Kick Out Labour's Torture Chiefs. Stepup

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The Bennett Report on The Bennett Report on the interrogation procedures used in the occupied six counties of Ireland is a calculated cover-up.

-t pointedly avoids any attempt to explain unmistakeable evidence of violence meted out to republican suspects in the notorious Castlereagh interrogation centre.

It points out from the start that it never intended to investigate any of the hundreds of specific allegations of torture and violence that have filled dossiers previously compiled by trade union bodies, priests and Amnesty International.

Instead it sets out to excuse the RUC for the supposed "excesses" of "young" • "inexperienced" police thugs who have beaten and maltreated hundreds of prisoners.

Medical evidence

Indeed it has left Labour Minister Roy Mason leeway to argue barefaced in Parliament that the Report: "did not say there had been ill-treatment; it only pointed to medical evidence of injuries but did not Say how they had been inflicted.* Nevertheless the furore surrounding the publication of the Report and in particular the categorical statement alleging 150-160 instances of policeinflicted injuries by RUC police surgeon Dr. Robert Irwin must have shown to all but the most fanatical defenders of police violence that systematic beatings are taking place.

Signs of RUC injuries to suspects began in early 1977-as soon as the RUC took over control of "security" from the British army. - Since that time the violence has continued unabated-and included the "suicide" of trade union militant Brian McGuire in Castlereagh under most suspicious circumstances.

The whole affair serves to lift a corner of the curtain of silence that normally shrouds the brutal methods through which the Labour government is fighting to maintain British rule in Ireland.

Loyalist gunmen

Armed thugs of the British army patrol every street and public place; they are backed up by diehard Loyalist gunmen organised in the Ulster Defence Regiment; and "law and order" is preserved by the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary.

A guage of this "law and order" is the half-dozen RUC men facing trial for terrorist offences while over 30 members of the UDR have been proved guilty of major crimes including murder-mainly against Catholics. The UDR's most prominent recent member is Eddie Mcllwaine, one of the bestial Shankill Butchers jailed for the murders of 19 Catholics.

March in support of H Block This weight of armed repres sion of the Catholic minority is backed up by a network of nojury Diplock courts-empowered to convict on the unsubstantiated evidence of a single police officer, but relying almost exclusively on forced "confessions" from supposed terrorists extracted by the RUC in Castlereagh.

Many suspects against whom there is no evidence rot for up to two years in jail "on remand" -an unofficial substitute for internment.

The intimidation of would-be anti-imperialists is rounded off by the horrors of the Long Kesh concentration camp, where republican prisoners demanding their legitimate status as Prisoners of War hava VE HaVC been forced to endure three years naked in freezing cells in conditions of indescribable filth and suffering.

In Britain supporters of the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland are intimidated through the operation of the reactionary "Prevention of Terrorism Act" under which over 3,200 people have been held by police for up to seven days: few of these have been subsequently charged with any terrorist offence, and fewer still convicted.

War going on PHOTO:

Only the wilfully blind could deny that there is a war going on in Ireland-a war that is again risoners in Derry last October growing in scope and intensity, as shown by the recent series of massive republican demonstrations in the six counties in support of the Long Kesh PoWs and demanding the removal of Labour's 'Minister for Torture' Roy Mason.

It is a war against the con tinued oppression of the Catholic minority in the sectarian six-country statelet: a war which of course threatens to flow over into the struggle for the ending of all forms of imperialist and capitalist exploitation in Ireland as a whole and the establishment of a secular workers' republic.

This is why the leaders, hand-in-glove with British capitalism. have Butcher-Mason the loa an‹ Fo ant on nol tre wil in tha Bri 'lef Lit gol nained implacably opposed to - Irish liberation struggle-and ed the most barbaric methods repress it.

Butcher Mason's hand js on 3 trigger: but the bullets are Ided by Callaghan, by Owen d cabinet cronies Benn and ot. The blood of Castlereagh d the filth of Long Kesh are their hands.

British workers must act W to put a stop to this achery. A government that I administer such repression Ireland is an abomination it can offer nothing to the tish working class.

A tiny handful of Labour its', in particular Tom terick, have opposed the vernment's role in Ireland. Union branches and PH Accomplice-Benn SIDON BOSCO Parties must at once put down resolutions demanding that these MPs lead a fight to drive out Mason and the Downing St. butchers from the Labour leadership, for the immediate granting of political status to Irish prisoners of war, and the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

NUM left' Arthur Scargill must be forced to fight for the ousting of Mason as the union's sponsored MP for his headquarters town of Barnsley.

And the fight must be stepped up for the building of a revolutionary, internationalist leadership in the British working class, prepared to mobilise active solidarity for the Irish liberation struggle.

Silent-Scargill

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LIAM WHELAN 12 YEARS PHOTO: Eamonn O'Dwyer IFL/ Report FL