Edition: U.S. / Global

Peace Is Topic, but Doubts Are the Issue in Ulster

Published: December 5, 1993

In Dublin and London, the talk these days is about peace, and the best hope yet for a settlement to end the years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland. But down at Brown's appliance store, on the Protestant side of Dungannon's business district, Ralph Brown stood alongside the blinking displays of Christmas lights Friday and shook his head in a gesture of utter disbelief.

Like a lot of Protestants in the province, Mr. Brown does not see peace coming. Only the day before, less than 20 miles south of Dungannon, an I.R.A. sniper shot to death a British soldier on the streets of Keady. Outside the windows of shops here, even as Mr. Brown spoke, a team of police officers, wearing flak vests and carrying rifles, could be seen threading a nervous patrol among the early Christmas shoppers.

"What I don't understand is how the British Government can talk with the very people who are still sticking their fingers up to society," said Mr. Brown, who has himself suffered from what is known locally as "the troubles." Since the early 1970's, Mr. Brown's shop has been damaged 39 times by I.R.A. bombs detonated in Dungannon.

"What's happening now is like our worst fears being realized, because I don't know if I can still trust the British," Mr. Brown said. "Sure we want peace, but we don't want to be sold out either." Apprehension and Anger

In the week since news broke that London had opened a channel of communications with the I.R.A., and the British and Irish Governments were pushing ahead toward negotiations on a possible peace, Northern Ireland's Protestant majority, which dominates the province's politics and business, has been swept by a alternating waves of apprehension and anger.

"I'll tell you how people feel," said the Rev. Andrew Rodgers, the rector of Dungannon's Presbyterian Chruch and currently the titular head of all of Northern Ireland's 390,000 Presbyterians. "There is a world of apprehension and dismay and bewilderment out there. I know professional people, business people, who until now never gave much thought to politics who are now saying, 'Hang on, what is London doing?' "

There is a kind of surreal feel to Dungannon, as there is to much of Northern Ireland, where the commonplace exists side-by-side with the unbelievable. Here is a lovely town of stone walls, rolling hills and soaring church spires, set in a green, pastoral countryside 40 miles west of Belfast. But it is also a town where soldiers in full combat gear and rifles at the ready patrol the streets, and the police station and other public buildings are barricaded behind fences and coils of barbed wire.

The population of Dungannon and its surrounding area is about 20,000, nearly equally divided between Protestants and Catholics. The town has worked out its own power-sharing araangements, which have helped defuse some of the tensions; the 22-member district council, for example, is evenly divided among Unionists and nationalists, including five elected representatives of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A. political arm. Hopes Up in Dungannon

Like elsewhere in Ireland and Britain, the talk of peace has raised hopes among many in Dungannon too. But among Unionists, the Protestants who above all else want to keep the six counties of Northern Ireland as part of Britain, the current negotiations smack of surrender and accommodation.

The Rev. Derick Swann, a local rector, said the disclosure of secret contacts between London and the I.R.A. had rocked Unionist confidence in British integrity. "There is a vacuum," he said. "People just feel they cannot trust the politicians."

At worst, they fear nationalist amibitions to create a united Ireland, in which the northern six counties would ultimately be swallowed by the Republic. "At the end of the day, our Protestant identity and culture would be submerged in the Catholic south," said Mr. Brown. "We would be lost."

At stake, for the Protestants, is the preservation of a separate cultural tradition, which took root in Northern Ireland in the 16th century, when the first waves of Protestant settlers came to Catholic Ireland from the British mainland and set off the cycle of turf battles that have persisted to today.

The anxieties are such that the most extreme elements in the loyalist community, the shadowy paramilitary organizations that for years have mounted their own bloody terror campaign against Catholics, say they are reaping a windful of fresh recruits and cash. On Thursday night, the Ulster Freedom Fighters distributed in Belfast glossy photographs showing their terrorists, dressed in fatigues and wearing ski masks that hid their faces, brandishing new automatic weapons, including a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. Protestant Majority

"These people are sending a message," said Ray Smallwoods, a convicted Protestant terrorist who works out of a cramped office in Lisburn, where he serves as a spokesman for the extremist Ulster Democratic Party. "They are saying that no one is going to decide the future of Northern Ireland except the people of Northern Ireland. No Englishman. And no Dubliner."

For its part, the British Government insists it is doing nothing to break its historic alliance with Ulster, or abandon the six counties of the north. Aides to Prime Minister John Major, in talks with Prime Minister Albert Reynolds in Dublin Friday, said Britain made it clear once again there could be no deal over Northern Ireland without the consent of the Unionist majority.

But that does not stop the Unionists from feeling, once again, suspicious and besieged; after all, perceptions have always counted for more than reality.

"I've been trying to reassure people that they've got nothing to worry about," said Kenneth Maginnis, a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and one of 17 Northern Ireland members in the British Parliament. "I really believe this is all much ado about nothing." High Walls and TV Cameras

At the heart of Protestant and Unionist anxiety is the decision by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1985 to sign the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which for the first time gave Dublin an official role in helping negotiate the future of Northern Ireland.

Unionists said they were never consulted, and more than 150,000 protesters converged on Belfast following the agreement, to assert their dismay and anger with London.

"I may live to eat these words, but I don't think Major is like Thatcher," said Mr. Maginnis, whose house outside Dungannon is surrounded by high walls and closed-circuit television cameras. "Major is a better listener. He knows he cannot do anything without our support and consent."

On the other hand, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the Protestant preacher and firebrand who heads the smaller Democratic Unionist Party, has been offering apocalyptic visions of Ulster's future, warning in Dublin Friday of a violent loyalist backlash if Dublin and London reached any kind of agreement regarding the future of the north.

"Politicians are being stampeded to reach a settlement," said Robert Mulligan, a farmer who said he feared Protestants and Unionist member of the Dungannon district council. "We must make it clear that no matter what, Northern Ireland will always be part of Britain."

Photo: "What's happening now is like our worst fears being realized, because I don't know if I can still trust the British," said Ralph Brown, owner of an appliance store in Dungannon, Northern Ireland; "I've been trying to reassure people that they've got nothing to worry about," said Kenneth Maginnis, a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, of the talks between the Irish and British Governments. (Photographs by Pacemaker) Map of Northern Ireland shows the location of Dungannon.