Word: armagh
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Died. William Cardinal Conway, 64, Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland and 112th pastoral descendant of St. Patrick; after surgery for removal of his gall bladder; in Armagh, Northern Ireland. Born in Belfast, Conway was spiritual leader for Ireland's 3.5 million Catholics, including Ulster's 500,000. The tall, husky Cardinal condemned the civil turmoil in Northern Ireland, calling both Protestant and Catholic terrorists "monsters...
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...
Responsible Protestant and Catholic leaders are pleading for restraint. "The blood lust which is ripping Armagh must be stopped before the whole of Ulster is engulfed by murder madness," said Thomas Passmore, Grand Master of Belfast's Orange Lodge. William Cardinal Conway, Ireland's Roman Catholic primate, described the Whitecross killings as "spitting in the face of Christ." Added a deeply pessimistic editorial in Dublin's Irish Times: "The headless horseman is driving Northern Ireland full tilt down the road to hell...
London's response to the new violence was swift and decisive. Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that some 600 troops from the crack Spearhead Battalion would be dispatched from England to South Armagh. In addition, 400 men of the predominantly Protestant Ulster Defense Regiment were deployed in the county. In a more drastic move, some 150 men of the elite Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) will be sent to Ulster. The dispatch of this counter insurgency strike force, which is specially trained to conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines, indicated that for the first time since the troubles began...