Between the lines
by Meadbh Gallagher
If you want to know why you should vote No in the EU referendum
on May 22nd, look no further than Dublin, March 20th 1998.
At a meeting of Europe's most secretive police units in the Grand
Hotel, Malahide, the Garda Siochana were represented by none
other than senior Special Branch figures and members of the
Emergency Response Unit (ERU).
At the meeting, the ERU exchanged papers and opinions with the
Met's SO19, the `anti-terrorist unit' which brought us the
shoot-to-kill of Diarmuid O'Neill, and Germany's paramilitary
police section GSG9. The FBI were also there.
This is the type of company we're keeping under the covers of the
Maastricht Treaty. The Amsterdam Treaty will enhance such
co-operation and secure it in even more secretive structures.
It was senior Special Branch figures and members of the ERU who
organised the ambush last Friday in Ashford, County Wicklow in
which Ronan McLaughlin was shot dead.
Like all such cases, initial police reports suggested Gardai
opened fire only after they themselves had been fired upon. This
allegation was subsequently withdrawn.
After all the charges and court cases are done with, the public
will still not know that Ronan McLaughlin was gunned down when he
could have been arrested. The Gardai will not tell the truth and
there will be no one in a position of power in this state
compelling them to do so.
You might be forgiven for thinking that aside from the occasional
bout of flu, the boys in blue (and they are mainly boys) are
harmless as Eurocops go.
The political establishment in the South certainly thinks so.
Their `tut tuts' are usually directed northward at the RUC.
But the record of the Special Branch and ERU shows that when it
comes to EU copshare meetings, for Garda reps, it's a case of:
``Wait `til you hear what our lads are up to''.
The point about the EU, whether in common defence, common foreign
policy or common policing, is that the Irish state will always be
lapping at the heels, trying to do one better than the rest.
d the rest are one awful lot. Take for example the German
police. Their record of harmless intervention in the cause of the
common good isn't great. The day the Eurocops meeting was taking
place in Dublin on March 20th, the biggest security operation
mounted since World War Two was underway in Germany. Thirty
thousand police, equivalent to the full force of the RUC, were
used to force a nuclear waste train from the south of Germany to
a depot north of Cologne against the wishes of local people.
d as the ERU fired on a group that was exposed for all to see
in the Wicklow hills, on the same day thousands of German police
again took the side of neo-Nazis in clashes with left-wing and
anti-racist demonstrators in Berlin, Leipzig and other German
cities. The abuse of state power was just as awesome and awful
behind the confines of the Garda scenes of crime tape in Ashford
as it is daily in the North, and daily in cities throughout the
EU.
The dodos of Democratic Left think there's nothing left to oppose
in the drive to get back into power. The Labour Party thinks its
electorate are fools. That's why both are recommending a Yes vote
to the Amsterdam Treaty to their voters.
One can only be amazed at their cheek in accusing opponents of
the Treaty of living in the past.
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