PEOPLE'S SAFETY HAS TO BE MAIN PRIORITY
People's safety has to be main priority
Eric Waugh
THE TORN and pitiably broken creatures, victims of the Omagh blast, are the price we have paid for a united Ireland. Not politically united, you understand; but its people made of one mind to an extent not seen for generations.
Democracy has been outraged. Every democrat is insulted. Now each insists upon action. The Prime Minister has pledged that the bombers will not win; so has Mr Ahern in Dublin. The wounded wait.
Ministers cannot say they were not warned. Conor Cruise O'Brien, ex-minister himself and now a Cassandra of the public prints, has told them often that, sooner or later, any democratic deal made would face an open challenge from those whose authority issues from the barrel of a gun.
We have been here before, though not in the lifetime of anyone under 60. A week before the outbreak of war in September 1939, two Irishmen, Peter Barnes and Frank Richards, were implicated in an explosion in Broadgate, Coventry. Five people died, among them a man of 81 and a boy of 15; more were injured. The two IRA men convicted at the Old Bailey, were hanged on February 22, 1940.
It was the final phase of a campaign in English cities which began in January 1939. De Valera had moved to introduce the Offences Against the State Act. It became law in June, providing for military tribunals imposing sentences of up to 10 years. It was internment in all but name.
But in the slack security of the day before Christmas Eve, an IRA party held up the garrison of the magazine fort in Phoenix Park. Dublin, and got away with a million rounds of army ammunition. The Taoiseach was not amused. There were sackings of army brass.
Intelligence men with fat wallets were sent out to collect tap-room gossip. By Boxing Day the first of the ammunition was being recovered. The rest followed.
The Dail met on January 4, 1940. and authorised the setting up of a detention camp at the Curragh army base. The next day it granted internment powers for the duration of the European war. But when detectives raided a suspect house at Rathgar. Dublin, in August, they were shot at: one policeman died on the spot, another later in hospital. The Dail at once empowered the military tribunals to impose death sentences with no right of appeal.
Two men taken in the Rathgar raid. Patrick McGrath (a released detainee) and Thomas Harte, duly faced a firing squad at Mountjoy Prison on the evening of September 6. The IRA, which had ordered cinemas in Cork to close the day the Coventry bombers were hanged (they did), repeated their edict; but this time it was ignored and the IRA campaign soon ended.
All that was two generations ago. We no longer hang or shoot criminals. But modern arms and communications have transformed the vicious terror trade. Electronics make surveillance of counter-measures easy. Every family saloon is fast enough for a getaway; AK47s, readily obtainable, deliver 12 rounds a second. The global village enhances the propaganda potential of political prisoners. How the story will play is a major worry for governments.
So internment now tends to be dismissed as yesterday's solution. Yet the stock republican claim that it has never worked in the past is the opposite of the truth. In fact, used with resolution, it has worked most effectively on every occasion it has been invoked in Ireland save one - 1971 in Northern Ireland, when it was botched fatally.
The Secretary of State takes the negative view on internment. But if it is to be rejected, she must find other means; it looks as if this could amount to internment by another name, strengthening the special courts, north and south, allowing known godfathers to be put away by a judge on the word of the police.
If she can do that, well and good; the law-abiding will rejoice. But she must ponder that the safety of the people takes precedence - even over her own libertarian instincts. In short, it is paramount. As the Caesars put it, Salus populi suprema lex: the safety of the people is the highest law.
Eric Waugh
THE TORN and pitiably broken creatures, victims of the Omagh blast, are the price we have paid for a united Ireland. Not politically united, you understand; but its people made of one mind to an extent not seen for generations.
Democracy has been outraged. Every democrat is insulted. Now each insists upon action. The Prime Minister has pledged that the bombers will not win; so has Mr Ahern in Dublin. The wounded wait.
Ministers cannot say they were not warned. Conor Cruise O'Brien, ex-minister himself and now a Cassandra of the public prints, has told them often that, sooner or later, any democratic deal made would face an open challenge from those whose authority issues from the barrel of a gun.
We have been here before, though not in the lifetime of anyone under 60. A week before the outbreak of war in September 1939, two Irishmen, Peter Barnes and Frank Richards, were implicated in an explosion in Broadgate, Coventry. Five people died, among them a man of 81 and a boy of 15; more were injured. The two IRA men convicted at the Old Bailey, were hanged on February 22, 1940.
It was the final phase of a campaign in English cities which began in January 1939. De Valera had moved to introduce the Offences Against the State Act. It became law in June, providing for military tribunals imposing sentences of up to 10 years. It was internment in all but name.
But in the slack security of the day before Christmas Eve, an IRA party held up the garrison of the magazine fort in Phoenix Park. Dublin, and got away with a million rounds of army ammunition. The Taoiseach was not amused. There were sackings of army brass.
Intelligence men with fat wallets were sent out to collect tap-room gossip. By Boxing Day the first of the ammunition was being recovered. The rest followed.
The Dail met on January 4, 1940. and authorised the setting up of a detention camp at the Curragh army base. The next day it granted internment powers for the duration of the European war. But when detectives raided a suspect house at Rathgar. Dublin, in August, they were shot at: one policeman died on the spot, another later in hospital. The Dail at once empowered the military tribunals to impose death sentences with no right of appeal.
Two men taken in the Rathgar raid. Patrick McGrath (a released detainee) and Thomas Harte, duly faced a firing squad at Mountjoy Prison on the evening of September 6. The IRA, which had ordered cinemas in Cork to close the day the Coventry bombers were hanged (they did), repeated their edict; but this time it was ignored and the IRA campaign soon ended.
All that was two generations ago. We no longer hang or shoot criminals. But modern arms and communications have transformed the vicious terror trade. Electronics make surveillance of counter-measures easy. Every family saloon is fast enough for a getaway; AK47s, readily obtainable, deliver 12 rounds a second. The global village enhances the propaganda potential of political prisoners. How the story will play is a major worry for governments.
So internment now tends to be dismissed as yesterday's solution. Yet the stock republican claim that it has never worked in the past is the opposite of the truth. In fact, used with resolution, it has worked most effectively on every occasion it has been invoked in Ireland save one - 1971 in Northern Ireland, when it was botched fatally.
The Secretary of State takes the negative view on internment. But if it is to be rejected, she must find other means; it looks as if this could amount to internment by another name, strengthening the special courts, north and south, allowing known godfathers to be put away by a judge on the word of the police.
If she can do that, well and good; the law-abiding will rejoice. But she must ponder that the safety of the people takes precedence - even over her own libertarian instincts. In short, it is paramount. As the Caesars put it, Salus populi suprema lex: the safety of the people is the highest law.
Further Information
Publisher: BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Ref: BT/0713
Published Date: 19-Aug-98
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