From Belfast to Belmarsh

By AM Saturday, August 11, 2012

Share Tweet Share Share Email

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey in Glasgow, Scotland in June giving a talk on the internment of Marian Price. Thanks to TPQ's invaluable transcriber.


Thanks very much. I always forget when I come to speak at these things how small I am and then I have to try and see you over the mike. (adjusts microphone) I was here in 1972 and it was only when I came in that side door that I remembered going out that side door in 1972. So some progress has actually been made. (all laugh) Last time that I spoke at a meeting in this hall it was surrounded by right-wing fascists. And I am not kidding you - we literally had to fight our way out of it. And the police turned up to basically protect the fascists and we all got out through that side door.

And I'd forgotten actually- it's just when I came around and saw it - I'm not sure if it was post-traumatic stress...I just said Wow! That's the same place I was in in '72. So well done to everybody's who kept this hall opened and kept people coming to it for all these years and again filling these seats tonight.

From Belfast to Belmarsh: Belmarsh also is a place every time I hear it mentioned my blood runs cold because my daughter was the only woman prisoner to spend time in there when she was heavily pregnant and deigned to be a terrorist.

And people throughout the whole of the British Isles, throughout the UK, throughout Ireland, throughout the world, particularly and I will never, ever forget an organisation called Women of Colour and led by a number of very, very fine Muslim women who stood the ground in London and looked after all of us while we were there. And fought that battle and got my daughter released. And my granddaughter who might, but for that campaign, have possibly been born in Belmarsh was actually born free in hospital in London. And she's now fifteen and was well worth the effort let me tell you all. She's a great girl!

So those of us who have been in struggle for a long time simply because we're older than those of you who have been in struggle for a short time are mindful and crucially aware of all the links between all the various groups of oppressed whom the government pick off, one against the other.

And sometimes the whole thing comes full circle. Because again I remember when making the links again between - particularly between - Palestine and Ireland...I remember an occasion when out of the mouths of babes ... I don't know if any of you do remember when Yasser Arafat handed over a revolver on the lawn of somewhere in the White House as a symbolic gesture of peace was televised.

And one of my children watching the television who, (and) it wasn't out of political acumen it was out of a child's understand of struggle, gasped and said: 'why is he giving the gun to the man to shoot him?' Because the gun was handed over as a symbolic gesture and it was handed with the barrel facing Yasser Arafat; he handed it over like that. (gestures)

And in the child's simple imagination guns were for shooting people with. And the one man had handed the gun to the other man with it pointing at him and he thought he had given it to him to shoot him with. And the child wasn't far wrong.

It always stuck in my mind - that generosity of spirit of a broad movement of people who always want to make peace. It is the oppressed who always want to make peace. Because it's the oppressed who suffer from violence.

Bankers? No. How many owners of banks ever died in a war? How many of the aristocracy ever died on the battlefield? Ever joined an organisation and put their own life on the line? The people who own and control the world don't fight it's battles. They simply drive other people into violent conflict. And the more of us who kill each other the better they like it - there's less of us to deal with.

And so it's the oppressed who always want to make peace. And when people think of Ireland at the minute, when they think of the North of Ireland if you're watching the media..let me tell you Nirvana wouldn't haven't had a look in...this is the Garden of Eden on Earth. Peace and manna in the form of European money has floated down upon our heads.

Her Majesty the Queen, you may have missed her, she whose jubilee ... my father used to say: 'she's was a receiver of stolen goods.' (All laugh and applaud) And my mother used to say she's a noble and gracious lady and he used say 'that may well be. But she's still a receiver of stolen goods.'

And that debate went on in the house I grew up in. And she came to visit, as you may have known, she came to visit The South of Ireland. And that was lovely and the President and all met her. And there's a big discussion she's coming now to The North. And there's a big discussion ... she's coming now to the North and there's a big discussion as to whether Martin McGuinness, the leader of all Sinn Féin Republicans, will bow, shake hands or curtsey - which ever takes his fancy I neither know nor care. (laughter)

But I'm not sure either what difference does that make to people on the ground? How does that symbolise peace? But you'd think we had peace and you'd think that we had a resolution of conflict. And then I have to ask a number of questions: If that is the case then what is peace supposed to look like? What is the end of conflict? What is peaceful resolution of conflict for the oppressed, the dispossessed supposed to look like? I'm not totally sure. I know what it looks like in my head. And I know I don't see it.

But I know what it's not supposed to look like. It's not supposed to look like that the fundamental and open and democratic rule of law still does not exist. It's not supposed to look like that. It's not supposed to look like that people can, as in policies like “prevent”, simply be taken away from their families because somebody thinks that they might be a danger to the common good. Now I would like to know if that's the way society is going to function, where do I point out that hereditary rule in the twenty-first century on these islands is archaic, is continuing the receipt and ownership of stolen goods? And how to I get a control order on the winters? (applause)

I wouldn't be tough on them you know ... being confined to Buckingham Palace is a wee bit more comfortable than being confined to a terrorist house in the east end of London. So there's room to move about. But it's not about that. It's about the people who own and control everything are now so confident that they will own and control our every thought and our every movement.

So what's Marian Price's crime? As Terry has said, Marian Price got herself back into prison. She gets the blame for it. The 32 County Sovereignty Movement is what they're called. And they're a break-off from Sinn Féin who didn't like the peace process. They disagreed with them on the peace process.

And the fragmentation in the Republican family is sad but it's, if you look at the politics of it, it's inevitable and it's the consequence of a whole lot of things. The fragmentation in that Republican Movement in Ireland at the moment is quite sad. And so a number of small organisations ... and the way you see it most is when you come to an historic event ... which is the commemoration of The Easter Rising and the movement towards independence. Which in fact, in 2016 will be the centenary.

But at Easter, which I find sad, those of us who have lived through and some generations have, in fact, over the past hundred years, there's scarcely a generation in Ireland that hasn't lived through a period of active struggle. So there's hardly a generation who don't in Ireland have what might be called “war dead”.

But ordinary folks like myself who don't do militarism can barely get into the cemetery on Easter Sunday to pay our respects to our dead because of the number of different organisations that turn up in military formation to formally lay wreaths on the graves of war dead. And Marian Price was at one of these.

And it was a very, very windy, wet day. So this guy, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement organised this small demonstration, and the guy stepped forward to read a proclamation. This is quite traditional in that Republican tradition.

And I don't mean, for the Republicans here, to be disrespectful but it is the way it goes. You know, no meeting of Republicans is complete without somebody with a mask on getting up in true male broad-shouldered style pulling out a piece of paper and reading a proclamation. That's part of the tradition ever since they read out The 1916 Proclamation on the steps of the GPO.

So up steps yer man and reads his proclamation. It's very hard to do this with the necessary, you can see I'm a feminist, but there's a bit of swagger (that) has to go with it and it's very hard to do it on a windy day with the rain.

So yer man's trying to do his bit and the bottom keeps going away. As any woman is conditioned to do, Marian Price stepped forward to hold the end of it steady for him. Now I'm not kidding you. That's her crime. That is her crime. And she is charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. So you see how “prevent” works in practice.

So she was charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. Three other people are charged with possibly being the man in the mask. And they were all brought up to the court. Now the magistrate kind of looked at it and said 'okay' because somebody hadn't said to him 'this is a new prevent policy.'

He said ... well, okay ... more or less aiding and abetting terrorism maybe a bit over the top for what's being presented here but in any event, that's the charge and he granted them all bail.  So far so good.

They're walking out of the court when the police step forward and arrested Marian Price and took her to prison. And her lawyer went in ... straight into the court to try and get her out again. And the reason she was imprisoned was going right back to the '70's. Marian Price was one of four young people who were convicted of a bombing in London. There was a bombing in London and in fact about a hundred and eighty people were injured in that bomb, mostly with flying glass. A person died of a heart attack when the bomb went off. And Marian Price was convicted, along with her sister, Dolours, and Gerry Kelly and another guy. And they were convicted of that and they were given twenty years for conspiring to cause the explosion and life for the explosion itself.

And Marian and the other three people, because it was part of the United Kingdom, the law said that prisoners ...which is about families and not prisons, not the convicted. Convicted prisoners can, in the interest of families, serve their sentences in a prison nearest to their family. And that's fairly routine. But right throughout the Irish conflict the British authorities refused to allow Irish prisoners convicted in Britain to serve their sentences in Northern Ireland, which is within the UK. So that was a big political battle.

And in pursuit of their right to serve their prison sentence in Northern Ireland Marian and the others went on hunger strike. And when we think of hunger strikes now what's in our minds are the 1980 hunger strikes where people refused food and subsequently died of starvation. In the 1970's prisoners were forced fed. And Marian Price and Dolours, her sister, went on hunger strike and they were on hunger strike for two hundred days. And for the last one hundred and sixty-seven of those days, the two young women were forced fed.

And that involved three times a day: they were forcibly held down, and they were held down by male prison officers. They were forcibly held down and restrained while a tube was put down their throat, into their stomach and liquid nutrition was poured from a jug down the tube into their stomachs. And that was done three times a day for one hundred and sixty-seven days. If they brought the liquid back up again they were restrained and it was poured down.  So, for a minimum of five hundred times Marian Price was subjected to that. It had a significant impact both on her physical and on her emotional health.  So having won the battle to be returned to prison in Northern Ireland the deterioration of her physical health continued. And finally in the 1980's she was released from prison on a royal pardon. At that time she weighed less than five stone and suffered from tuberculosis.

So Marian went home to her family in the 1980's as did Dolours. And like many other people, and particularly many other young women from that period, the impact of imprisonment has continued to affect their physical and overall well-being. The trauma and physical impact on their bodies of those period of imprisonments doesn't go away, you know. You don't go through that. People who have been through Guantanamo Bay, people who have been through prisons in Afghanistan and been through Belmarsh...it's not something you get up and walk away from.

Any more than people who have been involved in any other trauma: of war, violence, rape. You cope with it. You deal with it. But you don't put that in a parcel when the peace is declared and go home and put it behind you. Any more than those who lost loved ones in struggle – those who are bereaved - walk away from that. So Marian went home and she built her life. And she continued, as is her fundamental human right, she continued to believe the things she always believed. She continued to hold the political opinions she always held.

And she continued to hold the political aspirations in which she always believed. And that's her crime.  She is an unrepentant Fenian. That's her crime. (applause)

And so the Secretary of State, the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland revoked Marian's pardon. So the lawyer went back to prison again and said it's actually not within the gift of the Secretary of State to revoke a royal pardon. A royal pardon is in the gift of Her Majesty the Queen. Who, not withstanding the fact that she's a receiver of stolen goods, is the distributor of royal pardons. And so unless Her Majesty the Queen revokes the pardon – the pardon stands.

So a legal argument has started and is still going on. The Secretary of State said it wasn't a pardon; that Marian was released on a licence of good behaviour. Now he was wrong in that. And he's not the smartest of men. He's a Tory and “well got” as we say in Northern Ireland. He's well got financially and politically. And in the peace, I suppose Secretary of State for Northern Ireland seemed a cushy enough number.

So apart from trying to reduce corporation tax to ten percent and putting people in gaol for no good reason he doesn't have a lot to do. So Owen Paterson our Secretary of State for Northern Ireland ... actually I personally think ... being a sloppy sort of a guy ... made a mistake.

Most of the prisoners in Northern Ireland are released on licence of good behaviour as part of the Good Friday Agreement. And I think he got his wires crossed at the beginning and he said: Aha! Another one for us. And then when he put Marian in gaol and the lawyer came back he went: Aw, shit! She's got a royal pardon. She's not one of those other people. So what happened?

Royal pardon is missing. It is disperused. Disappeared. Diddly-squat gone ... into thin air! When did it disappear? When Marian Price was arrested.  So when the lawyer went to the Parole Commission and demanded the Secretary of State produce the pardon he came and said: 'it's lost. We don't know what happened to it.' When pushed, he owned up that in the history of the state, as far as they can go back, maybe as far as Walter Raleigh and the first Elizabeth ... I have no idea, but nobody in the history of the state in a position of authority has any recollection of a royal pardon document ever being lost before. In the whole history of this state there's only one copy of the royal pardon missing. And it's Marian Price's.

So we're asked to believe that that's unfortunate. The real problem comes to when the Parole Commission, the people who sit to look and determine whether people are allowed in or out of prison, the Parole Commission met and the lawyer put it up to them, that in fact it was a Habeus Corpus issue, this young woman, well she's fifty-eight now...that's young if you're the age of me, she had an entitlement: she'd been granted bail by the court and the rule of law should be upheld.

And the Secretary of State had simply said that he had an entitlement to override that and he had to demonstrate his authority. But the Parole Commissioner said they have no authority. They can't override the Secretary of State. Why not? Because he has secret information. He has secret information that Marian Price might be ... I love the use of the English language ... he has secret information, secret intelligence they call it. (quips) I'm not a good person. I try. But I'm not good. Every time I get Owen Paterson and intelligence, secret or otherwise, don't go together in my book. (applause)

So Owen Paterson has secret intelligence; which is not his own. (all laugh) He got it from somebody else but we're not allowed to know who. Except that they're in MI5 (holds up hand with palm extended and opened) Not MI 6 because that required two hands (all laugh)...but MI 5 told Owen Paterson on the q.t.: she will bring the entire United Kingdom down. She would need to be put in gaol.  So on the basis of that, the court in Northern Ireland is overruled not once, not twice, but three times.

Because the case against Marian Price, on which was her licence was revoked, was thrown out of court on the basis that for the period of a year the state had failed to bring to the court any evidence which would allow the case to start. So when it came to the Magistrate again he threw it out. He dismissed the charges against all four people. And he said he had seen mass murder trials come to the court in less time than they had been able to bring sufficient evidence to the court on this charge: that this woman and these three men had conspired in this cemetery to commit an act of terrorism. So they were thrown out. And when they were thrown out Marian was arrested again.

Now the kind of thing, and they have explained it very well, the kind of thing that they put in here, it that Marian was also arrested in 2009 and questioned at the time of the Massereene attack.

Now you may not be familiar with that attack: but in 2009 right in the middle of the peace there was an attack on an Army base by possibly the Real IR and, possibly by another splinter group. The real IRA is not the old IRA it's a new IRA calling itself The Real IRA. But the real IRA call them the pretending IRA. But they're a military organisation anyway and they attacked the barracks and two young soldiers were killed and a number of people injured.

Marian was arrested then, as were a whole spate of people. She was one of the people arrested and released. So once this charge was over the prosecution came back and said: we're considering charging her with Massereene. And of course, that hasn't happened either.

But the effect immediately was again for people who were uneasy about Marian's detention to say: 'oh ... I'm not going there. I am not going near anything connected with Massereene. Maybe she is one of “them”.'

Now, no evidence to suggest it. Her lawyers have again said look ... this woman was arrested in 2009, she was charged, there is no new evidence so why are you going ... and they haven't even yet brought these new charges. Why are you doing this?

Marian's case has been sufficient in the deterioration of her physical health. So she was held in solitary confinement in a male prison (shades of Belmarsh) in Maghaberry and she's now in solitary confinement in Hydebank in a special constructed area for a dangerous woman like her.

And this dangerous woman, now in her fifty-ninth year coming on sixty ... continues to have significant physical and emotional traumatic health problems daily being made worse by the return to the traumatic conditions that created it. So she's back in prison. Back in solitary confinement. Back within the very environment that destroyed her physical health and her emotional health previously.

To the extent that both the, her case has been reported to the UN; both to the Rapporteur on Torture and to the Health Rapporteur. The UN Health Rapporteur, a man called Annan Grover originally of Indian origin, a man whom I've had the privilege to meet and work with in other areas of health, Annan Grover ordered an investigation into Marian's health and the impact of prison on her health. And the prison authorities to date have succeeded in delaying that UN basic inspection of compliance for a number of weeks. The UN doctor is going in this week.

Marian's case has been raised by major human rights organisations. It's been raised by Amnesty. It's been raised by British (Ed: Irish) Human Rights Watch and by the Committee for the Administration of Justice which is a group - an NGO in Northern Ireland that has, for many years, highlighted abuses and has standing at the UN. So Marian's case, in the human rights confraternity, is raising significant concerns about what is happening in Northern Ireland.

It's a most critical case but in the middle of this peace it is not the only case. Marian is not the only person being held in Northern Ireland under administrative detention.

There are three other people. And while the numbers are currently being kept small, it is increasing ... the number of people who are being held that way and the efforts we have to put in to getting them out.

Now we see this is a rolling back of things we were promised in the Good Friday Agreement. The core bits of a new society that we were promised was 1) a Civic Forum: to allow those of us who don't define ourselves as Catholics, Protestants, Unionists or Nationalists. Those who define themselves as socialists, or feminists, or human rights activists or trade unionists ... through the Civic Forum we were to have some participative input into government.

It never happened. Civic Forum was stillborn. We were promised an Equality Commission, which we have got. But it does nothing but marks the government's homework. No campaigning for anti-discrimination, anti-sectarianism, anti-racism. And the most fundamental of all: were promised a Human Rights Bill in Northern Ireland as part of an independent Westminster Act that would ensure that we would never have human rights violations again that we could not address without an eight year battle to go to the European Court. And that has never happened and we are told will never happen.

So once that's going on we are beginning to see the “prevent” policy. We're beginning to see the same old routine build again where people who, because they disagree, the crime in Northern Ireland today is the crime of dissidence.

It was easier, it was easier in the midst of armed struggle and was easier in '68, '69 and '70 to have a dissident opinion. Now I don't mean a dissident Republican opinion. A dissident trade union opinion. A dissident political opinion. A dissident position on sexual orientation.

It was easier to do those things in Northern Ireland during the war and before the war than it is to do them now. Because the big crime in Northern Ireland society at the minute is to be different. To speak out against the consensus. To speak out against corruption. To speak out against poverty. Speak out against anything and you are accused of aiding and abetting a roll-back to violence. If I say look, I, in my place of work ... and I couldn't work. My crime was being elected to Parliament.

Once I left that place in 1973 I was black-listed in Northern Ireland and never was able to earn one penny of an income until 1998. Nobody was brave enough to allow me to wash their floors. And there was a whole generation of us (who) could never work. Now the devil made work for idle hands and we used that to good effect. (applause)

I look around (and there's not a bit I miss) and I wonder: How did other people stash money away when they didn't earn any? But at the age of sixty-five, which I am ... never mind because they moved the pension age, I work for my living and will have to work for it as long as I am fit. Because like everybody else it's the only way I have money. I have to earn it. Unlike the bankers.

But I can now go to my place of work. But I see in the work that I do, I see poverty. I see homelessness. I see racism. I see sectarianism that is as deep if not deeper than it was when I was twenty-one years of age. And for saying that out loud, people are afraid to speak in case they lose that piece of wages they used to have.

And people will say to me: “Bernadette, shut up!”. So many of the people who were a part of a movement for justice are now dependent as community workers, as administration workers ... dependent on the peace for the basic income they have that they are frightened to open their mouths because it'll be taken away from them again.

So many people are frightened to express a dissident opinion in case they are accused of aiding and abetting terrorism. That that creeping repression has got to the point that a woman whose health, but not her spirit, was broken by the state is now back in prison.

And you say: Why pick on Marian Price? For a number of reasons.  Because she can be picked on. Because it's symbolic. Because as a stubborn woman she'll give them a run for their money. And it will allow them to drive their point home. And because it will make the point: that they are in charge again and they can do what they like. And we have got...there's two ways to go here. We have been down one of those roads and I can tell you it leads nowhere but to that picture on the lawn of the White House.

There is no militaristic route to salvation for the people in Ireland, for the people in Palestine, for the Muslim people, for Afghanistan - here's the reality. It's not even a moral question. And I'm bad 'cause I'm going to say it: If those dogs of war who run the world could wipe us all out like that (snaps fingers).

Apart from the morality of it, none of us, all of us together, are no military match for what they are holding at our heads. But in solidarity, if we make the links, if we say: Well, I tell you...however you have divided us up...we are human beings. And we are, as working-class people, we are the human beings who put this world together, who hold it together and who keep it together.

And you have two choices: you take us all on as human beings standing our ground together for our humanity and our class, for democracy, for peace, for human rights ... you press the button and come with us. Because either this world will be made fit for human beings to live in ... or we have no future.

And that starts, not with some big plan to take over the world. It starts with us having the courage to say: you will not do it in Guantanamo Bay. You will not do it in Belmarsh. You will not do it in Belfast. Without us linking arms together, exposing you and trying to stop you. And that has to start with small steps. It has to start with us making people aware that they're doing the same thing to all of us in isolated patches.

And the main reason they're getting away with it is they're making me afraid of you, and you afraid of her, and her afraid of him. So I don't want it to happen to my people. But in case anybody thinks I might be a bad person, I'm certainly not going to have anything to do with yours because they're telling me you're bad. And I'm not going to have anything to do with yours, because they're telling me you're worse. We have to get over that.

And we have got to say: You touch one of us and you touch all of us. And we've got to start building that campaign. (Standing ovation. Long, rousing applause)