NORTHERN IRELAND: Whitelaw's Peace

The Irish Republican Army's Provisional wing last week offered the cease-fire that Northern Ireland had been awaiting for three sad and bloody years. If it could secure "a public reciprocal response" from British forces in Northern Ireland, the I.R.A. said, its units were prepared to "suspend offensive operations" beginning this week. Barely two hours later came the British answer. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw assured the House of Commons that the 15,000 troops in Ulster would "obviously reciprocate" if the I.R.A. called off its bombers and gunmen, to achieve what he hoped fervently was "a start to the end of violence."

After 378 deaths, 1,682 bombings and 7,258 personal injuries over the past three years, the tentative truce could of course easily be broken. Just how easily was shown at week's end. Three days before the ceasefire, three British soldiers were killed when their Jeep ran over a land mine, and a Catholic youth was shot dead by a sniper in Belfast.

Policy of Reconciliation. The Provisionals, who had called for the ceasefire only after hot debate at a secret meeting in the hills just south of the border, might not be able to control their hard-lining Belfast units. On the other side, Northern Ireland's Protestant majority viewed the cease-fire with instant suspicion, fearing that it was the result of a secret deal. Leaders of the Protestant Ulster Defense Association warned: "Now we go on the offensive. If there is any question of killers being allowed to remain at liberty, we will go in and get them."

Tenuous as it may prove to be, however, the truce represented a breakthrough for Whitelaw (see box) and a handsome return on his determined policy of conciliation. Whitelaw released more than half of the Catholics who had been interned without trial by Faulkner's government. Last week he took another conciliatory step and ordered that 80 Catholics and 40 Protestants sentenced for political crimes such as carrying arms be treated as political prisoners. That meant that they will be allowed better food, more family visits and ordinary clothes. The ruling came just in time to save some of the men from becoming martyrs; 30 of the Catholic prisoners were on a hunger strike, and one who had fasted for a month was near death.

The I.R.A.'s truce offer means that Whitelaw has won valuable time for further political initiatives. As a next move, he would like to convene a meeting on Northern Ireland's future at which all quarreling factions would be represented. The I.R.A.'s cease-fire was obviously a bid for a voice at such a meeting, but nothing will infuriate Protestant loyalists more than the suggestion that they join what one of them last week called "a compact with the Queen's enemies." Whitelaw, therefore, is in the position of a referee who has managed at last to separate the fighters —and now must bring them together again.