Word: whitelaw
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...tough new British policy was described by William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as an effort to "root out the I.R.A. and destroy their capacity for further acts of inhumanity." It was undoubtedly made practicable by the fact that Bloody Friday had enraged many Catholics as well as Protestants. Informants in Catholic neighborhoods tipped off the soldiers to the location of arms caches. One unit of the I.R.A.'s Marxist-linked Official Wing went so far as to denounce the Proves as "the enemy of the people...
Bitterly disappointed by the breakdown of the ceasefire, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw tried patiently to put it together again. To calm the anxieties of the Protestant community, ever fearful of being swallowed up by the Irish Republic, he emphasized that the province would remain a part of the United Kingdom "as long as the majority of the Ulster people want to keep the connection." He added flatly that he was not "out to let the gunman and the bomber...
...While Whitelaw was conferring with the Protestants, British Opposition Leader Harold Wilson talked to I.R.A. Provisional chiefs in London in hopes of working out a new ceasefire. But the government and the I.R.A. were nowhere near a compromise. The British insisted that Catholic "nogo" areas be opened gradually. The I.R.A. ambitiously demanded release and amnesty for political prisoners, a promise of British troop withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975, and some sort of British declaration that would not rule out the possibility of eventually merging Ulster into the Irish Republic...
...William Whitelaw rushed back to Belfast from London, condemning the I.R.A. attacks as "dastardly." A member of his staff added bitterly: "It looks like being a bloody Friday." In 21 bombings in Belfast that day, at least eleven people had been killed and 130 injured...
...proved we can do what we like in Londonderry. We are sick, sore and tired of being treated by the British government as little boys." Two days before the truce broke down, he was among the six Provo leaders flown secretly to London for talks with Ulster Proconsul William Whitelaw. Now, MacGuinness vowed, "we will not stop fighting until the Protestants and Catholics can live together without discrimination in housing, jobs or religion in a social, democratic and united Ireland. Protestant workers must realize they too are Irish and not British...