BY PAUL DAVIES
MANCHESTER, England - The British government of Prime
Minister Anthony Blair announced a new package of repressive
laws September 2 as part of its attempts to undermine the
democratic rights of working people in Britain and to shore up
London's rule in the north of Ireland.
The new legislation will give the courts the power to use the opinion of a police officer as evidence to convict someone of membership in a banned organization. It will also give the courts the power to seize the goods and property of anyone convicted of belonging to a proscribed organization, and will make it a criminal offense under British law to conspire to commit an offense while in another country. The proposed legislation also restricts the right to silence for those arrested on suspicion of "terrorism."
Blair boasted that "we will have the toughest antiterrorist measures in the whole island of Ireland that we have ever seen," referring to simultaneous plans by the Irish government to also restrict democratic rights in the Irish Republic. The government of the Republic of Ireland under Bertie Ahern will give cops the power to interrogate suspects for up to four days and will increase the protection offered to those who testify in court on behalf of the police.
Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein member of Parliament for Mid- Ulster, condemned the new proposals as "internment under another guise." Internment without trial was a policy widely used by the British government in the 1970s to try to break the struggle to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Thousands were routinely interned and subject to beatings and various forms of torture.
McGuinness, whose party is leading the fight for a free, united Ireland, stated, "Repressive legislation, like that previously introduced, is wrong and only succeeds in creating the conditions for a litany of miscarriages of justice."
Martin O'Brien of the Committee for the Administration of Justice commented, "To convict someone solely on the word of a police officer and the accused's own silence is in breach of the right to a fair trial.... The extensive use of emergency powers has allowed the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] to effectively intern suspects by remand; the consequences of allowing the RUC the choice of who to convict is even starker." The RUC is the pro-British police force in Northern Ireland.
The bill allows the government a sweeping definition of those that it wishes to ban, including organizations that they claim are "promoting or encouraging" terrorism.
Writing in the Irish republican newspaper An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein councilor Mary Nelis commented on British and Irish government claims that the repressive measures are aimed at those who carried out a recent car bombing in the town of Omagh. "Blair and Ahern know, as we do, that those responsible for Omagh...are finished in this country," she wrote. "But the legislation will only serve to give increased powers to those who are not finished in this country, the British Intelligence Services... the RUC and the No unionists," who voted against the so-called Good Friday Agreement. The term "unionist" is used for those who support the continued "union" of Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom.
"The net results of this situation," Nelis continued, "will be to set Irish people against each other through North/South cooperation in collusion, spies, `dirty tricks' operations, felon baiting, and shifting the onus of blame from the government onto the people."
Some members of the British Parliament have raise doubts about the contents of the proposed new laws. Former Labour Northern Ireland spokesman Kevin McNamara has indicated that he intends to propose amendments to the bill.
The new attacks on democratic rights come in the face of continuing gains won by nationalists. The British government's Parades Commission was forced to ban a march by ultrarightist Ian Paisley along the nationalist Garvaghy Road on August 15 and to prohibit a march by a similar organization, the "Black Perceptory," through the village of Dunloy on the same day.
The release of political prisoners, including many republicans convicted in non-jury Diplock courts, will begin September 7, despite calls from some Unionist and Conservative Party politicians that the releases be suspended following the Omagh bombing.
The new British government legislation will be debated as U.S. president William Clinton visits Northern Ireland. Commenting on the visit, Brendan O'Neill from the Catholic neighborhood of Andersonstown in west Belfast said, "People say [Clinton] is the most powerful person in the world, but it's something that the people of Northern Ireland or Ireland must sort out, not him."
Paul Davies is a member of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Workers Union in Manchester.