Paisley Led but Few Workers Followed

"The British government won't know what has hit it," boasted Andy Tyrie, "supreme commander" of the Ulster Defense Association, Northern Ireland's largest Protestant private army (estimated membership: 5,000 to 10,000). "We've had seven years of violence, and unless we act now, we'll have to put up with the I.R.A. for another seven years."

In fact, killings and bombings by the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army have been cut drastically this year. That did not stop the militant Protestant followers of the Rev. Ian R.K. Paisley, the working-class rabble-rouser who is as contemptuous of what he calls the "bluestocking brigade" (the middle-class Protestant Establishment) as he is of "old red socks" (the Pope). Last week Paisley and his "loyalists" in the United Unionist Action Council called a general strike, Northern Ireland's first in three years, to force the British to renew tough search-and-destroy operations against the terrorists in the Catholic districts and reinstate the majority-rule (meaning Protestant-dominated) provincial Parliament in Belfast. The earlier strike had led to the fall of the provincial government and caused Britain to impose direct rule. This time, however, it was a different story. At week's end it seemed clear that the strike had failed utterly to obtain its goals. The vainglorious act of defiance might even be Ian Paisley's last stand.

The strike was called at midnight Monday. Next morning, Protestant thugs in Belfast turned out to terrorize shopkeepers, block roadways and telephone anonymous threats to workers who went to their jobs. They poured sugar in gas tanks, fired shots at a school bus and bombed a rail line. When Mairead Corrigan, leader of the Women's Peace Movement, appeared to wage a counterprotest, they tore up her pacifist placards. Among the opponents of the strike who were subjected to "U.D.A. persuasion" was Thomas Passmore, the leader of the Protestant Orange Order in Belfast. Passmore, whose aged father had been shot dead by the I.R.A. last year, complained bitterly, "My own home has already suffered at the hands of the I.R.A. Am I now to suffer at the hands of the so-called loyalists?"

Gloomy Castle. Warning of "bloodshed" in the streets and of "dreadful repercussions" if he was arrested, Paisley--dressed in black clerical garb --led pickets outside the gates of Stormont, the seat of government in the province. Nearby, at the gloomy, old Stormont Castle, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, a tough ex-miner, calmly directed security operations. The 14,500 British troops in Northern Ireland were placed on alert, and 2,000 more were flown in, but order was maintained by the Ulster police force. The Secretary kept a low profile, although he did send Paisley a letter that ended angrily: "You are playing the I.R.A. game and you should realize it." By way of reply, Paisley denounced "that little man Mason."

The British government was convinced that Paisley and his paramilitary supporters were setting out to make a Rhodesia-style unilateral declaration of independence. Although Paisley and his allies denied that their goal was an independent Ulster, the strike was as much a threat to moderate Unionist leadership in the province as to Westminster. One former British Cabinet Minister who knows the province well said last week, "Paisley has always, in the back of his mind, thought of himself as the first president of a working-class Ulster Republic."

Alas for Paisley, his chances now seem dimmer than ever. On the first day of the strike, 30% of Protestant workers in Belfast stayed away from their jobs; by the third day, the absentees had dropped to 10%. Employers and trade union leaders agreed with Mason that a prolonged strike could only bring deeper recession to the province, where one worker in ten is already unemployed. At week's end the electric power workers, who could have paralyzed most of Northern Ireland's industry, announced they had voted to stay on the job.

Paisley fell far short of his vow to bring Belfast's economy to its knees. Earlier in the week he had told his followers, "I am only remaining in politics to see this thing through. If it fails, then my voice will no longer be heard." He may be right about that. For once, Northern Irelanders seemed to have demonstrated, even to themselves, that militant sectarian zealots can be defied. An aide to Roy Mason predicted that the strike's failure "could be a watershed" in the province's bloody history.

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