Peace Process Without Due Process
international | rights and freedoms | opinion/analysis 
Monday April 16, 2012 23:17
by BrianClarkeNUJ - AllVoices 
John McGuffin an Ulster Anarchist
John McGuffin an Ulster anarchist was cremated 10 years ago on this coming May Day in Belfast. I met John in London almost 40 years ago, when we got drunk together.John was the sole anarchist of the People's Democracy movement of the late sixties and carried alone an anarchist banner on the infamous Burntollet part of the civil rights march which was viciously attacked by Loyalists in and out of uniform. He was interned in 1971, writing a book later, about his experience and about internment in Ireland, followed by another book called 'The Guineapigs', about the torture of political internees of that time
John McGuffin and Ulster anarchist was cremated 10 years ago on this coming May Day in Belfast. I met John in London almost 40 years ago, when we got drunk together.John was the sole anarchist of the People's Democracy movement of the late sixties and carried alone an anarchist banner on the infamous Burntollet part of the civil rights march which was viciously attacked by Loyalists in and out of uniform. He was interned in 1971, writing a book later, about his experience and about internment in Ireland, followed by another book called 'The Guineapigs', about the torture of political internees of that time
John was from a Protestant background, who never met a Catholic until he was 18. He had however many libertarians friends from Germany and came from a very political family. His coffin was draped in the anarchist red and black flag or the "Up Down flag" as he called it ! John was contrary and being true to himself not always easy to get along with. I first met John at a Trotskyist get together in London, where he was a respected activist.
His latter book, "The Guineapigs" was about fourteen Irish political prisoners, with whom the British experimented with sensory deprivation torture in 1971. With the return of political Internment without trial this form of torture is still continued particularly with Marian Price held for a year in solitary confinement. Their 'techniques' which were outlawed after Britain was convicted at the International Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. Britain exported the techniques to its neo-colonies and its commonwealth worldwide. His book published in 1974 was sold out on his first run but was taken off the shelf and censored by the British Government as is today's internment.
Modern torture techniques such as 'Sensory Deprivation' is still being perfected by the British on guineapigs like Marian Price and her comrades for future use against civilians. John McGuffin being an ex-internee himself also spent two years researching the book, where he named the torturers. None of the British Army or RUC were ever convicted of torture or brutality, despite the fact that the British were forced to pay out more than $5 million in compensation to victims of torture.
In his earlier book called 'Internment' in Chapter 7 he wrote:
"THE POLITICS OF INTERNMENT 1971
In the mid-1960's people might have been forgiven for thinking that internment was a thing of the past. (True, the obnoxious Special Powers Acts were still on the Statute Book, but they were in abeyance). Such thinking was not to be right, however. The monolithic structure of Unionism proved incapable of reforming itself under the onslaught of the civil rights campaign. Terence O'Neill might have been able to save the Unionists with his pragmatic approach and his appreciation of the need for change, but their diehard 'not an inch'
backwoodsmen would have none of it. And so the week of 12 - 16 August 1969 saw the old familiar pattern: a police force unable, and, in many cases unwilling,[1] to prevent the sectarian attack upon the Falls Road periphery, led in some cases by the B specials. That month was to see house burning, intimidation and murder — ten civilians dead, including a 9-year-old boy asleep in his bed, shot by a high-velocity Browning machine-gun used with murderous recklessness by the police in their Shorland armoured cars; 145 injured, hundreds of families burnt out of their homes, 90% of them Catholic. Free Derry was born that week. The barricades went up in Belfast. The first steps towards the irrevocable demise of Stormont were taken. And, predictably, men were detained, without charge or trial....."
"But the Unionist hierarchy learn nothing from history. The gangling figure of Chichester Clark, the stand-in PM, shambled off into obscurity as 1970 and 1971 saw an escalation of the violence by the Provisional IRA, themselves a reaction to the attempted 'Loyalist' pogrom of 1969.
On 23 March 1971 Brian Arthur Deane Faulkner achieved his lifelong ambition and became PM. The English press warned that he was the 'last man in'. If he couldn't control the situation, direct rule was a certainty. But despite the obvious immensity of the task, Faulkner was confident.
This was the moment for which he had schemed, intrigued and betrayed, for so long. With a staggering record of disloyalty to previous PMs, he could hardly expect to be trusted or liked, but surely all could agree on his shrewdness and ability.
In fact, Faulkner's intelligence was always greatly over-rated by the media. And his biggest mistake was soon to come. The Sunday Times 'Insight' team claim[2] that "when he took over the issue was not whether internment was to come, but when and on what scale. By then Faulkner had been an advocate of internment inside Chichester Clark's Joint Security Committee, for six months." Whether this is true or not, and on balance it seems a reasonable statement, it is certain that Faulkner had completely failed to learn the lesson of how and when internment 'worked'. He had been Minister for Home Affairs in 1959 under Brookeborough, and, with the help of his trusty aide, the civil servant William Stout, he had been responsible for the implementation of internment, which he apparently felt to be responsible for the defeat of the IRA border campaign. As is made clear already, this just was not so......"
Forty years later in 2012 who would have thought, we would have "Internment" again or a 'Peace Process' without Due Process ! The withdrawal of the SDLP from Stormont was the response of the only Nationalist opposition last time the other sadistic fox hunter Brian Faulkner introduced internment and they established an "Alternative Assembly" in Strabane. Oppostion is still not tolerated within Stormont or without, these days by the unelected Englishman in Ireland Paterson but yet again the SDLP are the only real voices of clarity and passion there, opposing the internment of Marian Price and the jailing of all genuine opponents of British Occupation in Ireland.
Peace and democracy are still the few Brit buzz words not censored but a cursory examination shows that at best they are a satire. Indeed Her Majesty's unelected Paterson with his army of secret service puppet masters at Hollywood, along with his fellow English RUC man Baggot, will not tolerate any Irish opposition to their Irish occupation. Indeed he also employs certain Provo leaders who are well greased, as storm troopers and censors with their bastardized Voltaire version of a dishonourable peace.
In 1971 Faulkner offered in Stormont to the SDLP a degree of power-sharing. The SDLP have clearly said they were obliged in principle to leave Stormont because Foxhunter Faulkner introduced internment without trial as has his despotic horsey successor. The SDLP curiously are the only party to challenge MI5's along with Paterson and Baggot's absolute control of Stormont who to derive their authority from Her Majesty not mere commoners. However the two Englishmen have presided over the disappearance of Her Majesty's documentation in the instance of Marian Price which is further perverting the course of justice or more appropriately injustice, on the matter. This constitutes criminality carrying a life sentence for non nobility such as commoners. Further, be it Queen's English or plain English they both should be charged with kidnap be they citizens, commoners or the protected species of horsey Tory blood hunters in Occupied Ireland.
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