ABSTRACT
For a generation there was a general assumption that postindustrial Europe was immune to the more violent fashions in political extremism. If terrorists did appear in Europe at the Rome airport or at the Olympics, they were driven by distant motives, bringing with them the violence of the periphery. The fact is that in recent years Europe has become a battlefield for all sorts and conditions of secret armies engaged in liberating unsuspected or unwilling nations from previously unnoticed oppressors. There are those in Ireland who can envisage a doomsday situation in the North—civil war without a British referee—that will create a situation in Dublin to the advantage of real Irish Republicans. By 1976 the Ulster Troubles remained dangerous but somehow dormant; Ireland was a comfortable if uneasy hostage to random, irradicable violence. And always the fever of hostage Ireland threatened to peak and overwhelm the antibodies, and the proposed treatments meant even more deaths and more threats.
