Threat to Stormont over Derry deaths

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32660, 16 July 1971, Page 9

Threat to Stormont over Derry deaths

<N .2-P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

BELFAST, July 15.

Northern Ireland’s main Parliamentary Opposition has threatened to withdraw from the Assembly today, and form another, if the Government still refuses to hold an inquiry into a recent shooting by British Army soldiers of two civilians. The Social Democratic Labour Party issued its ultimatum with a demand for an official inquiry into the circumstances in which two men were shot and killed during the Londonderry rioting last week.

" If the party carries out its threat, and the six Social Democrats walk oat of the Chamber at Stormont, it would be a severe blow to the efforts of the Prime Minister (Mr Faulkner) towards easing the tension between Ulster’s conflicting Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The Opposition’s deadline is midnight tonight

Last night, the Social Democrats were given support in their threat to walk out. and to form a rival assembly, by another political group, the Nationalist Party. A demand for an independent inquiry has been turned down in the British Parliament by the Minister of De fence (Lord Balniel), who

said simply that there was no need for one. Since then, the member of Parliament for Mid-Ulster Miss Bernadette Devlin, and her supporters have announced that they will hold their own inquiry into the shootings. I.R.A. claim

The outlawed Irish Republican Army declared today its responsibility for the death of the young British soldier whose patrol car was hit by more than 60 bullets in a midnight ambush in Belfast. The paratrooper, Private Richard Barton, aged 25, was the tenth British soldier to be killed in Northern Ireland this year, and the second to lose his life in two days.

The militant, Provisional Wing of the 1.R.A., in a statement issued from Dublin, said that its men had killed

both soldiers in revenge for the deaths of the two civilians in the Londonderry rioting. The Army maintains that the two civilians carried weapons—one a rifle, and the other a nail-bomb—but witnesses say they were not armed, and members of their families say the men had never belonged to a subversive organisation. ‘Terrorists trained’

Private Barton’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Col-onel Geoffrey Howlett, said today that the terrorists were becoming more effective, and more efficient, through experience and training. “The ambush in which Barton was killed took place from a well-thought-out, well-sited position,” he said. “High-velocity weapons—probably a Thomson machinegun and an Ml-type carbine —were used, a trend which is causing the Army concern.

“We know that the terrorists are being trained regularly in special camps.”

Dublin call

In Dublin today, there was a call from an Opposition party for Government curbs on “the secret armies of paramilitary organisations.” Earlier, the Minister of Justice had rejected a demand, from the same party, for a tougher line against illegal organisations in the Irish Republic. In Londonderry last night a gang of about 100 youths stoned a police and Army post near the Roman Catholic Bogside area.

An Army lorry was turned on its side by the rioters to form a barricade. One soldier received treatment for a face wound after his vehicle had been attacked by about 30 youths. In the centre of town, a department store was badly damaged by a petrol-bomb.