London-Dublin Unease

The deterioration of relations between Britain and Ireland is not entirely inevitable. The government of Margaret Thatcher must bear responsibility for it at least in part.

Thatcher met with Prime Minister Charles Haughey at the Brussels European summit meeting on Feb. 12 and learned at firsthand how dis-satisfied Dublin is with the present state of affairs. The point had been made bluntly on Feb 2 at a special meeting of the Anglo-Irish conference.So it was the more shocking to learn Tuesday that the British have returned to active duty a soldier sentenced only in 1984 to life imprisonment for killing an unarmed Roman Catholic in Belfast.

That followed two controversial cases. In one, the British aquitted officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary who in 1982 had killed six unarmedpersons thought to be armed terrorists of the Irish Republican Army. The handling of the case drew condemnation from the European Parliament. In the other case, the British Court of Appeal haslet stand life imprisonment imposed on six IRA sympathizers in a 1974 bombing that took the lives of 21 persons in two Birmingham pubs--a case in which there was evidence that the defendants had been brutally treated before signing confessions, and in which other irregularities brought widespread protests in England.

The new difficulties between London and Dublin may set back the growing cooperation between the two governments in fighting the terrorism ofthe IRA. That cooperation cannot flourish unless the leaders of Ireland can feel confident about the system of justice in Britain.