Law? and Order

In Free Citizen: Vol. 2 no. 2, 9 October 1970 · scan page 4 · about 400 words

British troops and the occupation Internment, repression and the courts

No public scan is online for this item; the text below was read from a privately held copy.

Machine-read text, not corrected. Cut from the scan by machine, by the size of the headline type. Where columns were set close together, lines of a neighbouring article can run in, and a headline can be missed so that two articles share a page. For anything you quote, read the scan.

Scan page 4

This so-called booklet, produced by the C.C.D.C., purports to be an account of the 3rd - 5th July 1970, when the British Army attacked the Lower Falls. In fact, it isa sectarian and pro-imperialist reactionary political sheet. Produced by a bunch of clerics and deep Green Tories, its description of the events on the Falls is less comprehensive than the average newspaper - and its analysis of the reasons for that attack non-existent.

The book is blatantly sectarian, and an attitude of complete contempt for the working class Protestant is shown throughout. He is attacked for lack of education (P.3) and the authors gloat over the army's repression on the Shankill on 11th October (P6). The history of British imperialism in Ireland is even explained away as a battle between 'Planter' and'Native'! (P22).

For three days during the 'curfew' the workers of the Falls were beaten, starved, gassed, shot at, and imprisoned in their own homes, yet it is beyond the abilities of the book to give a clear and telling account of the repression. Instead the case is weakened by pan-Catholic ravJ.G. McAnulty.

ings about the people not being able ‘to get to mass (Pages 1, 2, 17, 18 etc.). Army rudeness to Fr.

“Murphy (P.13, 18, 19) and Army cruelty to animals (P. 33).

Although the British Army is attacked for its actions on the Falls the book states: "this work is not...

--.an indictment of the whole BritNeither is it attack upon militarism".

‘officer and gentleman’ myth is held up as a standard from which a few men have strangely fallen.

Fr. Murphy states to one of these ‘gentlemen! "I would like to meet you....for a round of golf....I do not defend stone-throwers". | (P.19), The British army is a bunch 0% ; trained killers which has, and will, ; Committ any crime in the interests : of British big business. This book ; tells us nothing of British Imperial| ism, but it does tell us very clearly that the C.D.C.'s are now controlled by reactionary clerics and Fainna Fail Hacks, more at home in the Wellington Park Hotel than in the houses of the working class people of the Falls. SUBSCRIPTIONS FREE CITIZEN by first class post to anywhere in Europe Per Year 10s. Od. 6 months 3 months airmail to anywhere in the world Per Year £3. Os. Od. Write to:

88 Ladybrook Park, Belfast.