Republican News · Thursday 22 November 2001

Designer Age Internees

BY JIM GIBNEY

It was 4am in the morning. Hundreds of people were on the streets running hither and tither. Doors normally shut tight to permit sleeping families protection from preying elements human and climatic were lying to the hall wall. Worried women with arms folded and brows furrowed looked at us as we rushed past them equally worried. Plastic buckets filled with water were visible at strategic places along the streets; cloths lay along side them. Burning vehicles were strewn everywhere like fences on a racecourse.

A thick black cloud of smoke hung menacingly in the air blocking out the early morning sunlight of an August sky. Soon the air was filled with pellets making a whizzing sound dropping around us and yet more clouds of smoke only this time distinctly white.

Suddenly we were coughing and spluttering, gasping, writhing in the street as if drunk, eyes streaming with water, smarting, arms gesticulating, backs bent over, necks craned upwards, mouths pouting fish like in search of air that was fresh not rancid with gas while damp cloths plunged into buckets found a welcoming face.

Numerous dull explosions, more white smoke, black bullet shaped plastic projectiles cutting through space striking their target felling it to the ground. In the distance the sky was raining more black objects down on lines of scuttling red and green berets carrying shields.

It was the Short Strand. It was 9 August 1971. Internment without trial was an hour old. Hundreds of men across the six counties were already rounded up destined for a torture chamber followed by a prison cell, then a ship's hull, then a Cage; some not to be freed for five years.

This was the memory I had as I read an article by Belfast republican and internationally renowned novelist Ronan Bennet in Britain's Guardian on Wednesday 14 November.

Ronan, himself a political prisoner in Long Kesh in the 1970s, was reminding his readers and the British government of the folly of internment without trial in all circumstances whether in Ireland or in Britain where it is expected to be introduced before Christmas.

Britain's Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in the same paper, was of course assuring the British people that internment without trial was needed to save their civil liberties from a "handful of people" and the best way to do this was to have the power to intern "suspects".

When I and the rest of my teenage friends came back off the streets after hours of rioting on day one of internment, I heard Brian Faulkner, then Unionist prime minister, saying something similar to Blunkett to a black and white television camera.

His high-pitched polished voice didn't reassure the people I had been on the streets with for most of the day. It didn't reassure the relatives of those brutally bungled into British Army vehicles at dawn and whisked away to unknown destinations. It didn't reassure those now 'on the run' as a result of yet another bout of internment, the fifth since partition.

But then David Blunkett is only talking about interning a 'handful' and calm down, they aren't even British. They are foreign nationals. Well that should be OK because that was Faulkner's sentiment exactly. As far as he was concerned or knew, for that matter, those who lived in places like the Bogside, Crossmaglen, Ballymurphy, and the Short Strand were either foreigners or suspects. Foreigners because they resented Britain's presence and suspects for the same reason.

Whatever, they were they were fodder for internment. But Blunkett assures us there are legal safeguards built in to the process: checks and balances.

I was having a drink in St. Matthews social club. It was about 9pm on 14 December 1972. Suddenly the dreaded happened. The British Army surrounded the club. I'm 'on the run', a suspect for internment. I hide behind a crate of bottles, a torchlight finds me. I'm dragged out, fists are flying into me. I'm face down on the floor of a vehicle, boots are not gently massaging my back. I'm spread-eagled against a freezing cold barracks wall. I'm interrogated practically non-stop for 48 hours. I'm served cold tasteless food, refused water to drink; I get to the toilet with difficulty.

My interrogators tell me a story about an IRA man who blows places up, shoots people down, sleeps with an armalite, fears no one and is about to free Ireland all on his own.

My eyes are staring in my head, partly from lack of sleep but more in disbelief... that's you they said... and bundled me into the back of a van with another eleven people and off we go to Long Kesh. A fresh batch for internment without trial. I wondered were all in the van like the IRA man my interrogators talked about.

I was a naïve 18 year old. I didn't realise my interrogators were making fun of me. They no more believed the IRA man was me. But what were the odds who was going to check them for lying about me? I was on a list. I was a suspect. I had to be interned.

But Faulkner said there were legal safeguards to protect internees. And David Blunkett said he was putting in place 'legal processes' to protect their prospective internees.

d Faulkner's safeguards had me up in front of an 'impartial' imported judge from apartheid South Africa six months after I was interned. I looked at the judge. He ignored me. I heard a voice, strangely familiar, but I couldn't place it, coming from behind a curtain partition, hiding, testifying against me. Then I knew it was my storyteller interrogator. I heard yet another description of another IRA man I didn't know who planted bombs, shot people and was now known as a 'terrorist'.

The judge said in a strange accent looking over his gold rimmed glasses 'That's you.' That's me....! I looked around me. The room was a makeshift court, the judge looked makeshift. I sat alone, defenceless, voiceless, while an anonymous, invisible voice behind a curtain condemned me as a terrorist. The voice had 'reliable' 'intelligence' sources he couldn't reveal to be cross-examined. Then the judge's voice, 'Sine Die', another strange word. That was it. That was me interned without trial in Latin, 'indefinitely'.

But that was a long, long time ago. And David Blunkett's 'legal processes' wouldn't let that happen. Oh really? For the designer label age, the designer internee, Blunkett said, would be interned without trial for a minimum of six months. The internee will be brought before a judge who will hear in his/her absence 'intelligence' reports from 'intelligence officers' about their 'terrorist' links. But don't be worried a government appointed lawyer would protect the internee's rights.

In the H-Blocks in the mid-'80s, a British government appointed lawyer visited me. I was challenging a ten-year-old exclusion order banning me from Britain. He said he would represent me at a private hearing. He refused to tell me his name, his law firm, to show any identification. He told me he had read a classified intelligence file on me and that it was pointless challenging the exclusion order. If it were down to him he would not lift the ban on me. He promptly stood up and left the room. I never saw him again. Government appointed lawyers are very effective at their jobs, especially when it comes to protecting them. The exclusion order lasted another ten years.

But what of the system needed to shore up internment? Will Blunkett's internees be tortured to get more 'intelligence' just as Faulkner's internees were to protect civil liberties? Will his foreign nationals have translators at their interrogations to make sure they understand what is happening in their own language?

Will the British government open a 'Long Kesh' type prison camp for the internees? Will they have political status? Will they wear their own clothes? Will they be forced to do prison work? Will their guards speak their language? Will they get visits? Will they and their visitors be strip-searched looking for more 'intelligence'? Will their cells be raided? Will they get parole to attend to sick relatives or be denied it because they would have to leave the jurisdiction?

Will there be an age limit or, like Faulkner, will Blunkett intern pensioners and school boys? How long will he hold an internee? The 'war' against terrorism we are told will last years. Will Britain have lifer internees?

Internment in the Six Counties made the IRA the force it is today. It made me the republican I am today. It made the republican community it is today. Why should internment in Britain not have the same effect on those interned, their families, their ethnic communities and their homelands?

I think Mr. Blunkett will find, like his unionist predecessor Faulkner, that the easiest part of this draconian, inhuman, nasty business will be the signing of internment orders.