Protestants Protest Pact as Ulster Braces for Today’s Battle of Boyne Marches

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — About 3,500 militant Protestants, some masked and others in military-style uniforms, staged a mock siege Friday of the town where Britain and Ireland signed an accord that gives Dublin a consultative voice in the province’s affairs.

The pre-dawn protest, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley and other politicians, occurred on the eve of the annual Battle of Boyne marches commemorating the victory of King William of Orange’s Protestant army over the Roman Catholic forces of King James II on July 12, 1690.

The marches are the biggest annual outpouring of Protestant fervor in this British province, and the advance maneuver apparently took security forces by surprise.

Police and army leaves have been canceled in preparation for the marches, with security bolstered at potential trouble spots.

About 20 police who arrived in the midst of the Friday protest made no attempt to arrest the demonstrators, who sealed off roads into Hillsborough, 12 miles southwest of Belfast, and blocked its main street for an hour.

Signed Nov. 15

“We hoodwinked them!” Paisley shouted triumphantly. He claimed the siege proved the government had no control over the town in which Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald, the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, signed the agreement last Nov. 15.

Nicholas Scott, the British government’s Northern Ireland undersecretary in charge of law and order, dismissed the protest as “a clever exercise, obviously highly organized but of little importance to the politics of Northern Ireland.”

Militant Protestant leaders denounce the agreement, which gives the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic a consultative role in the affairs of this Protestant-dominated province.

They call the accord interference by a foreign power and a sellout by Britain that is the first step in turning the province over to the Irish Republic.

Protestants have scheduled 18 marches for today, the 296th anniversary of King William’s victory.

Police Blockade Planned

Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has promised to be at the march in Portadown, 25 miles from Belfast. Police have said they will block off an area known as the Tunnel, a Catholic district in which 27 policemen and three children were injured during a Protestant parade Sunday.

Sources close to the police said an alternative route through another Catholic area might be used because it is easier to patrol.

It was not clear whether that solution would be accepted by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant organization, which pledged to turn out more than 100,000 people for the various marches.

Harold McCusker of the Official Unionist Party, the largest Protestant faction, appealed for “calm and dignity” in Portadown.

Scott, the British undersecretary, asked people to stay away from Portadown because it clearly would be a trouble spot. “I hope cooler and wiser counsels will prevail and that people will step back from confrontation,” he said.

Meanwhile, police reported these violent incidents Thursday night and early Friday:

Fight by Rival Gangs

In north Belfast, officers fired three plastic bullets to disperse rival gangs fighting a battle of firebombs during which one family fled after the windows of its home were broken. One officer was injured and five people were arrested.

A Catholic man was burned on the face, chest and hands when Protestants threw firebombs at his home in Antrim.

In Portadown, the homes of two Protestants were hit by firebombs, but little damage was done and no one was injured.

Meanwhile, a hunger strike by loyalist prisoners in Magilligan prison in County Derry ended Friday, loyalist sources said.

Two of the prisoners who were moved to the prison hospital on Monday had been refusing food since June 16 and threatened to fast to death to protest conditions.

The prisoners, all members of the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force and the much larger Ulster Defense Assn., claimed afterward through relatives that a compromise had been reached.