Injustice
Socialist Republic1984The Southern state and its partiesPartition and the national questionInternment, repression and the courtsKevin KeatingThe Southern state and its partiesPartition and the national questionInternment, repression and the courts
Read the scan at the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line (PDF, page 2) →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.
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for the bill.
Fianna Fail TD and for Justice, Michael Woods, has been particularly scandalous in his defence of the bill. And this, from a party, whose TDs are loudly proclaiming concern over jailed students.This bill would allow them to put 12.year olds away for 5 years for joy-riding!
NATIONAL QUESTION As with the — anti-amendment battle, the present Criminal Justice Bill campaign should set its target at creating public awareness of the issues, building broad opposition against its implementation and creating a base in the workers movement against repression at the moment, the campaign is concentrating on public meetings with trades union speakers. But the campaign has a weakness. Many fail to see, or are unwilling to, draw the connection between the overall polIts becoming clearer as the weeks go by, just how nasty this proposed bill is. And its also quite evident how involved the gardai are. They’re falling over themselves defending the Bill and stirring up public fears on vandalism and street violence. Many people, especially the old, are terrified of being mugged by youth, driven to desperation through unemployment and despair. The gardai and right wing TDs are feeding off this fear in rationalising their support Noonan itical crisis on the national question and the general deterioration of legislative civil rights.
The similarities that now exist between the two legal systems North and South are _ striking.
Diplock Courts, Special Criminal Court; Emergency Provisions Act -Criminal Justice Bill -same thing, same intent, same results. They’re y - ~ — rr ee now using paid perjurers in the North - it will only be a matter of time before that is introduced in the 26 Counties.
WITCHUNT!
Coupled with the Coalitions political witch_. hunt against Sinn Fein, ‘this Bill will be used against political activists as part of an insidious attempt to nullify opposition to government policy or the state apparatus. And _ the gardai view of subversives is very wide indeed. In reply to press reporters during the Mallon bugging controversy, a senior garda inspector labelled all those :‘who do not support the RUC’ as subversives!
It is important that the Criminal Justice Bill Campaign takes on board these issues. They combine with an economic- and _ social crisis of massive proportions within the Southern state. They sum up the reasons why the government and gardai want to equip themselves with legal machinery to protect a crumbling state.
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