
Old scores are being paid off, but one should not underestimate the relief among ordinary families because there are no burnings or bombings. Three years of violence have left all kinds of pressures, bitterness and a desire for revenge among the militants. But he was unable to curb the national sport of murder. Last month he managed to arrange a truce that ended bomb ings and burnings. Whitelaw is a bluff man whose hearty manner conceals subtle nego tiating skills.
#Redhand of ulster how to
How to make sense out of this bizarre situation which seems to bal ance permanently on the edge of a cliff is the task of William Whitelaw, installed this year as Britain's Secre tary of State and, in effect, benev olent dictator of Northern Ireland. Also next week the bonfire season starts with each side stoking pyres within its tribal enclaves. Their noise is designed to encourage Protestants and frighten Catholics - and it does. Sturdy paraders from the Orange order will march behind their thun derous lambeg drums, not held ade quately played until the drummers' thonged wrists bleed. Next week the great Protestant holidays begin, honoring battles and sieges of the past. The moderate majority is disintegrating as atavistic hatreds take over. Here in Ulster, people are being unwillingly conditioned to a kind of lawlessness. murder and the U.D.A., burly in cam ouflaged jackets and military caps, hi jack buses to move their units and strut in their hundred per cent Prot estant warrens. Britain's Army, here as the token of law and order, is con strained to follow an unaggressive low‐profile policy while the I.R.A.

#Redhand of ulster full
Thanks to intimidation and burning down of nonconformist blocks, partial segregation is becoming full apartheid based on religion. Young Lads Join Fianna Eireann (a Catholic Republican society). If you drive through this drab capi tal now divided by steel and cement barricades erected by the Protestant Ulster Defense Association (U.D.A.), you get the mood through slogans smeared on building walls: No Sur render. Ulster's Red Hand reaches out for anyone. The only other Red Hand I know was a secret French terrorist organization that specialized in killing Algerian patriots. BELFAST-There is no more suit able national symbol than the Red Hand of Ulster, recalling an avid Celtic chieftain who chopped off his hand and heaved it ashore to claim this bloody land.
