Present Situation
Over the centuries, Britain has refused to recognise Ireland’s right to National Sovereignty.
In denying Ireland its’ right to National Sovereignty through its colonial policy, Britain has fostered divisions within our people through armed force, sectarianism, inequality, partition and the continued military occupation of the six north-eastern counties of our country.
On January 21st 1919 the elected representatives of all the Irish people met in national assembly known as Dail Eireann and passed our Declaration of Independence.#[1] Britain responded with war and the forced partition of Ireland.
Britain is currently attempting to copper-fasten the partition of our country through the promotion of a “peace process” built on preconditions which seek to legitimise its occupation and the fostering of a veto by a national minority.
Should Britain succeed in its aims to modernise its occupation, continue the denial of our right to national sovereignty and prolong partition, this will result in further injustice and conflict.
Therefore we believe that the United Nations should urgently investigate the matter as Britain is clearly in transgression of the Covenants and Declaration cited.
Historical Background
In outlining Britain’s role in Ireland we submit the following document which was written by the late Sean Mc Bride, an international jurist; a former U.N. High Commissioner and winner of both the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes.
Britain's Role in Ireland by Sean McBride
Since I ceased to take an active part in politics in Ireland, I have systematically refrained from dealing publicly with Irish affairs when speaking outside of the country. I considered that this was the responsibility of those who were actively engaged in politics in Ireland. Furthermore, I did not wish anything that I might say to be construed as an encouragement to those who are engaged n a campaign of violence against the British in Northern Ireland. I had hoped that persuasion and common sense would ultimately persuade the British to withdraw gracefully from Ireland without inflicting more suffering on any section of Ireland or further damaging Britain’s reputation.
This apparently was an erroneous judgement on my part. I should have known from previous experience that when it comes to dealing with Ireland, the British government and establishment lose all common sense and all sense of justice.
Before dealing with hunger-strike situation, I should outline briefly the history of the Anglo-Irish relationships for those who may not be familiar with it.
For over seven centuries, Britain has sought to conquer Ireland and to treat it as a colony. Famines, amounting to genocide, confiscation of lands, executions, jails and bribery were the methods used to colonise Ireland. Because of her overwhelming strength, military and economic, Britain was able to hold on to the whole of the island of Ireland until 1921. The repression that followed the 1916 Rising unified the Irish people behind the Irish Republic.#[2] By 1921 the Irish national liberation movement, known as the Irish republican Army, was able to bring about a situation in which the British government agreed to a truce and to enter into negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty that would recognise the right to self-determination.
The Truce was signed on 11 July 1921 and negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty began in London on 11 October 1921. By December 1921, the British delegation in the Anglo-Irish negotiations had succeeded in dividing the Irish delegation. On 6th December 1921, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, dramatically issued an ultimatum that unless the Irish delegation signed a draft treaty, which had been prepared, there would be ‘immediate and terrible war’. This Treaty#[3] and the circumstances under which it had been signed led to a deep division among the Irish people. In turn this division led to the Civil war in Ireland that began on 25 June 1921. The British Government, having succeeded in splitting the Irish Republican Movement, pressed their advantage home by urging the then provisional government to assert its authority over the Irish republican Army. Mr deValera and the Republican forces, who refused to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty, were finally defeated after a bitter civil war which ended nominally in May 1923, but which continued sporadically for some years to follow.
Three main issues divided the country and led to the Civil War.
Firstly, the insistence of the British Government that all the elected representatives of the Irish people should swear an Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown, and that provisions to this effect should be embodied in the Irish Constitution. This requirement was embodied in the first Irish Constitution of 1922.#[4]
Secondly, provisions for the partition of Ireland into two separate states: one in the north-eastern part of the island to be known as ‘Northern Ireland’, would remain under British jurisdiction - the other which would include twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland would form part of the British Commonwealth and be styled ‘The Irish Free State’.
Thirdly, under the Treaty imposed by Britain, Ireland was to become and remain a Member-State of the British Commonwealth owing allegiance to the British Crown. Britain was also to retain some military bases in the Irish Free State.
These provisions had been accepted by a war-weary Ireland under the threat of ‘immediate and terrible war’, but in reality, they were unacceptable to the Irish people. Michael Collins, who had signed the Treaty and led the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State, did so on the basis that it was to be a ‘stepping stone’ to achieve an independent Irish Republic for the nation.
After the Civil war, Mr deValera set up a political party and became Prime Minister of the Irish Free State consisting of twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. He promptly did away with the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown and enacted a new Constitution on 1 July 1937,#[5] which received the overwhelming support of the Irish people. In this Constitution, he rejected the concept of a partitioned Ireland and provided by Article 1 of the Constitution that: “The National territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas”.
Later, another Irish Government in 1949 declared the State to be the Republic of Ireland, thus terminating such links as had continued to subsist with the British Crown and the British Commonwealth.
Reluctantly, Britain had to accept the constitutional change that had been brought about by Mr deValera’s and Mr Costello’s governments. It did so with bad grace and each time announced its determination to maintain control over the six northeastern counties known as Northern Ireland.
The British argument was that the six northeastern counties now formed a separate state entitled to the exercise of self-determination. The Irish argument was that the right of national self-determination applied to the island of Ireland as a whole and not to twenty-six out of the thirty-two counties of Ireland.
In Northern Ireland itself, the ordinary laws were abrogated and a police state was installed. Because the British authorities and those who supported British rule in Northern Ireland feared that the nationalist population, which were then a minority, would increase more rapidly than the pro-British population, which was generally Protestant, a regime of wholesale discrimination was installed. The reason for installing a draconian system of discrimination, based on religious beliefs, was that by preventing Catholics from obtaining employment or housing, their numbers could be kept down. They would not be able to get married and they would not be able to obtain employment. This would force them to leave the area, thus ensuring that the Catholic population would decrease.
Because the discrimination exercised by the British authorities in Northern Ireland was based on the religion of the population, the impression was created that the conflict in Northern Ireland was a religious conflict and not a political one. While there is some foundation for these allegations, it is a foundation that is based upon the history of the British occupation of Ireland. Until the nineteenth century, British policy had been to eradicate the catholic religion from Ireland and to dispossess all Catholics of their property. To this end, vast tracts of land and property had been confiscated and given to ‘planters’ or colonists brought over to Ireland by the British who were invariably Protestant. Thus, up to catholic emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century Catholics were the deprived and impoverished segment of the population. While after 1829 the Catholics were allowed to own property, the Planters nevertheless continued to exercise an official ascendancy over the ordinary Irish people insofar as employment, housing and privileges were concerned. It is by reason of these historic events that the present-day divisions between Catholics and Protestants have survived until now.
The situation is best described by no less a person than the well-known Anglican Theologian, John Austin baker (now Bishop of Salisbury), who was the Chaplain to the Speaker of the British House of Commons, and who in a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey (1 December 1980) pointed out:
"No British government ought to forget that this perilous moment, like many before it, is the outworking of a history for which our country is primarily responsible. England seized Ireland for its own military benefit; it planted Protestant settlers there to make it strategically secure; it humiliated and penalised the native Irish and their Catholic faith, and then, when it could no longer hold on the whole Ireland, it kept back part to be a home for the settlers descendants, a non viable solution for which Protestants have suffered as much as anyone.
Our injustice created the situation, and by constantly repeating that we will maintain it as long as the majority wishes it, we actively inhibit Protestant and Catholic from working out a new future together. This is the root cause of the violence and the reason why the protesters think of themselves as political offenders".
The political parties, North and South, while not accepting the situation, did nothing about it. A new generation of young people however, resented the discrimination that was being implemented to their detriment. They could get neither employment nor housing. All employment and promotion within the all services were strictly reserved to non-Catholics. Notices were displayed outside factories proclaiming ‘No Catholics employed here’.
Gradually, as was inevitable, the rising generation of young people resented a situation in which they were treated as third class citizens and were precluded from obtaining employment or housing. They became dissatisfied and disillusioned with existing political parties in the North as well as in the South, and they started a perfectly legal and constitutional civil rights campaign demanding an end to the discrimination that prevailed and insisting on their civil and religious rights. They obtained the support of the majority of the nationalist population in the North, and indeed the active support and sympathy of the population in the rest of the country. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey became one of their leaders and swept aside the existing, more moderate politicians. The rise of this new Civil Rights Movement was met with violent repression by the British forces and police. This culminated in the killing of thirteen civilians at a perfectly legal public demonstration in Derry City by British soldiers on 30 January 1972, now known as Bloody Sunday.
These acts of oppression by the British forces had two results. In the first place they solidified and increased the support for the Civil Rights movement, and on the other hand, they influenced the young people to turn more and more towards the IRA and physical force. The IRA availed of this situation to become the defenders of the Catholic population against the attacks of the police and the British military forces. The methods used by the British became more and more indefensible. Prisoners were systematically tortured by means of sophisticated methods imported from England. This was fully exposed and condemned in the course of legal proceedings brought by the Irish Government before the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and assurances that these methods would be discontinued. It is claimed by the IRA that these methods have not being discontinued, but are now being applied more secretly.
As the extent and nature of the oppression grew, so did the IRA reaction to it, and we have a constant escalation in what is now a full-blown guerrilla war, in the course of which some 628 members of the British forces have been killed and 7,496 wounded in the period 1969 - June 1981. In the same period, 1,496 civilians were killed and 16,402 wounded. The total number of persons killed in this small area over the last ten years is 2,124 and the number wounded is 23,898. There were in Northern Ireland 1,244 Republican prisoners in 1981. These are variously described by the British authorities as terrorists or criminals; by the nationalist population they are regarded as political or Republican prisoners.
Lest the account I have given be regarded as biased because of my natural sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people for reunification of Ireland, I should like to quote from the editorial of a well-known English catholic Monthly, magazine, The New Blackfriars:
“The squalid pretence that the problems of Ulster flow from the flaring up of mysterious sectarian differences and not from the misery, anger and frustration produced by the sorry mess of the last 50 years of British rule, the white washing of the massacre of Bloody Sunday of January 1972, the arbitrariness and brutality concomitant with internment without trial, the hypocritical shunning of the Strasbourg Report of 1976, which found Britain guilty of the crime of torture and inhuman treatment in Northern Ireland, the method used to extract ‘confessions’ for the political ‘Diplock’ trials, the killing of civilians by rubber and plastic bullets and speeding ferret cars: all of these and many more are equally is not more responsible for the deaths of the hunger-strikers and all the violence and misery that followed.
So long as these beams in the English eye remain, so long does the English condemnation of hunger strikers lack moral credibility, even when it is made by those ‘speaking as English Catholics’. We have to pause and reflect on the possibility that cardinal O’Fiach and the other Northern Ireland bishops may be able to see more clearly and certainly with more compassion the complexities and subtleties of the sorry problem”.
As a result of the situation described, there were on 11 June 1981 1,244 male prisoners serving sentences in British prisons in Northern Ireland for what the British describe as terrorist type offences. In addition, there were on the same date approximately 50 women prisoners also serving sentences. It must be borne in mind that none of these prisoners were convicted after trial in due process of law. They were tried by single-judge courts without any juries. These courts are known as ‘Diplock Courts’. These are courts which follow procedures that do not conform with those applicable to normal trialsunder the rule of law.
Of the some 1,300 prisoners serving sentences in British jails in Northern Ireland, 328 have been receiving what the British describe as ‘special status treatment’. The balance of some 966 have been denied this ‘special status treatment’. The balance of some 966 have been denied this ‘special status treatment’. In effect, what the hunger strikers in the H-Blocks as Long Kesh demanded was that they should receive the special status treatment. This was spelled out by the hunger strikers and the other prisoners in five specific demands concerning:
1. The right to wear their own clothes at all times.
2. The prisoners requested that they should not be required to do menial prison work; they were prepared to do all the work required for the maintenance and cleaning of the portions of the prison occupied by them. They also asked that study time should be taken into account in determining the amount of work which they were required to do.
3. They requested the right to associate freely at recreation time with other political prisoners.
4. They requested the right to a weekly visit, letter or parcel, as well as the right to organise their own educational and recreational pursuits.
5. The right of remission of sentences as is normally provided for all other prisoners.
The prisoners believed that the refusal of the British authorities to grant them the ‘special category status’ which obtained in regard to other prisoners was a political decision taken in order to criminalise their status. Several hundred of them went on what was called the ‘blanket protest’ from September 1976. This protest consisted of refusing to wear prison clothes and on wearing a blanket instead. As from March 1978 they escalated the protest to a ‘no-wash protest’.
A number of them went on hunger-strike in October 1980. And the hunger-strike ended in 18 December on the basis of agreement put forwards by cardinal Tomas ‘O’Fiach and Bishop Daly. In the course of the negotiations, which took place with Cardinal O’Fiach and Bishop Daly, the British Government had agreed substantially to the demands made by the prisoners provided that they were not described ‘as acceptance of political status’. This proviso was accepted by the prisoners. However, the British Government failed to implement the recommendations made by Cardinal O’Fiach and substantially accepted by the British Government.
This caused considerable bitterness and distrust among the prisoners. They considered that they had been tricked into giving up the hunger-strike by subterfuge in which the British Government availed of the good offices of cardinal O’Fiach but then reneged on the agreement they had made with him.
Cardinal O’Fiach and Bishop Daly also considered that they had been misled by the British Government. It is in this atmosphere that the later hunger-strike was started on 1 March 1981. However, on this occasion, the prisoners started the hunger-strike with the preconceived determination that they were not going to allow the British Government to trick them again, or to use intermediaries; they insisted that they would continue the hunger-strike until death, in relays, until such time as the British Government gave categorical assurances to them concerning the future treatment of prisoners, and the granting of the five requirements which they had specified. In the meantime, a succession of well-intentioned intermediaries including a number of members of the Irish parliament, representatives of the European Commission on Human Rights, representatives of the Irish Commission on Justice and peace and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross sought to mediate, bit the attitude of the British Government throughout had been:
“We cannot accept that mediation between the government and convicted prisoners, even by international bodies of the highest standing is the right course”.
They also refused to negotiate directly with the prisoners. In reality, the attitude of the British Government had been to avail of all the intermediaries in an effort to break the determination of the prisoners and to avoid negotiating with the prisoners, thus binding themselves to alterations in the prison rules. The prisoners accused them of playing a cynical game of brinksmanship, waiting for one prisoner after the other to reach the dying point, hoping that this would break the morale of the other prisoners. Indeed in the course of a press interview given by Michael Alison, British Minister of State for Northern Ireland in the British Embassy in Washington. He made the startling but candid admission that negotiations about the hunger strike was like:
“the efforts of authorities to keep hijackers occupied while plans are developed to subdue the. (Irish Times, 13 July 1981).
In the course of this protest ten hunger-strikers died. They were Bobby Sands MP, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty TD, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine.
I have sought to outline as objectively as I can the elements of the drama which unfurled itself in the British prison known as H-Block in Northern Ireland.
I do not agree with the violence used by the IRA and have refused to countenance their politics. Likewise, I have refused to allow myself to be used for propaganda purposes by the H-Block Committee in Ireland. Having said this, I understand fully the reasons which prompted the H-Block prisoners to undertake this ultimate form of protest. Furthermore, I cannot remain silent in the face of the duplicity and methods used by the British in their dealings with Ireland and with the hunger-striking prisoners.
Britain’s attempts to maintain dominion over the six north-eastern counties have caused misery and suffering to the whole of Ireland for over half a century. It has been the cause of a civil war in Ireland; it has divided Irishmen all over the world; it has been responsible for thousands of deaths and untold sufferings; it has prevented the economic development of Ireland. In brief, as our last Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey put it, it has cast long dark shadows into every aspect of Ireland’s life for over a century. Successive Irish governments, opposed as they are to partition, have been put into the impossible position of having to jail and oppress their own young people in order to protect British rule in the north-east corner of our country. A stage has now been reached where this is no longer acceptable to the Irish people.
In their own country and in countries which they do not seek to dominate, the British are reasonable, fair-minded, and even loveable. It is otherwise in areas which they regard as their preserve. In regard to Ireland, the British government and establishment are just incapable of being objective, fair-minded or just. A typical illustration of this was provided some time ago.
The British forces in northern Ireland have been using for the last three years rubber or plastic bullets indiscriminately. They have argued that they are harmless. Over fifty people - mostly children - have been killed or permanently maimed in Northern Ireland by these plastic bullets. This was denied by the British who maintained that they were harmless. When extensive riots broke out recently in Britain, the possibility arose of using rubber or plastic bullets for crowd control. An alarmed Conservative British Home Secretary said immediately that he would oppose their use ‘in mainland Britain because they are lethal!” (Irish Times, 11 July, 1981). It is all right to use them in Ireland and to kill women and children there - not ‘on mainland Britain’.
The British Government likes to portray itself in the role of the ‘honest broker’ who is in Northern Ireland against its will ‘merely in order to protect the Protestant population’. There would be absolutely no persecution of Protestants in Ireland. The Irish Government has a good record in this sphere and would willingly agree to international supervision in this area if it was thought necessary. The Convention on Human Rights would provide the necessary safeguards.
Impoverished Britain spends fourteen hundred million pounds to subsidise and occupy Northern Ireland. This equal to approximately double the amount in U.S. Dollars, $2,800,000,000. Britain has systematically used, and continues to use, its vast military and financial resources to encourage a segment of the population of the North-East to support British rule there. With such an expenditure and army occupation it would be possible to disrupt any country. We have had examples of this external intervention all over the world.
Britain has no right or mandate to be in any part of Ireland. The overwhelming majority of the Irish people want a united Ireland, and want the British out of Ireland. It is as simple as that.
By agreeing to withdraw from Ireland and by agreeing to a United Ireland, Britain could begin to establish a normal, friendly relationship with Ireland. She could only improve her international image and put an end to a shameful part of her colonial past.
In the early stages of the last decade, Paul Johnson, one of Great Britain’s most distinguished journalists, editor of The Spectator, and one of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s most ardent supporters, wrote in The New Statesman:
“In Ireland over the centuries, we have tried every possible formula; direct rule, indirect rule, genocide, apartheid, puppet parliaments, real parliaments, martial law, civil law, colonisation, land reform, partition. Nothing has worked. The only solution we have not tried is absolute and unconditional withdrawal. Why not try it now? It will happen in any event.
Political View
The 32 County Sovereignty Committee stands to uphold Ireland's Declaration of Independence as declared by Dail Eireann on January 21st 1919.
We reject Britain's right to occupy any part of our country and to involve itself in any make, shape or form in the affairs of the Irish nation.
Down through the years Britain has denied the right of the Irish people to national sovereignty and has imposed partition by force of arms.
Whenever the Irish people have moved to express their right to sovereignty, Britain has moved to oppose that right and sought to perpetuate partition.
The pretext for partition - the wishes of a national minority to maintain British rule - holds no validity against the expressed wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people.
Partition perpetuates the British Government's denial of the Irish peoples right to self-determination. It perpetuates the cycle of oppression/domination/resistance/oppression.
In the words of the late Sean McBride, winner of the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes:
"Irelands right to sovereignty, independence and unity are inalienable and indefeasible. It is for the Irish people as a whole to determine the future status of Ireland. Neither Britain nor a small minority selected by Britain has any right to partition the ancient island of Ireland, nor to determine its future as a sovereign nation."
Political/Historical Summary
From the above historical analysis we conclude:
1. The acceptance of the partition acts whether under duress or free choice can have no legal standing.
2. The Declaration of Independence 1919 was issued by Dail Eireann as the result of the Authority of the people of Ireland in the 1918 election. Therefore any fundamental change in that position could only be brought about by going back to the Irish people.
Therefore we challenge the authority of the Dail to accept a motion before it usurping the sovereign decision of the people, i.e. The Treaty of 1921. for the following reasons:
(a) Having declared the sovereign position of the people lawful, it was not within their remit to disestablish the sovereignty of the people - a fact clearly understood in their own declaration of Independence.
(b) More importantly, the members of the Dail went before the people with the specific aim of upholding the will of the people. Therefore, it defies belief that a motion to accept a treaty fostered upon the Dail at the point of a gun by a foreign parliament would be anything other than null and void.
3. The Treaty foisted upon the Irish people also includes a British insistence that a written constitution be brought into being but not put before the people. At this stage the Dail could no longer consider itself a sovereign Parliament as it was now operating under a British Act of Parliament.
4. The relevance of what way the vote went to accept the Treaty is the main flaw in the argument. That the Treaty was won by a majority of seven votes is irrelevant. The partitioned Dail had no authority to disenfranchise a section of the population into a partitioned state.
5. Authority to put before Dail Eireann the dictates of foreign power in the first instance was not within the remit of the Dail because this was not a Treaty being signed by two Governments who respected each other's sovereignty. The British had in 1920 challenged the will of the Irish people at the ballot box with introduction of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 #[6] - an update of the Act of Union #[7] However without granting any credence to the Act of Union 1800, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was without doubt a clear breach of international law and of the British Government’s own previous acceptance that they would acquiesce to the will of the people.
6. The British Parliament up to the present day has not yet being fully brought to account in a direct legal challenge as to what authority she has to set up a state in Ireland for her colonial descendants by the International Community bearing in mind the great loss of life and human suffering that has stemmed from this denial.
7. The statement by Peter Brooke, the then British Secretary for State for Northern Ireland on November 9 1989 to the effect that Britain has no selfish or economic reason to remain in Ireland is possibly the clearest intention as to what her real intent was, for she forgot to mention that she had given a legal guarantee that the majority within the artificial state would now be her legal excuse to remain in Ireland. The British avoid recognising that Ireland has the right to sovereignty in the first instance.
8. The granting of consent to the unionist is in direct transgression to the sovereignty position. We ordain that consent to a minority to opt out within the sovereignty of a nation can only be granted by a sovereign decision of the people as otherwise it grants sections of the people the right to transgress their own sovereignty.
Our Rights in International Law
We claim that Ireland's right to sovereignty, independence and unity - the right of the Irish people, as a whole, to self-determination - is supported by universally recognised principles of international law.
In particular, the right to self determination is enshrined in the two United Nations' Covenants of 1966 - The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights.
Article 1 of each Covenant states:
"1. All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtues of
that right they determine their economic, social and cultural development."
The landmark Declaration on Principles of International law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations declares:
"..all people have the right freely to determine, without external
influence, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development and every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter."
Over the centuries, Britain has refused to recognise Ireland’s right to National Sovereignty.
In denying Ireland its’ right to National Sovereignty through its colonial policy, Britain has fostered divisions within our people through armed force, sectarianism, inequality, partition and the continued military occupation of the six north-eastern counties of our country.
On January 21st 1919 the elected representatives of all the Irish people met in national assembly known as Dail Eireann and passed our Declaration of Independence.#[1] Britain responded with war and the forced partition of Ireland.
Britain is currently attempting to copper-fasten the partition of our country through the promotion of a “peace process” built on preconditions which seek to legitimise its occupation and the fostering of a veto by a national minority.
Should Britain succeed in its aims to modernise its occupation, continue the denial of our right to national sovereignty and prolong partition, this will result in further injustice and conflict.
Therefore we believe that the United Nations should urgently investigate the matter as Britain is clearly in transgression of the Covenants and Declaration cited.
Historical Background
In outlining Britain’s role in Ireland we submit the following document which was written by the late Sean Mc Bride, an international jurist; a former U.N. High Commissioner and winner of both the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes.
Britain's Role in Ireland by Sean McBride
Since I ceased to take an active part in politics in Ireland, I have systematically refrained from dealing publicly with Irish affairs when speaking outside of the country. I considered that this was the responsibility of those who were actively engaged in politics in Ireland. Furthermore, I did not wish anything that I might say to be construed as an encouragement to those who are engaged n a campaign of violence against the British in Northern Ireland. I had hoped that persuasion and common sense would ultimately persuade the British to withdraw gracefully from Ireland without inflicting more suffering on any section of Ireland or further damaging Britain’s reputation.
This apparently was an erroneous judgement on my part. I should have known from previous experience that when it comes to dealing with Ireland, the British government and establishment lose all common sense and all sense of justice.
Before dealing with hunger-strike situation, I should outline briefly the history of the Anglo-Irish relationships for those who may not be familiar with it.
For over seven centuries, Britain has sought to conquer Ireland and to treat it as a colony. Famines, amounting to genocide, confiscation of lands, executions, jails and bribery were the methods used to colonise Ireland. Because of her overwhelming strength, military and economic, Britain was able to hold on to the whole of the island of Ireland until 1921. The repression that followed the 1916 Rising unified the Irish people behind the Irish Republic.#[2] By 1921 the Irish national liberation movement, known as the Irish republican Army, was able to bring about a situation in which the British government agreed to a truce and to enter into negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty that would recognise the right to self-determination.
The Truce was signed on 11 July 1921 and negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty began in London on 11 October 1921. By December 1921, the British delegation in the Anglo-Irish negotiations had succeeded in dividing the Irish delegation. On 6th December 1921, the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, dramatically issued an ultimatum that unless the Irish delegation signed a draft treaty, which had been prepared, there would be ‘immediate and terrible war’. This Treaty#[3] and the circumstances under which it had been signed led to a deep division among the Irish people. In turn this division led to the Civil war in Ireland that began on 25 June 1921. The British Government, having succeeded in splitting the Irish Republican Movement, pressed their advantage home by urging the then provisional government to assert its authority over the Irish republican Army. Mr deValera and the Republican forces, who refused to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty, were finally defeated after a bitter civil war which ended nominally in May 1923, but which continued sporadically for some years to follow.
Three main issues divided the country and led to the Civil War.
Firstly, the insistence of the British Government that all the elected representatives of the Irish people should swear an Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown, and that provisions to this effect should be embodied in the Irish Constitution. This requirement was embodied in the first Irish Constitution of 1922.#[4]
Secondly, provisions for the partition of Ireland into two separate states: one in the north-eastern part of the island to be known as ‘Northern Ireland’, would remain under British jurisdiction - the other which would include twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland would form part of the British Commonwealth and be styled ‘The Irish Free State’.
Thirdly, under the Treaty imposed by Britain, Ireland was to become and remain a Member-State of the British Commonwealth owing allegiance to the British Crown. Britain was also to retain some military bases in the Irish Free State.
These provisions had been accepted by a war-weary Ireland under the threat of ‘immediate and terrible war’, but in reality, they were unacceptable to the Irish people. Michael Collins, who had signed the Treaty and led the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State, did so on the basis that it was to be a ‘stepping stone’ to achieve an independent Irish Republic for the nation.
After the Civil war, Mr deValera set up a political party and became Prime Minister of the Irish Free State consisting of twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland. He promptly did away with the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown and enacted a new Constitution on 1 July 1937,#[5] which received the overwhelming support of the Irish people. In this Constitution, he rejected the concept of a partitioned Ireland and provided by Article 1 of the Constitution that: “The National territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and territorial seas”.
Later, another Irish Government in 1949 declared the State to be the Republic of Ireland, thus terminating such links as had continued to subsist with the British Crown and the British Commonwealth.
Reluctantly, Britain had to accept the constitutional change that had been brought about by Mr deValera’s and Mr Costello’s governments. It did so with bad grace and each time announced its determination to maintain control over the six northeastern counties known as Northern Ireland.
The British argument was that the six northeastern counties now formed a separate state entitled to the exercise of self-determination. The Irish argument was that the right of national self-determination applied to the island of Ireland as a whole and not to twenty-six out of the thirty-two counties of Ireland.
In Northern Ireland itself, the ordinary laws were abrogated and a police state was installed. Because the British authorities and those who supported British rule in Northern Ireland feared that the nationalist population, which were then a minority, would increase more rapidly than the pro-British population, which was generally Protestant, a regime of wholesale discrimination was installed. The reason for installing a draconian system of discrimination, based on religious beliefs, was that by preventing Catholics from obtaining employment or housing, their numbers could be kept down. They would not be able to get married and they would not be able to obtain employment. This would force them to leave the area, thus ensuring that the Catholic population would decrease.
Because the discrimination exercised by the British authorities in Northern Ireland was based on the religion of the population, the impression was created that the conflict in Northern Ireland was a religious conflict and not a political one. While there is some foundation for these allegations, it is a foundation that is based upon the history of the British occupation of Ireland. Until the nineteenth century, British policy had been to eradicate the catholic religion from Ireland and to dispossess all Catholics of their property. To this end, vast tracts of land and property had been confiscated and given to ‘planters’ or colonists brought over to Ireland by the British who were invariably Protestant. Thus, up to catholic emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century Catholics were the deprived and impoverished segment of the population. While after 1829 the Catholics were allowed to own property, the Planters nevertheless continued to exercise an official ascendancy over the ordinary Irish people insofar as employment, housing and privileges were concerned. It is by reason of these historic events that the present-day divisions between Catholics and Protestants have survived until now.
The situation is best described by no less a person than the well-known Anglican Theologian, John Austin baker (now Bishop of Salisbury), who was the Chaplain to the Speaker of the British House of Commons, and who in a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey (1 December 1980) pointed out:
"No British government ought to forget that this perilous moment, like many before it, is the outworking of a history for which our country is primarily responsible. England seized Ireland for its own military benefit; it planted Protestant settlers there to make it strategically secure; it humiliated and penalised the native Irish and their Catholic faith, and then, when it could no longer hold on the whole Ireland, it kept back part to be a home for the settlers descendants, a non viable solution for which Protestants have suffered as much as anyone.
Our injustice created the situation, and by constantly repeating that we will maintain it as long as the majority wishes it, we actively inhibit Protestant and Catholic from working out a new future together. This is the root cause of the violence and the reason why the protesters think of themselves as political offenders".
The political parties, North and South, while not accepting the situation, did nothing about it. A new generation of young people however, resented the discrimination that was being implemented to their detriment. They could get neither employment nor housing. All employment and promotion within the all services were strictly reserved to non-Catholics. Notices were displayed outside factories proclaiming ‘No Catholics employed here’.
Gradually, as was inevitable, the rising generation of young people resented a situation in which they were treated as third class citizens and were precluded from obtaining employment or housing. They became dissatisfied and disillusioned with existing political parties in the North as well as in the South, and they started a perfectly legal and constitutional civil rights campaign demanding an end to the discrimination that prevailed and insisting on their civil and religious rights. They obtained the support of the majority of the nationalist population in the North, and indeed the active support and sympathy of the population in the rest of the country. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey became one of their leaders and swept aside the existing, more moderate politicians. The rise of this new Civil Rights Movement was met with violent repression by the British forces and police. This culminated in the killing of thirteen civilians at a perfectly legal public demonstration in Derry City by British soldiers on 30 January 1972, now known as Bloody Sunday.
These acts of oppression by the British forces had two results. In the first place they solidified and increased the support for the Civil Rights movement, and on the other hand, they influenced the young people to turn more and more towards the IRA and physical force. The IRA availed of this situation to become the defenders of the Catholic population against the attacks of the police and the British military forces. The methods used by the British became more and more indefensible. Prisoners were systematically tortured by means of sophisticated methods imported from England. This was fully exposed and condemned in the course of legal proceedings brought by the Irish Government before the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and assurances that these methods would be discontinued. It is claimed by the IRA that these methods have not being discontinued, but are now being applied more secretly.
As the extent and nature of the oppression grew, so did the IRA reaction to it, and we have a constant escalation in what is now a full-blown guerrilla war, in the course of which some 628 members of the British forces have been killed and 7,496 wounded in the period 1969 - June 1981. In the same period, 1,496 civilians were killed and 16,402 wounded. The total number of persons killed in this small area over the last ten years is 2,124 and the number wounded is 23,898. There were in Northern Ireland 1,244 Republican prisoners in 1981. These are variously described by the British authorities as terrorists or criminals; by the nationalist population they are regarded as political or Republican prisoners.
Lest the account I have given be regarded as biased because of my natural sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people for reunification of Ireland, I should like to quote from the editorial of a well-known English catholic Monthly, magazine, The New Blackfriars:
“The squalid pretence that the problems of Ulster flow from the flaring up of mysterious sectarian differences and not from the misery, anger and frustration produced by the sorry mess of the last 50 years of British rule, the white washing of the massacre of Bloody Sunday of January 1972, the arbitrariness and brutality concomitant with internment without trial, the hypocritical shunning of the Strasbourg Report of 1976, which found Britain guilty of the crime of torture and inhuman treatment in Northern Ireland, the method used to extract ‘confessions’ for the political ‘Diplock’ trials, the killing of civilians by rubber and plastic bullets and speeding ferret cars: all of these and many more are equally is not more responsible for the deaths of the hunger-strikers and all the violence and misery that followed.
So long as these beams in the English eye remain, so long does the English condemnation of hunger strikers lack moral credibility, even when it is made by those ‘speaking as English Catholics’. We have to pause and reflect on the possibility that cardinal O’Fiach and the other Northern Ireland bishops may be able to see more clearly and certainly with more compassion the complexities and subtleties of the sorry problem”.
As a result of the situation described, there were on 11 June 1981 1,244 male prisoners serving sentences in British prisons in Northern Ireland for what the British describe as terrorist type offences. In addition, there were on the same date approximately 50 women prisoners also serving sentences. It must be borne in mind that none of these prisoners were convicted after trial in due process of law. They were tried by single-judge courts without any juries. These courts are known as ‘Diplock Courts’. These are courts which follow procedures that do not conform with those applicable to normal trialsunder the rule of law.
Of the some 1,300 prisoners serving sentences in British jails in Northern Ireland, 328 have been receiving what the British describe as ‘special status treatment’. The balance of some 966 have been denied this ‘special status treatment’. The balance of some 966 have been denied this ‘special status treatment’. In effect, what the hunger strikers in the H-Blocks as Long Kesh demanded was that they should receive the special status treatment. This was spelled out by the hunger strikers and the other prisoners in five specific demands concerning:
1. The right to wear their own clothes at all times.
2. The prisoners requested that they should not be required to do menial prison work; they were prepared to do all the work required for the maintenance and cleaning of the portions of the prison occupied by them. They also asked that study time should be taken into account in determining the amount of work which they were required to do.
3. They requested the right to associate freely at recreation time with other political prisoners.
4. They requested the right to a weekly visit, letter or parcel, as well as the right to organise their own educational and recreational pursuits.
5. The right of remission of sentences as is normally provided for all other prisoners.
The prisoners believed that the refusal of the British authorities to grant them the ‘special category status’ which obtained in regard to other prisoners was a political decision taken in order to criminalise their status. Several hundred of them went on what was called the ‘blanket protest’ from September 1976. This protest consisted of refusing to wear prison clothes and on wearing a blanket instead. As from March 1978 they escalated the protest to a ‘no-wash protest’.
A number of them went on hunger-strike in October 1980. And the hunger-strike ended in 18 December on the basis of agreement put forwards by cardinal Tomas ‘O’Fiach and Bishop Daly. In the course of the negotiations, which took place with Cardinal O’Fiach and Bishop Daly, the British Government had agreed substantially to the demands made by the prisoners provided that they were not described ‘as acceptance of political status’. This proviso was accepted by the prisoners. However, the British Government failed to implement the recommendations made by Cardinal O’Fiach and substantially accepted by the British Government.
This caused considerable bitterness and distrust among the prisoners. They considered that they had been tricked into giving up the hunger-strike by subterfuge in which the British Government availed of the good offices of cardinal O’Fiach but then reneged on the agreement they had made with him.
Cardinal O’Fiach and Bishop Daly also considered that they had been misled by the British Government. It is in this atmosphere that the later hunger-strike was started on 1 March 1981. However, on this occasion, the prisoners started the hunger-strike with the preconceived determination that they were not going to allow the British Government to trick them again, or to use intermediaries; they insisted that they would continue the hunger-strike until death, in relays, until such time as the British Government gave categorical assurances to them concerning the future treatment of prisoners, and the granting of the five requirements which they had specified. In the meantime, a succession of well-intentioned intermediaries including a number of members of the Irish parliament, representatives of the European Commission on Human Rights, representatives of the Irish Commission on Justice and peace and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross sought to mediate, bit the attitude of the British Government throughout had been:
“We cannot accept that mediation between the government and convicted prisoners, even by international bodies of the highest standing is the right course”.
They also refused to negotiate directly with the prisoners. In reality, the attitude of the British Government had been to avail of all the intermediaries in an effort to break the determination of the prisoners and to avoid negotiating with the prisoners, thus binding themselves to alterations in the prison rules. The prisoners accused them of playing a cynical game of brinksmanship, waiting for one prisoner after the other to reach the dying point, hoping that this would break the morale of the other prisoners. Indeed in the course of a press interview given by Michael Alison, British Minister of State for Northern Ireland in the British Embassy in Washington. He made the startling but candid admission that negotiations about the hunger strike was like:
“the efforts of authorities to keep hijackers occupied while plans are developed to subdue the. (Irish Times, 13 July 1981).
In the course of this protest ten hunger-strikers died. They were Bobby Sands MP, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty TD, Thomas McElwee and Michael Devine.
I have sought to outline as objectively as I can the elements of the drama which unfurled itself in the British prison known as H-Block in Northern Ireland.
I do not agree with the violence used by the IRA and have refused to countenance their politics. Likewise, I have refused to allow myself to be used for propaganda purposes by the H-Block Committee in Ireland. Having said this, I understand fully the reasons which prompted the H-Block prisoners to undertake this ultimate form of protest. Furthermore, I cannot remain silent in the face of the duplicity and methods used by the British in their dealings with Ireland and with the hunger-striking prisoners.
Britain’s attempts to maintain dominion over the six north-eastern counties have caused misery and suffering to the whole of Ireland for over half a century. It has been the cause of a civil war in Ireland; it has divided Irishmen all over the world; it has been responsible for thousands of deaths and untold sufferings; it has prevented the economic development of Ireland. In brief, as our last Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Charles Haughey put it, it has cast long dark shadows into every aspect of Ireland’s life for over a century. Successive Irish governments, opposed as they are to partition, have been put into the impossible position of having to jail and oppress their own young people in order to protect British rule in the north-east corner of our country. A stage has now been reached where this is no longer acceptable to the Irish people.
In their own country and in countries which they do not seek to dominate, the British are reasonable, fair-minded, and even loveable. It is otherwise in areas which they regard as their preserve. In regard to Ireland, the British government and establishment are just incapable of being objective, fair-minded or just. A typical illustration of this was provided some time ago.
The British forces in northern Ireland have been using for the last three years rubber or plastic bullets indiscriminately. They have argued that they are harmless. Over fifty people - mostly children - have been killed or permanently maimed in Northern Ireland by these plastic bullets. This was denied by the British who maintained that they were harmless. When extensive riots broke out recently in Britain, the possibility arose of using rubber or plastic bullets for crowd control. An alarmed Conservative British Home Secretary said immediately that he would oppose their use ‘in mainland Britain because they are lethal!” (Irish Times, 11 July, 1981). It is all right to use them in Ireland and to kill women and children there - not ‘on mainland Britain’.
The British Government likes to portray itself in the role of the ‘honest broker’ who is in Northern Ireland against its will ‘merely in order to protect the Protestant population’. There would be absolutely no persecution of Protestants in Ireland. The Irish Government has a good record in this sphere and would willingly agree to international supervision in this area if it was thought necessary. The Convention on Human Rights would provide the necessary safeguards.
Impoverished Britain spends fourteen hundred million pounds to subsidise and occupy Northern Ireland. This equal to approximately double the amount in U.S. Dollars, $2,800,000,000. Britain has systematically used, and continues to use, its vast military and financial resources to encourage a segment of the population of the North-East to support British rule there. With such an expenditure and army occupation it would be possible to disrupt any country. We have had examples of this external intervention all over the world.
Britain has no right or mandate to be in any part of Ireland. The overwhelming majority of the Irish people want a united Ireland, and want the British out of Ireland. It is as simple as that.
By agreeing to withdraw from Ireland and by agreeing to a United Ireland, Britain could begin to establish a normal, friendly relationship with Ireland. She could only improve her international image and put an end to a shameful part of her colonial past.
In the early stages of the last decade, Paul Johnson, one of Great Britain’s most distinguished journalists, editor of The Spectator, and one of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s most ardent supporters, wrote in The New Statesman:
“In Ireland over the centuries, we have tried every possible formula; direct rule, indirect rule, genocide, apartheid, puppet parliaments, real parliaments, martial law, civil law, colonisation, land reform, partition. Nothing has worked. The only solution we have not tried is absolute and unconditional withdrawal. Why not try it now? It will happen in any event.
Political View
The 32 County Sovereignty Committee stands to uphold Ireland's Declaration of Independence as declared by Dail Eireann on January 21st 1919.
We reject Britain's right to occupy any part of our country and to involve itself in any make, shape or form in the affairs of the Irish nation.
Down through the years Britain has denied the right of the Irish people to national sovereignty and has imposed partition by force of arms.
Whenever the Irish people have moved to express their right to sovereignty, Britain has moved to oppose that right and sought to perpetuate partition.
The pretext for partition - the wishes of a national minority to maintain British rule - holds no validity against the expressed wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people.
Partition perpetuates the British Government's denial of the Irish peoples right to self-determination. It perpetuates the cycle of oppression/domination/resistance/oppression.
In the words of the late Sean McBride, winner of the Nobel and Lenin Peace Prizes:
"Irelands right to sovereignty, independence and unity are inalienable and indefeasible. It is for the Irish people as a whole to determine the future status of Ireland. Neither Britain nor a small minority selected by Britain has any right to partition the ancient island of Ireland, nor to determine its future as a sovereign nation."
Political/Historical Summary
From the above historical analysis we conclude:
1. The acceptance of the partition acts whether under duress or free choice can have no legal standing.
2. The Declaration of Independence 1919 was issued by Dail Eireann as the result of the Authority of the people of Ireland in the 1918 election. Therefore any fundamental change in that position could only be brought about by going back to the Irish people.
Therefore we challenge the authority of the Dail to accept a motion before it usurping the sovereign decision of the people, i.e. The Treaty of 1921. for the following reasons:
(a) Having declared the sovereign position of the people lawful, it was not within their remit to disestablish the sovereignty of the people - a fact clearly understood in their own declaration of Independence.
(b) More importantly, the members of the Dail went before the people with the specific aim of upholding the will of the people. Therefore, it defies belief that a motion to accept a treaty fostered upon the Dail at the point of a gun by a foreign parliament would be anything other than null and void.
3. The Treaty foisted upon the Irish people also includes a British insistence that a written constitution be brought into being but not put before the people. At this stage the Dail could no longer consider itself a sovereign Parliament as it was now operating under a British Act of Parliament.
4. The relevance of what way the vote went to accept the Treaty is the main flaw in the argument. That the Treaty was won by a majority of seven votes is irrelevant. The partitioned Dail had no authority to disenfranchise a section of the population into a partitioned state.
5. Authority to put before Dail Eireann the dictates of foreign power in the first instance was not within the remit of the Dail because this was not a Treaty being signed by two Governments who respected each other's sovereignty. The British had in 1920 challenged the will of the Irish people at the ballot box with introduction of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 #[6] - an update of the Act of Union #[7] However without granting any credence to the Act of Union 1800, the Government of Ireland Act 1920 was without doubt a clear breach of international law and of the British Government’s own previous acceptance that they would acquiesce to the will of the people.
6. The British Parliament up to the present day has not yet being fully brought to account in a direct legal challenge as to what authority she has to set up a state in Ireland for her colonial descendants by the International Community bearing in mind the great loss of life and human suffering that has stemmed from this denial.
7. The statement by Peter Brooke, the then British Secretary for State for Northern Ireland on November 9 1989 to the effect that Britain has no selfish or economic reason to remain in Ireland is possibly the clearest intention as to what her real intent was, for she forgot to mention that she had given a legal guarantee that the majority within the artificial state would now be her legal excuse to remain in Ireland. The British avoid recognising that Ireland has the right to sovereignty in the first instance.
8. The granting of consent to the unionist is in direct transgression to the sovereignty position. We ordain that consent to a minority to opt out within the sovereignty of a nation can only be granted by a sovereign decision of the people as otherwise it grants sections of the people the right to transgress their own sovereignty.
Our Rights in International Law
We claim that Ireland's right to sovereignty, independence and unity - the right of the Irish people, as a whole, to self-determination - is supported by universally recognised principles of international law.
In particular, the right to self determination is enshrined in the two United Nations' Covenants of 1966 - The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights.
Article 1 of each Covenant states:
"1. All peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtues of
that right they determine their economic, social and cultural development."
The landmark Declaration on Principles of International law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations declares:
"..all people have the right freely to determine, without external
influence, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development and every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter."
32
Nature of Application
This submission is being made by the 32 County Sovereignty Committee to the United Nations to ascertain as to whether the Government of Great Britain has been in breach of the following U.N Covenants:
1. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. GA Res. 2200A(XXI), Dec 16th 1966. 21.GAOR Supp. (No 16) at 52, UN Doc. A/6316 (1966). 999 U.N. -S.171 entered into force March 23, 1976. ) Part.1 Art,1(1).
2. The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. GA Res. 2200A (XXI). Dec 16th 1966. Dec 16th 1966. 21 GAOR Supp. (No.16) at 49, U/N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.:S.3. entered into force on 3rd of January 1976. Part.1. Art.1. Art 1 (1).
3. The United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. (Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 14th December 1960). GA Res. 1514/XV, Dec 14th, 1960. Article 4 and Article 6.
4. Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning
Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.G.A. Res. 2625, 25 UN GAOR Supp. No. 28 at 121, UN doc. A/8082 (1970)
This submission is being made by the 32 County Sovereignty Committee to the United Nations to ascertain as to whether the Government of Great Britain has been in breach of the following U.N Covenants:
1. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. GA Res. 2200A(XXI), Dec 16th 1966. 21.GAOR Supp. (No 16) at 52, UN Doc. A/6316 (1966). 999 U.N. -S.171 entered into force March 23, 1976. ) Part.1 Art,1(1).
2. The International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. GA Res. 2200A (XXI). Dec 16th 1966. Dec 16th 1966. 21 GAOR Supp. (No.16) at 49, U/N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.:S.3. entered into force on 3rd of January 1976. Part.1. Art.1. Art 1 (1).
3. The United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. (Adopted by the UN General Assembly on 14th December 1960). GA Res. 1514/XV, Dec 14th, 1960. Article 4 and Article 6.
4. Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning
Friendly Relations and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.G.A. Res. 2625, 25 UN GAOR Supp. No. 28 at 121, UN doc. A/8082 (1970)
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