Many Protestants Skeptical About Ulster Peace : Northern Ireland: The widespread fear among non-Catholics is of being dominated by a rival faith.

In his office on Dublin Road, George Patton, head of the 80,000-member Orange Lodge, sounded a theme often heard within Northern Ireland’s Protestant community.

“We Protestants have been in Northern Ireland for close to 400 years, and we remain very much British in our hearts and minds,” he said. “How long do you have to live in your place until you can call it home?”

“An American from West Virginia,” he added, “may consider himself a West Virginian, but he is first an American. It’s the same with the Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland.”

While Friday’s announcement that Britain is ready to pursue talks with a wing of the Irish Republican Army drew widespread applause and raised hopes that peace is possible in Northern Ireland, many Protestants here remain wary.

Fearing domination by the Republic of Ireland, which is predominantly Catholic, they still cite the Protestant Reformation as their lodestar and in some ways react much as American Protestants did in 1960 when considering the possibility of a Roman Catholic President.

Without a doubt, the 900,000-strong Protestant population here is central to ending the sectarian violence that has racked Northern Ireland for 25 years.

“The republicans argue that we are some kind of planters--here temporarily--and not entitled to our self-determination,” David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, said. “I think it is pathetic that the republicans can’t cope with the idea that we are British. . . . For all its ills, the United Kingdom is a liberal democracy and Northern Ireland is part of the U.K.”

Protestant unionists insist on their constitutional right to self-determination, which, because they still hold a 57% majority in the six counties of Northern Ireland, means they would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom.

In contrast, Catholic nationalists here--and particularly the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein--insist that any referendum on Northern Ireland’s future include voters in the Republic of Ireland.

That impasse has worried Protestants, who believe the IRA would not have announced its Aug. 31 cease-fire unless it had received some secret assurances from the government of Prime Minister John Major.

The government denies this. But Protestant leaders like the Rev. Ian Paisley, head of the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, and his deputy, Peter Robinson, won’t accept Major’s word that no secret deals have been made.

However, James Molyneaux, the moderate head of the Ulster Unionist Party, maintains that the British haven’t made undercover agreements with the IRA.

“There is a deep sense of distrust that has split the unionist leadership,” a diplomatic observer here said. “There’s a sense of being abandoned by the British, which leads to a siege mentality. It’s doubly frustrating because they want to be British but feel the British don’t want them. They are unionists not because of Britain but in spite of Britain.”

The Protestant community in Northern Ireland has a long history of feeling betrayed by the British government.

Unionists point out that English and Scottish settlers were forcibly implanted in Northern Ireland in the early 17th Century. Most were strict Protestants, many Scottish Presbyterians, as opposed to the native Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. The Protestants set up churches that continue to operate today.

Moderate Protestants admit that Catholics in Northern Ireland were treated as inferiors for centuries, while unionists controlled the provincial government and economy. In that period, sharp divisions arose between the communities, with militant Protestants contending that union with Ireland would mean religious rule by the Catholic Church. This led Protestants to view Catholics as political subversives, which led to discrimination in jobs and housing.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Ervine said, “the Catholics were second-class citizens. But those inequalities have been ended, from about 20 years ago. I would like to see a Northern Ireland society based on equality.”

Ervine, like Patton, has been trying to reduce violence among Protestant paramilitary units, which operate under the Combined Loyalist Military Command. The units include the Ulster Defense Assn. and the offshoot Ulster Volunteer Fighters as well as the Ulster Volunteer Force.

They all recruit among Belfast’s poor, youths with loyalist slogans tattooed on their arms and parents who buy infants’ bibs inscribed “Proud to be a Baby Prod.”

Besides the persistent threat to peace posed by this martial tradition, many here think that the moderate Protestant cause is constantly undermined by extremist outbursts from Paisley, now 68, who calls Molyneaux, a fellow member of Parliament, a “Judas Iscariot,” Major “a dictator” and the Pope “John Paul Antichrist.”

Robinson, Paisley’s even more radical deputy, calls not so much for “no surrender” as for “on to victory.” Of any settlement that would put Northern Ireland under southern control, Robinson says: “No politician will be able to keep the lid on the situation. It will be not the paramilitaries but the whole community which will rise up and defeat the pan-nationalists.”

As one official here put it: “Paisley has led his followers up and down the hill many times. But Robinson is capable of taking them into the abyss.”

However, some unionists believe the Paisley-Robinson star may be waning unless the IRA renounces its cease-fire and violence erupts again. Protestants have also been somewhat reassured by recent visits by Major, during which he repeated British support of Northern Ireland’s self-determination.

Major also agreed that inhabitants of Northern Ireland could hold a referendum on any agreements made in future all-Irish negotiations among the political parties and officials in London and Dublin.

But Protestant skeptics wonder what the IRA position will be if there is no all-Ireland referendum to determine the province’s future.

One British official said, “Most Protestants view the situation as a zero-sum game: What is good for the Catholics is bad for the Protestants and vice versa.”

But Molyneaux said: “We ought to have confidence in ourselves. Our best guarantee for our future is in the greater number of people making up their minds (at) a ballot box.”

Some observers suggest that demographics in Northern Ireland, where Catholics have the higher birthrate, will eventually favor republicans in any free election to determine future rule.

But Ervine disagrees. “Many middle-class Catholics, the lawyers, doctors, businessmen, prefer to remain connected to the United Kingdom,” he said. “They have a good life here, and in a united Ireland their taxes would go up sharply and their incomes would drop. It is incorrect to assume that all Catholics are republicans.

“We might see the beginnings of trust developing between our communities,” Ervine said. “I hope our peoples will face the necessity for change. We have too often relied on dreams. The unionists dream of returning to majority-ism, absolute rule. The republicans dream of a united Ireland. Somewhere between these two dreams lies reality.”