Documents reveal policy on Internment
Seamus McKinney, Irish News, 5 July 2010
A legal process put in place in the 1970s was manipulated to ensure as few internees as possible would be released, it has been revealed.
Documents uncovered by the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry also reveal that the RUC and British Army believed loyalists should not be interned because they presented no serious threat of violence.
This was despite atrocities such as the murder of 15 men, women and children in McGurk's bar in Belfast and the murder of five men in Annie's Bar in Derry by loyalists.
Paul O'Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) said the documents were important because they showed the lack of due process in internment and the state's attitude to extreme loyalist violence at the time.
On August 9 1971 hundreds of Catholic men were taken from their homes and interned by the Stormont regime, backed by the RUC and British army.
Up until 1973 internment was used only to arrest and hold Catholics.
While Protestants and loyalists were interned after 1973, the numbers were miniscule in comparison with Catholics.
Now recognised as one of the most inflammatory acts carried out against nationalists, many innocent men spent years in Long Kesh as a result of internment.
Following the introduction of internment a commission system was put in place to examine the cases of each man interned and to decide if he should be kept in custody.
However, the documents uncovered at Kew National Archive by the PFC show the British army chief of staff knew the commission system was abused.
The documents include minutes of a meeting between the chief of the general staff of the British army, Lord Carver and the permanent under secretary for Northern Ireland on June 15 1973.
The Permanent Under Secretary told Lord Carver the commission system was "fair and accurate."
But he then said: "They [the authorities] had succeeded in only putting to the commission those cases which they felt would be turned down; 180 of the 200 men put before the commissioners had had their detention confirmed."
Sinn Fein assembly member Raymond McCartney went through the commission following his internment in October 1973.
Mr McCartney recalled that the commission was made up of retires South African judges who heard evidence - quite often anonymous witnesses sitting behind curtains.
"I remember there were seven or eight charges against me and it was ruled that the evidence in all but one was inconclusive," he said.
"But a British soldier gave evidence in the open. He was actually the soldier who charged me with possession of a firearm in October 1972. I was actually acquitted in court of that charge on 15th February 1973 so the only evidence to intern me was a charge I had been acquitted of."
Mr McCartney said the commission system was a means by which the British government could claim that it wasn't interning people but "detaining them."
In his book on the internment, the late John McGuffin recall some of the more ridiculous evidence put forward at the commission hearings.
"One man was accused of 'being suspected of being responsible for robbing a post office in 1943'. Another was accused of causing 650 explosions in a six-month-period," the author said.
On another occasion even the commissioners queried the evidence when the witness voice from behind the curtain said: "I know nothing about this charge. I am only reading it off the sheet."
McGuffin, who was the first Protestant to be interned [in 1971], concluded: "On such hearsay nearly 300 men rotted for another winter in Long Kesh."
A second document uncovered by the PFC records a meeting in December 1974 between NIO officials and representatives of the attorney general's office, treasury solicitors, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence.
A representative of the attorney general asked why only Catholics were interned before 1973.
He was told by BB Hall of the treasury solicitor's department: "In view of the security forces there was no serious Protestant threat in that period of a kind which led to death an serious injuries."
During the period referred to, loyalists were guilty of some of the most heinous attacks of the Troubles.
These included the bombing of McGurk's bar at North Queen Street in Belfast on the night of December 4 1971. Ten men, three women and two children died in the bombing.
On the night of December 20 1972 five men were shot dead, believed to be by the UDA, at Annie's Bar in Derry's Gobnascale.
According to the Lost Lives database of Troubles deaths, in 1972, loyalist paramilitaries were thought to be behind more than 120 murders across Northern Ireland.
PFC spokesman Mr O'Connor said: "On one level, it is almost like Monty Python. They say the commission is fair but as a result they do not send the cases of innocent men in case they are released."
Mr O'Connor said the documents showed British authorities were quite willing to ignore due process to keep hundreds of men interned in world war two huts for years.