uildford Four campaign had to overcome. British justice now stands completely exposed as an institutionalised system of injustice, a system under which both the black and Irish communities have been framed and intimidated in an attempt to destroy their resistance.
The case raises many questions that have SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
FEATURES 'justice' barely been aired in the mainstream media. Take the stifling of alibi evidence to that showed that Conlon, the supposed ringleader, could not have been in Guildford when the bombs were planted. Considering that Michael Havers, later Attomey General, was the person in charge of the prosecution case, any inquiry that simply condemns a few low ranking Surrey officers can only be seen as, at best, a second rate damage-limitation exercise. Similar questions apply to Peter Imbert, now chief constable of the Met, who is bleating about a 'witch hunt".
Given the senior positions occupied by these and other central figures and the seriousness of the issues, how can Irish people and the labour movement have any confidence that judges investigating judges (the judicial inquiry) and police investigating the police (the criminal investigation) will yield anything but a whitewash?
Frantic attempts are being made to shore up the eroded credibility of the judicial sys tem, through the promotion of reforms in the hope that the appalling vista' opened by the Guildford case will rapidly close. New appeal procedures; a hailing of the virtues of the 'independent" prosecution service and the procedures of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act; a 'warning' to juries to take care with confession-only convictions - all are repeated like a mantra by the liberal media. In addition they are attempting to ex-
plain away Guildford by systematically narrowing the problem to the specific details of the case: the particular officers, the particular time of hysteria, the particular procedures in force, and so on.
But these efforts are hardly adequate to dispel the problems raised. It isn't just that Guildford could happen again in the same form. It could happen in a thousand different ways. It is already happening in a thousand different ways. Hence the state's need for a major damage limitation exercise - with the DPP admitting delaying announcing the new Guildford evidence for 5 months; Thatcher and even the press being informed of the release before the prisoners themselves; the preparation of the appeal hearing as a news management exercise; the reluctance to admit any miscarriage of justice or error by the system. The state is desperate to hold the line.
The whole post-1974 policy of terrorising the Irish community through combining the Prevention of Terrorism Act with major show trials such as the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six must now be open to challenge. The Guildford Four were the first victims of the PTA, highlighting its underlying purpose — to intimidate the Irish community. To date less than one per cent of those arrested under the Act are convicted of "terrorist" offences. And given the confessions forced out of these four people, the question if posed: how many
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others have made false confes- sions due to police violence and threats to their families? The role of British press hysteria and the media ban on Ireland are also clearly ripe for examination. The Evening Standard headline when the Guildford Four were convicted was 'In Gaol Until You Rot'. Throughout the trial national papers attempted to outbid each other in baying for the Four's blood. This situation has been repeated countless times since - with the gutter press attack- ing the Birmingham Six cam- paign for holding a meeting in Birmingham before the last ap- peal, screaming What about the victims?'; and claims that there were pictures of PC Blakelock's head being held aloft in triumph on Broadwater Farm which, unsurprisingly. tumed out to be a myth. And on national news it was proudly proclaimed that names had been found on Rizla papers a well known IRA tactic*, as the Winchester Three were added to a long list of innocent politi- cal hostages. An interview with Errol Smalley, uncle of Paul Hill, on County Sound - Guildford's local radio station - was banned, an example of the way that the media ban is intended to silence any questioning of British policy on Ireland. Where were Labour's front bench - now so keen to pat themselves on the back for their "support' of the Guildford Four - when this happened? Certainly not helping the campaign. Their efforts went into organising an abstention on the PTA when it became permanent, opposing the use of private security guards at army barracks and other civil liberties issues. The decision has had major repercussions for the Irish community and on the cam- paigns for the Birmingham Winchester Three. It was noticeable that after it, people who were second or third genera- tion Irish were prepared to speak for the first time of their being Irish and on what they thought of the Irish situation. They felt that, at last, the British state and its supporters in the media were in retreat. This attitude should not be allowed to simply subside - as the es- tablishment attempts to put the lid on the situation again. It is a major boost of con- fidence for the Irish community which shows the importance of solidarity work orienting to and mobilising it. Neither should this victory be looked at simply in terms of Ireland - obviously its im- portance applies equally to the black com- Page 8
FEATURES NUJ FREE SPEECH R.I.P. OCTOBER 91986 The National Union of Journalists has taken up the fight against censorship tice. nesty International's recent indictment of the the findings of the Stalker/Sampson inves- Six and killings." to loyalist paramilitary groups, there is con- clusive proof to back up Amnesty's worries. in the police force, so essential in confession- only evidence. It is difficult to find a force that is not subject to conspiracy, corruption into the West Midlands Serious Crimes Kent, Hampshire, Squad, Metropolitan Police at Wapping, the Broad- and more.
THE Graeme Cookson munity and organisations like the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign and the Newham Monitoring Project. The victory must act as a green light for the left to throw its weight behind all the campaigns for the release of political prisoners in British gaols. The time is ideal to have combined events around these campaigns and to expose British injus-
That Britain's policy on Ireland has been put under the spotlight is reinforced by Amtreatment of the Birmingham Six and the "shoot to kill" policy: "A refusal to publish tigation and the decision not to prosecute police officers who had allegedly committed offences would contribute to allegations of official involvement in deliberate planned
With the revelation that RUC death lists' of republican sympathisers are being passed In addition there is the collapse of confidence and thuggery scandals - with investigations
Surrey, the water Farm riot investigation squad, the RUC
Wider political ramifications of the release bring into question in- herent aspects of the criminal jus- tice system and its strategic role in bolstering British rule in Ireland. The police and the judicial sys- tem in this country have evolved gradually in a way that has helped cloak them in an aura of class neutrality and independence. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - in the ab- sence of a revolutionary overthrow of the monarchy and the aristocracy - the courts, along with parliament, were an important focus in the fight for basic bourgeois reforms and rights. Each stage in the development of the police force - from its es- tablishment, through the formation of a plainclothes detective branch and its explicit extension into political activity through the Spe- cial Branch - was carried out reluc- tantly and often much later than in other countries. The development was seen as an encroachment on traditional individual liberties by an increasingly powerful central state. The "British tradition" on this was contrasted to continental policing which was seen as an openly politi- cal arm of the state. Both police and courts always acted as brutal instruments of class oppression throughout - that is a matter of historical fact. But a powerful ideology of The Rule of Law", based on the faimess of the criminal justice system as a neutral arbiter emanating from an 'independent" state, was developed in the context of a broader economic and political liberalism. The labour movement's bureaucracy that grew in the late 19th and early 20th century was ingrained with this perspective, particularly with the formation of the TUC and the Labour Party. However, the influence of this ideology has been dependent on a relative class peace, the predominance of "consensus" politics and an avoidance of the open involvement of these institutions in class warfare. This poten- tial fragility was exposed in the 1980s - not just by Thatcherism, but two decades of war in the north of Ireland, the black inner city uprisings and the miners strike. In particular Britain's policy on Ireland has involved a counter-insurgency strategy in which the police, the courts and the prisons are explicitly subordinated to the political re- quirements of the military-security apparatus to smash militant nationalism. This was ar- ticulated by Brigadier Frank Kitson - the first military ruler during "the troubles" - and then implemented through the Diplock Courts, "anti-terrorist" legislation and the criminalisa- tion policy of the late 1970s. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
The Guildford affair has a potential for seriously undermining this set-up by threatening the ideological veil that has underpinned a criminal justice system so heavily geared around police credibility. Progress was made in the early 1980s. through black defence campaigns and bodies like the GLC, in developing greater awareness on similar questions. But this was squandered by a combination of a 'new realism', which has led to wholesale collaboration between "left" Labour representatives and the police, and a systematic attempt to divide and bureaucratically to co-opt black community activists.
Guildford provides a much-needed opportunity to resurrect carlier debates on policing and the courts; to fight for a principle of class independence and the right of self organisation and self defence of the oppressed. A good starting point would be for London Labour authorities to stop their cosy monthly chats with Commissioner Peter Imbert, given his central involvement in the Guildford convictions. These issues must also be linked to a campaign against the erosion of minimum rights to a 'fair' trial and against arbitrary detention, as reflected by the attack on jury trials, the abolition of the right to silence and the right not to be held incommunicado, and the reliance on uncorroborated confessions.
The public debate about the credibility of the system poses the government with a dilemma. The debate is a pandora's box that must be firmly sat upon in defence of the sanctity of the law. At the same time, the longer there is inaction over other cases like the Birmingham Six and the Broadwater Fam Three - the greater the alienation and erosion of credibility and the greater the ultimate disgrace when further crises develop.
All the same issues arise, but to a far greater degree, in respect of the British police and judicial apparatus in Ireland. The context is one of juryless courts; a majority of political prisoners being convicted solely on the basis of confessions; the use of torture; widespread loyalist paramilitary collusion with the police - all in a highly polarised society. The criminalisation policy in Ireland had already been kicked in the teeth by the mass mobilisations around the hunger strikes of 1981. After Guildford it is more discredited than at any time since the early 1970s.
Given that Guildford came in the wake of a series of scandals regarding British policy in Ireland - the Stalker Affair, Gibraltar, the UDR/RUC leaks, evidence in all of which existed for 15 years or more - why is it all coming out now?
The prospect of a British military victory in the medium term in the North had been discounted as early as the late 1970s. Instead faith was placed in 'containment' as the only SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
FEATURES realisable objective. This was coupled with a process of drawing in Dublin and allowing the Labour Party to canvass a safe pro-imperialist altemative - unity by consent - promoted by the 26 counties' rulers. At the same time the Tories have done their best to distance themselves from their erstwhile loyalist allies -going so far, at their last conference, as to allow the affiliation of party branches in the six counties.
All this, institutionalised through the Hillsborough Accord, has helped buy time and allies in the context of the disintegrating international credibility of British rule. It has also helped to mask growing divisions and fractures within the formerly unified power bloc that the British subjugation of Ireland rested upon.
From undemeath this mask a basic contradiction is emerging. British rule has been justified by a law and order ideology since the early 1970s, when the usefulness of overtly supporting the Unionists began to be ques tioned. But the propagation of this ideology has been accompanied by a subversion, over 20 years, of even the oppressive laws and procedures of the British state itself - through torture, kangaroo courts, death squads, conspiracies, and mass repression.
This contradiction has been a consistent feature of all the scandals and particularly Guildford. It was sustainable without being exposed only so long as the political forces and institutions involved were united in their purpose. The panicky debate over Peter Brooke's comment that he would talk to Republicans if they eschewed violence (official policy for a long time) is another sympton that this unity of purpose may not be so iron clad.
That the ruling class is in a bit of a mess in
its attempt to match theory and practice on the Irish question shouldn't hide the broader unity in defence of imperialism's strategic interests and the need to crush any resistance -nationalist or working class - that threatens to destabilise this in Ireland. It would also be foolish to predict the outcome of these fundamental debates or even presume that they will continue for long. The British ruling class has enormous resources and a long, rich history of successfully managing such problems - a supreme example being the "home rule" crisis over its Irish policy at the tum of the century.
But defeats for imperialism, like Guildford, present tremendous opportunities. The Labour and trade union leaderships are deeply implicated in the Guildford scandal and the whole process of upholding this system and will steadfastly refuse to use the opening to intervene themselves. Unfortunately this may give the Tories the space and time to cover over the cracks, introduce cosmetic reforms and once again shut down the discussion.
This presents socialists with an urgent task of organising at a grass roots level, intervening in labour movement bodies, opening a debate and demanding that the bureaucrats take a stand or pay a price for their collaboration.
We must fight for working class organisa tions to campaign for the release of the Birmingham Six, the Broadwater Farm Three and the Winchester Three; expose the conspiracy that Guildford was based upon and the ongoing cover-up; defend democratic rights against the police and the courts and expose the rank injustice upon which British rule in Ireland is so dependent.
Piers Mostyn and lan McLarty
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The case of the m