various international human rights bodies.
personal traits of Roy demands for 'human rights' in Ireland are sufficient.
needs to be faced.
something.
British presence as a whole.
MPs will make such an observation. forthcoming election. Let Ireland be an issue.
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Socialist Challenge 15 March 1979 page 2 THE NEW revelations of torture by the British administration in the North of Ireland will come as no surprise to readers of this newspaper. We have chronicled many times the countless acts of murder, torture and repression by the British Army and Royal The truth is that the exposures made on ITV's Weekend World and said to be contained in the government-sponsored inquiry into Castlereagh police barracks should not shock anyone with even the slightest knowledge of events in the North of Ireland. The facts of British repression have been reported in Irish national newspapers, they have been raised by the Irish government, and highlighted by There are signs that this time the Labour government may make some pathetic gesture to appease its Irish critics. There is, after all, an election looming, and the Irish vote cannot be alienated too But the torture is not the result of a couple of particularly sadistic uniformed thugs, it is not even the result of the rather nasty Mason. The tactics employed to put opponents of British rule in Ireland behind bars are the only tactics available to Britain — apart from internment or mass murder.
Torture flows from the British presence, it will continue to be employed while Britain is in Ireland, for such has always been the case. So although the latest exposures may persuade some of the Labour "left' in Parliament finally to ask a few questions (and a substantial vote against the forthcoming renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act would help), the time has long gone when The denial by Britain of the right of the Irish people as a whole to self-determination is the biggest denial of human rights there is, and it is the whole issue of the British presence in Ireland which Just for once in the life of this Labour government, it would be pleasant to see the Labour left actually taking a principled stand on . They could do no better than take such a stand on the North of Ireland, and to say that it is not individual soldiers or policemen who should be made the scapegoat, but rather the But we don't have much confidence that more than a couple of Accordingly, socialists should think long and hard about how they can raise it in the