No More Parades

By far the most visible of Britain's detention camps in Ulster for suspect members of the Irish Republican Army is H.M.S. Maidstone, a former submarine supply ship anchored in Belfast's harbor. One evening last week, seven prisoners sawed their way through porthole bars, lowered themselves into the icy water by knotted bed sheets and swam ashore. The fugitives hijacked a bus, drove into the market area of Belfast and vanished from sight.

That was by far the most spectacular escape since the Ulster government invoked the Special Powers Act last August to crack down on the I.R.A. terrorists. Suspecting another breakout of internees, 1,200 British troops and 60 police made an intensive search of the Long Kesh camp near Belfast, where 500 I.R.A. suspects are detained. The search uncovered hacksaws, chisels, wire cutters, counterfeit money, three imitation tommy guns carved from wood, cosh-like steel pipes--and four gallons of still fermenting poteen (moonshine whisky mash).

Aided in part by information from Catholics who are fed up with the terrorists' bombing attacks, the government of Prime Minister Brian Faulkner has stepped up the internment campaign. So far this year, 250 suspects have been rounded up, as many as had been detained in the previous three months. Among the new prisoners are three key officers of the Belfast I.R.A. command. There are now so many suspects in detention that Britain recently opened up a fourth camp near the Irish Republic border, and British officers are confident that they are gradually winning the war against the gunmen. "The rate of attrition is steadily increasing," says Faulkner. "The I.R.A. is being crippled."

But the terrorists still have some sting. Last week a Protestant bus driver who was scheduled to testify at a trial of three gunmen was shot dead at his own front door. A British soldier was also killed by a mine on border patrol. His death was the 214th since British troops arrived in Ulster in 1969 to try to keep the peace between Ulster's quarreling Protestants and Catholics. The continuation of terror makes it less and less likely that Faulkner's Stormont government can ever find a political solution for Northern Ireland on its own.

Policy of Terror. Last week Faulkner took the calculated risk of ordering a one-year continuation of a ban on all public demonstrations. In Ulster, parades are both extremely popular and the cause of sectarian clashes. The decree infuriated Catholics--at week's end they staged two protest marches halted by troops using tear gas --as well as Protestants. "The government has capitulated to the policy of terror!" cried the Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of many militant Protestants. "The I.R.A. has won." There were some suggestions that the I.R.A., for its part, might try a new tactic by organizing illegal parades of Catholics to test the ban and the government's will. The result might well mean more bloody clashes between the warring sects, the need for still more British troops to maintain order, and more trouble for a land that has trouble enough.

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