From today's Guardian...

Detention lessons
Post-charge questioning might have saved the Guildford Four from badly miscarried justice

Duncan Campbell
Monday July 30, 2007
The Guardian

Just over 30 years ago, the convictions of four young men for the IRA bombing of a pub in Guildford were broadly welcomed, the police applauded for their diligence and the government encouraged to proceed with yet more stringent measures to combat terrorism. With the spectre of bombs on the London underground and reports of many men and women eagerly volunteering to risk their lives for the IRA, politicians and commentators queued up to suggest ever more muscular methods of dealing with the threats the country faced.

Eight days after his conviction, one of the four, Gerard Conlon, facing life in jail, made a prison "confession" that contained supposed details of IRA members. It was worthless, the product of the panic of an innocent man whose equally innocent father, Guiseppe, had by now been caught up in the frenzy of the time and was to later die in jail before his name could be cleared. Years afterwards the confession was revealed to contain much that could easily have been shown to be wrong at the time.

It is easy to forget what the political climate was like in those days, now we are living in a time when ex-IRA men and their former UDA enemies can sit down together for a pint and a reminiscence in a Belfast pub. It took 15 long years before Conlon and his co-defendants were cleared and freed, but it seems the lessons of those days have been almost forgotten.

The government seems determined to at least double the time people can be detained, arguing that in the complex world of international terrorism more time is needed to analyse computer data and phone records. This is the main argument they have put forward to move to at least 56 days of detention without trial. The civil rights group Liberty opposes any extension and has suggested, as an alternative, the idea of post-charge questioning, whereby police could continue interviewing someone in prison after they had been charged with an offence. At present, except in designated circumstances, the police cannot carry on interviewing once a charge has been made.

This appears to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion. If fresh evidence crops up, why shouldn't the police interview a suspect? Some prisoners against whom there is substantial evidence might even welcome the chance to make further statements in anticipation of a lighter sentence. And Liberty says it would only back this initiative if the additional questioning was authorised by a judge and, crucially, provided that suspects were not charged on spurious minor grounds in the first place.

But there is a danger that the government will decide to opt for not only the extension of the time limits but also the post-charge questioning that Liberty was offering only as an alternative. The events of July 7 and other recent thwarted plots may have given the government the impression that any measures it suggests will be adopted.
The "ricin plot" was an example of a case where some of the defendants were arrested on what turned out to be the flimsiest of grounds. The defendants were fortunate they had a jury that was prepared to analyse the evidence and acquit. In a different climate, with a different jury, that might not be the case. The lesson of the Guildford Four case was that desperate isolated people held in prison, reviled by guards and inmates alike, may make desperate statements. The longer they are detained, the easier it is to lock them up, and a miscarriage of justice is likelier than ever.

It may be that, in 30 years' time, people will look back at this period and wonder why the country was panicked into moving towards the equivalent of detention without trial. Memories should not be shorter than the jail terms being handed out to those convicted.

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Sinn Féin call for publication of Stalker Report on shoot-to-kill cases

Sinn Féin Policing Spokesperson, South Belfast MLA Alex Maskey has called for the full publication of the Stalker Report and the immediate publication for all other enquiries relating the policy of shoot-to-kill after the Police Ombudsman confirmed that she had been asked to re-open files on the killing of Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns and Eugene Toman in North Armagh 1982 in by the RUC.

Mr Maskey said 'The hard facts about the killing of Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns and Eugene Toman in North Armagh 1982 are clear. There was a policy of shoot-to-kill operated by the RUC in this area.

The families not just in this case but the relatives of others killed as a result of the shot-to-kill policy, including 17-year-old Michael Tighe, deserve the truth.
The European Court demanded a proper investigation into the circumstances of these killings and other state murders.

Europe has already laid the finger of blame at the door of number 10. Now we need to see the full publication of the Stalker Report and the immediate publication for all other enquiries relating the policy of shoot-to-kill.'

Irish Labour considers its role in the North

Jeremy Corbyn MP was invited to speak at the Irish Labour Party's Tom Johnson Summer School at the weekend, to talk on the subject "21st Century Socialism: What does it look like and how can we get it?" he was joined on the platform by Irish Labour TD and former Workers Party TD Eamon Gilmore. Corbyn's presence on the platform to discuss the way forward for the left is a welcome step by the leadership of the Irish Labour Party given his role as the leading Parliamentarian opposing the US imperialist interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, but also his long-standing solidarity with Cuba and more recently with Venezuela.

However he was not asked to speak on the British occupation of the north of Ireland, given his differing views from the current Irish Labour Party project and it is interesting to note the platform on the "way forward for the left in the north of Ireland". The Chair of the Northern Ireland Labour Forum, Mark Langhammer, who was also co-opted on to the Irish Labour Party NEC in 2005, was the main speaker while another was the SWP member and candidate in the recent north's Assembly elections, Sean Mitchell.
Unfortunately the north's largest left party, Sinn Fein was not invited to send a representative and perhaps more surprisingly, neither was Irish Labour's sister party, the SDLP. The inclusion of the SWP gave the event some useful left cover but failed to engage with the mass force of the left in the north.

Langhammer's role is interesting. He is Chair of the Northern Ireland Labour Forum and is quoted on the Irish Labour Party's website as stating "We will be bringing a resolution to Labour's Wexford Conference. The resolution will task the party with registering with the Electoral Commission as a political party in Northern Ireland" in order to contest - in the short term - local elections.

Langhammer played a leading role in drawing up the Irish Labour Party's 2006 statement on the north of Ireland that included "that In accordance with our view that our society is not and never will be exclusively British or Irish, we take the view that Northern Ireland should be part of both the UK and Ireland and that political structures should be established accordingly...In any future referendum on the border issue, as envisaged by the Belfast Agreement, in addition to the highly divisive and mutually exclusive British or Irish options, we will actively seek to have a third 'part of both' option included."

As part of this project, the statement also says that "The NI Labour Forum is also seeking a formal structural relationship with the British Labour Party, in the spirit of the proposal below." The inability of Irish Labour to challenge the role of British colonialism in the north of Ireland risks any candidates they see falling between the cracks and failing to make any advances for the left in Ireland. Their refusal to engage with other major left forces, whilst tokenistically using hard-left cover, is the surest sign of the failing of their policy.

Tom Griffin reports on Islington North Labour Party's meeting on the Irish peace process

Photo by Theo Russell.

Tom Griffin reports on the meeting 'What Next for the Irish Peace Process' organised by Islington North Labour Party on the 27th June in the latest edition of the Irish World.

It’s a relatively rare occurrence to find speakers from all the main parties in Northern Ireland represented at a public meeting in London. All credit therefore to Islington North Labour Party for achieving just that last Wednesday, with a meeting on the peace process where the line-up included the DUP’s Sammy Wilson, Sinn Fein’s Martina Anderson, Rodney McCune of the Ulster Unionists and Paul Callaghan of the SDLP.

The theme for the evening, was where next for the peace process? On that point there was underlying similarity in the message offered by the two largest parties.

Both the DUP and Sinn Fein presented a controlled optimism, emphasising that significant pitfalls still lie ahead.In his speech, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson emphasised the changes he believed his party had secured from the Good Friday Agreement.“The one thing we always said was that if we got a deal which we believed was workable, we would stick by it,” The East Antrim MP told the meeting. “I think that so far the behaviour of our party and in particular our party leader, has indicated that that promise has been kept.”“We will expect ongoing delivery by the other major partner in the administration, namely Sinn Fein. There will be rocky roads ahead because the kind of consensus Government which we are expected to live with, I doubt that any party would contemplate in Westminster.”“We are dealing with politicians who for thirty years have never had a chance to rule, so there are big challenges ahead. Nevertheless, I believe that we’re up to it and that so far we have seen sincerity on everyone’s part.”

Sinn Fein’s Martina Anderson agreed that the Stormont executive will face rough patches: “As Sammy said, there’s a lot of things not tested. There’s a view that things have moved on, it’s sorted now in the North and people don’t have to worry about it. Nothing could be further from the truth.”The Foyle Assembly member emphasised the continuing inequalities in the North, and suggested that the relationship with the South would be key to turning the situation around.“We live in a basket case economy, and that’s not Sinn Fein saying this, it’s PriceWaterHouseCooper, a consultancy firm who came in to take a look at our economy, “ she told the meeting. “We need to try and hook up with the amazing developments that have happened in the 26 counties. We need greater all-Ireland co-operation.”

The SDLP’s Paul Callaghan continued the economic theme. “I agree with the concept of importing the best bits of the Republic economic success into the North, but it has to be met with action,” he said. “The Republic has a National Development Plan which the northern administration really has to hook into. We want to see a united Ireland based on just enterprise that funds quality services, and that can be done through the National Development Plan and our integration into that.”

It was also the UUP speaker McCune who repeatedly stressed the importance of the British Labour Party organising in the north of Ireland. However a largely nationalist audience opposed the proposal for the clear role of unionism driving it forward, primarily because of their support for Labour's long-standing policy for Irish reunification but as one speaker highlighted, the lack of any voter base for the British Labour Party in the Six Counties.

The same speaker highlighted that Islington North Labour Party had indeed already discussed organising in the north and had decided not only to firmly reject it but to raise its opposition at Labour's annual conference.

British Army assessment of Irish operations released by Pat Finucane Centre

A statement from the Pat Finucane Centre released on 6th July 2007 reveals its discovery of a document outlining the British military view of its own role, function, successes and failures in the north of Ireland from 1969 to 2006.

The PFC statement says, "The document, Operation Banner - An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland, offers an unprecedented and deeply worrying insight into the thinking of senior military officers and civil servants at the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. Above all the document betrays a profoundly colonial mindset towards the conflict here and those involved in it. From the perspective of Whitehall the rolling hills of Tyrone and Armagh might as well have been the Hindu Kush a century ago."

The statement in particular notes "Loyalist violence and the links between loyalist paramilitaries and the state has been airbrushed out of this military history," in the paper prepared under the then Direction of the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson (pictured) who drew up the notorious 'shot list' in the hours after Bloody Sunday.

BBC coverage draws out the papers assessment that the IRA acted professionally, saying it was "a professional, dedicated, highly skilled and resilient force", while loyalist paramilitaries and other republican groups are described as "little more than a collection of gangsters".

The Pat Finucane Centre also stated "It is clear that the document was not intended to be put in the public domain. We are making it temporarily available on our website in case the MoD attempts to restrict access." The document can be seen here.

Open letter from Justice for the Forgotten, the Pat Finucane Centre and Relatives for Justice

To the Editor

We are responding to the announcement by former Northern Secretary Peter Hain MP of the establishment of a panel to consult on the legacy of the conflict.

We have serious concerns about this NIO initiative, the principal one being that it has been designed by one of the parties to the conflict, the British Government. The process is based on the premise that the British Government was/is a neutral broker, which is reinforced by Hain’s reference to his own role as that of ‘an outsider’. This is clearly an attempt to distance the British Government from any responsibility to join with others in a truth recovery process and to portray the conflict as one between two warring tribes. The British Government was an active combatant and cannot be regarded as an outsider in terms of state violence and collusion. There is a real fear that this initiative may be intended to result in ‘death by consultation’. Any attempt to ‘draw a line in the sand’ and deny families their right to truth and acknowledgment will frustrate any hope of genuine reconciliation between the people of these islands.

We are disturbed by the failure to discuss this proposal in advance with victims’ and survivors’ groups, the context in which it was announced, the proposed narrow focus of the consultation and the lack of representation on the panel of precisely those sectors relevant to this consultation. For such a consultation to attract widespread support the following elements are an essential requirement:
Ø International involvement, which is absolutely necessary in terms of confidence building. However, this has been sidelined to that of two ‘advisers’;
Ø Representatives of victims of the conflict should be consulted and a number of them appointed to the panel;
Ø Any process attempting to deal with the legacy of the conflict should be transparent, inclusive and island wide. The current terms of reference are restricted to the North and ignore the legacy of the conflict south of the border where more than 130 people lost their lives and hundreds were injured. The proposal also excludes consultation in Britain on the needs of victims and survivors there including the families of British soldiers.

In the lead up to this announcement a number of individuals and organisations have been arguing forcefully that is too expensive, or too dangerous, or impossible to deal with the past. The less than subtle message that has been given is that those who have lost loved ones should dry their proverbial eyes and ‘move on’. British Government ministers and former civil servants complain incessantly of the cost of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry but fail to mention that it was the constant legal interventions of the MoD that caused such costs to soar. The Barron Inquiries into the Dublin, Monaghan and Dundalk bombings were a model in terms of cost effectiveness, yet the British authorities treated this Commission with utter contempt.

Others have joined the debate with relentless attacks on any form of re-investigation or inquiry. The Police Federation and Retired Police Officers’ Association have attacked the Office of the Police Ombudsman while others have questioned the personal integrity of the Police Ombudsman. It would appear that the Operation Ballast report got too close to the truth. Surely one of the more bizarre developments is the spectacle of those who spent their professional lives as police officers asking questions of others now refusing to answer questions about their own activities when asked to co-operate by the Ombudsman!

The Public Prosecution Service, with impeccable timing, has done its bit to convince us that the past is a place where we should not, shall not and dare not go.

It is the considered view of our organisations that an independent, international truth commission is the mechanism of truth recovery that would benefit the greatest number of families who have been bereaved through the conflict.

Maya Angelou reminds us that, ‘History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’ It is time that the British Government showed the necessary courage.

Yours,

Margaret Urwin, Justice for the Forgotten
Paul O’Connor, Pat Finucane Centre
Mark Thompson, Relatives for Justice

(JFTF, PFC and RFJ work on behalf of more than 800 families bereaved through the conflict)