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His tip was confirmed by two twelve-year-old boys who had seen strange men carrying heavy cases into a vacant building. Detectives quietly swooped on the building and in a cobweb-hung cellar found 45 ammunition boxes and twelve larger cases containing Bren and Sten guns. Atop one case lay a loaded .38 revolver, its owner evidently having recently fled. In the city of Dublin next day, newspaper editors received an official communiqué from the I.R.A.'s "Adjutant General" Diarmid Macdiarmada reporting "a successful raid by a party of ten volunteers, all [of whom] have now been accounted for."*
The I.R.A. had lost its loot, but it had gained worldwide publicity for its cause. It had made a fool of the British Army, which sheepishly admitted that at Aborfield barracks "the only weapon the guards had between them was one pick handle and a four-foot piece of wood, [because] no arms were issued for guard duty." In London, Prime Minister Eden had a 45-minute special session with Field Marshal Sir John Harding, Chief of the Imperial Staff. The British were more worried than they cared to admit by the resurgence of the I.R.A.
The I.R.A.'s estimated strength is 5,000 men. Its units drill openly, sometimes within sight of Northern Ireland. Its declared intention is to terrorize Northern Ireland until authority crumbles. Last May, to demonstrate that it had support inside Northern Ireland, it contested every North Ireland constituency in the British general election, polled 150,000 votes out of 650,000 cast. Two of its candidates, both prisoners of the Omagh raid and now in British jails, were elected, and the House of Commons (which does not admit felons) was later forced to unseat them. The jailed Sinn Feiner, who recontested his seat, was returned with a tripled majority. Irish societies everywhere are once again raising funds for the I.R.A., e.g., the United Irish Counties Association in New York last week unanimously voted $25,000 for the defense of the three men arrested in the Aborfield raid.
Opposition in the North. To curb I.R.A. terrorism, Northern Ireland has a Royal Constabulary of 3,000 regulars and a Special Constabulary of 11,000 volunteers, mostly farmers and shopkeepers. More perhaps than at any time previously, Northern Ireland seems determined to resist union by force. The country's 500,000 Protestants cite the Republic's 1937 Constitution, which gives the Roman Catholic Church "a special position . . . as the guardian of the faith," as evidence that in a united Ireland they would be a religious minority, and subject to pressure, if not persecution. They are supported by the British who feel, on the basis of Eire's determined neutralist record in World War II, that a united Republican Ireland would constitute a serious hindrance to British security in any future war.