Free Citizen: Vol. 2 no. 2, 9 October 1970

Vol 2 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER AT THE POSTOFFICE

NEWSPAPER OF THE

Pod PEOPLES DEMOCRACY VA = je PRICE WEEKLY FRI. 9 Oct. 1970

FAULKNER TAKES

CONTROL

CHICHESTER CLARKE'S 'INFECTION'

MAY NOT LAST VERY LONG - THOUGH

SOME SAY IT WILL DO UNTOLD HARM

TO HIS CONSTITUTION - BUT THERE

CAN BE NO DOUBT THAT IN THE

MEANTIME BRIAN FAULKNER HAS COM-

PLETELY TAKEN OVER THE LEADER-

SHIP OF THE UNIONIST PARTY. LAST

SATURDAY, AT THE MEETING OF THE

UNIONIST STANDING COMMITTEE HE

SHOWED IN WHAT DIRECTION THE

PARTY WAS GOING TO MOVE BY

ANNOUNCING THAT IT WAS UNLIKELY

THAT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-

FORMS WOULD BE BROUGHT IN IN

TIME TO HAVE.AN. ELECTION IN 1971.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS WERE

ORGINALLY DUE IN MAY. 1970. THEY

WERE POSTPONED UNTIL OCTOBER

1971 TO ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT

'TIME' TO REDRAW BOUNDARIES AND

INTRODUCE 'ONE MAN, ONE VOTE',

“Our GREATNESS AS A NATION HAS BEEN

OUR CAPACITY TO DO WHAT HAS TO BE

DONE WHEN WE KNEW OUR CAUSE WAS RIGHT.”

RICHARD M NIXON, NOV.3, 1969

So now it appears that even the simpliest demand of the original civil rights movement - democracy at local government level - is going to be denied. We must demand Even the absurd, gerrymandered local government elections in 1971. Fermanagh Council seems to be get- Without doubt, the most important ting a new lease of life from the reform at local government level Government with the decision on was the proposal in the MacRory re-| Monday to imprison the Fermanagh port that publically financed housing | C.R.A. protesters who ‘occupied’ should be taken out of the hands of the chamber - they had far more local councillors and given over to right to there than Brooke or any of a central authority. At apress con-| his crew. P.D. fully supports the ference on Saturday, Faulkner made! stand taken by the more militant it clear that the Government had not | demonstrators who refused to pay yet accepted ''a single line’’ of the fines imposed on them for opposing MacRory report and "could, in fact, | a blatantly unjust system. At reject the whole document". Faulk-| least one of those ‘inside’ is a P.D ner said a lot more about "keeping member. o & options open” and other politicans' double talk, but the fact is that he ee failed to give a clear undertaking mal IiclOUS that central housing authority would We deny malicious reports in be set up. It, too, will presumably some daily newspapers alleging be postponed "until 1972 at the earl-| that three P.D. members paid the first issue that sparked off the present wave of unrest in N. Ireland.

It is intolerable that local councils elected on sectarian issues in gerrymandered wards should be allowed to hold onto power for even a week longer. Active political organisations must demand that Stormont scrap sectarian government by next year at the latest.

Otherwise - SCRAP STORMONT!

that act again Meetings calling for an end to the Criminal Justice Act and mandatory 6-month sentences are to be held by the P.D. next Saturday, 10th October, in the following towns: iest . their fines... The three:indriduale ff adahrook:<«.: cis scees cee We must demand the immediate concerned were expelled last. June | Nawtownstewart..«.scscccc setting-up of a central housing au- for taking part in a 'Unity' convent- | G---,,sssss, thority no later than October 1971. ion coftrary to P.D. policy, §§».-»§»«4 «|«\ [eo aoc eee eee weer wenee Reform of local government was

« FREE CITIZEN 9th October 1970.

The Truth about Walmsley R.M.

Next week 8 P.D. members will appeal against a total of 57 months in jail sentences arising out of a peaceful Cement Strike protest in Ardglass. These savage sentences caused outrage but no great surprise at the time. The lack of surprise was due to the fact that the Magistrate was Albert James Walmsley R.M. Of all the Unionist hacks on the Magistrates Bench Walmsley is perhaps the most cordially detested.

A mean-minded authoritarian he is notorious for his constant threats to jail for contempt of court anyone who coughs, splutters or glances at a newspaper: During the Ardglass cases he reached new heights of petty tyranny. Informed by the police that someone had -scribbled 'corrupt courts' at the back of the court Walmsley went into a near frenzy and declared that this....''shows the type of people we are dealing with...itis..

...at least as significant as any of the other evidence which had been produced against the defendants."

In fact it was not evidence against the defendants and Walmsley had no idea who did the scribbling.

He had just prejudiced the case however. Not that Walmsley always behaves with the same severity in court.

Sometimes he can be positively benevolent. Trying 12 Apprentice Boys for breaking the ban on parades at Kilkeel on August 12th he declared that the Magistrates were taking into account the fact that it was "a token defiance of the law" and that the defendants were men of standing in the community. They were given a one month suspended sentence and fined £25 each. Shortly before,another Magistrate had sentenced a group of Blackmen to six months in jail for the same offence. The Apprentice Boys moreover had broken a government ban. Ardglass defedants had held a peaceful, lawful meeting.

An Orangeman of long standing like his father and grandfather before him, as he boasted at a 12th rally in Enniskillen in 1958, - Walmsley was a Unionist Senator from 1957 until he became a magistrate in 1964. He remains Chair man of Linfield Football Club with all its sectarian associations. In the Senate - normally a rest-home for retired party hacks - Walmsley was unusually active and a noted apologist for the Unionist party and the Orange Order. He constantly defended the notorious Fermanagh County Council and Derry Corporation against all charges of gerrymandering, discrimination and neglect, declaring that ''the local councils have done a magnificent job to rehouse all and sundry in Co. Fermanagh." In fact Fermanagh has the worst housing record in the North and even today well over half the houses lack basic amenities.

In 1960 Walmsley defended a grossly sectarian speech by Harry West, saying ''The Parliamentary Secretary (West) was merely telling the people in Co. Fermanagh that Walmsley normally adopts an attitude of outraged indignation towards | those charged before him. But he the birth rate on the Nationalist side | did not always have such an exagwas increasing and that if they were not to be left behind they would have to do something about it by getting married and having larger families".

In 1961 he declared that people not loyal to the Crown should not be given public employment. "If the person who is taking up employment which is paid for out of the public purse refuses or is not prepared to give allegiance to the Crown then it is quite clear that that person should be in public employment."

Occasionally - and quite unconsciously - he has his funny side as when he declared that any money spent in connection with senile bigot Brookeborough must be for the public good. “Our Prime Minister, as everyone of all creeds and classes in this country knows, has been one of the greatest Ambassadors for N.

Ireland that we have ever had. He has stirred the hearts of Ulstermen from the North of Canada to the sunny shores of New Zealand and any money that is spent on his Department or on sending him on any mis- -sion, no matter what it may be, can only be of the very greatest benefit to all sections of the community in N.Ireland.'' February 25th 1958.

Perhaps his most absurd statement was ''we are among the highest earning people in the world today... No matter where we look throughout N.

Ireland we prosperity on every hand.

9th February 1961.

19 PUBLIC NOTICES 19

PUBLIC NOTICES

gerated concern for the public good.

In November 1959 his firm of solicitors acted to secure a lease of building land at Knockagoney for a totally inactive speculative building firm called Ulster Housing Ltd.

Walmsley's partner F. Tughan, Mayor of Bangor, was a shareholder and former director of this company, and an employee of Tughan and Walmsley was a current director.

The land was leased from W.M.. -__ May, the Minister for Education who had just bought it. The whole transaction was completed just in time to prevent Belfast Corporation buying the land for Council housing. There is no record of Walmsley trying to persuade his colleagues to drop this shoddy speculative manoeuvre.

Albert Walmsley is a typical product of a system which elevates second-rate Unionist hacks - and the odd Nationalist as well - to the Magistrates bench and gives them inordinate power over the liberty of the working class people whom their party and associates have robbed and plundered. This petty court-room bully has now been transferred from Co.

Down to Belfast where he can jail yet more members of the working class who are not as impressed as he is with the "prosperity on every hand" in N.Ireland and who revolt against it. 19 PUBLIC NOTICES Pottiagh, S mrparkin, Kill Mineral Deve INISTRY OF COMMERCE (hereinafter referred Ministry”) hereby gives notice pursuant to ) of the above Act that the Ministry proposes in its powers under section 11 of the above Act. to yspecting licence authorising Amax Exploration separated to enter the lands and waters in the 'yrone and Fermanagh lis‘ed in the. Schedule oni In Free Citizen No. 49 we warned how the Mineral Development Act, passed only last year, could be used to line the pockets of a few foreign capitalists (and perhaps of one or two Government ministers).

The Act vests the right to mine any mineral in any part of N.Ireland in the Stormont Minstry of Development. The Ministry has the power to pro: spect for minerals and to mine for them. Such powers could be used for the good of the whole community. A Workers State certainly would. Modern methods have made mining for low grade ores profitable, and such profits should go to the whole community. But that is not what the capitalist hucksters at Stormont have in mind. They are simply granting licenses to industrialists to come here and exploit the resources of the country for

MINISTRY OF COMMERCE ;

Ins, ‘ree, ‘uth, gh), ibad Cordoolagh, Mu) mshancorick, Drun heanlish, Derry EEaignnamby ie iC { treaghnagore, Gre | Derrygannon, Kno geely, Corragunt (4 age men c art) (DED. of E nerwinter, Tibbere! - - tMieanty eownzsallard, Greaghaca Cortaher, Derr; macloy, Killylifferbane Glebe, Mull Glebe, Annaghilly North ,Knockmacroony Glebe, Fc Little, Crockawaddy Glebe, Corranny, Greaghacholea.

Follum: Big, Cornacreeve, Bunmichael, Bunlougher () (D.E.D of Carnmore), Eshekerin (part), Ervey (part) (D Carnmore), Bunnablaney Bane, Carnmore (r Frrecelladh (naw private profit. As if that wasn't enough, the Ministry will also pay them grants and subsidies.

Last Friday an advertisement, taking up two-thirds of a page appeared in the Belfast Telegraph, informing the public that the Ministry proposes to grant a prospecting license to Amex Exploration of U.K. Incorporated (whoever they might be) to prospect for minerals in Fermanagh and Tyrone. Any person may write to the Ministry and demand an enquiry into this legalised banditry. The closing date for objections is 9th November. P.D. intend to lodge a complaint against the granting of a license to private speculators. If enough people object, a public enquiry may have to be held. Write to Ministry of Commerce, 21 Linenhall Street, Belfast BT2 8BY.

The wholesale repression of militant opponents of the Government continues and has assumed deadly proportions since J. Taylor became regent in the ministry of Home Affairs. At the core of repression are laws which give police all the opportunities they need to be totally ruthless and cynical. Chief amongst these laws which can silence even the most vigilant is the classic and notorious Special Powers Act, but the new Criminal Justice Act, sadly passed with opposition support, has become neagly as infamous as its older brother. A mere constable can ensure a man six months in jail whereas under the Special Powers legislation a police officer is normally required to effect any measures under it. It is important, therefore, that people should know what miserably few rights remain to them under the law, how far they can use the law for their own benefit when confronted by police and what their position is when arrested on fabricated charges. arrest When challenged by the police it is | advisable to give your NAME and ADDRESS if asked: the citizen can ask why the policeman wants to know, but ultimately he should give the information, otherwise he might face several charges. Often police are put in their place easily enough, but the important thing to remember is that today, police evidence, however patently false, is damning. It is left, therefore, to the individual to assess in the circumstances the extent of his opposition to the police.

Similarily with interrogation by police as to where a person is coming from: police can arrest with impunity and without a warrant if they claim to have a reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed e.g. lawyers consider if a person is moving about at night under 'suspicious' circumstances that this may give grounds for reasonable suspicion. Arrests can be made any day or at any time. With or without a warrant, police can break down a door to @fect arrest, although they are supposed to demand entrance first. Arrest is a physical interference with a person's liberty.

Words are not sufficient while, on the other hand, restraint can occur without the police actually touching: to go voluntarily is not arrest.

Arrest under a DEFECTIVE WAR~ RANT is ineffectual (e.g. some details of the charges must be stated in the warrant) but a constable executing the warraut remains immune from a civil action, although the

© KNOW YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS!

by LIAM SHANNON J.P. signing it may not be. The constable is liable, however, if he exceeds the authority vested in him by a warrant e.g. if under a serch warrant he takes goods not mentioned in the warrant, or if he arrests the wrong man. A constable can arrest even if the warrant is not in his possession in connection with proceedings, but in cases where there is no power of arrest unless under warrant, he must have it in his possession at the time of arrest otherwise he is acting illegally. Recently, Armagh police forgot this when they tried to arrest P.D. member K.Trainor when his time for paying a fine had lapsed; Kevin defended himself vigorously, and when charged later with assault the R.M. had to throw the charges out of court. Kevin is now suing the police for assualt and false imprisonment. A policeman must let a person know the substance of the warrant.

handcuffs A person cannot be HANDCUFFED except when he has attempted to escape or it is reasonable of police to expect he will do so. It is considered that a person handcuffed unnecessarily has a right of action against the police. In the case where a person is arrested without a warrant and held in custody he must be released within 24 hours, and if not, the police must bring him before a court 'as soon as practicable, but not more than 48 hours after arrest'. Lawyers consider it reasonable for police to detain a person arrested without warrant at night, until the next day, when he is put before a court. It is not considered reasonable, however, to so detain for a full 48 hours except where a Sunday intervenes.

Police can SEARCH a person on his arrest in custody and sieze any property capable of forming material evidence in a criminal charge, but not any other property.

Police require an R. M.'s order to fingerprint a person taken into custody and charged with an offence, but if the accused is acquitted or the charge dismissed they are supposed to destroy the fingerprints and copies. Whether they do or not, especially in political cases, is FREE CITIZEN 9th OCTOBER 1970 something open to doubt. If convicted, a prisoner is photographed and fingerprinted when he is taken into prison. Where police prosecute, the summons must be served by a policeman and a reasonable time allowed to elapse before the hearing so as to give the defendent time to prepare a defence. When arrested, a person is entitled immediately to consult a solicitor and shouldask the police for use of their phone to contact him Before the solictor arrives (and often this will not be until the next morning) even if the person has not been formally charged he should make no statement whatsoever not give any information whatsoever to the police. He should be fully aware that he is under no legal obligation and has usually nothing to gain and a lot to lose by talking with police despite cajolery or threats on their part. This final point must be emphasised strongly because often police have no information to use against an arrested person except what he himself tells them.

CONFERENCE

The P.D. held a preliminary conference the week-end before last to | discuss the wave of police repress- { ion being directed against the left in general, and the P.D. in particular. Methods of countering this repression were put forward, as well as means of making more { difficult the serving of the police i state's summonses etc. A useful paper on citizen's legal rights with regard to all aspects of pig work was read. An abridged version of this article is reprinted ia this week's Free Citizen.

This Sunday, October 11th, P.D. is holding a similar conference to which other socialist organisations have been invited. From this we hope a common policy will emerge, as well as an agreed course of joint action to harrass the pig harrassers. A full report will be contained in next week's Free Citizen. I would like to become a member of the People's Democracy. I enclose a fee of 10 shillings. he All letters, gifts, correspondence ete: to:~ 88, Ladybrook Park, Belfast. To remit sums of money you can use our giro number: 68 101 2005

RAT OF THE YEAR

DON'T BOTHER TO SEND

US YOUR NOMINATIONS

FOR LURGAN'S KING RAT.

WE'VE FOUND HIM OUR-

SELVES. FARMER, LAND-

LORD AND RENT-COLLECT:

OR CHARLIE HAYES,

BALLYMACATEER, LUR-

GAN, SCION OF THE

HORSEY-PLAYBOY HAYES

CORNER SET. THE

PLOUGHBOY-PLAYBOYS.

STAND UP AND TAKE A

BOW, CHARLIE, RAT OF

THE YEAR.

Mrs. Elizabeth Carville (85-years | old) is an old age pensioner. She has lived in the same house at 31. | t | Wesley Place, Lurgan, for the past 55 years. She has looked after a middle-aged relative invalid since birth, and is now old and sick herself. But that didn't protect her landlord !

Charlie Hayes serving an eviction threat on her on October 1st 1970.

Why? For non-payment of rent over the past nine weeks. She counts out £3 per month into the sweaty grasping hands of Charlie Hayes for a pokey little Ed\,ardian terrace house that town planning should have legislated out of existence years ago. Early in August Mrs. Carville decided she'd had enough. The water supply to her house stopped completely. No water for anything, not for drinking, for cooking or for washing. She told her landlord Charlie Hayes. Nothing happened.

She reported the stoppage to the Sanitary Authorities in Lurgan.

Law? and Order This so-called booklet, produced by the C.C.D.C., purports to be an account of the 3rd - 5th July 1970, when the British Army attacked the Lower Falls. In fact, it isa sectarian and pro-imperialist reactionary political sheet. Produced by a bunch of clerics and deep Green Tories, its description of the events on the Falls is less comprehensive than the average newspaper - and its analysis of the reasons for that attack non-existent.

The book is blatantly sectarian, and an attitude of complete contempt for the working class Protestant is shown throughout. He is attacked for lack of education (P.3) and the authors gloat over the army's repression on the Shankill on 11th October (P6). The history of British imperialism in Ireland is even explained away as a battle between 'Planter' and'Native'! (P22).

For three days during the 'curfew' the workers of the Falls were beaten, starved, gassed, shot at, and imprisoned in their own homes, yet it is beyond the abilities of the book to give a clear and telling account of the repression. Instead the case is weakened by pan-Catholic rav- | buy it ten times over. } Charlie wants more and more and : more and more and more and more.

Twice! Nothing happened. So without redress, without attention, without water she desperately gestured for help. She quit paying her rent.

Mrs. Carville is perfectly willing to pay Christian Charlie his £3 per month. Even the rent for the past nine waterless weeks. She's prepared to forget the incovenience caused by having to carry home buckets of water supplied by friendly neighbours during that time. She just wants a normal existence. She wants the water supply restored.

And when that happens Charlie is welcome to his blood money. When he fixes it up, she will pay up.

Landlord Charlie, however, doesn't care about Mrs. Carville.

Or the fact that he is threatening her and her invalid dependent with the wet streets of winter. At Eighty-five years of age! Landlord Charlie doesn't care that Mrs. Carville has paid enough rent for the ; house during her past 55 years to Landlord And he doesn't give a damn about the sick old woman who is Mrs.

Carville. Landlord Charlie may not care. But we do. As Charlie ; would do well to remember on evict- ' ion day. If you're a Landlord Charlie who thinks that the old, the helpless and ; the sick don't matter, return this i copy of the Free Citizen to P.D.

headquarters. We'll refund your money. And welcome. Then we'll post you a copy of 'Mein Kampf! to nurture you until next week.

J.G. McAnulty. ings about the people not being able ‘to get to mass (Pages 1, 2, 17, 18 etc.). Army rudeness to Fr.

“Murphy (P.13, 18, 19) and Army cruelty to animals (P. 33).

Although the British Army is attacked for its actions on the Falls the book states: "this work is not...

--.an indictment of the whole Brit- Neither is it attack upon militarism". ‘officer and gentleman’ myth is held up as a standard from which a few men have strangely fallen.

Fr. Murphy states to one of these ‘gentlemen! "I would like to meet you....for a round of golf....I do not defend stone-throwers".

| (P.19), The British army is a bunch 0% ; trained killers which has, and will, ; Committ any crime in the interests : of British big business.

; tells us nothing of British Imperial- | ism, but it does tell us very clearly This book that the C.D.C.'s are now controlled by reactionary clerics and Fainna Fail Hacks, more at home in the Wellington Park Hotel than in the houses of the working class people of the Falls. FREE CITIZEN 9th October 1970 information Two weeks ago we were the only paper to print the inside story that recently Sir Ian Freeland and Sir Arthur Young had actually come to blows in the G.O.C.'s office in Lisburn. Two days after hearing this we learnt that they both had resigned much earlier than had originally been intended. Their row, regular readers will recall, had been over whether or not 5,000 troops should be withdrawn and the R.U.C. rearmed. Freeland favoured and advocated the idea, Young was dead against it. On the night we publish ed this little item a special courier was sent from Lisburn to Belfast to get a copy of the Free Citizen. The army's copy doesn't normally arrive until Friday morning. Subsequently investigators are now frantically investigating the 'leak' in their security. Heads, we hear, may roll. We would like to help the investigators by revealing our source, but this, of course, would be against all journalistic ethics.

Besides they wouldn't believe us if we told them. Ceasar's wife is above suspicion! Still it's nice to know that top people read the Citizen,

APPEALS

Appeals against sentences totalling 57 months imprisonment hanging over P.D. members will be heard at Newtownards on Wednesday 14th September. The cases arose out of a meeting held in Ardglass in June to protest about the blackleg importing of cement during the 4-month old strike of cement workers in the 26 Counties.

The following are appealing jail sentences: Michael McCullough (Newry) 4 mths, Brian Vallely (Armagh) 9 months.

Dermot Kelly (Armagh) 9 months.

Eugene Cassin (Armagh)4 months.

Dennis Cassin (Armagh) 7 months.

Brid Ruddy (Belfast) 10 mths. (sus.)

Oliver Cosgrove (Fermanagh) 7mths Gerard Ruddy (Newry) 7 months.

Meetings in support of those sentenced will be held on Tuesday 13th September in Ardglass, Newry, Armagh and Dublin.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

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