Now It's Protestant Anger

As has so often happened in its dour and tragic history, bloody Ulster was politically divided last week. For a change, the most pressing quarrel was not between dominant Protestants and the Catholic minority, but among the Protestants themselves. The issue that split them was Britain's imposition of direct rule over Ulster.

The ideological and emotional crunch created by the takeover was typified by the maneuvering of Ulster's outgoing Prime Minister Brian Faulkner. Suddenly deprived of office by Britain's decision, he first denounced any attempt by Westminster to run Ulster like a "coconut colony." Faulkner also showed up at a huge rally in Belfast of nearly 100,000 Protestants, which was summoned by William Craig, leader of the extremist Ulster Vanguard. Faulkner's presence lent a patina of respectability to Craig's demand for a massive civil-disobedience campaign. Then Faulkner reversed himself. "We must respect the law," he said in a statement issued on his last day as Prime Minister. "I must earnestly urge that there should be no further disruption of industry or economic life."

It was a noble but faint hope. Even though divided as to what to do next, most of Ulster's 1,000,000 Protestants clearly felt betrayed by the prorogation of the Parliament at Stormont, through which they had used their 2-to-1 popular majority to discriminate against the Catholic minority for more than half a century. One Unionist M.P. summed up the general feeling at Stormont's emotional last session by quoting from Kipling's 1912 poem Ulster: "Before an Empire's eyes/ The traitor claims his price./ What need of further lies?/ We are the sacrifice."

No Protestant leader felt, or conveyed, that sense of betrayal more than Craig. He called for a two-day general strike, and in an impressive display of solidarity, 170,000 workers--notably not including police or civil servants --walked off their jobs last week. Belfast was closed up tight. Most of the electricity was shut off, telephone service was sporadic; and there were no buses, trains or mail deliveries. At one point "tartan gangs" of Protestant youths roamed through Belfast's streets, shouting curses in Catholic neighborhoods and in one case partially destroying a parochial school. The Protestant violence ended as abruptly as the strike itself, and Ulstermen returned to work next day.

Wild Card. Craig's aim is to compel London to reinstate Stormont and redraft a constitution ensuring Protestant control. "We are going to endeavor by all nonviolent means to make the British initiative unworkable," he declared last week in an interview with TIME Correspondent Marsh Clark. "We can burst the government." As a first step, Craig plans a rent strike by Protestant tenants of government-owned homes, and mass Protestant refusal to pay property taxes and utility bills. He is also considering the creation of an Ulster "provisional government"--a sort of government-in-exile-in-residence.

As if these threats were not ominous enough, there remained a wild card in Britain's gamble for peace: the I.R.A. A relative lull in its bombing campaign ended violently last week when a gelignite-loaded van exploded in the town of Limavady, demolishing the police station and several other buildings and killing two men who were driving by at the time.

Next day a series of bombs went off; one of them devastated a stretch of Belfast's Wellington Street and killed a British officer. Another 18 persons were injured in a blast in Lisburn, the site of British army headquarters.

In a Dilemma. The I.R.A., though, was clearly in a dilemma, and reports persisted of a split between some units in Ulster and the leadership south of the border over whether to declare a temporary truce. If the I.R.A. ceased bombing, it stood to lose momentum in its goal to drive the British out of Ireland entirely. If the I.R.A. continued, it could lose the support of Ulster's Catholics, whose immediate demands had been met by the end of the Stormont government, and by a British promise to begin releasing terrorist suspects who had been interned since last summer. "Very nearly 100% of the people in my area favor a stop to the bombing now," said John Hume, M.P. for Londonderry and a leading Catholic moderate.

Moving quickly last week, the British Parliament whipped through--with a majority of 483 to 18--the legislation making London's takeover of Ulster official. Among those who opposed the legislation were the Unionist M.P.s. As a last-minute gesture to Ulster's Protestants, the bill carried an amendment pledging no permanent change in Northern Ireland's status without the consent of its majority.

The debate also brought a respectful hearing for the Rev. Ian Paisley, who advocates full integration of Northern Ireland with Britain. Said Ulster's best-known Protestant preacher: "If we are realists, we will admit that it is easier to change half a million people than it is to change a million people. And there are a million people in Northern Ireland who want to remain part and parcel of the United Kingdom."

As soon as the bill was law, William Whitelaw, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland--"the Supremo of Ulster," as the newspapers dubbed him--flew by helicopter to Windsor to accept his seals of office from Queen Elizabeth, and then proceeded to Belfast. One of his first tasks, he promised Parliament, would be to review the files of the internees--numbering some 720--and free some of them.

Tea and Sympathy. Each batch of men freed will be guarantors for the next, and if violence tapers off, releases will be accelerated. "I must stress with the utmost force," he declared, "the basic simple principle that the sooner violence ends the sooner internment can be ended"--though he intends also to keep the power to intern others if necessary.

Following Whitelaw to Ulster were 600 more British troops, bringing the total number there to 15,000 men. They were sent to keep the peace during Ulster's traditional season of marching, which began last weekend with the Catholic commemoration of Dublin's 1916 Easter Rising, and ends with the Protestant parade of the Apprentice Boys of Derry in August.

In one of the many ironic turns of Ulster's modern history, the British troops were welcomed once again into the Catholic communities. Worried by the prospect of raids by armed Protestant vigilantes, Catholic women who screamed curses at the soldiers only a few weeks ago were again offering tea and sympathy to the Tommies.

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