Northern Ireland under Thatcher:

...If the British under a to be the most difficult one in the British Cabinet-when Rees Conservative government start hanging Irishmen again they was promoted to a higher spot...

...Their Over the last year the RUC has been pushing slowly into the beliefs are based on the assumption that police intelligence is Catholic ghettos from which it was expelled nine years ago...

...poor, he often needs compensation...

...In late 1974 through intermediaries most bloody in the history of the Northern Ireland crisis...

...IRA leaders were also would be treated like an ordinary criminal...

...A RETURN TO INTERNMENT...

...themselves within their own compounds, where they were housed...

...To do Commonweal: 238 this their credibility had to be restored...

...garet Thatcher...

...During that crisis the British seemed powerless to act and Catholic force had to be changed at the top...

...Ulsterization" would then be complete...

...But the policy of Harold Wilson, to be dominated by two related concepts: "criminalization" and "Ulsterization...

...It would undoubtedly lead to large-scale cost...

...sionals...

...But it has not done so without considerable on the Catholics...

...Not only was it an emotive rallying point for the IRA, introducing capital punishment for "terrorist type" offenses...

...IRA as they would any other complex colonial-type situation...

...He has continued the policy will run the risk of arousing the now slumbering nationalistic with effect...

...Northern Ireland under Thatcher JACK HOLLAND Labor Prime Minister until 1976, when he resigned, to become effective had first to dismantle the legacies of the previous THE COMING general election in Great Britain should Conservative government which had to tackle the Northern bring a Conservative government to power under Mar- Ireland crisis when in office from 1970-74...

...The Protestant DURING 1975 the Labor strategy began to unfold...

...They can be sent by sea...

...This had happarty spokesman on Northern Ireland, Airey Neave, is looking pened partly as a result of the Conservatives' own policy which forward to a Conservative success...

...Instead they were shooting local Officers, and has continued to do so ever since...

...Paramilitary prisoners would be However, Harold Wilson and Merlyn Rees were taking a treated like any other, and after a while, the psychological gamble...

...The paramilitaries, both Catholic and Protestant, threatened violence if Special Category was removed...

...They attempted, back issues of such journals as Commonweal, National by threats and intimidation, to stop Protestant workers from Catholic Reporter, Catholic Worker, Sojourners and Chrisgetting to work...

...A new Conservative government this year could halt that month the British Army would be under the control of the this process...

...tially true...

...And if, through restitution But, if anti-criminal tendencies can be checked, this move- programs, we can provide compensation, increase the chances ment is worthy of liberal attention...

...Had they more military punch, they might inflict so Protestant terrorist groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and much damage that the authorities would be forced back into had scored significant inroads into the Provisional IRA...

...An English detective was put in charge of up military momentum...

...with the British Army...

...If the first was to succeed then two 27 April 1979: 237 things had to go: internment and Special Category Status, the second major embarrassment to the Labor Government...

...How- using internment, thus starting the vicious cycle over again...

...the IRA started attacking and killing Prison killing British soldiers...

...Crime victims plicit conservative notion that criminals are overrepresented...

...The greatest embarrassment of all was Ireland that decline might be arrested...

...their viogains during the period the truce was in force...

...but it was an open admission that the kind of violence the The Provisional militants believe that such measures, were British had to deal with was political, and could not be they brought in by the British, would lead to an upsurge of adequately dealt with by the ordinary courts...

...It included the right to wear their own clothes, extra food parcels, more visits and freedom of association, which meant the members of each organization could segregate...

...By any estimation the Labor strategy has succeeded...

...Unlikely supporters of the (under the influence of Northern Ireland Protestant Unionists) Conservative party, it might be thought...

...and because he is, it is time for us to learn from Hammurabi the lesson that crimes after all, a victim...

...From 1975 Merlyn Many Catholics watched anxiously to see how Mason and Rees, with the backing of his government in Westminister, set the RUC would handle it...

...The IRA's involvement in a This in many ways was a turning point in the Labor governvicious Republican feud late in 1975 only emphasized the ment's propaganda campaign against the Northern Ireland point the British were now tediously reiterating: these were paramilitaries...

...one indication of the success of the present Labor govern- The social and political grievances that had created the crisis ment's Northern Ireland strategy, which reduced the violence were forgotten...

...They argue it could to be asked for authorization before the Army mounted any now work on a more "selective" level than in 1971 when minor operations in his area...

...claims would be removed...

...If it succeeded in abolishing Special Category not freedom fighters but gangsters...

...Part of the arrange- soldiers died...

...Ironically, the organization of Irish Re- During that period the situation had developed from widepublican terrorists which recently killed the Conservative spread civil unrest to open guerrilla warfare...

...When he came to power he determined to Conservative party-was speculating on the possibility of end it...

...As a party founded on socialseveral years of careful and often subtle Labor party maneuver- democratic and socialist principles, they could not be seen to ing which has brought the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland to be engaged in an open colonial-type struggle...

...the other units, including the Special Branch-the political The provisional IRA have meanwhile been trying to build wing of the RUC...

...and because the state has failed in its basic against the state are, first and foremost, crimes against people...

...But the key statements...

...Fourteen policemen were shot dead in 1977 by the confrontations between the Catholic population and the army Provisionals who have sworn that the RUC will not be permit- which characterized the previous Conservative administrated to gain a foothold in their ghettos...

...Many of their more politically conscious the RUC back into the Catholic ghettos in some form...

...By December that year Status then an important plank in the IRA and UDA's political internment had ended...

...An Englishman the Protestant paramilitaries took over the state for nearly a was appointed head of the force, and those who had made the month...

...The Provisionals forcing the British to reintroduce it...

...In much better now than in 1971, and that the IRA has little many such areas it now operates patrols and checkpoints support left in the Catholic ghettos...

...In May, 1977 Paisley and the UDA called for a general social justice in the spirit of the Gospels...

...He could also instigate such people were indiscriminately imprisoned although they were operations at his own request...

...British soldiers...

...But their attitude is interpreted the troubles as being one gigantic IRA conspiracy...

...support for them among Northern Ireland's war-weary The Conservatives might have been prepared to admit as Catholics...

...Within six months of coming to power Wilson had taken the It was a significant indication of the Labor party's thinking first steps toward achieving both "Ulsterization" and "crimi- that the year they ended internment proved to be one of the nalization" of the conflict...

...Like internment, Special Category Status was an implicit recognition that the Northern Ireland violence was not primarily criminal...

...Harold Wilson had called it a "recruiting sergeant for the the Labor Party...

...There was always the possibility that the Provisionals effect of this would be a bad blow to their morale and selfwould swell their ranks with released internees, regroup and image...

...It also lent some credence to the imprisoned paramilitaries' claim that they were "prisoners of war...

...Bay, Maseru, LESOTHO...

...Their policy was the point of desperation...

...permitted to move about openly without fear of arrest...

...Their vestigated by Amnesty International, and found to be substan- support has declined, their members badly hit by arrests...

...ment in the criminal justice system...

...Special Category, or political...

...To many Catholics it 1972, after a hunger strike by a group of Republican prisoners...

...An added boon to compensation laws may forces which cause crime, often consider victim rights to be an be the American public's restored faith and greater involveideologically dangerous cause to espouse...

...without army assistance...

...police more efficient...

...have for too long been treated solely as pieces of evidence in The violent crime victim deserves compensation because, American courtrooms...

...This would have been impossible a But they underestimate the provocative effect it would have few years ago...

...innocent of any crime or even Republican connection...

...seemed that the IRA's guerrilla army had become a mafia...

...make the Labor government change their so-far successful Within 18 months it had mopped up one of the most powerful policy...

...mainly "criminal" in character...

...status, as it is often called, was a series of privileges which were conferred on imprisoned members of paramilitary organizations...

...But it signally policemen and becoming increasingly involved in blatant sec- failed to rally any support from the Catholic population behind tarian attacks on Protestants...

...In 1978 the toll was 14...

...in 1977 they killed 11...

...ever, in doing so it has provoked a storm of accusations about But so far the Provisionals' campaign has been on a smaller the ill-treatment of its prisoners-accusations which were in- scale than it was throughout most of 1971, '72 and '73...

...Address: J. E. Stewart, Transformation, Private the IRA...

...at the same time having gained some has been almost three years since Special Category was political credibility among Catholics by claiming to have abolished, and neither the IRA nor the UDA seems capable of ended internment...

...They have started attacking soldiers the Crime Squad's Intelligence Unit, and it was given access to again...

...The militant Republicans -members of the Provisional IRA When Labor inherited the problem after they won the general and other factions-believe that if a new Conservative gov- election in 1974, they found the fruits of the Conservative ernment was true to the party's past record in Northern policy embarrassing...

...It was important for the British to get of shops and hotels...

...Apart "Ulster Defence Association" (UDA) burnt buses the day from occasional "retaliatory" attacks the IRA had stopped before March 1st...

...The old image of the RUC as a pro-Unionist, anti- in it...

...By the begin- the majority of the violence was sectarian and internecine: few ning of 1975 a truce had been negotiated...

...It appeals for sets of strike against British rule in Northern Ireland...

...In the meantime they had begun to build some- to this most important part of their strategy `was the Royal thing of a business empire in the Catholic areas, and became Ulster Constabulary, a discredited force in the eyes of Northinvolved in running drinking clubs, garages and an assortment ern Ireland's Catholics...

...ever, their violence is no longer a serious enough threat to The Crime Squad's task was to break the paramilitaries...

...Provisionals...

...hanced (in spite of growing allegations about its treatment of prisoners) when it successfully confronted a serious threat A new community working for new forms of society in from the Reverend Ian Paisley and the Protestant paramilitary Southern Africa is building up a resource center of materials on forces...

...27 April 1979: 239...

...Hunwing Conservatives have been advocating the reintroduction dreds of Catholics had been arrested and imprisoned without of internment without trial, which was phased out in 1975 by trial...

...The Conservative government had granted it in members protested, and resigned...

...It is a fact that many in the Conservatives' right local police divisional commander...

...Significantly, the Catholics did not see it as an say that the violence was now more of a police matter, being emotive issue...

...But the gamble paid off...

...In 1978, the fatalities tion, and which did so much to swing support behind the were almost as high...

...Late in 1975 Rees took the next step toward "criminalizThere were other concessions, including the fight of the ing" his paramilitary opponents...

...Their own demand: tighten security against tian Century...

...Recently Margaret Thatcher-leader of the Provisional IRA...

...At a secret plans of the Labor party for a gradual withdrawal of the British meeting of police chiefs in Belfast they were told that as from Army...

...That is, they aimed to remove any politiJACK HOLLAND, a Belfast poet and journalist, is American corre- cal claims that the paramilitaries had to justify their violence, spondent for The Irish Press and Hibernia...

...Already many right- internment, which had been introduced in August, 1971...

...They did, and the threat evaporated...

...and has The Conservatives tackled the violence of the Provisional precipitated a decline in support for the various violent groups...

...It launch another campaign...

...Liberals can agree that for criminal rehabilitation, and lighten the burden on the crimvictims are underrepresented without also accepting the im- inal justice system, then so much the better...

...inspired strike of 1974, which brought down the last Northern Officers who had an obvious political past were not pro- Ireland government because it had dared to include Catholics moted...

...The growing police presence in the Catholic ghettos and A significant stage in the changing security pattern in their increased responsibility for security is a prelude in the Northern Ireland was reached in February, 1977...

...Howinformation from all sections of the force...

...That meant he would have wing want to see internment reintroduced...

...Detectives were recruited into it from all charges...

...Their much lence was no longer mainly directed at the British Army, vaunted incident centers, which many saw as the opportunity which the Labor government hoped it could gradually withthey needed to build up a solid political following in the draw from the front line, leaving the police in charge of ghettos, became publicity offices, and did little but issue security...

...His work has appeared in whilst at the same time diverting it away from confrontations the Nation, Newsday, and the New York Times...

...They remembered the UDAabout this delicate and difficult task...

...The British would probably I N SEPTEMBER, 1976 a new Secretary of State for Northern have a bloodier war on their hands than anything they have Ireland was appointed . Roy Mason took over the job-said experienced so far in Northern Ireland...

...But he opened up contacts with the Provisional IRA...

...Many thought the 1977 crisis would be a repeat permost rapid progress under him tended to be young "profes- formance...

...For reasons of equity and practicality, being...

...Under him the RUC's morale was further en- instincts throughout Ireland...

...there last year (1978) to its lowest level since 1970...

...AN END TO 'ULSTERIZATION...

...However, Mason ordered the RUC to move against the A certain amount of reorganization was begun to make the ,Protestant roadblocks...

...By the end of the year the Labor a political campaign of protest against the ending of the government's man in Northern Ireland, Merlyn Rees, could privileges...

...He announced that as from Provisionals to run local offices or "incident centers," which March 1st any member of a paramilitary organization contheir political wing ("Sinn Fein") hoped would give them a victed of an offense would not be granted political status, but power base in the Catholic ghettos...

...Should the death penalty be introduced the result would be even more traumatic...

...Being primarily militarists, they could make no political BY 1976 the Provisionals were "criminalized...

...The conflict was gradually becoming ments was that the British would phase out internment in return "Ulsterized," and the Provisional IRA's claims that they were for a guarantee from the IRA that they would stop attacking waging a war of national liberation were being undermined...

...Should their hopes be fulfilled, it would undermine much but Labor was not...

...In August, 1975 a new squad was set up The police have followed this up by a series of arrests of which has developed throughout Northern Ireland as the Re- prominent Protestant paramilitary militants on a variety of gional Crime Squad...

...proved less well able to conduct a truce than a war...