BRITISH TORIES SMASH PEACE PROCESS IN OCCUPIED IRELAND WITH POLITICAL INTERNMENT

Irish Republican, Marian PriceMarian Price was charged with a trumped up British creation of 'glorifying terrorism'. Her lawyer applied for bail on the basis she is not a threat to anyone. The Court agreed and instructed her to be released. Just as she was being freed in Court, non-elected all powerful British Ruler of Occupied Ireland, Owen Patterson interned her for expressing her political beliefs.

Marian Price was originally released under the the terms of a so called peace process, that the British have clearly dumped. Other former Irish POWs like Martin Corey (19) from County Armagh who spent 19 years inside Long Kesh concentration camp and was also released in June 1992.

Without warning Martin's home was raided by the RUC/PSNI and following arrest placed into Maghaberry internment. Martin had tried his best to rebuild his life with family and friends. Martin found it difficult to find work, he is now in bad health and no longer a young man. Martin has not been given any official reason by the British or Stormont as to why he is politically interned.

It appears like Marian Price, Martin a principled traditional Irish Republican, is being held as a political hostage by the British and their collaborators, simply because of political beliefs that refuse to accept British Occupation of Ireland. Many other Irish political prisoners, too numerous to mention here are being interned. There have more than 2,000 Irish people politically interned by the British in occupied Ireland in the latest phase of the troublle

The British compromised mainstream media in Ireland, try to portray the dictated British propaganda lie of normality in Occupied Ireland. They censor and refuse to broadcast anything that remotely exposes the corrupt, out of control bureaucracy budgets of securocrats, which are profiting from smashing any possible real peace process, based on genuine justice in Ireland.

The current destruction of the path to real peace has started in earnest, since the arrival of the new Conservative Government to power in Britain aided by extravagantly recently rich collaborators at Stormont.

The British are not genuinely interested in real peace in Ireland, there is much more money to be made in the Irish troubles, with the British taxpayers funding huge budgets, for the resulting expanded securocrat budgets.The re-introduction of political internment in Occupied Ireland, is guaranteed to inflame militant resistance and sectarian passion, in the absence of freedom of speech, or any prospect of progressive change to achieve real justice in Ireland.

In a recent article I used an objectivel report of the atrocities being committed by the British in Ireland from a non-Irish republican or British perspective, to explain how the priest, Father Murray an admirable campaigner for justice, in a book explained how British "State Violence" along with the terrible injustices that included internment, have guaranteed no end to the troubles in Ireland.

"Pursuance of the grievances of those who suffered duress in interrogation centres, a never-ending story in the recent long war in Northern Ireland, led Denis Faul and myself into campaigning against other violations of human rights in Northern Ireland in subsequent years: corruption of law; lack of independence in the matter of inquiry into complaints; the abuse of emergency laws; harassment and intimidation of civilians by security forces; injuries and deaths caused by rubber and plastic bullets; collusion between British security forces, British intelligence and loyalist paramilitaries; unjust killings and murders by state security forces; excessive punishments in the prisons; cruel strip searching in prisons. In the 1970s only a few people actively helped to try and stop these violations of human rights: the Civil Rights Movement, the Association for Legal Justice, the National Council for Civil Liberties, Amnesty International and some concerned priests, doctors, surgeons and lawyers.

There are two kinds of histories, one fact and one semi-fiction. This is the conclusion of my experience in working for human rights. The history put out by the ruling class borders on fiction. Their official communiqués are published first and grab the headlines. They hold attention while a crisis lasts. It is an attempt to legitimise illegal actions by which they maintain their power over the powerless and the poor. It is tyranny's deceit.

The second history is the short and simple annals of the poor, the worm's eye view. It is often secret. It is the story of the injustice done to them in order to preserve the power and privilege of a few. When power is threatened, the 'lion' and the 'eagle' and the 'bear' will grab the nearest and crush them as an example to the rest. It matters not that they are innocent or guilty. What matters is that they are close at hand and are representative.

Can true history be written? Is it essentially the story of the ruling class? Is it the speeches of President Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan and the memoirs of Mrs Margaret Thatcher? Is it not also the story of the unemployed in Birmingham and the deprived blacks in Atlantic City? Must the 'nobodies' remain statistics of birth, death and marriage? There are many 'hidden Irelands' but who has hidden them? The sufferings, the tensions, the spiritual striving for holiness of countless poor families, the injustices done to the underprivileged and the miraculous survival of their traditions in spite of the ever-present monster of power, these are true history. We should give the poor the dignity of their names.

Traditionally too much writing of the history of Ireland was based on state papers and the public judgements of governments and judges. Historical expression was reduced to a truculent embarrassment which silenced the cries for justice of the poor. When the state was wrong it hid the facts and stopped the truth being told. The writer of the introductory history to Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae 1152-1827 says, We may observe here once for all that Ireland of itself has no history, properly speaking'.

The conflicts of the 1798 period are no different from those of today I have witnessed the state in Northern Ireland kill, torture, bribe, and imprison people unjustly Denis Faul and I tried to stop these violations of human rights by official complaints, by breaking the silence in the media, by publishing books, pamphlets and broadsheets, by noising the problems abroad. This book State Violence in Northern Ireland, 1969-1997, draws together pieces illustrative of the violations of human rights by the state in Northern Ireland. They were written fresh during those years. Most of them have already been published in books, pamphlets and magazines. People who have lived through this period in Northern Ireland will immediately recall the perspective they convey I am sure they will help others understand the frustration of the 'nobodies' who did not get justice and whose voices were almost suppressed.

The rôle of the academic is changing, I hope. Today the historian must live with history as it is being made. We have seen historians expose the hypocrisy of the public statements and the private orders of the last world war and the wars in Korea and Vietnam. I think historians should close the gap and become investigators of current public affairs. They should expose and challenge the prejudice that the ruling class presents through the media and through their spokespersons. Similarly what good are theologians if they can only speak for the past? And why did the philosophers in the universities sing dumb in post-war Northern Ireland while the whirlwind gathered? We had five years of internment and a decade of torture. Only a few notable academics spoke out. Do academics only comment on the dead?

The historian of today should expose the workings of modern government and reveal the enormous amount of truth that is concealed. This book gives examples of the violations of human rights in Northern Ireland. Fortunately the interests of national security, patronage and power did not suppress all the truth."

This humanitarian, politically non-aligned, priest worked tirelessly for justice all of his life. This author can personally vouch for him as a spiritual man of honour. Those who profess peace in Ireland, would do well to turn to his work as a genuine basis for real peace based on justice in Ireland, as opposed to opportunistic soundbites and lip service to the injustices of political internment, torture and injustice.

The collaborators at Stormont do have the power to change this but once again, it will be left to Irish freedom fighters, with all of the grief for everybody it entails, to resort to militancy on the streets, to effect the real change, that is only possible, with a British withdrawal from Occupied Ireland. It has beeN proven in Ireland, over and over again in a period of 800 years, that neither justice or peace is possible with British Occupation in Ireland.

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