ABSTRACT: According to the author, the explosion of violence and intolerance in Northern Ireland foreshadows new and more serious tragedies for those populations.

(Radical News n. 87 of 28 April 1988)

"What is perhaps the most depressing aspect of events such as the assault on the crowd during the funeral in Belfast yesterday, is the way in which they reflect the past and prefigure the future.

Unfortunately, there is nothing new in these assaults against groups of people gathered in order to pray or to remember their beloved ones...

By now, millions have seen the Milltown tragedy. Can indignation open the path toward hope? This will depend, for the time being, from the reactions of a community which today and in the next few days must face the perspective of other funerals" (editorial from The Irish Times, 17 March 1988).

This is what the anonymous editorialist of the Irish Times of Dublin wrote, the day after the murder (committed by a fanatic loyalist) of three people who attended the funeral of three young Northern Irish people in the cemetery of Milltown in Belfast: Mairead Farrel, Daniel McCann and Sean Savage - these are the names of the three young men. They belonged to the provisional Ira, and had been killed ten days before by some English soldiers serving in the Gibraltar territory, because they were suspected of wanting to organize an attempt against the Governor of the same territory: only later it turned out that they carried no weapons at the moment of the killing, even if, according to the military report, they were transporting a certain quantity of explosives in the trunk of their car.

Immediately after the attempt of Milltown, a certain Michael Stone was arrested. According to the spokesman of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police of North Ireland), this man has a criminal past. It is still to be cleared if the man was acting alone or if he had accomplices who would have helped him to escape once the attempt was over. The English press was also concerned about the role of the police and the military authorities in the case; The police have obviously preferred to adopt a "low profile" strategy, in order to avoid riots with the crowd of republicans attending the funeral: it is however known that a military helicopter was flying over the cemetery during the funeral, and we have heard that a police van was stationing nearby. In particular Gery Adams, president of the Sinn Fein (pro-republican) accused the police of "collusion", meaning that it had created the conditions which made the attempt possible.

The editorialist of the Irish Times certainly did not need to look into the crystal ball to foresee which turn things were going to take in Northern Ireland. In fact, three days followed an almost ritual script, from the 16th to the 19th of March: disorders take place in the Catholic ghettoes of Belfast, there is a diffused sense of despair and frustration and obviously of anger in the Irish and republican milieu, and there is also a national feast (March 17, St.Patrick's Day, patron of Ireland), transformed, for the republicans, in a mourning day.

In any case, if someone wanted to launch a message to the public opinion and to the European papers on March 16, he succeeded completely. "Grenades against the funeral. Dead and wounded people at the cemetery of Belfast", this is the title of the chronicle by Mino Vignolo of the Corriere della Sera - to mention only one of the major Italian daily newspapers on the day after the attempt. In London, The Independent publishes a picture representing the terror of the people attending the funeral of Milltown on the front page, taken just at the moment in which one of the three coffins of the Ira activists is being buried, while the grenades of the terrorist (or terrorists) explode.

On the 17th of March, therefore, the European press remembers (after how many years and how many more funerals?) the existence - in a Europe that wants to be federalist, and within in the U.K. (a country often praised for its ancient traditions of democracy) - of a climate of tension so strong as to flare up again the fuse of the clash, which in reality never died out, between politically opposed factions (many of which have real paramilitary groups). Beside the Uda and the Uff, both paramilitary groups "loyal" to the English Crown and supporters of the union with Great Britain, on the Republican side there are the "provisionals" operating, and the Inra. The "provisionals" are generally known under the name of Ira, but they must not be mistaken with the "officials", the historical Ira which fought for EIRE independence before 1922 and which officially does not support the use of a terrorist strategy in order to "free" or to unite Northern Ireland under the same Irish government. The Inra is a faction of re

publicans who have taken the responsibility of the murder of Lord Mountbatten, which took place off the Irish coasts in 1979.

Three days, as we said, went by. From the 16th ot the 19th of March.

19 March: another funeral, another demonstration; this time, the Irish community is on the alert. Prudence, discipline is needed, say the republican "stewards", guiding the funeral train along the roads of the Catholic ghettoes, once again in the direction of the cemetery of Milltown: the republicans, the friends and the relatives of Kevin Brady, "member of the Ira murdered last Wednesday by a protestant pistoleer in the cemetery of Milltown" (Corriere della Sera, 21.3.88) march silently. And another tragedy occurs, as the editorialist of the Irish Times had foreseen. This time the victims are 2 English soldiers in civilian dress, corporals Derek Wood and Davis Howes, 24 and 23 years of age respectively, who (strangely enough) were in their car precisely on the road followed by the funeral train.

Unfortunately the rest is well known; thanks to the cruel, terrible pictures showing a lynching, which arrived, in a matter of a few hours, to all the editorial offices of newspapers and Tv stations of the democratic world.