Rees has brought four years and four months of internment to an But he warned that he was prepared to resort to something like internment' if nationalist resistance continues. Rees still holds internment powers, and 27 internees remain in Long Kesh as sentenced prisoners' - including those given terms of imprisonment for attempted escape from internA statement from the released internees declared that any celebration would surely be premature'. It went on to say that their release was tinged with sadness that 'so many of our fellow countrymen and women are still behind the wire',and express the hope that their release would not be long postponed.
Eruption Internment began on 9 August 1971 when thousands of British troops and police invaded the Catholic districts of the North of By breakfast time over 300 men had been lifted - and the nationalist population had erupted in protest. The following days saw some of the fiercest fighting between Republican forces and the British Army. Fourteen people were murdered by the British occupation forces on the first day Resistance to internment united the anti-Unionist working class, leading to the development of the *No-Go' areas and the mass civil disobedience campaign. In these early days even the Social Democratic and Labour Party were drawn into the protest, declaring their full support for the rent and rates strike. But its opposition to internment was short-lived.
At the first whiff of imperialism's money the SDLP initiated a campaign to break the back of the resistance and dislodge the civil resistance campaign. in the soft chairs of Stormont as members of the power-sharing Executive,the Fitt-Curry-Paddy Devlin gang imposed financial penalties on the rent and rates While protesting their opposition to internment they deprived internees' families of their social security payments. Thus for the SDLP the internees only had words of scorn: "To the SDLP we say: take no credit for our release. While our people suffered you connived with the enemies of Ireland behind our back. yourselves: you are quislings.' Guinea pigs Once installed guinea pigs by the British security forces. They were subject to torture and brutality - or 'ill treatment' as the more sensitive call it. They were unwilling volunteers for experiments in perfecting sensory deprivation techniques, for the future use of the British Army wherever and whenever it is called on to fulfil its repressive role.
The misery inflicted on the anti-Unionist working class by internment is not open to calculation.
Internment has firmly stamped the nature of imperialism on the not forget. Neither must the British working class forget that it two years.
Incarceration Hugh Coney, Jim Moyne,Paddy Tear,Teddy Campbell and Paddy Crawford did not survive their You speak for no-one but The first internees were used as Sir Edmund Compton preferred to But one thing is clear.
mind of that working class. It will was a Labour Government that has maintained internment for the past dards. wordsit went to the polls.
Australian workers view the ALP as their interests; and during its first year in Gov• but as tne economic crisis began determined to smash.
The last 18 months of Labour rule
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SOCIALIST SPAIN, PORTUGAL, IRELAND; THE MARCH AGAINST