Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report) Second generation black people reject the discrimination that their parents tolerated. They are prepared to fight for their rights. As a way of thanking the Queen for letting him stay in Buckingham Palace, the Brazilian dictator Geisel recently presented her with a two-toed sloth. The current joke giving Ministry of Defence officials bellylaughs is to ask how many toes it had before Geisel got hold of it. The MoD gentlemen may well find humour in the Brazilian situation, for they are no strangers to repression themselves.
Allegations of torture against British forces in North-East Ireland first hit the Sunday Times headlines in September 1971. They were immediately dismissed as products of the "IRA propaganda machine'. When they were later confirmed in a report necessary to mount a slander campaign led by the Daily Mirror against Amnesty's director Sean MacBride. Mr MacBride's father had been a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, and this "Irish connection' was enough to clear British liberalism's conscience about what 'our boys' could The sensory deprivation techniques were used too systematically against the Catholic population for the facts to be hidden for long, however. The massive tide of indignant anger that swept Ireland forced the Republic's Government to bring its British paymaster before the European Human Rights Commission at Strasbourg in order to keep its 'green cover'. The Commission finally reported last month, finding Britain guilty of using a modern system o torture"
But the use of the media to whip up anti-Irish chauvinism in this country has been so successful that the British Government no longer finds it necessary even to deny such methods. As Brian Faulkner said on TV, it is necessary only to justify their use "by results'. Nevertheless the :Wal continues. And the result most needed by British imperialism - the defeat of the resistance in the nationalist ghettoes - has not yet been attained.
So the repression continues too. Every male over the age of 15 in Andersonstown has been picked up at, least once, and the recent binge by troops in Derry suggests that the 1,000 or more violent deaths caused since the military intervention in 1969 will not be the last. the Broad Left leadership of the NUS have begun to retreat even trom their with drawal to barracks" position on the troops. Instead, at the Teacher Training Colleges conference they combined their call for a 'Bill of Rights' with support for the much heralded "Peace People'. political basis for a campaign by the British student movement to oppose repression. We believe that it can come out with a better solution than the ones promoted by the Daily Telegraph and similar rags. If the Broad. Left seriously believe that Ms Betty Williams is the mass leader that is required for such a solidarity movement, then we would expect them to test out their positions at this conterence. However, as ar Irishman who knew a little bit more about the consequences of British imperialism than do the Broad Left once said: "Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.
That sums up the position that supporters of the Troops Out Movement will be
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possibly be getting up to in Belfast. Tide
Solution The conference at Canterbury (to be held on 13 November) will be working out a