(5 of 6)
An all-Irish civil war is also feared by Eire's Prime Minister John Lynch, who decried the Derry killings as an "unprovoked attack on unarmed civilians." Just last month Lynch started a crackdown on I.R.A. gunmen who have been making raids across the border from hideouts in the Irish Republic. Two weeks ago, Eire police arrested seven gunmen after a shootout between the Provos and a British army patrol near the Ulster border at Dungooley. Faced with rising popular support for the I.R.A. in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Lynch will find it very difficult to continue his antiterrorist campaign. Instead, he recalled his ambassador to Britain for consultations, and dispatched Irish Foreign Minister Patrick J. Hillery to U.N. headquarters in New York, in hopes of pressuring the British there to change their policy in Ulster. "We do not intend to go to war," Lynch warned at week's end, "but the activities of British soldiers could lead to a war situation."
"Hitler Is Alive." Underscoring Lynch's fears was an outbreak of anti-British violence in Eire last week. As the country observed a day of mourning on Wednesday for the 13 Derry dead, a mob of Dubliners estimated at as many as 30,000 stormed and burned the British embassy in Merrion Square. Police stood by helplessly as petrol bombs rained down on the 18th century Georgian building, which had been vacated the previous day for fear of attacks. The crowd shouted "Burn, baby, burn!" when the roof caved in, and a placard read ADOLF HITLER IS ALIVE AND LIVING IN 10 DOWNING STREET. Lynch apologized for the in incident, which he said had been carried out by "a small minority" of subversives. He offered to reimburse the British government for the $255,000 in damages, but he could not promise to control the anti-British sentiment.
That feeling was running strong in the Republic all week long. A bomb damaged Dublin's monument to the Duke of Wellington. Airport workers refused to service British airplanes, forcing flight cancellations. Toward the end of the week a mob of more than 1,000 badly damaged the British Rail ways office in Cork with fire bombs.
Black Flags. To demonstrate Ireland's sense of solidarity with the Catholics in the North, five members of Lynch's Cabinet, as well as mayors of nine Eire cities, attended the mass funeral in Londonderry for the 13 victims of Bloody Sunday. Cardinal Conway presided over the hour-long service at St. Mary's Church. Outside, 10,000 mourners prayed in a bleak, icy rain. As the throng murmured in unison, "May the angels lead you into paradise, martyrs await your coming," a woman groaned, "No, no, no." "Jimmy, my lover boy," sobbed another woman, upon seeing one of the 13 identical hardwood coffins." He was only 17," moaned a third.
In town, all shops were closed, and from almost every window in the Bogside and Creggan ghettos black flags were displayed. In Stewartstown, some 50 miles away, a Catholic pub that stayed open was bombed and one man was killed — thereby raising to 234 the number of dead in Ulster since the summer of 1969. Mourners also marked the spots where the victims had fallen and died with flags, crude crosses and rosaries.