WITHIN arrested under its provisions.
North of Ireland.
The facts speak themselves. The overwhelming majority of the people picked up under the PTA are innocent oi any crime ol a terrorist Nor is there any evidence to suggest that the Act 'prevents terrorism', or deters Provisional IRA from undertaking urban guerrilla warfare in this country The IRA active service units (ASUs) carrying out bombing campaign in London, Manchester and Southampton during 1975 were little hindered by the then recently passed legislation. Members of ASUs were picked up in 1975 and 1976 as a consequence of operational mistakes.
The beginning of 1976 witnessed a closing down of operations by the IRA in Great Britain after the arrest during the latter part of 1975 of a number of key personel.
But as recent events have shown, the IRA has been able to rebuild its organisation in England and the Act has had little effect on its activities.
Nor is it likely to, for IRA activities are carried out as anonymously as possible.
The typical ASU will be composed of a small number of men and women who have no criminal convictions and are unknown to the police.
They will keep clear of Irish areas and Republican activities; they will not act in a way that is likely to draw attention themselves, they will stay clear of drugs and drink moderately.
n these circumstances the PTA is not going to provide much help in detecting preventing "terrorism'.
the next few days the Prevention of Terrorism Act comes up for renewal for the sixth time. Since November 1974, when it first came into operation following the public hysteria over the Birmingham pub bombs, over 3,750 people have been Of those, no more than 2 per cent have been charged with offences arising out of 'terrorist' activities. Some 4 per cent have been "excluded', the majority to the This is not to suggest that the Act deserves support if it were for shown to be effective. Indeed there are fundamental reasons for opposing the PTA.
Chief of these is anther piece of legislation in a long line of legislative measures designed to combat the struggle Irish people the self-determination.
If the Act has not deterred the IRA, what has it done? In terms of pre-existing powers and practices it was the hardly necessary In his book In the Office of Constable, the former head of the Metropolitan Police, Robert Mark, wrote of the PTA: "The police indifferent (to its enactment).
The National Council for Civil Liberties were quite right in assuming that we would not let any legal niceties prevent us from dealing with terrorism and that we were therefore not all that interested in what we thought WES essentially propaganda measure.* Propaganda measure or not, the Act increased police powers to an unprecedented extent in vital areas.
It enabled them to arrest people for no particular crime and to hold them for up to SCYCIE days without inconvenience of producing them in court.
It introduced new offences couched in ambiguous terms, making it an offence to support the IRA in any way. to Eventually, therefore, Act has had two only effects. In the first place it has people. enabled the police to intimidate and harass Republicans Secondly, the Act and provided the police with the means to gather information on that it is for police police to Sir were largely those politically active on the Irish issue.
Thus the police find the Act extremely useful intelligence-gathering ment. It is this particular aspect of the Act that explains the extreme disparity between the total numbers detained those actually excluded.
the In that context the Act fulfils OlIC Frank Kitson-type insurgency strategy quires a large quantity of low level intelligence'.
Necessarily, such a strategy the envisages the arrest, detention important and screening of many innocent To better quantities of information to be has oblallica once taken place, it is important that the police have the power to suspect tor a consid able length of time interterence SoncHors or being subject Ec Specifically the Act prc