The Internment Without Trial of Marian Price and Martin Corey is the return of the Guinea Pig experiment of 1971. Experiment for what you may ask ? For You ! whether you be a working parent in the North of England who cant feed your children, a trade unionist or simply someone who challenges the status quo, its back and British Occupied Ireland is probably where you will be rendered. It has been Britain's laboratory for a police state, Kitsonian low level intensity war on civilians, state secret service testing political laboratory for more than 40 years now with all genuine human rights lawyers, eradicated or compromised. It is Britain's state with the real power
hidden within a democratic/monarchy facade.
This article by libcom.org is a good summary of the internment of Marian Pricea 58 year old Irish Republican. She was initially jailed in 1973 for her part in an IRA bombing campaign in London. She targeted the Old Bailey, and an army recruitment centre. She was subsequently sentenced to two life terms.
Immediately on her incarceration, Marian went on hunger strike. The hunger strike lasted 200 days – during which Marian was force-fed on over 400 occasions.
In 1980, Marian was gravely ill, days away from death due to severe anorexia – which she had developed following the ordeal of being force-fed. Marian was granted a ‘Royal Pardon’ (Royal Prerogative of Mercy) and was immediately released from prison.
Marian survived, and over the next thirty years, she remained active in several republican groups such as the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, and the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association.
Present Day
In May 2011, Marian Price was arrested after appearing at a Irish Republican rally, where she held up a piece of paper from which a masked man read. She was immediately taken to Maghaberry high security prison (an all-male prison) and was placed in solitary confinement.
Marian has been accused of, ‘encouraging support for an illegal organisation’. Marian has now been in prison for 14 months, during which time neither her lawyers, or Marian have been allowed to see any of the state’s ‘alleged’ evidence.
Key facts from Marian’s internment in Maghaberry prison:
• She has been kept in solitary confinement in a ‘male’ high security prison
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the secretary of state has overruled those decisions.
• The secretary of state claims he has ‘revoked Marian’s license’. This is despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The secretary of state has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent license that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by the secretary of state responsible (Owen Paterson)
Marian suffers from numerous physical health problems due to how she was treated in prison in the 1970’s. Due to her year-long solitary confinement, Marian’s physical and mental health has deteriorated rapidly, and she has been transferred to hospital.
As I pointed out at the beginning of this post – you may not share the same political views as Marian Price, but you should be deeply concerned about how the state treats people who it views as a threat.
I recall that some anarchists were snatched from their beds on the morning of last year’s royal wedding, and detained for the day – but imagine being interned without trial for over a year, and kept in solitary confinement.
The case of Marian Price is one we should all keep a close eye on, and is best summed up by the Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, who said that:
Quote:
“Is a clear signal to everybody who is not “on board” and who is not of the same mind as the government: that no dissent will be tolerated. No dissent will be tolerated and you challenge the status quo at your peril.”
• She is effectively interned without a trial, sentence, or release date.
• She has not been given any timescale for any investigation.
• She has not been allowed to see the evidence that the state claims to have
• Her release has been ordered on two occasions by judges. However, on both occasions the secretary of state has overruled those decisions.
• The secretary of state claims he has ‘revoked Marian’s license’. This is despite Marian never being released on license. She was given a Royal Pardon.
• Marian’s Royal Pardon has ‘gone missing’ from the home office (the only time in history). The secretary of state has taken the view that unless a paper copy can be located – it must be assumed that she does not have one.
• Despite no ‘license’ existing for her release from prison in 1980, it is the non-existent license that is being used to keep her in prison.
• She can only be released by the secretary of state responsible (Owen Paterson)
“Is a clear signal to everybody who is not “on board” and who is not of the same mind as the government: that no dissent will be tolerated. No dissent will be tolerated and you challenge the status quo at your peril.”
‘The Guineapigs’ by John McGuffin (1974, 1981)
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The Guineapigs
by John McGuffin (1974, 1981)Originally published in London by Penguin Books, 1974. Paperback, 192 pp. Out of Print.
2nd edition Minuteman Press, San Francisco, 1981. Paperback, 75 pp. Out of Print.
The first edition by Penguin sold 20,000 copies and was banned after one week by the British government and Reginald Maudling. The 2nd edition in 1981 updated the fate of the victims and named the torturers, but omitted two chapters from the original edition.
A complete compilation of both editions is now here available for the first time. Feel free to download these pages, but if you decide to do so we would like to ask you to make a donation to Irish Resistance Books, in order that IRB can publish further works. (Note: We are not in receipt of any grants or Art Council funding.)
You may not edit, adapt, or redistribute changed versions of this for other than your personal use without the express written permission. Redistribution for commercial purposes is not permitted.
From the back cover (2nd edition):
The Guineapigs in the title were fourteen Irish political prisoners on whom the British Army experimented with sensory deprivation torture in 1971. These 'techniques' are now outlawed, following Britain's conviction at the International Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, but have been exported and used by Britain's allies throughout the world. This book first appeared in 1974, published by Penguin Books in London. It sold out on its first print run and was then abruptly taken off the market following pressure from the British Government.
In Ireland in 1971 there was deliberate and careful use of modern torture techniques, not merely to get information but to perfect the system of Sensory Deprivation for use against civilians. The author, an ex-internee himself spent two years researching the book following his release from Crumlin Road jail where he had been held without charge or trial. In this new edition he is at last able to name the torturers and those responsible for this sordid episode in British Imperial history. No member of the British Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary has ever been convicted of torture or brutality to prisoners, although the Government has been forced to pay out over $5 million in compensation to torture victims.
This re-issue of 'The Guineapigs' is dedicated to the blanket men in Long Kesh concentration camp and the women political prisoners in Armagh jail. 'Na reabhloidi Abu.'
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been written without the active help and advice of many people. Firstly I must thank the 'guineapigs' themselves, and in particular Jim Auld, Pat Shivers and Paddy Joe Mc Clean. A large debt is also owed to the Association for Legal Justice, Amnesty International (and in particular Richard Reoch) and the British Society for Social Responsibility in the Sciences. For help on the medical and psychological aspects of SD I am particularly indebted to Dr. Tim Shallice of the National Hospital and Dr. Pearse O'Malley of Belfast.
As for the rest, many have preferred that they remain anonymous, but special thanks must go to Judy Smith, Frank Doherty, Johnathan Rosenhead, Kevin Boyle, Hurst Hannum, Father Denis Faul, Margaret Gatt, Ian Franklin, Eamonn Kerr, Billy Close, Joe Quigley, Noelle, Hugh, Judith and, of course, R. W. Grimshaw. I am grateful to Gil Boehringer for permission to use part of his work for Appendix I.
Finally, I must thank Marie for her typing and Fra for putting up with it all.
JOHN McGUFFINBelfast, February 1974
Preface
Torture and brutality – or 'ill-treatment' as Sir Edmund Compton would prefer to call it – are as old as war itself. Mankind has expended centuries of research in trying to devise newer and more bestial ways of extracting information from reluctant witnesses or causing lingering and painful deaths.
The purpose of this book, however, is not to deal with torture in general. It is specific. It deals with the treatment meted out to fourteen Irishmen by the British 'security forces' in the period from August to October 1971. It is not written to show that this treatment was more barbaric than that practised by the British Army upon hundreds of other Irish internees/ detainees/ political prisoners since 1969 nor upon the victims of the ten colonial actions undertaken by the British since the Second World War. Instead it is an attempt to show how these men were selected as unwilling and unwitting subjects upon whom Army psychiatrists, psychologists and 'counter-terrorist strategists' could experiment in that particular field known as 'SD' – Sensory Deprivation. That the experiment was a dismal failure, both from a military and a propaganda point of view, mattered little to the men in the War Office. Worse still, the fact that several of the men used were literally driven out of their minds and still today, over two years later, suffer from severe mental traumas which they will carry with them to the grave has evoked not a shred of remorse, admission of guilt, or apology, let alone an attempt at recompense – though how do you give a man back his mental health? – from the 'mother of parliaments'. This book is an attempt to tell these men's story, the story of the 'guineapigs'.
Table of Contents
| Chapter 1: | 'Ill-Treatment' – A Brief History |
| Chapter 2: | What is Sensory Deprivation? |
| Chapter 3: | The Swoop – The First Forty-eight Hours |
| Chapter 4: | The Experiment |
| Chapter 5: | The Compton Report |
| Chapter 6: | Replay |
| Chapter 7: | Parker: Cover-up MK2 |
| Chapter 8: | The After-effects |
| Chapter 9: | Down on the Killing Floor |
| Chapter 10: | Postscript – Torture in the World Today |
But alas we seem to be moving further away from these things.
Re: "Sustaining and resourcing circles of protection for the weakest and most vulnerable is indeed an important aim." It is and actually it benefits everyone in the long-term, so you can actually make an economic argument (as well as an altruistic one) to support this idea.
It's a fierce big book....is it worth the effort?
BO'B is really engaging in a bit of strawman bashing with this effort. Objectivism is a non-philosophy philosophy. Like Creationism, it can't be disproven but doesn't add anything to our ability to understand the world around us.
The liberalism that I understand is about maximising freedom for the greatest possible number of people. You should have the freedom to live your own life however you want. But, that freedom does not extend to things that would impinge upon the freedoms of others. It's well summed-up by the maxim "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins". So you don't have the right to drive your car as fast as you want. Industries don't have the right to dump their waste into rivers. Advertisers don't have the right to make false or misleading claims about their products. Business owners don't have the right to discriminate against customers or employees on the basis of gender, ethnicity (etc). It's not at all the same thing as "do what thou wilt".
These are just some of the many ways in which liberalism differs from libertarianism. Liberalism recommends laws and regulations to keep rogue individuals from depriving others of their rights. Libertarianism, on the other hand, favours smaller government, privatisation, de-regulation. Let them do as they please; regulations are expensive and bureaucratic, the free market will sort everything out in time. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 effectively ended the racist Jim Crow laws. But Ron Paul, libertarian, opposes the Act because it restricts the rights of the individual to run their business the way they want. Not that he thinks segregation was a good thing, but he values the rights of the bus company to segregate its passengers more than he values the rights of the passengers not to be segregated. This is at odds with liberalism. And it means he's still a racist.
Liberalism is a religion/philosophy/political stance whereas "liberalism" (Irish Times style) is a mental illness that thinks it's Liberalism.
If Catholicism is the destruction of oak trees than "liberalism" is a massive waste of spruce trees....
No man is an island especially in todays world where we depend on others for nearly everything - work, food, clothing, even entertainment. So no matter what you do you are inpinging on others. The area of family life is one of the best examples where freedom these days is exactly the same as the libertarianism you describe.
As the Gospel says "You will know them by their Fruits" and America exemplifies everything that is undesirable in today's world .
The reason for this is American society has come to a dead end. This is evident in the fact that their version of human rights (which we are now aping here e.g. the children's referendum) in based on "Enlightenment" thinking with an emphasis on an atheistic individualism which seeks to replace religion with science, bans God from all aspects of life, replacing Him with a system that puts the interests of the individual over the interests of the common good and society at large. (as Breda points out above about Rand “Man – every man – is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”)
While there is a pretence of Christianity in American society "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;" This is obvious in the fact that the Judeo-Christian version of human rights based on the Mosaic Covenant which established an absolute right to the one true God, the right to the truth, the right to life, the right to a natural family and the right to ownership of property are noticeably absent from their legal system.
I guess all her 'friends' took her writings too seriously.
I think selflessness is far more in vogue these days in this country than the days when the vast majority stood by as a tyrannical church systemically abused and tortured and utterly destroyed the lives of thousands of vulnerable children, young single mothers and their families. Up until 1993 we had a law, vehemently supported by that church, that made it illegal for same sex couples to be couples, and today that church and certain organisations still oppose the equal rights for those couples. Some people are so selfish in their beliefs and their parenting that they implant their religious beliefs into the young vulnerable minds of their children in attempt to skew any chance of them making a rational, objective choice on their own (to the point where we end up with buckets of lukewarm believers who aren't sure why they believe or what they believe - quelle surprise). How selfish is it to mutilate the body of your baby boy because of your religious convictions? It's just my opinion: I could go on; I could be wrong
This cry that selfishness is a new idea that is in vogue is utterly ridiculous. Ireland was once a very, very brutal place. It is undoubtedly less so now. If you were a member of a vulnerable minority which year would rather live in?
While we have a very friendly reputation, we are certainly not good at looking after our own here. We're like the family who make the downstairs spotless for the big visitor while making sure that the dysfunctional members of the clann are kept quiet upstairs.
We have a way to go, but we are on the road. People like Breda O' Brien are trying to make us believe that we left some mythical better place behind us. It just isn't so.