Ireland talks draw protests

Press, 9 November 1981, Page 8

Ireland talks draw protests

NZPA-Reuter Belfast Hundreds of masked Protestants occupied two northern . Irish villages for just under an hour yesterday as a protest against friedship talks between Britain and the Irish Republic in London on Friday. After sealing off the twin County Antrim villages of Connor and Kells with roadblocks soon after midnight, 400 men wearing camouflage jackets paraded in military formation before leaving. The police rushed to the villages in force but did not intervene. “There was no trouble and the men were unarmed," an officer said. It was the sharpest warning to Britain yet from hardline Protestants that they were ready , to resist what they regard as a plot to unite their British province with the mainly Catholic Irish Republic. Meanwhile, in its guerrilla campaign against British rule in the North, the outlawed Irish Republican Army yesterday set off a bomb which wounded three British soldiers at the proRepublican border village of Crossmaglen.

The Protestant turnout at Connor and Kells came after a decision by the Prime Ministers of Britain and the Republic, Margaret Thatcher and Garret Fitz Gerald, in London on Friday to set up an inter-governmental council to stimulate relations damaged by the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.

The brief occupation of the villages was a show of strength by supporters of the Rev lan Paisley, a hard-line Protestant leader, who alleged that the ultimate aim of establishing the council was Irish unity. Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political wing, also denounced the council as a bid for more British influence in Ireland. Mrs Thatcher said that it was no threat to the North’s Protestant majority. It was welcomed in the Republic as a step towards peace in the North, where 2000 people have been killed since 1969.

Several projects for closer North-South economic links were expected to follow.