Word: armagh
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even by Ulster standards, it was a crime of surpassing brutality. Early Monday evening a red minibus was routinely carrying twelve workers home from their jobs at the John Compton Ltd. textile factory in violence-ridden South Armagh (TIME, Jan. 12). Suddenly, just outside the village of Whitecross, the bus was stopped by a group of masked, heavily armed men. The workers and their driver were lined up against the vehicle, and the lone Roman Catholic among them was sent away. The rest, all Protestants, were then gunned down in a withering hail of automatic fire. Ten died instantly...
Gruesome Weight. The next day an anonymous caller telephoned the Belfast Telegraph and, in the name of the South Armagh Republican Action Force-a branch of the Provisional Irish Republican Army-claimed responsibility for the killings. They were carried out, the caller said, in retaliation for the assassination the previous night of five Catholics, apparently by Protestant extremists. In what constitutes sad testimony to the endless cycle of terror and reprisal in Ulster, those murders were, in turn, thought to be in retaliation for three recent pub bombings by the Provisional I.R.A. that killed three and injured...
Little Hope. Such attitudes have led the I.R.A. to call South Armagh an "independent republic." Its capital is the dingy farm hamlet of Crossmaglen...
British officials privately admit they see little hope of ever bringing South Armagh under control, and they doubt that Catholics who support "the boys" will be impressed even by such a major British gesture as London's recent decision to abandon its hated internment policy in Northern Ireland. "Militarily, it's a no-win situation," admits one official...
...army is in County Armagh for one reason only-there is no way it can leave without creating a storm in the House of Commons." Just as the U.S. Army learned in Viet Nam, the military's very presence in the area has helped to alienate local residents and broaden support for "the enemy." Says Paddy Short, a ruddy-faced bartender in one of Crossmaglen's pubs: "They're an army of occupation and we're an occupied country. We're not pro I.R.A., we're just anti-British. We hate them, and nothing...