New lease of life foi 'Terror' Act

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porary Provisions) Act another year of life.

For the Irish community in Britain, this vote heralds another year of fear.

The Act has shown itself to have little to do with combatting terrorism, and far more to do with satisfying the anti-Irish sentiments rife within the British establishment, and throughout the country OUTCRY As Ron Thomas MP said in Wednesday's debate, there has been a huge outcry at the threatened deportation of the journalists Agee and Hosenball, especially at the fact that neither had knowledge of specific charges against them.

Mr. Thomas noted that there has been no such outcry at the deportation of nearly 100 irish people under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, also with no charges being brought.

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All available from Folrose Books; 31 London NW5 1HR given time to select their place of banishment, freedom to campaign against exclusion, and plentiful publicity.

An Irish person once made the subject of an exclusion order is taken directly into custody, denied access to either solicitors or family and friends, and shipped to Ireland under a cloak of secrecy.

During nearly. . three years operation, the Act has resulted in almost 2,500 arrests leading to a mere eleven charges under the Act. All the remaining 90 or so charges. brought against people detained under the PTA-defrauding the Inland Revenue, possessing drugs, wasting police time and so on-apart from their irrelevance to the supposed aims of the Act, could have been brought without the existence of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

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It terrifies people out of expressing, however peacefully, the slighest criticism of Britain's role in Ireland.

Those detained have included a pregnant girl, a fifteen year old child, committed pacifists, and many others quite beyond suspicion as far as violence is concerned.

OPPOSITION

For the above reasons, a group has been formed to fight the legislation, People Against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which declares its total opposition to the Act as yet another attempt by a British government to solve the "Irish Problem" by repressive means. In Ireland-the Army bullet; in Britain-a police cell.

PAPTA correctly insists that Irish people must be free to campaign openly for the right to "THEY HIT ME' determine th eir country's future without the constant threat of intimidation, or peace can never be achieved.

It further declares its intention to campaign alongside "all those who want to see the Prevention of Terrorism Act repealed" "whatever their political outlook".

LABOUR MOVEMENT

The WSL declares its full support to those campaigning to end the Prevention of. Terrorism Act, but we insist that the only way such a campaign can be correctly waged is through the labour movement-demanding that those who undertake to defend the interests of the working class fight in defence of the Irish working class or stand exposea.

In this fight the link between problems facing the Irish liberation struggle and the struggle to end coalition politics within the British labour movement will come to the forefront.