After more than a year of relative calm, Northern Ireland is once again a powder keg, its three-century-old sectarian debate threatening to explode in yet more death and violence. The British Government had hoped to return local self-rule to Northern Ireland this past fall, and a province-wide election for a seventy-eight-seat local assembly was to introduce a new era of peace and stability. This has not happened. Both Protestant and Catholic political parties declared they would not cooperate in any new government, and terrorist activity on both sides threatens to escalate the violence still further.