With a ferocity that surprised even its own leaders, the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army was being hunted down last week not only in Ulster, where the I.R.A. has been on the defensive for some time, but in the Irish Republic and England as well. In part, the crackdown was a response to the widespread outrage that followed the pub bombings in Birmingham last month in which 21 people were killed and another 184 injured (TIME, Dec. 2). The campaign included arrests in Ulster and Britain of suspected I.R.A. supporters and a comprehensive new criminal bill in the republic aimed specifically at the Proves' gunmen. Even in the U.S., there was renewed scrutiny of arms funding through I.R.A.-front organizations. Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, bluntly summed up the new mood when he pledged: "There will be relentless pursuit of criminals — and no amnesty."
> In Britain, where Parliament recently passed emergency legislation out lawing the I.R.A. throughout the country and permitting authorities to arrest I.R.A. suspects without warrant, a newly formed police squad made its first significant headway against I.R.A. bomb units. Police arrested eleven suspects who were accused of involvement in the October bombing of a Guildford pub in which five died; six of those arrested were charged with murder. Of the five I.R.A. terrorist cells that the British believe are operating in England—two in London and three in the Midlands cities of Birmingham, Luton and Coventry —authorities think that one and perhaps two have been broken up by the arrests. Parliament, meanwhile, voted down by a margin of 369 to 217 a proposal to restore hanging as capital punishment for terrorists, although the final vote, as Home Secretary Roy Jenkins acknowledged, was "probably at variance with public opinion and dangerously so."
> In Dublin, the government proposed a new criminal-law bill that, amazingly enough, provides for trial in Ireland of any person charged with terrorist offenses in Ulster or elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The bill is chiefly designed to discourage the I.R.A. from using the republic as a secure haven for its attacks on the North.
> In Belfast, the British campaign to cripple the I.R.A. intensified. At least 16 suspected Proves were arrested in the bloody Ardoyne area. Police also raided a house in the Roman Catholic Lower Falls Road area and uncovered what they claimed was a central I.R.A. "factory" for explosives: fire bombs wired to watches and American-made booby traps as well as arms and ammunition. More important, they found and arrested Tommy Maguire, one of the Provisionals' top explosive experts, who had been at large since he escaped from Belfast's Crumlin Road jail four years ago.