remained, there was no possibility of any sizeable section of the Catholic community taking these promises seriously. Stormont had to go.
But the British hoped that the suspension of Stormont would be limited to one year. In that year they hoped to isolate and destroy the IRA, and lay the basis for a new settlement in the North, which would be acceptable to the Green Tones in the South and the SDLP in the North.
The removal without fanfare of General Tuzo, the British equivalent of General Westmorland, was the writing on the wall; the final acceptance by the British that they were not going to achieve their immediate aims by the tactic of Whitela wism; the recognition that the IRA was not destroyed, and that this meant the inability of the British Army to bourgeoisie within the one-year time table which had been laid down.
THREE-CARD TRICK Thea, Whitelaw's planned March White Paper could not deliver the promised goods. The White Paper must double-cross one or other of the three main Irish props of Whitelawism, the Green Tores in the South, the SDEP in the North, or the moderate Unionists.
By neforming the Ascendancy while protecting the Union (its original intention) moderate Unionists and the SDLP could be satisfied. But on the question of implementing the proan end to internment and the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.
mised "Irish Dimension" of the Green Paper, i.e. gradual steps towards Irish unity, either Lynch or the SDLP or the moderate Unionists must be disappointed.
The SDLP is the least important in this three-card tnck. As Whitelaw himself has said privately, who would buy a used White Paper from Gerry Fitt? But the co-operation of Lynch is essential.
Lynch had been threatened and cajoled into throwing his weight behind the British Army in this period - introducing the Offences Against the State Act (Amendment) 1972, in an attempt to finally smash the IRA. But before Lynch's helping hand could begin to bite we had the escalation of the sectarian Some of those who marched to British Government Office in Toronto on first anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" demanding killings. • These killings, originally instigated by the British SAS as part of a policy of intimidating the Catholics, without the British Army getting the blame for it, took on a momentum of their own, as plebeian sections of the Orange-Ultras joined in the game in a desperate orgy, attempting by these politics of despair to save the Protestant Ascendancy. EFFECT OF KILLINGS The killings in turn swung decisive middle-aged sections of the Catholic population back behind the IRA, and therefore endangered Lynch, who could not afford to be seen stabbing in the back the defenders of the Catholic ghetto areas, while the killings COMERICa. horse on this issue, James Wellbeloved, to call for the withdrawal of "our boys", while at the same time protecting himself against allegations of being an anti-imperialist by referring to the dangers our boys have to face from the "savages" on both sides. SERIOUS DANGERS However half-hearted this demand, it contains serious dangers for Whitelaw. The shifting by the Tribunites could easily provoke a movement by Harold Wilson to break bi-partisanship on Ireland and in turn precipitate a stampede in Britain for the withdrawal of troops, leading to the antiwar and solidarity movements of thousands gaining the strength of millions, and even reaching such proportions as to threaten to rend the fabric of British society on this issue.
Revolutionary socialists involved in rallying aid for the struggle in Ireland must, in the next crucial weeks, be sensitive to these possibilities and prepare now the initiatives to gather and organise this potential. This means organising support for the conference called by the Anti-Internment League for the week-end of 12-13 May to raise the question of the role of the British troops in Ireland inside the British trade union, labour and student movements. * Tagh: English settler racialist term used by Ulster Protestants to describe Catholics: derived from Be tagh, native Irish hewer of wood and drawer of water, circa 16 - 17th Century.