26-County police state

BY ART Mac EOIN

During 1976, the Dublin government declared a `State of Emergency' in the 26 Counties. The Fine Gael/Labour coalition, widely recognised as the most repressive Irish administration since the Second World War, introduced an array of repressive security and censorship legislation aimed at crushing republicanism in the Southern state.

The new weapons in the state's armoury, the Emergency Powers Act and the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act (CLJA), completed the transformation of the Irish legal, political and media systems into mere adjuncts of Britain's counterinsurgency strategy on the island as a whole, a process which began four years earlier under Fianna Fáil.

The Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act (CLJA) was passed in 1976, allowing the 26-County courts to try defendants on charges allegedly committed outside the state. The target was, of course, republicans who had carried out acts of resistance against British occupation in the Six Counties. The CLJA ensured the continued survival of the non-jury Special Court, originally introduced as a temporary measure.

Political censorship in the form of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, already used to dramatic effect in November 1972 when Gerry Collins sacked the entire RTE Authority for broadcasting an interview with IRA leader Sean Mac Stiofáin, was strengthened by Conor Cruise O'Brien. Sinn Féin members could not be interviewed on RTÉ no matter what the subject. It was to be almost two decades before the Act was allowed to lapse.

The activities of the Garda Heavy Gang demonstrated the new levels of corruption that characterised the Irish criminal justice sytem. Allegations soared that Garda detectives were torturing republican suspects in custody. The activities of the Heavy Gang inevitably led to wrongful convictions, most notably in the Sallins mail train robbery case.

1976 marked a violent and overt onslaught by the 26-County state on the physical, political and intellectual manifestations of Irish republicanism. It underlined the political bankrupcy of the Irish political elite and established the status quo for the following two decades.

The Dublin government declared its `state of emergency' on 1 September 1976, 25 years ago this week.