Fatal Error

The Irish Republican Army turned to a new tactic in Northern Ireland last week: indiscriminate terror directed against the civilian population. The result was appalling panic in the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland's largest city. Forty persons were injured in a series of explosions that severely damaged the headquarters of the ruling Unionist party as well as a random selection of other targets: a clothing factory, an office building, a bacon plant. Along the border, a customs post was destroyed and a national guardsman was killed by gunfire from a speeding car. A 19-month-old girl was killed by a ricocheting bullet fired at an army patrol by a lone gunner.

All the terrorism was presumed to be the work of the militant "provisional" wing of the Irish Republican Army. Last week its estimated 200 guerrilla members in Belfast held the city of 400,000 virtually at ransom. Inevitably, the Protestant backlash began to take shape. The Ulster Special Constabulary Association, a body of 10,000 former members of the Protestant B Special police that were disbanded last year, held a mass meeting and called for the government to rearm them to protect Protestants.

Ungovernable Ulster. The I.R.A.'s growing fanaticism was underscored last week by one of its leaders, Joe Cahill, who has belonged to the I.R.A. for 27 of his 51 years (twelve of them in prison, including 71 years for the murder, with five other men, of an Ulster policeman in 1942). Easily slipping across the border from the north, Cahill showed up in Dublin, where he told newsmen that his organization intended to shoot as many British soldiers in Northern Ireland as possible.

Cahill left Dublin by jetliner for the U.S., where he planned a five-week trip to raise money for guns and ammunition. But on arrival at New York's Kennedy Airport, he was held by U.S. immigration authorities, who canceled his visa and detained him pending a hearing this week.

The only hopeful news during a week of rising anxiety was the announcement that Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath would meet with the Irish Republic's Prime Minister John Lynch in London this week. Lynch is expected to argue that Ulster is "ungovernable" under the present system, and to ask Heath to reconsider the Northern Ireland government's internment policy, which set UPI off the recent round of violence. Heath in turn will undoubtedly solicit Lynch's help in shutting off the flow of I.R.A. terrorists across the Eire-Ulster border-an ultimately impossible job for either London or Dublin. Last week the border itself figured in at least three serious incidents, one of which started with a British soldier's fatal error. TIME Correspondent John Shaw visited the frontier and sent this report:

Gaelic Sign. The 2,400 British troops trying to police the border have an almost impossible assignment. The frontier has no fences, no minefields, no walls, no guard towers. Officials are not even sure how long it is; their published estimates range from 250 to 303 miles. Twenty roads cross the frontier at authorized transit points, marked by British and Irish customs posts. An additional 160 "unapproved" roads also cross the border; passage along them is forbidden, but they are widely used for transporting everything from guns to butter, from whisky to gelignite. On the other hand, British troops have, by their own admission, strayed accidentally across the border 30 times in the past two years.

Last week, two British Ferret scout cars, each manned by a corporal, set off down an "unapproved" road south of the border village of Crossmaglen. Suddenly, when they saw a Gaelic sign on a schoolhouse, they realized they had gone too far. Turning swiftly back through the hamlet of Courtbane, they found the narrow lane blocked by a minibus and a crowd of jeering youths who poured gasoline over one of the scout cars. Moments later, as the vehicle blazed, a corporal scrambled out and jumped quickly into the other car. Finally, after 30 minutes of agonized waiting, the soldiers warned the crowd, "Move or we'll shoot," and managed to escape for the moment.

After driving north for some 300 yards, the two corporals stopped and climbed out to repair their tires, which had been punctured by barbed wire. They did not know that they were still ten yards inside the Irish Republic; at that place, the border is marked only by a stream winding through the tussocky green fields and pastures. Their ignorance was fatal. I.R.A. gunmen lying in ambush in the hedgerows opened fire. One corpora] was killed and the other seriously wounded.

"It was a bad business," said a farmer whose property straddles the border. "If I had known it was going to come to shooting, I would have told those two boys to drive on another little road." Such sentiments, however, are not common in the region. Irish troops and police were seen-and photographed-near the ambush site, but they did nothing. The I.R.A. congratulated the local villagers for "their courageous resistance to foreign occupation troops."

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