Word: stormont
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...long time, the I.R.A. was winning. By 1972 it had bombed the Protestant Unionist Government at Stormont out of existence. Indeed, only seven months ago, the Proves were still, in the words of one Ulster politician, "on the pig's back." They, more than any other group, held the key to peace or war. Britain's Secretary for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, was dealing with them as a major power, flying them to London in an R.A.F. plane for secret political talks. MacStiofain even got the British to release an internee from prison camp to join the I.R.A...
...guidelines to its own thinking on what provisions a new Ulster constitution might contain. Westminster strongly favors some form of regional assembly in Belfast; it does not approve of a revamped provincial Parliament dominated by a Cabinet-such as the one through which the Protestants ruled Northern Ireland from Stormont. And Britain does not want the full integration of Ulster into the United Kingdom in the manner of Scotland and Wales. A regional assembly could be modeled along the lines of the Greater London Council, with various assembly committees-some headed by Catholics-administering the province's financial, social...
Embarking on what he privately admitted was a "frightening gamble," Whitelaw set up offices in gargoyled Stormont Castle, and held an exhaustive series of meetings with everyone from Unionist politicians to Catholic housewives whose admiration for the I.R.A. was diminishing under the endless violence. Visitors reported that the Scots-born Whitelaw had at least one Irish trait, "the gift of the gab." He proved it two weeks ago by persuading a party of masked Protestant vigilantes to unmask and be comfortable in his office...
...wave of terrorism was a setback for William Whitelaw, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the eight weeks since he had been sent to Belfast to replace the suspended provincial parliament at Stormont, Whitelaw had pursued a policy of conciliation and persuasion. He ordered the release of 306 interned Catholics who were being held without trial in prison camps under Ulster's Special Powers Act, and instructed British troops to avoid incidents in Catholic areas. He also allowed to remain standing the barricades set up and manned by the I.R.A. in the "no go" Catholic...
...violence. For nearly a month since Britain's takeover of direct rule, Ulster's Catholics had wavered between supporting the outlawed Irish Republican Army and coming to terms with the British. But the nascent good will toward London for replacing the hated Protestant-dominated Parliament at Stormont was clearly a fragile feeling. Almost any incident could spark a renewed flare-up of hatred in the Catholic community-and last week, with a certain inevitability, that flare-up was touched off. By a single death, the I.R.A. gained a martyr, and the British were put on the verge...