Next Step : Elections Fail to Brighten Ulster’s Outlook : * A weary public changes little in the political lineup. Moreover, the defeat of Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams makes peace a distant prospect.

Talks to forge a new political future for this British-ruled province are set to resume later this month following an election in which a war-weary public did little to shuffle the deck of stubborn Ulster politicians.

The only Northern Ireland card rejected in Thursday’s British general election was Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, whose party backs the Irish Republican Army and its “armed struggle” against London. From his impoverished west Belfast seat, Adams had served since 1983 as the leading elected thorn in the side of the British Establishment--and thousands of his working-class supporters loved him for it.

His stunning upset defeat deals a severe blow to Sinn Fein’s ambition to exert ballot-box pressure alongside the IRA campaign of shooting so-called legitimate targets and bombing businesses. It casts Sinn Fein supporters farther into the political wilderness, because neither the British government nor the Unionist parties will allow Sinn Fein representatives to the on-again, off-again talks meant to finally end the province’s euphemistically dubbed “troubles.”

Adams’ defeat means the next round of political discussions--should they get off the ground--are likely to occur against a backdrop of heightened strife. It has strengthened the view within republican circles that the more effective challenge to British rule is IRA violence, not Sinn Fein votes. The point was underscored by two huge car bombs that blasted London, killing three people and injuring dozens of others less than 24 hours after Adams’ loss.

Emerging the big winner in Thursday’s elections was the anti-IRA Social Democratic and Labor Party, which outpolled Sinn Fein by a more than 2-to-1 margin in the latest round of their perennial contest for the Catholic nationalist vote.

SDLP support climbed to its highest level--23.5% of the overall vote, compared to 10.2% for Sinn Fein. The performance earned SDLP four seats in the London Parliament, including the west Belfast seat formerly held--but never filled, in protest of British rule--by Adams. SDLP’s Joe Hendron beat Adams by barely 600 votes thanks to support from the two Protestant Unionist parties who shifted their ballots to the more moderate Catholic party in order to be rid of the Sinn Fein leader.

Hendron promised that he would work to bring peace and jobs to west Belfast. And party leader John Hume commented in an interview: “We are a deeply divided people, and I would hope that we can . . . get the healing process underway. But we’ve got to do it by agreement. This election has given us a very powerful mandate to do that.” Hume was reelected to his constituency in the province’s second city, Londonderry, with a crushing majority. He drew nearly three times as many votes as his Sinn Fein rival, party deputy Martin McGuinness. The SDLP-Sinn Fein rivalry helped return Protestant Unionist candidates to the province’s 13 other seats.

Given the competing aspirations of even the most moderate of the nationalist and unionist forces, it is difficult to envision any breakthrough in round-table talks, which collapsed last July but may begin again by the end of this month.

The new arbiter in the two-year process is Patrick Mayhew, former British attorney general who was named by Prime Minister John Major last week to replace Peter Brooke as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Mayhew comes with a strong law-and-order brief and is viewed with suspicion by Northern Ireland’s Catholics.

The two Unionist parties, the Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists, remain united in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Signed in 1985, the agreement gave the Irish Republic a limited role in shaping British policy on Northern Ireland. Unionists view the document as an undemocratic diktat , a betrayal of their loyalty to Britain. While holding that the agreement could be reformed or replaced, SDLP politicians will not bargain away its powers unless Unionists are ready to concede something better.

Amid the bickering, John Alderdice’s Alliance Party has proved a consistent and vocal advocate for the talks. The party campaigned that a vote for Alliance, which favors power-sharing equality within the British state for Protestants and Catholics, would be a vote for political progress, reason and peace. It was drubbed, gaining only 8.8% of the overall vote. Alderdice, a Presbyterian psychiatrist who has led the party since 1987, again lost the east Belfast race to Peter Robinson, deputy leader of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists.

In Northern Irish politics, one force unites most Protestants and Catholics: the sense that they are divorced from power and will remain so.

The public mood may best be captured in the words of Belfast songster Hugh Jordan, whose radio broadcast on election day featured the downbeat chorus:

At long last the day has come, It’s time to put your X, to exercise your right to vote as democracy expects. To see who is right and who is wrong, and who’s the ones to blame. But I’ve got this awful feeling, it will all just stay the same.