14 minute read
Ella O’Dwyer
Never again
The legacy of Internment without Trial
There’s a whole lot of ways of putting people in jail. What exactly is internment?
We had, of course, the Diplock courts here in the North in the late ‘70s where there was no jury, but during internment there was neither judge nor jury. Internment is basically indefinite detention without trial.
What yearwere you arrested?
I was arrested on 3 March 1973. I was 18 years of age and was held for five days and then I thought I was going home. Of course I wasn’t [laughs]. I was heading for Armagh Jail. I was taken from our house in Turf Lodge at the early hours of the morning. None of the others in the family were lifted. My dad said that morning – ‘say nothing’. I took his advice. I got a bit of a pushing about and one cop –my dad had warned me about him – he was called Harry Taylor – a veteran of brutality, said he’d come down to the cell and rape me. He didn’t but Iwas afraid.
How at 18 did you cope with that kind of aggression and how was Armagh?
In God’s truth I said, I’m not going to let it annoy me, and I knew there were republican POWs in Armagh ahead of me –Liz McKee and Tish Holland were there. Tish was only 17 when she was interned and then there were eight republican POWs in Armagh too. The OC was Eileen Hickey. Sadly, Eileen died in recent years. I learnt so much in Armagh about life, discipline, values and how to live with other people. We kind of leaned on each other and I made a lot of friendships in jail then – people I still know to this day.
Do you think the Irish Government could have done more to counteract Internment? •Poster from 1971, Margaret Shannon top right
Ifeel the Irish Government let us down back then. In 1970, eight months before it was introduced by Faulkner, Jack Lynch, the then Taoiseach, and his Justice minister Dessie O’Malley, announced that the Irish Government was preparing to introduce internment in the South. In the event, they decided against it but the announcement was later used by the Stormont premier to justify bringing in internment in the North.
I’d like to see the Irish Government do what they should have done years ago –stand by their own people and particularly now during the Peace Process. I’d ask them to show sincerity after all these years – to have no hidden agendas and to do what they should have done all those years ago – take internment off the statute books. I’d ask the Irish Government to look into its own legislation and banish the pain of imprisonment without trial in the 26 Counties – it should be banished from Ireland, North and South.
What did you do when you came out of jail at twenty and how did internment impact on yourlife lateron?
Ispent two years in jail and it did take away part of my youth. My dad and my brother were also interned, so it was hard on my mother. She went to the rallies against internment – she was great. But you must remember that while I was in jail I had POWstatus. We turned a bad situation into a good one, as they say, and we studied.
I’m a counsellor now – not apolitical councillor – I work in the area of suicide support and with victims of sexual abuse. I have a very happy life now. I didn’t let jail ruin my life but it took away some of the important years.
It is estimated that something in the region of 1,981 people were interned at that phase of the struggle. Were there many loyalists interned?
Internment went on until December 1975. It was a weapon traditionally used to put down republicanism in Ireland but in fact it had the opposite effect and actually led to increased support for the IRA. Out of almost 2,000 internees only around 107 loyalists lifted. That speaks for itself.
Do you think there has been progress in the North in terms of relations between the two main communities?
Yes, things have moved on. I remember the bigotry of unionism back at the time when I was growing up. When Iwas 15 I left school and took my first job as a junior clerk with an agricultural firm. I remember one day serving tea to some of the other staff. One of them refused the tea and said he didn’t drink ‘holy water’. When I told my boss about it he said I’d better leave. But I’m by no manner or means a bitter person. I feel, for instance, that the loyalist community haven’t nurtured themselves enough all along. They never really took the chance to learn or study and I think they are only doing that now.
In the period of 30 years of what is loosely called ‘the Troubles’, the republican struggle has had many traumatic phases. Do you think there is a tendency forus to lose sight of the memory and relevance of internment?
Maybe. But for the people who were directly affected the memory is alive. I think we need to recall that period –internment – and the injustice that was involved. As I said, it didn’truin my life, but it took away some of my youth and the internment of my father, brother and myself was hard on my mother.The families of all the other internees went through the same.
We have had hugely successful commemorations around the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the 1981 Hunger Strike and these events were central to educating young people about those tough times. It’s important that people throughout Ireland be made aware of the consequences of internment and that we do all possible to ensure it never happens in this country again. It’s important to remember, recall and look at what happened back then.
14
26 July/Iúil 2007
www.anphoblacht.com
MARGARET SHANNON
ON HER INTERNMENT EXPERIENCE
This article was first published in An Phoblacht, July 2007
NEVER AGAIN
Internment detainees were overwhelmingly male but among the women interned was Belfast woman MARGARET SHANNON, who talked to ELLA O’DWYER about her own experience of internment.
What year were you arrested?
I was arrested on 3 March 1973. I was 18 years of age and was held for five days and then I thought I was going home. Of course I wasn’t [laughs]. I was heading for Armagh Jail. I was taken from our house in Turf Lodge at the early hours of the morning. None of the others in the family were lifted. My dad said that morning – ‘say nothing’. I took his advice. I got a bit of a pushing about and one cop – my dad had warned me about him – he was called Harry Taylor – a veteran of brutality, said he’d come down to the cell and rape me. He didn’t, but I was afraid.
In God’s truth I said, I’m not going to let it annoy me, and I knew there were republican POWs in Armagh ahead of me – Liz McKee and Tish Holland were there. Tish was only 17 when she was interned and then there were eight republican POWs in Armagh too. The OC was Eileen Hickey. Sadly, Eileen died in recent years. I learnt so much in Armagh about life, discipline, values and how to live with other people. We kind of leaned on each other and I made a lot of friendships in jail then – people I still know to this day.
I feel the Irish Government let us down back then. In 1970, eight months before it was introduced by Faulkner, Jack Lynch, the then Taoiseach, and his Justice minister Dessie O’Malley announced that the Irish Government was preparing to introduce internment in the South. In the event, they decided against it but the announcement was later used by the Stormont premier to justify bringing in internment in the North.
© Gérard Harlay
What did you do when you came out of jail at 20 and how did internment impact on your life later on?
I spent two years in jail and it did take away part of my youth. My dad and my brother were also interned, so it was hard on my mother. She went to the rallies against internment – she was great. But you must remember that while I was in jail, I had POW status. We turned a bad situation into a good one, as they say, and we studied.
© Gérard Harlay
unionism back at the time when I was growing up. When I was 15, I left school and took my first job as a junior clerk with an agricultural firm. I remember one day serving tea to some of the other staff. One of them refused the tea and said he didn’t drink ‘holy water’. When I told my boss about it, he said I’d better leave. But I’m by no manner or means a bitter person. I feel, for instance, that the loyalist community haven’t nurtured themselves enough all along. They never really took the chance to learn or study and I think they are only doing that now.
Maybe. But for the people who were directly affected the memory is alive. I think we need to recall that period – internment – and the injustice that was involved. As I said, it didn’t ruin my life, but it took away some of my youth and the internment of my father, brother and myself was hard on my mother. The families of all the other internees went through the same.
OPERATION DEMETRIUS Internment and the infamy of Long Kesh
BY PEADAR WHELAN
On Sunday 8 August, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Ballymurphy in West Belfast to mark the 50th anniversary of the Ballymurphy Massacre, carried out by British paratroopers deployed to suppress the rage of a nationalist community incensed at the introduction of internment and the violence of the unionist state directed against them.
The march was all the more poignant as the echoes of the recent judicial verdict, confirming that the dead were unjustifiably killed by the British Army, reverberated through the march.
Among the marchers were campaigners from Derry’s Bloody Sunday group whose campaign for justice inspired the Ballymurphy families. There were also families from the Springhill/Westrock Massacre Campaign, highlighting their demand for justice for five unarmed civilians shot dead in July 1972 by Paratroopers.
Throughout the demonstration, the seething anger of the marchers could be felt, incensed at the British government’s plans to introduce amnesty legislation, their latest plan to prevent investigations and inquiries into the political/military strategies employed by the British state over the years of the Northern conflict.
The numerous banners from Derry, to the McGurk’s and Kelly’s bar bombings, to the Loughinisland Massacre and the families from MidUlster – Tyrone and Derry – carried at the demonstration represented not only a geographical spread of Britain’s war, but also pointed to the various levels of British state activity in the conflict, including the use of unionist death squads.
That Sunday’s March for Truth took place on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Operation Demetrius, the military invasion of nationalist areas in August 1971, which saw 342 people from republican, socialist, and civil rights backgrounds rounded up and interned, ensuring that one of the seminal moments of our recent history was in focus.
Internment, used successfully against the IRA in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s was the go-to form of suppression. However, the newly elected leader of the unionist party Brian Faulkner went further by sanctioning the killing of nationalists with his ‘shoot with effect’ order. This shows that the Ulster Unionist Party, riven by infighting, chose ever more repression, rather than real democratic change.
The events of July 1971 in Derry when civilians Seamus Cusack and Dessie Beattie were shot dead by British soldiers showed that the British Army were up for the task of ‘shooting with effect’!
That unionism wasn’t interested in a political solution at this stage is clear from the comments of John Taylor, Minister for Home Affairs, who defended the “action taken by the army … against subversives … when it was necessary to actually shoot to kill”.
• British army raiding parties into nationalist areas brought an angry communities onto the streets
• Ulster Unionist Party leader Brian Faulkner and John Taylor, Minister for Home Affairs (below)
Taylor warned, “I feel it may be necessary to shoot even more in the forthcoming months”. This was on 18 July. The next day, Faulkner called British Prime Minister Edward Heath to cajole him into introducing internment.
On 5 August after a meeting between Faulkner and the British government, internment was agreed for 9 August and, in a prelude to what lay in store for the nationalist community, a paratrooper shot South Armagh man Harry Thornton dead on 7 August as he drove along West Belfast’s Springfield Road.
As the armoured cars and raiding parties swooped into nationalist areas, smashing their way into homes to arrest ‘suspects’, the palpable anger of those communities brought people onto the streets.
And John Taylor’s warning was fulfilled. Before the month was out, the British Army killed 23 people, the youngest being 14-year-old Desmond Healy, shot dead in Lenadoon.
As street warfare erupted across the Six Counties, the next chapter of the internment story was being written as detainees were systematically beaten in interrogation centres.
For 14 of them, the nightmare of ‘deep interrogation’ began as they were spirited off to a secret location, later identified as the British military base in Ballykelly, County Derry, where they were subjected to interrogation under a methodology known as the Five Techniques.
Journalist Ian Cobain’s 2014 book ‘Cruel Britannia’, confirmed that the Five Techniques were authorised at the highest level of the British government and “ill treatment of selected prisoners had been an integral part of British military doctrine for years”.
While initially classified as “torture” by the European Court of Human Rights in a case taken against the British by the Dublin government, the ECHR, after the British appealed, downgraded the ruling finding the British guilty of using only “inhuman and degrading treatment”. This ruling opened the door for the rendition of suspects in the United States and Britain’s so-called ‘war on terror’ and was relied upon by Israeli torturers in their interrogation of Palestinian prisoners.
Those interned on or just after 9 August were held in Armagh women’s prison, Crumlin Road jail, and on the Maidstone, a British Royal Navy vessel anchored in Belfast Lough before their transfer to the Long Kesh site outside Lisburn.
Sentenced prisoners were also incarcerated in The Kesh where
