London based Irish Civil Rights Association, was recently arrested and held for five days under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. She relates how a member of the Anti-Terrorist Squad mouthed to her: 'You are in very serious trouble, Mrs O'Brien. We could slap a conspiracy charge on you or get an expulsion order".
Margaret O'Brien did not need to be told that. A consistent campaigner for the rights of Irish people in this country, she knows by now that when you are arrested under the PTA you are indeed 'in very serious trouble'. As Margaret's husband Frank overheard two policemen saying during his arrest: "We can do anything we like under the Act!
While the O'Brien family were being held their interrogators did indeed do as they wanted. They held Mrs O'Brien for five days in solitary confinement, and they questioned her on no less than seven separate occasions during that time. On one occasion she was interrogated in total darkness with a buzzing noise coming from behind her head - a similar technique to that used against internees in the North of ARRESTED Frank was also arrested and held for three days; and their 15-year-old daughter Margo was arrested, photographed, finger printed, interrogated and told that she was going to be put into care as her mother was going to prison.
Since the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, none JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast 15-year-old Gerard Craig after a British soldier fired a rubber bullet in his face last month of this is terribly exceptional. Hundreds of Irish people have undergone similar treatment - indeed, as Margaret O'Brien points out: The English people are also having their rights eroded"
What gives Mrs O'Brien's case a macabre touch of irony is her position as a campaigner against the PTA. How many tut-tuts have we heard from drawing room liberals in this country who lecture the South African Government for arresting civil rights workers under a similar "AntiTerrorism' Act? Well it is happening in England today, although the protesting liberals are few and far DCEWCCH The O'Brien family owed their eventual release to luck rather than any 'democratic' concessions. In the first place, the phone rang as the twenty policemen were carting off the O'Brien family, and Margo •Write a piece on the bombs in Britain", said the comrade from Red Weekly. So 1 sat down and began to compose an article on how revolutionary Marxists In reland oppose this bomoing cam paign, explaining that the bombs are no substitute for the lack of ment opposed to British imperialism in Ireland, and arguing that the energies of the group or groups responsible for these bombs would be immeasurably better emoloved if thev were directed al rebuilding this mass movement.
But while such an article would cer tainly reflect the views of the revolutionary left in Ireland, it would fail to convey the real subjective feelings of the anti-Unionist working class and rankano-ulle reouo cans Bombs in Belfast are routine. As I sit here typing this article I hear the dull thud of anther. I'm told that it. was at Daly's pub, just up the road. Loy. alists chucked a bomb through the door into the midst of the crowded throng or Calnonc workers enjoy!ng their Saturday afternoon pint and watch ing the sports programmes on 1 V.I can hear the wail of the ambulance sirens as they rush to the scene of the explosion from the nearby hospital.
I don't know if anyone has been killed or what the injured total is. But statistics are rather bare anvwav They cannot convey the anger on the raus or te sorrow m eamonc nomes tonight if a friend has to knock at the door to say that Michael or Sinead won't be coming home any more except in the undertaker's box. Yes, bombs are routine in Belfast. Routine Death is routine in Belfast. Ninetynine people have already died this year - that's eight or nine deaths each week Young men like Francis Rice, who died h che cutter ora back-enuy or me boy alist Shankill Road with his throat cut from ear to ear. Or the voung musicians of the Miami Showband, machine-gunned to death by an Ulster Volunteer Force assassination squad on teir was home from a dance. housewife who collapsed and died from a heart attack after witnessing the brutal arrest of her son by British soldiers. Yes, in Belfast death is routine nod from a Loyalist can see you driven from your job, even your home. And if you refuse to leave through your bedroom window might intuence vour cees oa. or cne nenar local unit of the Ulster Defence Associa tion might pav a visit to remind vou o your responsibility to the community - as the fifty Catholie residents of St. vonns nace in arne aiscoverea onny RELEASE sacked. a mass move rounne SHe T8S1 Or the Ballymurphy Intimidation is routine in Belfast. A - wer. & perro Domt workers in Belfast.
MARGARET O'BRIEN
managed to grab the receiver and shout down it what was happening.
Usually nobody knows when someone is arrested under the PTA. but that phone call enabled the caller to alert Margaret's friends -and even the media could hardly ignore the arrest of someone as prominent as Margaret O'Brien.
The second piece of luck came in jail itself, when a row developed between the Anti-Terrorist Squad and the Special Branch over what should happen to Mrs O'Brien Margaret played one off gainst the other, and this in no small way contributed to her eventual release.
What happened to the O'Brien family while they were locked up was bad enough; but for the workers movement what happened to Frank O'Brien afterwards is in many ways more serious. When Frank returned to Thorn Electric, where he has worked for twelve years, he was shunned by his workmates who threatened to strike unless he was At least Margaret was not faced a few weeks ago, when they were subjected to an invasion by eudgel-wielding UDA thugs in full uniform.
But then, as was pointed out by the Koval Uister Constaburary, te local defenders of law and order' in the area, the UDA were keeping down van dalism. Yes, intimidation in Belfast is In Belfast, harassment by the British Armv is roune mouse searcnes arrests. attacks on peaceful demonstrations, the colection or intelleence wnicn is chen handed over to the Loyalist paramilitaries are all daily occurrences in Belfast. Beatings with batons reinforced with lead, the firing of rubber bullets at point blank range, torture by military intelligence, assassination by the SAS - they're all aspects of routine life in Civil rights - or rather their denial -are routine in Belfast. For fifty years under the sectarian Stormont regime, Catholics were discriminated against in terms of votes, jobs and houses: thet were subjected to torture and imprisonment without trial. Inen Brusn demo cracy intervened and it was a case of play il again dim, wuue, werty Discrimination, imprisonment without trial continue as routine for nationalist Yes, that's right: bombs, death, intimidation, harassment, diserimination are all routine in the North of reland and ney al stem trom imper alism's refusal to recognise the right of the Insn people as a wnole to selt in fact the National Executive of her union, the AUEW-TASS, are demanding an inquiry into why one of their members was treated in such an arbitrary fashion. TASS deserve to be congratulated for this action, but Frank O'Brien is now out of work APOLOGIES Surprisingly, he does not seem bitter at the action of his brothers: *Those I work with know nothing about Ireland except what they read in the Sun and Mirror', he comments, almost apologising for his workmates But such apologies are out of place Quite simply, the men at Thorn Electric are a disgrace to the working class; it is they who should be treated as outcasts, not Frank O'Brien.
So if twenty policemen come for you in the morning, do not blame Margaret O'Brien, and do not blame the Provisionals or bombs on the London tube. Blame the British presence in reland from which the PTA flows, blame Roy Jenkins and the Labour MPs who voted the Act into existence, blame the men at Thorn Electric who have made it all too easy. And note these words of Margaret O'Brien:
OBLIGATION "They asked me on a radio pro gramme if I did not feel that the Irish in London had an obligation to help the police catch the bombers I say that the British people have an obligation to get their troops out of my country. Any violence has come from their refusal to let the Irish people run their own affairs. Give the Irish nation back to the Irish people so that we can have our own destiny in our own hands. Let them get the hell out of there.' determacon amo eno tre oooe ocel pation of the Six Counties by the British Not surprisingly, therefore, there have been very few tears shed in the Catholic ghettoes over the bombs in Britain. Not surprisingly, people say that the British populanon is now receivine cne same kind of medicine which British imperalism has dished out to the Irish people for seven hundred years. What should also not surprise British socialists is the Tante co oe enunte gerween the кт tish ruling class and the British workers. Erupted When the Catholie masses erupted onto the streets of the Northern cities in 1968 pledging that they would never acan submit to the umonis ackooo! the British ruling class and the Britsh abour movement decareo un unson that they did not know of the plight in which the nationalist minority in the Six Counties had been. It is now eight years since the first civil rights demonstrations. No longer can the British workers movement feign ignorance.
nere is oniv one road to zuarante that the bombs will end in London Dublin and Belfast and that is for the British workers to stand apart from their ruling class, to recognise the right of the Trish to self-determination, and to launch a campaign now to end the occupation or the six coundes. Torme immecate and total withdrawal of British troops
Red Weekly 15 April 1976