Royal Blitz in a Troubled Realm

Elizabeth shows the flag in Ulster

There were no casual "walkabouts," as she calls them, and no rides in horse-drawn open coaches past cheering crowds. Indeed, the only touring she and her husband Prince Philip dared was a short ride aboard an army Land-Rover specially fitted with a cocoon of bulletproof glass. Nonetheless, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II had reason to be pleased with her two-day Silver Jubilee visit to Northern Ireland. Racked by warfare between Protestants and Catholics for the past eight years, Ulster was girded for yet another round of violence, punctuated by what the militant Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army had said would be a "Jubilee bomb blitz to remember." Instead, a force of British soldiers, police regulars and reservists--beefed up to 32,000 for the occasion--managed to prevent any major bloodshed and allowed the Queen to turn her first visit in eleven years into at least a show of sovereignty over the most troubled province of her realm.

Before the royal yacht Britannia sailed through the morning mist of Belfast Lough, violence had already flared up. In Londonderry, the I.R.A. Provisionals claimed credit for a sniper's wounding of two soldiers, while in another Provo attack, a Belfast police reservist was shot in the leg and shoulder. Later, tensions mounted dramatically when a teen-age Catholic boy was shot and killed by an army patrol after he twice refused an order to stop throwing gasoline bombs into a lumberyard. The I.R.A. retaliated by shooting down a soldier guarding a bomb-disposal unit. The bloodshed, said an I.R.A. statement, was "the direct responsibility of Queen Elizabeth."

Hardly, but her timing might have been better. The day before her arrival marked the sixth anniversary of the start of internment, the unwise British detention plan that summarily imprisoned 2,000 suspected terrorists and thus served to heighten sectarian tensions in Ulster before the program was abandoned in 1975. The day after Elizabeth's departure was another big date in Ulster's calendar of conflict: the anniversary of the closing of Londonderry's gates in 1689 to prevent the forces of James II, the Catholic King of England, from entering. It was rioting touched off by this anniversary in 1969 that prompted the British to send in the army--which has been tied down in Ulster ever since. But the Queen could not be blamed for the timing of the trip. The scheduling was set by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Cabinet way back in 1975.

In any event, Elizabeth used her visit to note a different sort of anniversary. A year ago last week, Catholics Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan founded the so-called Peace People's Movement, which has attracted mass support from both Catholics and Protestants. The Queen pointedly invited the two women to a reception aboard the Britannia. Other royal events: a slow cruise on the floodlit yacht up the coast, which was crowded with onlookers, and an investiture ceremony at Hillsborough Castle at which she bestowed honors on 18 of her subjects.

For her last stop, the Queen visited the New University of Ulster at Coleraine. While I.R.A. bombs went off before and after Elizabeth's stay, a Provo threat to disrupt her time on campus proved to be a hoax. Elizabeth delivered a televised speech from the university, in which she urged Ulster's warring tribes to stop fighting ("violence is senseless and wrong") and to try to "work together in friendship and forgiveness."

While peace in the province is probably still years away, there have been some indications that both sides may be getting weary of the endless conflict. When Ulster's militant Protestant leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, called a general strike in Belfast last spring, it fell well short of disrupting the city's economy as intended. Among the Catholic minority, most believe that the security forces are gradually gaining control of the extremists. Most Catholics, moreover, now seem repelled by the Provisional I.R.A.'s cruel brand of hit-and-run, random terror. The latest example was a sniper attack that killed a British marine the day after the Queen departed. Ulster's fatality toll, after eight years of violence: 1,779. -

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