that would allow them to end a losing war. Thus Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees, despite repeated pleas for a "genuine and sustained" peace, refused to meet with members of the I.R.A.'s legal political wing, the Provisional Sinn Fein.

Sweet-Sour Strategy. The British response to the truce, in fact, was almost begrudgingly small. After holding out the hope of an eventual end to internment, Rees dismayed even moderate Catholic politicians by releasing only 25 prisoners (five of whom were Protestants) of the 533 still interned in the notorious Maze prison and offering three-day home leave to 50 others. Moreover, British authorities would not even consider British withdrawal from Ulster--the principal I.R.A. demand.

On the whole, however, Rees' sweet-and-sour strategy was approved by many Ulster loyalists, as well as by a Parliament whose mood has noticeably toughened since last November's Birmingham bombings, which took 20 lives. Commented the London Times: "The Provisional I.R.A. is of such a nature that it will be checked by one thing and one thing only--defeat."

Right Timing. By the end of 1974, moreover, the British army had stalemated the Proves in Northern Ireland. "Things had been going wrong," one I.R.A. leader told TIME Correspondent William McWhirter, "and the timing was right for a cease-fire." The only chance that it would succeed was a significant British concession on withdrawal. Failing that, the I.R.A.'s strategy for 1975 involved an intensified campaign of terror--not in Ulster, but in Britain.

Even so, Ulster had been able to return briefly to life as it once was. In Belfast, pubs and restaurants were jammed, and people who a few weeks before would not have ventured from their houses after dark queued up for the movies. The British army took its heavy personnel carriers, the hated "pigs," off the city streets, and Catholic and Protestant leaders sponsored a united drive to "think, talk, pray" peace.

There were even those who believed that peace would exert its own form of pressure on the Proves. "The consequences of the truce breaking down are too grim to imagine," one of the eight Protestant clergymen who helped to arrange the cease-fire said earlier last week. "If this fails, it will be a fight to the finish." With a vengeance that seemed to prove him right, the peace was shattered shortly after the I.R.A. announcement, by a bomb explosion at an army post in northern Belfast.

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