A letter from Ireland
a Chara,
This week marks the anniversary of the reintroduction of internment without trial in the North of Ireland in 1971.
Since the partition of Ireland in 1922, the British Unionist-controlled government in Stormont had interned Irish Republican prisoners in every decade up until the 1970s. My grandfather was interned in the 1940s, an uncle in the 1950’s and two uncles in the 1970s. As a family, we knew the cost of the internment.
Following the establishment of the Northern State, the parliament of Stormont passed the Special Powers Act, which remained in force until the parliament was closed down in 1972.
The Special Powers Act conferred wide powers of arrest without warrant, search, and questioning. A Minister had the power to detain and intern without trial, hang, flog, prohibit coroners’ inquests, and to make regulations, each with the force of a new law, without consulting the parliament in Stormont.
It was little wonder that Vorster, the South African Minister for Justice in the apartheid regime commented that he “would be willing to exchange all the (apartheid era) legislation for one clause of the Northern Ireland Special Powers Act.”
On August 9th, 1971, a mass arrest operation was authorized by the old Stormont regime with the support of the British Government in London. It was given the grandiose name of Operation Demetrius.
Three hundred and fifty men from an Irish Catholic background were rounded up and brutalised. One hundred and four were released within forty-eight hours. The remaining number were imprisoned for an undetermined time without access to a trial based on uncorroborated and untested allegations and “intelligence”.
The target was Irish Republicans, but many evaded capture. Despite the sectarian assassination campaigns by pro-British loyalists, it would be February 1973 before any members of these groups would be targeted.
At the end of internment on December 5th, a total of 1,981 people were detained without trial; 1,874 were Catholic / Republican, including women prisoners held in Armagh Prison. Over the same period, 107 Protestant / Loyalists were interned.
The reintroduction of internment in 1971 was met with civil resistance and an increase in violence. The anti-internment march in Derry in January 1972 was attacked by British Paratroopers, and thirteen civil rights protesters were killed on the day, and one later from their injuries. It became known as Bloody Sunday.
I offer this not as a look back in anger but as a measure of how far we have traveled. The old Stormont regime that ordered the internment of my grandfather and uncles is gone. The pro-British unionist majority in Stormont is gone. Interment without trial is gone. The truth about Bloody Sunday is known.
Progress is measured by both how far we have come and how far we have yet to travel. The injustice and brutality imposed on internees have not been resolved, with the British government seeking to block legal cases against those illegally detained.
The Good Friday Agreement now means that Irish Unity is within reach. Remember the past and plan for a better future.
Have a great weekend.
Is mise,
Ciarán
Ciarán Quinn is the Sinn Féin Representative to North America. Each week he writes a letter from Ireland with news and analysis. It is featured in the weekly Friends of Sinn Féin USA Newsletter. Be sure you are subscribed to stay up to date.
