NOT SINCE the carly 1970s has conflict between the Loyalist community in the Six Counties and the British security forces been so intense.
The shooting by troops of Loyalist para-military thugs has been the occasion for the kind of rioting against the military which is more commonly associated with the Bogside and Falls, rather than the Shankill Road.
These conflicts are the symptom of a change in Irish politics which has been gathering pace. Other symptoms include the much puoncisco nandismake oc tween sinn rein president Gerry Adams and the Irish president Mary Robinson, the electoral successes of Sinn Fein, and the more up-front attitude of the Irish goverment, protesting the exclusion order against John Matthews and proposing joint British-Irish sovereignty over the Six Counties.
Why have these changes come about, and what do they mean? Surface appearances in Irish politics can change quickly, disguising underlying realities.
But it is becoming increasing cicar to cycryone, including Ene Protestants, that the Loyalist community in the Six Counties faces huse long-term difficul as in sustaining is dominant poston. ane rust underying cause is demographic.
Put simply, the Catholic much quicker than the Protestant community. Resistance to Irish unification has always been premised on the 'will of the majority".
Within a couple of generations, a short time historically. the claim of the Protestants to be the majority will have croded.
Mass force
Scoond. whatever the twiste and turns of day-to-day politics, the Republican movement is a mass force which no political settlement can ignore.
recent local elections saw Sinn Fein getting more crate:' SDLP, and indeed being beaten only by Paisley's Democratic Unionists (DUP).
This indeed is an emergency for John Hume's SDLP, and the recent talks between Hume and Gerry Adams, and the more forceful statements of the Irish goverment are linked to the realisation that the long-ferm Loyalists: losing their majority military and political stalemate has not weakened the strength of the Republicans.
For all the Major government's talk about "terrorism', we can bo sure that in toe more thinking recesses of the Northem Ireland Office there is a realisation that when push comes to shove, one way or another the Republican movement has to be #oco in any pomacal scale ment.
All these factors are deepening the seige mentality among the Loyalists. The response has been the successive waves of sectartan assassination in name of the "Ulster Freedom Fighters', but of course in realalc a now, potchuany unstabl and unknown quantity on its doorstep.
But standing idly by won't do cither. Some form of political settlement must be sought in the long term, and this means a settlement which can integrate the Catholic community. ment won't talk to Sinn Fein plenty of opportunities for delivering messages, via the SDLP and Catholic dignitaries.
Intelligent British strategists will aim to push the kepool cans to the right, to integrate them into a new capitalist stabslisation plan. AMERICAN anti-abortionists are getting in practice before their expedition to Britain this autumn. A ten-day, seven-city. campaign of harassment has just come to a close, writes Carole Sedgman from San Francisco.
The pro-choice movement prepared for the rightists campaign by activating large numbers in the detence of clinics.
In Minneapolis a pro-choice rally drew 4,000 supporters. Over 1,300 volunteers have been trained for clinic defence in that city.
The pro-choice movement has gained new supporters who have never done this sort of work before but were enDavid Gunn, who performed abortions in Florida and elsewhere in the South, by an anti-abortion activist. Who wins in