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Halfway House. Appearing on television, Chichester-Clark denounced "sinister elements — anarchists and others" for starting the fighting. Two days later, voicing the deep Protestant suspicion that any British help would lead to a loss of majority control, he warned Parliament: "Those who cry so loudly for British intervention see it as a halfway house to the long-sought goal of an Irish Republic."
Nonetheless, it became clear that the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which numbers only 3,000 men, was incapable of restoring order. The hasty call-up of 11,000 police auxiliaries only worsened matters; Catholics consider them little more than armed Protestants. Finally Chichester-Clark had an urgent telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Breaking off a vacation at his Scilly Islands retreat, Wilson helicoptered to a Royal Navy base in Cornwall for a three-hour conference with Home Secretary James Callaghan, who holds responsibility for Ulster.
Though he was well aware that Irish politics proved the graveyard of many a 19th century British government, Wilson reluctantly moved 300 troops into Londonderry, followed by an airlift of 600 to Belfast. By week's end, with the "full consent" of the Ulster government, an additional 1,000 British reinforcements were put on alert to move into Northern Ireland. Ulster, for all intents and purposes, had turned itself over to the foreign peacekeepers.
The most immediate problem was to restore order. There were hints that Chichester-Clark might decide to invoke Northern Ireland's Special Powers Act, which could enable police to undertake mass arrests and detentions. At best, however, such wholesale roundups could lead to nothing more than a temporary cooling-off period. At worst, since most police are Protestants, they could simply compound Catholic panic and resentment. Britain's direct involvement in its new Irish "troubles," belated and reluctant as it was, provided the only measure of relief. That involvement may well increase substantially, and perhaps indefinitely, before any kind of normalcy can return to sundered Northern Ireland.