NORTHERN IRELAND: It is Clearly a War Situation

A political leader of “the movement “speaks on I.R.A. aims

“I.R.A.—I ran away!” With that derisive taunt, British troops arriving in Ulster ten years ago dismissed the threat posed by the remnants of the old Irish Republican Army. Their laughter died quickly after the birth of the Provisional I.R.A., whose cold-eyed gunmen began ambushing Protestant loyalist civilians, policemen and the newly arrived soldiers with ruthless efficiency. But a decade of Provo bloodshed, climaxed by the wanton murder of Lord Mountbatten in Southern Ireland last August, has eroded much of the I.R.A.’s support in the largely Catholic Republic. “They started well but now they’re Communists,” growled a Dublin workman over a pint of Guinness last week. “They don’t want Irish unity.

All they want is power, like the Ayatullah or Fidel Castro.”

Anti-I.R.A. attitudes have hardened in the Republic in the wake of the Mountbatten assassination, and police there appear to be having some success at curbing the guerrillas’ activities. Late in October, Dublin authorities seized a large shipment of contraband U.S.-made arms that included M60 machine guns, and last week they began the trial of two I.R.A. defendants charged with planting the bomb on Mountbatten’s boat. Though the two, Francis McGirl, 24, and Thomas McMahon, 31, are pleading innocent, detectives testified that they had traces of gelignite explosive material, sand and paint from the boat on their clothing.

Ireland’s Prime Minister Jack Lynch, meanwhile, arrived in Washington for talks with President Jimmy Carter, Congressmen and Irish-American leaders on the problems posed by the turmoil in Ulster, which indeed are beginning to show up in the U.S. Shortly before Lynch’s visit began, FBI agents in Philadelphia arrested I.R.A. Bomber Michael O’Rourke in Philadelphia on charges of illegal immigration. O’Rourke, who blasted his way out of a Dublin jail in July 1976, may request asylum, but Irish authorities have moved to have him extradited.

A united Ireland has always been the goal of the I.R.A., which looks on the six northern counties of Ulster as a beleaguered colony. While Ulster’s 65% Protestant majority clings to its ties with England, the I.R.A. remains a potent force among Ulster Catholics, who chafe at the constant surveillance of their impoverished neighborhoods by armed British soldiers.

According to British intelligence, the supreme leader of the Proves is Belfast-born Gerry Adams, 31, a sometime student and bartender who has spent 4% of the past nine years in prison without being convicted of a serious crime. In the past three years, the British say, Adams has honed the Proves into a deadly terrorist force. Despite their small numbers —there are only 600 to 700 gunmen, organized into cells of four to six men each —they manage to tie down 30,000 troops and police. A top British officer in Ulster says flatly: “Gerry Adams runs the I.R.A. in the North.”

Adams, a soft-voiced six-footer with spectacles and a brown beard, denies that he is the “mastermind” behind the new I.R.A. He claims that the British want to “personalize” their enemy and settled on him for the purpose. “No one man could have done everything they say I did,” he says. Yet he is clearly a top strategist in the Republican movement. Speaking officially as vice president of the Provisional Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Provos, Adams met TIME Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof in Ulster last week in the first interview he has granted to any U.S. publication.

On the Mountbatten murder: The I.R.A. gave clear reasons for the execution. I think it is unfortunate that anyone has to be killed, but the furor created by Mountbatten’s death showed up the hypocritical attitude of the media establishment. As a member of the House of Lords, Mountbatten was an emotional figure in both British and Irish politics. What the I.R.A. did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people; and with his war record I don’t think he could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war situation. He knew the danger involved in coming to this country. In my opinion, the I.R.A. achieved its objective: people started paying attention to what was happening in Ireland.

On the I.R.A.’s support: Clearly there is considerable support for the movement. The proof of this is that after a whole decade of war, the I.R.A. appears to be able to expand and escalate at will. It is obviously a small force fighting against tremendous odds and couldn’t even exist unless there was popular support for it.

On the charge that the I.R.A. will eventually attack the Irish Republic: The main aim of this phase of the struggle is to remove the British [from Ulster] and to create conditions where the Irish people, in a united Ireland, can establish social democracy with complete control over their own destiny. The movement wants to see the creation of a decentralized socialist state. Obviously, even the term united Ireland means that the government that has been set up in the Republic must come down. The working-class majority from Ulster—Protestants and Catholics—don’t simply want to be absorbed into a decadent state. The Republic has got severe economic problems: high unemployment and all the ills of an unjust society whose wealth is controlled by a very small group.

Obviously, that government has to come down, and they know it. Their interpretation is that the I.R.A. is trying to destroy them.

On whether the movement is Marxist: This is propaganda. The Republican movement has always been socialist in the Irish tradition of radical thinkers. It has never been a Marxist movement, and it is not one now. We are not enamored of what happens in the East bloc countries, and at the same time we don’t think democracy exists in the West. We would have a lot more in common with the Third World.

On links with other guerrillas: There have never been close ties between the Republican movement and the P.L.O., the Basques or any other revolutionary groups. Obviously, there are parallels, and we would express solidarity with their struggles for national liberation.

On the alternative to violence: Your country overthrew colonial rule because its people were forced to. Armed struggle is a response to what the Establishment is doing. The British soldiers come with weapons. They don’t come and say, “Let’s try to sort this out.” Their political masters don’t say, “Let’s try some other way.”

They use force, they use all the instruments of war. The I.R.A., as a manifestation of the people’s resistance, is a response to that.