Conference tallis::celt

1255.0. "From the North" by KOALA::HOLOHAN () Thu Aug 05 1993 14:04

                       From the North 

                     - by Rev. Des Wilson
                       Director, Springhill Community, Belfast

British police in Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), have
demanded more repressive powers than ever in what they call their "fight
against terrorism."  Democrats in Ireland have long recognized that
police do not arrest and torture innocent citizens because they
themselves are bad people in the normally accepted sense.  They are
normal by British standards.  but they are under severe pressure.

57 of the British police force in Ireland committed suicide between 1973
and 1993.  Doctors are worried by the high stress level in their police
patients.  The British government has assigned special psychiatric
services to deal with the mental health of RUC members.  Unbalanced
members are allowed free run of RUC guns and barracks.  Sometimes
British military in Ireland kill each other - so do the police.  Many
drink too much.  They use drugs too much.  They are paid too much.
Their families, seduced by the thought of a rich and easy lifestyle,
assent to a way of life which often leads to the breakdown of marriage
and suffering for wives.

In the end, the police do not know who their enemy is, so they imprison
people because they must imprison somebody.  They have to get
politicians - and political churchmen - off their backs by producing a
result.  Any result will do.

Thus, Annesley, the chief of British police in Ireland, is embarrassed.
He proposes to remedy this by arresting more people, most of them
Catholics, most of them probably not his real enemies at all.  And when
they are imprisoned, as most of them will be even if they have never
even read a political newspaper, let alone held a gun, they are to be
kept in prison for the rest of their lives.  Or until the war is over.

Democrats in Ireland now see the police taking on all the powers of the
Nazis and preparing to use them as ruthlessly as they did.  For those
who think such things cannot happen -- that, after all, Irish people as
a whole would recognize the reality of so many false imprisonments and
tortures and would react accordingly -- it is sufficient to recal that
one of the most infamous Nazi concentration camps was situated as little
as 16 miles from Munich.  And the citizens of Munich knew nothing about 
what was happening there! They said they didn't.

Of course many of them must have known.  They tolerated it.  Similar
tolerance of police wrong doing in Britain and Ireland is similarly
dangerous.

So those who thought it was all over when the last of the U.S. troops
withdrew from European battle stations, think again.  The police state
was never as alive and well as under the British regime in Ireland.
However, even British human rights associations have been appalled at
Chief of Police, Annesley's strident demands for total police powers and
total imprisonment of political opponents.

Democrats in Ireland know that the Chief of Police feels despair because
neither he nor this government know who their enemy is.  Edward heath,
who once served as British government controller in Ireland, reflected
this despair when he asked petulantly how the IRA can bring massive
explosives into central London without anybody knowing about it?

Faced with such a dilemma, British politicians, clergy and police,
instead of doing the rational thing and working for a morally acceptable
solution, are demanding that the causes of the disaster remain exactly
as they are while they get more powers to put more people in prison.  A
recipe for further disaster which, like British policy in general,
defies reason.

    Another nicely balanced piece from ::HOLOHAN. Tell me, do you ever
    write anything original or do you simply act as a mouthpiece for other
    people's bias?
    
    Laurie.

 

  The article is a good followup to the article on
  the PTA.
  And by the way, thank you for your contributions.
  It's important that the readers know where 
  Laure_ashamed_of_his_50%_irish comes from.

                       Mark