Once More, Terror in the Streets

In a new campaign, I.R.A. bombs kill three in London

IF YOU SEE ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS:KEEP CALM KEEP CLEAR DON'T TOUCH PHONE THE POLICE--DIAL 999

Travelers at London's Victoria Station eyed the police posters, stray bags and packages, and each other, then warily went about their business last week. On busy central London shopping streets, young bobbies stopped shoppers at random and asked to look at their packages and shopping bags. Big department stores were also making random searches of customers' parcels and pockets. Once again the I.R.A. was exploding bombs in London in random acts of terror.

After a telephone tip one day last week, police rushed to busy Oxford Street, the heart of London's main shopping district, where bombs were said to have been planted. Police Explosives Expert Kenneth Howorth, 49, a former army warrant officer who had tackled I.R.A. bombs in Northern Ireland, went into a Wimpy hamburger shop to defuse one of the bombs. It blew up in his face, killing him instantly. Another bomb, hidden in a rest room in a nearby department store, was successfully removed by an explosives expert, who had just heard the blast that he knew had killed his friend.

The attacks were the latest in a series that started on Oct. 10 when I.R.A. bombers blasted a bus carrying Irish Guards to their barracks, killing two civilian bystanders, injuring 22 soldiers and 16 other people on a Chelsea street. A week later, Lieut. General Sir Steuart Pringle, 53, commandant general of the royal marines, put his black Labrador, Bella, in the back seat of his red Volkswagen to take her to the park for a run. As he drove off, a bomb planted under the car exploded; Pringle survived but one of his legs was amputated. On a visit to the hospitalized Chelsea victims, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher condemned the attacks as "cold, callous, brutal and subhuman."

Last month the firm stand of Thatcher's government thwarted the seven-month hunger strike in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland by men seeking the status of political prisoners. Scotland Yard believes that now an I.R.A. gang of about half a dozen members has come to London to begin yet another bombing campaign. The hope of the I.R.A. is that bombings in Britain will keep their cause in the headlines and force the government to pull its soldiers out of Ulster. That scheme seems to have little chance of succeeding: When the I.R.A. tried similar tactics in the '70s, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds, police were able to track down and imprison more than 100 activists.

What's more, the current spate of bombings could hurt one of the most promising approaches to working out an eventual settlement in Ireland: the hopes of Garret FitzGerald, who became Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland in June, to pave the way for eventual unification of Ulster and the republic. FitzGerald would like to see the establishment of an Anglo-Irish council, including Protestant and Catholic representatives from Ulster and members of the British and Irish parliaments, to promote better relations between Britain, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. This week FitzGerald is scheduled to meet with Thatcher at 10 Downing Street. As they talk, Londoners will be nervously keeping an eye out for the parcel that could bring sudden death.

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