IRISH MY ERSE!

The following  review  was published in the Connolly Association journal THE IRISH DEMOCRAT in February  1985 under the heading SHAM JUSTICE:-

Death On The Streets of Derry . Tony Gifford. NCCL

Tony Gifford is a Labour Peer and a Queen's Counsel.

His pamphlet follows visits to Derry where he questioned eye-witnesses to two incidents in April 1981. In them three young civilians, all unarmed, Catholic and Irish, met their deaths.

Fifteen year old Paul Whitters was shot by the RUC with a plastic bullet after the police had been attacked with stones. From the evidence Gifford is satisfied as regards the fact that the RUC were not in danger; that the boy was alone when shot;that the range was at most ten yards; and the shot was head-high, apparently (against regulations), aimed that way deliberately. As regards law, he is certain that a charge of murder should have been brought, and sustained, in court.No charge whatever was brought against the RUC.

Nineteen year Gary English and eighteen year old James Brown died after two Land Rovers,armoured and weighing three quarters of a ton each, were driven at a speed of between fifty and sixty miles per hour , into a crowd. Already felled by one of the vehicles, and orobably already dead, English's body was run over by one of the vehicles reversing.

From evidence, including that of an experienced BBC journalist, Gifford is convinced that the direction and speed of the vehicles were deliberate, and that charges of muder should have been brought and sustained against the soldiers in court.One British soldier was charged with causing death by dangerous driving,and another was charged with aiding and abetting him. They were acquitted by a jury after a trial which prompts Gifford to inform us as to the correct procedure for a court of justice.

For one thing, a judge should direct a jury on the law, particularly on the definition of a crime. For another he should remind them of the evidence. Mr Justice Hutton failed to explain the law, disposed of the evidence in five paragraphs, and in passages covering six pages of transcript spoke for the defence.

Gifford is not satisfied with the conduct of the prosecution either. Wrongfooted from the start by not bringing a charge of murder and using the damning evidence to convince the jury, they allowed the judge throughout to impute innocent motivation to the army. TheCrown QC abandoned the case at the critical stage, leaving a Junior Counsel with  the burden of cross-examing the defendants and the other crucial task of making the final speech for the prosecution.

Introducing the booklet, Gifford asks  the following questions. What is the real nature of the "minimum force" policy of the security forces? What restraints are there in practice and what faith can the community have in the processes of judicial hearing?

It its many years since these questions exercised the keenest minds in Derry. Government propaganda, as instanced by Humphrey Atkins in the Daily Mail includes the three youths amongst those killed by the IRA, whilst THE TIMES numbers them amongst its spurious calculations of Protestant martyrs.

Donal Kennedy.

Mr Justice Hutton was raised to the Peerage, and as Lord Justice Hutton was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland from 1988 to 1997. He had been Counsel for the British Army at the Tribunal on Bloody Sunday presided over by England's then Lord Chief Justice Widgery which found that  the the discharge of firearms by the Parachute Regiment bordered on the reckless. As a member of the Law Lords he was instrumental in the release of General Pinochet, the mutinous ex-soldier and murderous renegade, from fear of extradition to answer murder charges in Spain. He was recalled from retirement to conduct an inquiry which exonerated the British Government from improper conduct regarding the dossier on the "threat from Iraq" which induced Parliament to support the Anglo-American attack on that oil-rich country. Consult Google for further coverage of his distinguished career.

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