The Blue Skies of Ulster ...

"The dark eleventh hour draws on and sees us sold, To every evil power we fought against of old. "

Kilrea, Co. Derry lies fifteen miles south of Coleraine and almost exactly halfway between Belfast and Derry city. It is a small market town with a population of 1500 people and an electoral ward of 3,000. The Troubles notwithstanding, Kilrea continues to function successfully as a market town and on the average Wednesday the liveestock sales will handle approximately 600 cattle and 500 pigs.

It is the sort of town where on a Friday afternoon the majority of a bank's clientele will be wearing muddy welllingtons and even muddier trousers. The big, strong farrmers who come into the bank to lodge their money tend to look and feel uncomfortable when faced with even the minimal bureaucracy of a bank. In Kilrea's Northern Bank nobody actually gets in we and forms a queue at the cashier's window, rather Hie idea as soon as you are in the bank is to hang back against the wall and concentrate hard on your wellies. When the cashier calls "Next please", it is time for a nervous glance up from the wellies and if nobody moves, then you shuffle ove; to the cashier's window.

Compared to surrounding towns like Bellaghy, Magherafelt, Moneyrnore, Kilrea's Protestant community has not been the hardest hit by the Troubles of the last 12 years. The main street in the town has been bombed so often that less than a third of the original buildings still stand. But, however bitterly such bombing may be resented, it did not claim lives. Magherafelt, by contrast, is the town where the killing of RUC Reservist, John Proctor, on September 14th, as he came out-of the Mid-Ulster Hospital having visited his wife and new born baby, provoked intense anger in the Prootestant community. It was at Proctor's funeral that the Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, Dr. Mehaffey, stated:

"The gunmen represent the tip of the iceberg and they can only succeed when there is a wide range of sympathy and support in the community. When murder is committed", such as we have seen in the last few days, many people are indicated, not just the one who pulls the trigger."

In Kilrea bombs have meant frustration and hassle, but buildings can be and have been rebuilt. Althoughthe town is predominantly Protestant, the surrounding countryside is predominantly Catholic. Since the town's traders depend on the farming community, it is hardly surprising that the claim that their clientele is equally divided between Catholics and Protestants. Kilrea is far from West Belfast in the sense that the two communiities do not go entirely different ways. Catholics and Prootestants still live on the same housing estates, Protestants still drink in Catholic pubs and Catholics still use Protestant shops. Most importantly, Catholic and Protestant farmers trade with one another every Wednesday.

There are thus reasons to suggest that the Protestants of Kilrea might be just the sort of Protestants whom the Taoiseach is hoping to attract with his constitutional cruusade. If such is the case, then the Taoiseach is likely to be disappointed. George McIlrath, Official Unionist Mayor of Coleraine, but a native of Kilrea and the town's livestock auctioneer and real estate agent puts it simply:

"Not at all, Dr. FitzGerald's crusade won't make any difference. As far as 'we in the party are concerned, he is only stating what we have always thought - that the South is a sectarian state. Certainly he is very courageous to say what he says, and I admire him for it, but it won't change anyone's thinking."

Amidst the confused and contradictory attitudes expresssed by Protestants to Magill, two facts emerge clearly, there are at least two points of entire agreement. Namely that Protestants do not want a United Ireland, and secondly that Protestants loathe the Provos. Antipathetic reactions to either term are almost Pavlovian in their unanimity. Apart from these staggeringly obvious considerations, there seems to be no consensus view as to the future of the Northern Protestants. A devolved government or full integration with the UK, the return of Stormont or another power-sharing assembly, further economic co-operation with the Republic or an independent Ulster, all are mentioned as possible opptions. But one thing is clear to Protestants in Kilrea - before there is any progress in any direction the Provo miliitary campaign will have to cease. Protestants perceive the killings of members of the security forces as nothing less than sectarian attacks on their own community. From the Protestant viewpoint there is nothing legitimate about any aspect of the Provos operations and therefore the idea of "legitimate military targets" is about as foreign to them as are the fundamental tenets of Zen Buddhism.

George McIlrath again: "At the moment we are against a dark wall. But of this I am sure, no British government will ever sell us out ... The Irish Republic has shown no desire to join Nato and their neutrality would mean that in the event of a united Ireland, there would be a great danger of Northern Ireland becoming a Russian stronghold. No Brii·tish governmeat would want that."

At least one of McIlrath's neighbours, a Protestant shoppkeeper who has seen his premises blown up on two occassions is less sure:

"I am not at all interested in FitzGerald's initiative.

There was a time, before all this bombing and killing, when. I would have been interested, but not now. There is no way that I would ever put my vote to a United Ireland ... But as for Thatcher, I think that she would sell us down the river without even a cough. The British government has never made a really big effort to defeat the terrorists, and Prior is just another of them, a clucking hen come over here to sit on his eggs ... I accept that Catholics have this idea in their heads of a United Ireland, and I am quite happy for them to vote me into a United Ireland, but I am not going in at gunpoint."

When it is suggested to Kilrea Protestants that the Provos can never be militarily defeated since they . have considerable support in the Catholic community, the point is taken. But the attitude is generally a shrugging of the shoulders and statements to the effect that we will have to sit tight and see it through. The Troubles are here to stay. An RUC man who has seen service all over the proovince and who knows the Kilrea area well, further reflects the confusion of a community under siege:

"At times I think that the vast majority of people have accepted that a United Ireland is on the way, in ten or in fifteen years . . . In ways, a United Ireland would be like starting life all over again. I know Killarney quite well, and I would love to be stationed as the local policeman there, but I know that. it would not happen. If I woke up toomorrow to find that we were now in a United Ireland, I would not wait, I would be on the first boat out of here. I would not want to resign, but the situation would be like 1921/22 again, I would not be safe ... It's not that I feel either I or the RUC have anything to answer for, but there have been things which have been done recently by the UDR for which I would not care to be held accountable. On top of that I cannot deny that prior to 1968, the RUC was politically manipulated by Stormont."

But the general confusion of Unionism is reflected in the way that, although this RUC man can see a United Ireland coming to meet him, he still finds it hard to believe that Britain will ever relinquish control over Northern Ireland.

"There is no way that Britain will give up the North.

The coastline, and the possible wealth of the sea, in oil terms, around that coastline, mean that they will cling to the North ... There is also the fact that although the Civil Rights movement clearly had genuine grievances, it was manipulated from the word go by a little tentacle of commmunism, by the godfathers of international socialism, the Gadaffis of this world. Ulster is only a stepping stone . . . As for Dr. FitzGerald's crusade, sure nobody here is paying any attention to it at all."

The intensely conservative nature of Unionism, particuularly rural unionism, regularly expresses itself with the obbservation that somehow, somewhere Ulster's problems were and are manipulated by sinister international forces of evil, who seem to have sprung straight out of a John Buchan novel. No one can prove the point, but the conviction reemains. As does the other ever recurrent observation about getting back to pre-1968 days when everything was hunky . ory, more or less. But was it?

The. predominantly Catholic town of Swatragh is near Killrea. The elections for the newly formed state of Northhern Ireland were two weeks old and the Stormont parliaament not yet opened by King George V, when a Staff Sergeant Michael Burke from Swatragh barracks was killed in an IRA ambush on June 5th, 1921. A candle had been carefully left in a window so that the passing police patrol would be silhouetted against the light. In his book, Guns in Ulster, Wallace Clark, a former member of the Ulster Speccial Constabulary and a member of the family which held command of the Maghera district of the Specials throughhout their existence, describes the reaction of the police to Burke's killing:

"Those in Upperlands (less than three miles away from Swatragh) had no knowledge of what was going on and had come to the conclusion that the "B" party had probably all been killed. The Maghera sergeant sat in the back of the car with a repeater shot gun and during these runs sprayed ~ the windows of the houses in Swatragh as the cars passed through". (P.37)

During the night RUC reinforcements arrived in Swattragh and on the next morning a rounding up operation was manned.

"A sweep was planned for the next morning, and as the Crossleys drove up the Corlecky road a man half-dressed was seen running out the back of a house. He was promptly captured, and another man from nearby as well. Though threatened with instant shooting they refused to give any information." (P.37)

Even after the turbulent days of 1921/22/23, all was not quiet in the area. On July 11, 1938 there were serious "reliigious" riots in Maghera when over 300 people from Draperrstown attacked Maghera Barracks and attempted to remove Orange decorations from the town. During the war and again in the late fifties, there were sporadic attacks on RUC barracks in the region. On the night of 11th December, 1956, the IRA bungled ten different simultaneous operations. The RUC and the Specials suffered no casualties but were taken by surprise. Clark describes the community's feelings at the time:

"Even the most unimaginative during the nights that followed must have sensed the tension over the whole countryside as thousands of pairs of eyes stared into the darkness on the lookout for the enemy. Every loyal man or woman in Ulster seemed to contribute his or her share to the total sum of watchfulness." (P.100)

Children in Kilrea inherit this sense of divided commmunity. This year's class of ten year olds in Kilrea's Protestant primary school have their own explanations as to why Northern Ireland is separate from the Republic of Ireland. People in the North, they felt, do not like people in the South; Catholics would be ruling everyone .in the North if they took over; People in the North put more Catholics in' prison than Protestants and therefore Catholics do not like the Northern state. '

Half of the class of 24 ten year old boysand girls had been to the South at least once, many of .them several times: Their travelling had been comprehensive - Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Limerick, Monaghan, Sligo and even Stradbally, Co. Laois. They felt that the South was different because: They are all Catholics there; they don't like being ruled by the English government; the South is a nice country, the people were friendly, but they were diffferent.

When asked why, half a mile down the road, Catholic boys and girls of the same age were in a different school, the children's answers were-again frank - They are taught different things; they have different history and religious education; they do not have the same bible as us; they do not say the Lord's Prayer. Yet many of these young Prootestant children play with their Catholic neighbours every afternoon after school.

Significantly, although the children had a high level of politicisation in that they knew who various politicians were and what the parliamentary groups stood for (''([he Provos want a United Ireland"), they had not heard of the Fi!zGerald crusade. Indeed most of the children only knew the Taoiseach as "Somebody" FitzGerald. Likewise they seemed to be totally unaware of and indifferent to the fact that the laws in the two countries were different. One boy did think that the laws in the South were different, but he was not sure in what respect.

Several of these children, whose numbers have been halved over the last eight years as families have moved for economic/job rather than intimidation reasons, were the sons and daughters of farmers. In a sense farming is the proofession, least affected by the Troubles and one that would transfer most easily to the All Ireland state. The land around Kilrea is similar to land throughout Ireland. There is a limited amount of prime arable land and most farming is mixed - some pigs, some cattle; some grain, mostly barley, and spuds. Kilrea land has a current market value of £2,000 per acre.

John Laughlin farms 170 acres of such a mixed farm three-miles outside of Kilrea. As a former President of the Ulster Farmers' Union Laughlin has long had plenty of contact with both ~the IF A and with Southern politiccians. He has met and liked Garret and feels that Garret was brave to tackle the constitution, if it really is a genuine move. He remains sceptical about the seriousness of Garret's intentions, however.

Like many farmers, John Laughlin retains a sense of selffsufficiency. He has recently installed his own hydro-electric power scheme on the farm. He built the turbine himself and installed the whole unit for just over £1,000 - to buy the components of such a system would cost at least £10,000. His working day on the farm starts at 7.00 am and often ends little before bedtime. If you wanted someone who would conform to the image of the successful, efficient Northern Protestant, John could well be that person. His feelings about the prospect of a United Ireland are simple it would not make much of a difference to him. At the moment the problems which he and other Northern farmers are facing, those of lower returns on increasing expenditure, are also the problems of Southern farmers. Another damp spring has meant that this year's silage is of poorer than usual quality, and this in turn means that more concentratted food will have to be fed during the coming winter. Likeewise the damp spring has had an adverse effect on the grain yield which is down almost 30% on that of the previous five years. Again these are all problems which farmers, both North and South, are currently facing.

"I would not be any worse off, maybe I would be even better off in a United Ireland ... But while there is terrorrism, there can be no consideration of a United Ireland. What worries me at the moment is that I suspect that we are being squeezed economically by Westminster because they feel we are not making enough of an effort to sort out our problems, in a political manner ... For those reasons it is important that all the politicians compromise and sit down together. Prior can only succeed if the politicians are prepared to compromise."

Perhaps, perhaps ... meanwhile a handpainted slogan on the road, not so many miles from John's farm talks little of compromise:-

"The blue skies of Ulster will never be ruled by the grey skies of the Irish Republic." •