Last September's demonstration-now solidarity efforts must be redoubled Fianna Fail Government did not stand idly by; they embarked on a of the defenders of the Catholic ranging powers of a revived (1939) war-time emergency law, further legislation was enacted.
lican rhetoric in Fianna Fail's elecpathies not only of its supporters but also of elements among its public representatives, made it slightly unreliable for carrying out a policy of full collaboration with Election of 1973, Fianna Fail was lition.
INCREASE courts to sentence Republicans to ed forces have had massive budget and manpower increases, and the police force Branch In 1969, following pogroms on Catholic areas in Northern Ireland by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and pro-imperialist Protestant mobs, the then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Dublic Government, Jack Lynch. moved troops to the border and announced: "We shall not stand idly by.' In a sense, Jack Lynch and his campaign of arrests and harassment COUTES. ghettoes, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Not content with the wide- ARRESTS But the importance of Repubtoral base, and the Republican symin the South.
British imperialism. In the General defeated by a Fine Gael/ Labour coa Since then, the use of non-jury jail for alleged IRA membership has continued at a steady rate, the armespecially the Special has been expanded. More and more, the Free State Army has Siochana (police force), and regular has come up with the Criminal Law ent before the Dail (Parliament) and ercraft. Court, but evidence from witnesses in the North (such as the RUC and the British Army) could be taken in the North before similar non-jury The Bill would also authorise any civilian to arrest anyone whom they believed had committed an offence in the North. This clause could legalise action by a Loyalist gang trying to kidnap Republicans This is no improbability: three Loyalists are in jail in the South at the moment for trying to kidnap an Armagh man, Seamus Frew, in Monaghan last year (he was later shot by the RUC in Armagh). Under the Bill they could be congratulated for doing a public service (Section 19).
Another sinister aspect of this vicious piece of legislation is that it would also increase drastically the penalties for many offences in the South something which has nothing to do with its declared purpose. No less than seven sections of the Bill redefine existing laws and extend their application, and in so doing go well beyond the scope of "terrorist type offences Section 6 amends the definition of burglary to include among other things, entering a building as a trespasser with intent to steal or doing any damage to the building. lor these offences you can be imprisoned for 14 years. Section 10 states that the hijacking of a vehicle is punishable by 15 years imprisonment. The term vehicle includes everything from a bicycle to a hovREPRESSIVE Since the defeat of the campaign against the Forcible Entry Bill in 1970, which brought thousands of trade unionists onto the streets, the trade union movement has done little to fight repressive laws The Republican Movement has, ever since the rise of the struggle in the North, been reluctant to tackle the Southern state: and the opposition of the Provos to the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Bill has been almost exclusively restricted to articles in their paper, An Phoblacht. In particular, the Provos have never organised their numchically consecrane nase wa the trade unions.
IRISH PREMIER LIAM COSGRAVE Thus the Provos were unable to exploit a situation where unions had come out formally in opposition to the Bill and to transform for formal opposition into positive acThe orientation of the Revolutionary Marxist Group (Irish section twofold. Regarding the mobilisation of trade unionists as the most important factor, they attempted to get trade union bodies to sponsor a march against the Bill. In this they were successful, despite the very strong tendency of the trade union movement (shared by the Stalinist parties) to restrict itself to ceononne questons The Dublin District Council of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU - by far the largest Irish trade union) passed