Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 12, September 1981
The war of national liberation conducted by the Irish people against British imperialism has not been confined to Ireland. Time and again it has been brought into the heartland of British imperialism by bombing campaigns and other military actions. A growing number of Irish men and women have been jailed as a result. Many of them had no part in the actions for which they were jailed. They have been framed and jailed as part of the systematic terror conducted by the British ruling class to prevent Irish people in England from joining the war of national liberation. The trials and convictions of Irish prisoners of war in England thoroughly expose a web of lies, corruption, brutality and perjury. They have exposed the police and courts for what they are: instruments of the ruling class designed to suppress the revolt of the oppressed against rotten and decaying imperialism. The case now being manufactured against the Bradford 12 shows that the machinery perfected against the Irish will now be directed against revolutionary workers in this country who dare to fight oppression. The experience of the Irish POWs contains a wealth of warnings and lessons for the vanguard forces of the working class in this country.
Imperialist conspiracy
Over the last decade more than 100 Irish men and women have been jailed in England. The favourite device used is the notorious conspiracy charge which poses no obstacle to the frame-ups organised against Irish people. It is no accident that the Bradford 12 are charged with conspiracy. The Bradford 12 case is designed to play exactly the same role against the oppressed in Britain as the Irish political trials have played against the Irish. The imperialist conspiracy to frame and jail lrish POWS has been thoroughly exposed in these trials. The petit bourgeois left has not only refused to support the Irish POWs but also refused to bring the lessons of their struggle to the working class-lessons which, are vital today.
Provocateurs
Nothing shows up the real basis of imperialist ‘justice’ for the oppressed so much as the use of police agents and provocateurs.
In June 1972, six Irishmen were charged with arms offences. It was ‘discovered’ that the guns in question, supplied by police agent John Parker, had come from police arsenals! The charges were dropped but no action was taken against either John Parker, self-confessed perjurer, or the police who had conspired to commit a ‘criminal’ offence. In November 1973 three members of Sinn Fein – Sean Campbell, Phil Sheridan and Gerry Mealey — known as the Luton Three were convicted of ‘conspiring to rob persons unknown in Bletchley’. They were not accused of actually robbing anyone and no evidence was produced to show that they ever intended to rob anyone. They were the victims of a trap laid by police agent Kenneth Lennon at the instigation of Special Branch. At the trial Lennon’s name and his role in the affair was concealed by the prosecution denying the defence any opportunity of contesting the basis of the police case. All three were sentenced to ten years on the concealed evidence of a police tout. Lennon went on to set up an 18-year-old Irishman Pat O’Brien.
Lennon approached Sinn Fein with a plan to free the Luton Three from Winson Green prison. Rebuffed by Sinn Fein he succeeded in entrapping Pat O’Brien in his plot. Both were arrested outside Winson Green prison whilst O’Brien was taking photographs of the prison. They were jointly charged with conspiracy to effect an escape. Pat O’Brien was jailed whilst Lennon, with the aid of Special Branch, was acquitted. Lennon later confessed his role as tout and provocateur to the NCCL. He said that the police would kill him and make it look like an IRA execution. Days later he was found dead in a ditch shot in the back of the head. Pat O’Brien was released on appeal but Lord Widgery – the man who covered up the Bloody Sunday massacre – upheld both the police use of Lennon and the concealment of his role by the prosecution. Legal niceties cannot stand between the courts and their suppression of Irish people. The murderer or Lennon has, of course, never been found.
In April 1977 John Higgins, then National Organiser of Sinn Fein Britain, was tried for offences including soliciting arms from John Banks. Banks, notorious reactionary gunrunner and ex-paratrooper, provided the ‘evidence’ against John Higgins. Banks’ disgusting role came to light when he was organising mercenaries for the CIA-backed FNLA in Angola. Judge Griffiths-Jones gave John Higgins the maximum possible sentence of ten years.
Torture
Just as in Ireland, many of the convictions of Irish political prisoners in England rest on ‘voluntary confessions’ torn out of them by brutality and threats.
In October 1975 Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong, Gerry Conlon and Carole Richardson were jailed for the Guildford and Woolwich bombings in October and November 1974. The four were convicted solely on the basis of ‘confessions’ having been subjected to ‘beatings, threats, sleep deprivation and denial of food. Carole Richardson had evidence that when the Guildford bombing took place she was at a concert in South London. The man who came forward to provide this evidence was himself detained for two days. The evidence was ignored. No other evidence was produced connecting any of the four to either bombing. They were convicted and sentenced to life, 35 years, 30 years and detention at Her Majesty’s Pleasure respectively. When Brendan Dowd and three of the Balcombe Street Four claimed the Woolwich and Guildford bombings, the appeal against the conviction of Hill, Armstrong, Conlon and Richardson was rejected. Even though forensic ‘expert’ for the state, Higgs, admitted that he had removed evidence relating to Woolwich and Guildford from the Balcombe Street trial at the instruction of the Bomb Squad. The chief prosecutor was Michael Havers who, having proved his worthiness in serving imperialism, is now Attorney-General.
Following the Birmingham explosions on 21 November 1974 the then Labour Government, in alliance with the bourgeois press, whipped up anti-Irish hysteria to cover the introduction of the racist anti-Irish Prevention of Terrorism Act. In this orchestrated carnival of reaction six men — John Walker, Patrick Hill, Robert Hunter, Noel McIlkenny, William Power and Hugh Callaghan — were arrested. Later they were joined by Michael Murray, Michael Sheenan and James Kelly, who were charged with conspiracy. As none of the Birmingham six had anything to do with the explosions the frame-up machine went into action.
The six were repeatedly beaten by the police. They were threatened with summary execution. Mock executions using unloaded guns placed in their mouths and behind their heads were staged. They were told that mobs were outside their homes baying for the blood of their families. No doubt the rabid chauvinist hysteria which filled the gutter press helped in the mental and physical torture of these comrades. Four made statements full of inconsistencies and contradictions. But the stumbling block for the police frame-up was the fact that the six bore clear marks of the brutality used to extract the confessions.
Dr Harwood, prison doctor at Winson Green, declared that the six arrived at the prison ‘black, blue, battered and bleeding’. For his naive belief that his job was to tell the truth Dr Harwood was called everything from an incompetent to a perjurer by Judge Bridge at the trial —just as Dr Irwin was smeared and slandered for exposing RUC torture in Castlereagh. Prison officers at Winson Green themselves savagely attacked the prisoners. The result of this beating was to cover up the marks left by the police beating. All six appeared in court bearing fresh signs of brutality but, of course, it was impossible to distinguish the screw brutality from the police brutality. The ‘confessions’ were admitted as evidence and all six convicted and sentenced to life.
For the oppressed fighting imperialist oppression ‘justice’ in an imperialist court consists of the organised lies of touts and provocateurs, police brutality, forced ‘confessions’ and rigged evidence. Over 100 Irish men and women are in jail as a result of such ‘justice’. But Irish revolutionaries have not gone meekly to prison they have fought imperialism in its very courts. They have turned the tables on their oppressors and used the courts as forums to expose imperialist barbarity and lies before the whole working class.
Imperialist ‘justice’ opposed
The skilful, courageous and determined revolutionary resistance to imperialism by Irish freedom fighters is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the case of the Balcombe Street Four. The Four — named after the street in which they were finally captured — used their trial to expose the Guildford and Woolwich frame-up and to reveal to the working class the political character of their struggle against imperialism.
Even before their trial they showed their understanding of imperialism and their calibre as revolutionary fighters. On 6 December 1975 the Four — Joe O’Connell, Eddie Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty were surprised by the police during a military action. Knowing the fate that befell other Irish people on capture they decided to ensure that they would be arrested with maximum publicity to reduce the opportunity for the police to assault them, or indeed murder them. They entered a house in Balcombe Street and took a married couple hostage. On 11 December, having achieved their purpose of surrounding their capture with maximum publicity, they surrendered.
At their trial all four refused to plead. Three refused on the grounds that Guildford and Woolwich were not included in the indictment thus, right from the start, mounting the offensive against the frame-up. The fourth, Harry Duggan, refused to plead stating ‘I refuse to plead because I am an Irish Republican and I know I won’t get justice in an English court’. The battle opened between four revolutionaries and their oppressors.
All four used their right to challenge the jury to dismantle the rigged jury set up by the Special Branch and produce a working class jury including five women and three blacks. Throughout the trial they refused to defend themselves but concentrated solely on exposing the Guildford and Woolwich frame-up.
Their expert conduct trapped the prosecution in lie after lie. The alleged ‘verbal’ statements produced omitted the statements actually made claiming Guildford and Woolwich. So effectively did they expose this that prosecuting Counsel Matthews was forced to declare to the jury ‘Guildford and Woolwich are not a matter for you’ in a desperate effort to maintain the frame-up. By the end of the trial the prosecution attempts to maintain the frame-up were in ruins. Then Joe O’Connell made statement from the dock which put forward the revolutionary standpoint of these comrades.
‘We admit to no ‘crime’ and to no ‘guilt’ for the real crime and guilt are those of British imperialism committed against our people. The war against imperialism is a just war and it will go on, for true peace can only come about when a nation is free from oppression and injustice. Whether we are imprisoned or not is irrelevant for our whole nation is the prisoner of British imperialism. The British people who choose to ignore this or to swallow the lies of the British gutter press are responsible for the actions of their government unless they stand out against them.
As volunteers in the Irish Republican Army we have fought to free our oppressed nation from its bondage to British imperialism of which this court is an integral part.’
The jury, to the rage of the police and judge, acquitted the four on 26 of the 100 counts against them. As Judge Cantley handed out life sentences the four raised clenched fists and shouted ‘Up the Provos’. To the last they demonstrated their unyielding contempt for imperialism.
True to the spirit of the Balcombe Street Four, Irish POWs have gone into prison not as passive victims of imperialist violence and repression, but as organised, politically conscious revolutionaries continuing the fight against imperialism inside the prisons themselves. The Irish POWs have set an example to the whole working class in the battle against imperialism in the courts and, as we shall see, inside the prisons.
Terry Marlowe
Acknowledgement: Much of the material used in this article is based on publications produced by the Prisoners Aid Committee. Their newspaper Irish Prisoner can be obtained from PAC, 2a St Pauls Road, London N1. Price 15p plus postage [OFFER NO LONGER APPLIES].
Jim Reilly, Luton Sinn Fein and Home Counties Organiser, died in hospital on Friday 26 September 1980. Jim Reilly was a lifelong revolutionary Republican fighter working right up to the moment of his death.
His death was a direct result of the frame-up organised against him and his close comrade Gerry MacLochlainn (now serving a six year sentence). Having hounded Jim Reilly throughout his life, British imperialism succeeded in hounding him to death in September 1980.
Jim Reilly’s death was a great loss both to the Republican movement and the British working class. He will always be remembered as a courageous dedicated Republican and convinced socialist. The RCG salutes the memory of comrade Jim Reilly.
