A political leader of "the movement "speaks on I.R.A. aims
"I.R.A.—I ran away!" With that derisive taunt, British troops arriving in Ulster ten years ago dismissed the threat posed by the remnants of the old Irish Republican Army. Their laughter died quickly after the birth of the Provisional I.R.A., whose cold-eyed gunmen began ambushing Protestant loyalist civilians, policemen and the newly arrived soldiers with ruthless efficiency. But a decade of Provo bloodshed, climaxed by the wanton murder of Lord Mountbatten in Southern Ireland last August, has eroded much of the I.R.A.'s support in the largely Catholic Republic. "They started well but now they're Communists," growled a Dublin workman over a pint of Guinness last week. "They don't want Irish unity.
All they want is power, like the Ayatullah or Fidel Castro."
Anti-I.R.A. attitudes have hardened in the Republic in the wake of the Mountbatten assassination, and police there appear to be having some success at curbing the guerrillas' activities. Late in October, Dublin authorities seized a large shipment of contraband U.S.-made arms that included M60 machine guns, and last week they began the trial of two I.R.A. defendants charged with planting the bomb on Mountbatten's boat. Though the two, Francis McGirl, 24, and Thomas McMahon, 31, are pleading innocent, detectives testified that they had traces of gelignite explosive material, sand and paint from the boat on their clothing.
Ireland's Prime Minister Jack Lynch, meanwhile, arrived in Washington for talks with President Jimmy Carter, Congressmen and Irish-American leaders on the problems posed by the turmoil in Ulster, which indeed are beginning to show up in the U.S. Shortly before Lynch's visit began, FBI agents in Philadelphia arrested I.R.A. Bomber Michael O'Rourke in Philadelphia on charges of illegal immigration. O'Rourke, who blasted his way out of a Dublin jail in July 1976, may request asylum, but Irish authorities have moved to have him extradited.
A united Ireland has always been the goal of the I.R.A., which looks on the six northern counties of Ulster as a beleaguered colony. While Ulster's 65% Protestant majority clings to its ties with England, the I.R.A. remains a potent force among Ulster Catholics, who chafe at the constant surveillance of their impoverished neighborhoods by armed British soldiers.
According to British intelligence, the supreme leader of the Proves is Belfast-born Gerry Adams, 31, a sometime student and bartender who has spent 4% of the past nine years in prison without being convicted of a serious crime. In the past three years, the British say, Adams has honed the Proves into a deadly terrorist force. Despite their small numbers —there are only 600 to 700 gunmen, organized into cells of four to six men each —they manage to tie down 30,000 troops and police. A top British officer in Ulster says flatly: "Gerry Adams runs the I.R.A. in the North."