New Plans for Sharing Power

But Catholic and Protestant politicians are equally skeptical

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher looked on pensively as her Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, presented the long-awaited document to the House of Commons. The 16-page paper outlined an ambitious government plan for restoring self-government to Ulster after roughly eight years of direct rule by Westminster and a decade of sectarian violence that has claimed more than 2,000 lives. Atkins guardedly insisted that the Thatcher government's initiative contained "grounds for some optimism. I detect that the leaders of the political parties really do want to find a way forward."

The new proposals call for an Ulster government to be composed of an executive branch and an 80-member Assembly, elected on the basis of proportional representation. Catholics make up about one-third of Ulster's population of 1.5 million. Since they would form a permanent minority in the Assembly, Atkins outlined two options for assuring them a voice in the executive branch: 1) Cabinet seats proportional to their strength in the Assembly, or 2) a Cabinet controlled by the Protestant majority but counterbalanced by a special Council of the Assembly, endowed with veto powers, on which the largely Catholic minority parties would have a guaranteed 50% representation. Westminster would retain direct control over security, most taxation, defense and foreign policy; but all other political powers would reside in the government of

Northern Ireland, as they did before the Stormont Parliament was suspended in 1972.

On the whole, initial reactions from Ulster's political leaders were not encouraging. The Official Unionists' craggy-faced leader, James Molyneaux, warned against adopting a "rigged Assembly" and reminded fellow M.P.s of the fate of a similar power-sharing plan that was wrecked by a Protestant-organized general strike in 1974. The Rev. Ian Paisley, the militant head of the Democratic Unionist Party, denounced any formula for sharing power with Catholics as "totally unacceptable." Nor were Catholics enthusiastic about the proposed guarantees. John Hume, Catholic leader of the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party, said only that he would be open to having further talks.

Leaders of the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland, ever faithful to their goal of Irish unity, also reacted cautiously to the limited home-rule plan. An official statement from Dublin welcomed the discussion of "possible solutions" but insisted on "closer political cooperation between the British and Irish governments" on the Ulster question. Some measure of cooperation actually began in May, when Ireland's Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey had a cordial meeting with Thatcher, at which the two leaders agreed to hold regular consultations. At that time, Haughey insisted that the Republic did not seek to annex the six northern counties "by force." He suggested that his government would even be willing to change certain articles of the Irish Constitution, such as one that prohibits divorce, in order to accommodate Ulster Protestants in an eventual unification agreement.

Most of Ulster's Protestants reject unification. Their longstanding distrust of the Catholic South has been intensified by continuing hit-and-run raids across the long, largely open border by Provisional Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) terrorists based in the Republic. In the border area of Newtownbutler alone, 51 Protestants have been shot by terrorists in the past few years. "It's as bad as Viet Nam here now," said a South Tyrone auto mechanic who had seen two co-workers gunned down by Prove hit men a week earlier. At an angry protest meeting in Newtownbutler last month, thousands of Unionists cheered as Paisley demanded that cross-border roads be sealed with mines and Molyneaux vowed that Protestants would "take whatever steps are necessary to protect ourselves."

That was apparently no empty threat.

Dublin intelligence sources claim that quiescent Protestant guerrilla groups are now back in operation. Indeed, Protestant "death squads" are suspected in the separate killings last month of two of Ulster's prominent Republican sympathizers, Landowner-Politician John Turnly, 44, and Queen's University Lecturer Miriam Daly, 45.

As the political violence continues, Ulster faces a steadily worsening economic crisis. Male unemployment is already running at nearly 15%, more than twice Britain's national average. Foreign investment has been difficult to attract, and the Thatcher government, grappling with Britain's own recession, is hardly able to fill the gap. Last week Atkins announced that the government would have to pump an additional $153 million into the ailing Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff in a last-ditch effort to save 7,000 jobs. British public expenditures in Northern Ireland, including the cost of security operations, average $3,200 a year for each of Ulster's 1.5 million inhabitants--a burden the government is anxious to lighten.

Westminster's desire for a speedy solution to Ulster's tragic and costly turmoil is reflected in Atkins' ambitious timetable: he plans to meet separately with the four main political parties in the coming weeks, reach a consensus on one of the proposed formulas by September and present a bill to Parliament before the Queen's speech in November. If the Ulster politicians cannot agree, as seems likely, the Thatcher government could submit its own plan to the people in the form of a referendum. That course runs the risk of further underlining the sectarian divisions in Ulster and might lead to a new round of bloodshed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.