Fresh Pain

Elections offer little hope

It was not a promising start. As Protestants and Catholics alike prepared to cast their ballots for a new assembly in Northern Ireland last week, a streak of violence marred the occasion. David Wright, 61, was teaching a class of ten-year-olds in the border town of Newry when a man burst through the door, unwrapped a sawed-off shotgun, and shot Wright twice in the chest. The Irish National Liberation Army, a Marxist splinter group of the outlawed pro-Catholic Irish Republican Army, claimed responsibility for the attack. The next day James Molyneaux, leader of the Protestant Official Unionist Party, fled his headquarters in downtown Belfast minutes before a bomb planted by the INLA exploded. On the morning of the elections, Molyneaux barely avoided a fire bomb left by the same terrorist group on the windowsill of the house in which he was staying.

The results of the election itself were hardly more comforting. Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., made an impressive showing by picking up five of the assembly's 78 seats. It was the first time Sinn Fein had taken part in an election under its own banner in 20 years. Though the mainstream Social Democratic and Labor Party won 14 seats and thus remains the primary Catholic party, Sinn Fein's surprising performance indicated support for the I.R.A.'s violent ways. The Protestant parties, as predicted, captured most of the votes: the Official Unionist Party claimed 26 seats, while the smaller, right-wing Democratic Unionist Party, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley, won 21.

The outcome may not matter much, because, in a sense, the assembly was crippled from the start. Ever since British Prime Minister Edward Heath suspended the Protestant-dominated Parliament in Belfast in 1972, London has sought to restore a measure of self-government to the province. Under a plan prepared this year by British Secretary of State for Northern

Ireland James Prior, a 78-member assembly composed of Protestants and Catholics would gradually assume administrative and legislative powers. The plan requires that at least 70% of the representatives agree on each step toward home rule, thus in effect developing a Protestant-Catholic coalition.

Yet even before the balloting last week, the candidates of both Catholic parties had vowed to boycott the assembly's meetings. Without their participation, the newly formed body would not be able to meet Prior's key condition of "cross-community" involvement.

The strong showing made by Sinn Fein may pump new life into the I.R.A.

The group's popularity peaked in early 1981, after Bobby Sands and other I.R.A. members in Maze Prison went on a hunger strike in a bid to be classified as political prisoners. But by year's end, after Sands and nine other strikers had died, sympathy for the I.R.A. had faded and the strike was called off. So far this year, more than 500 suspected members have been arrested in police raids, and violence has dropped to its lowest level since 1970.

Though the election did not turn out to London's liking, Prior downplayed the results. "These are setbacks which have been present in Northern Ireland for centuries," he observed. "I don't expect to put them right in a year. We just go patiently on." Lord Gowrie, Prior's deputy in the province, pointed out that some accommodation must now be reached with the Catholics, perhaps by enlisting the aid of the Republic of Ireland.

But relations between Dublin and London have rarely been chillier: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has not forgiven Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey for trying to persuade other European nations to adopt a neutral stance during the Falklands war. Haughey, for his part, is angry that he was not consulted about Prior's plan and agrees with S.D.L.P. Leader John Hume that the assembly is "unworkable." After last week's elections, an idea that had meant to bind the wounds of a bloodied land instead seemed more likely to inflict fresh pain.

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