Challenge To Lynch

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32072, 21 August 1969, Page 11

Challenge To Lynch

(By PETER HOPKIRK, of “The Times,” through N.Z.P.A.) DUBLIN, August 20. The Irish Republican Army’s challenge to the authority of Mr Lynch, the Prime Minister—-a challenge that appears to have shaken the Dublin Government is something that the Government is partly to blame for itself. Although the I.R.A. is a proscribed organisation, there has been little serious attempt in recent years to stamp it out. There are no I.R.A. men in prison in Dublin. Yet it is no secret that recent bank robberies and the burning of

German-owned farms in Ireland were the work of the I.R.A. The official Government assessment of the I.R.A.’s fighting strength is that it has an active membership of only 200 men, ill-armed and illtrained at that. Why then, hat Mr Lynch

been so quick to answer the challenge so strongly today? It is not simply that he is furious with them —which he undoubtedly is—for providing Major Chichester-Clark with ammunition for retaining the “B” Specials. For the damage has already been done: there can be no withdrawing the statement that I.R.A. units are operating in the north. Nor can it be because Mr Lynch is personally annoyed by their tin-pot challenge to his authority. For Mr Lynch is known to have a cool head, as his failure to rise to the bait of Major ChichesterClark’s personal attack on him showed. But unless he has information to prove that official estimates of the I.R.A.'s strength are wildly wrong, it would seem that he is concerned at the heady effects it might

have on the hooligan gangs who run riot in Dublin each night, destroying property and stoning the police. The Government is aware that there is frustration among ordinary people in Ireland about their inability to do anything to help in the north. There would be the real danger, if the North were to blow up again that an increasing number of people might in desperation look to the I.R.A. for leadership. The pressures on Mr Lynch, it appears from Dublin are clearly not appreciated fully in Whitehall and Stormont Like everybody else, he too was caught by surprise at the sudden blaze of violence in the North. He had to say something, and even if it was clumsily put, it was the very least that was acceptable. Neutral observers in Dublin consider that he has behaved with great moderation, particularly in view of strong pressure from some of his Cabinet colleagues to take a far tougher line. In the next few days it should be clear whether his gamble of moderation has paid off.