Marches had been banned in Northern Ireland since August 9, 1971 under the Special Powers Act of 1922. At 4:00 o'clock in the morning of August 9, under the authority of this Act, British soldiers made sweeping arrests of suspected IRA terrorists or Republican activists in a number of Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. Hundreds of men were taken from their homes on that day and on subsequent days and were interned in concentration camps without being charged with or tried for any criminal offense.

Under the Act these men were not entitled to representation by counsel or the traditional writ of habeas corpus. The duration of internment was indefinite--the release of any individual internee being solely a discretionary act of a goffernment official. One cannot avoid commenting that legislation permitting such arbitrary deprivations of individual liberty is extraordinary, indeed, in the United Kingdom with its proud heritage of Magna Carta.

The internment of Catholic men under the Special Powers Act is directly relevant to the march in the Bogside on January 30, 1972. This march was planned and sponsored by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (nicra) as a specific protest against the internment and the failure of the Stormont goffernment to release the internees, or, in the alternative, to try them for specific criminal offenses. Indeed, the internment policy of the Stormont goffernment was largely responsible for the increased strife in Londonderry from August 9 to the day of the march on January 30, 1972.

Lord Widgery in the opening portions of his report offers a short history of this strife from August 1971 to January 30, 1972 as a basis for proffiding the context of the military action on January 30, 1972. But he completely ignores the subject of internment and the charges of cruel treatment of internees by the military which had been made by nicra and others during this period, and which constituted one of the most significant reasons for the increased hostility against the military by the Catholic civilian population of Londonderry.

The terms of reference originally announced by Lord Widgery for his Inquiry limited in time to an hour on January 30, would have prevented any consideration of this background. Yet Lord Widgery, himself, permitted testimony from the military concerning events in Londonderry between August 1971 and January 30, 1972, and chose to discuss these events in the introductory portion of his report. It is therefore a singular omission on his part that he makes no mention of the internment controffersy which was a principal reason for the gathering of thousands of Londonderry Catholics under the sponsorship of nicra to march on Sunday, January 30.

Lord Widgery was certainly aware of the internment controffersy and could have taken judicial notice of it. Allegations against the military in Northern Ireland of physical brutality in the treatment of internees were the subject of a highly publicized official Home Office inquiry under the chairmanship of Sir Edmond Compton. The Compton Report was presented to Parliament in Noffember 1971 and released to the public. It is not germane here to discuss the contents of the Compton Report, except to state that the report absolved the military of any acts of physical brutality or cruelty against the internees.

Lord Widgery only refers to the military testimony, heard by him, which disclosed that the Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland had decided by October 1971 to regain the initiative in the Bogside and Creggan Estates area for the purpose of imposing law and order. He omits any reference to the publication of the Compton Report the following month, which stunned and angered the Londonderry Catholic community, of which the great majority were not involved in any terrorist or hooligan activity against the military.

"Justice Denied" Main