ON November 28th, 1974, spent the best part of 24 hours in the gallery of the House of Commons listening to the Terrorism Emergency debate on the Prevention of (Emergency Provisions) Act. Although it is more than 20 years ago, I still remember the mood of fear and loathing that gripped Britain at that time, the demands for tough action to be taken against the "murdering Irish scum", the almost desperate desire of MPs to articulation and indeed outstrip the anger of their constituents.
The Bill had been introduced after IRA bombs in two Birmingham pubs killed 21 people and injured 123. There were demands for the reintroduction of the death penalty, internment, legal restrictions on Irish people living in Britain. The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, promised legislation "to enable the police and others to take exceptional measures to protect our people". The PTA was rushed through the House of Commons in an emergency debate lasting 17 hours. It was passed by the House of Lords in two minutes.
Very few voices were raised to question the wisdom of introducing such draconian measures, clearly designed to target one section of the community, with speed. Those who did were reassured that "the innocent have nothing to fear" from the new police powers. The soothing phrase has been used over and over during the current public and political debate which has followed the appalling murders of Veronica Guerin and Garda Jerry McCabe.
It sounds plausible but is dangerously deceptive. For the fact is that, when the police are under intense pressure to solve crimes that have outraged public opinion and produce people in court to answer for these crimes, it is the innocent who are most vulnerable. Hardened professionals, whether they be members of the IRA or organised drugs dealers, know all about their rights and have access to lawyers to protect them. Ask any good policeman and he will confirm this. It is the innocent who has never been inside a police station who ends up signing an incriminating statement, often too frightened to realise what they are doing.
IT is salutary to recall what happened when the PTA was passed and the British police were under just such pressure to bring the "murdering Irish scum" to justice. Paul Hill was the first person to be arrested under the new Bill. He and the other members of the Guildford Four spent 15 years behind bars, convicted on the basis of confessions beaten out of them by the police. The Birmingham Six served 16 years and, as we saw when they visited Dublin recently, are still struggling to rebuild their shattered lives. The Maguire Family were convicted of having explosives. Guiseppe Conlon died in prison. Judith Ward served 18 years for crimes she did not commit.
All these people were released only after long and courageous campaigns, usually led by the great and the good of British society. To suggest that they were innocent, that the police had lied, was to conjure up "an appalling vista", that eventually shook public confidence in British justice to its very foundations. Added to these cases, which are engraved on the collective memory of this country, there are those of thousands of anonymous, innocent Irish people who have been arrested, held and terrified under the PTA.
We have had our own experience of how the police can act when they need to be seen to respond to public demands for tough action against crime. The "Heavy Gang" and the Nicky Kelly case should not be forgotten, particularly in relation to the innocent people who are, perhaps inevitably, drawn into the web of suspicion and questioned following the murders of Garda McCabe and Veronica Guerin.
On RTE's Saturday View last week, an experienced crime correspondent suggested that the public would be quite happy for the Heavy Gang and its methods to be brought back, if this was the only way to deal effectively with the kind of thugs responsible for recent crimes. On the same programme, Liz O'Donnell demanded, in what can only be described as a shriek, that the Government should declare a state of emergency. There have been times during the past week when the tone of public debate has come dangerously close to the hysteria which gripped Britain in 1974.
It does no service to the Garda Siochana, struggling to preserve public confidence in a period of intense anger and grief, to suggest such methods are remotely justified. We should have learned by now that if they were to be used, particularly in specific areas where drugs related crime is rife, the most likely result would be to poison trust between the Garda and the community.
WE are fortunate in having a police force which enjoys a high degree of public confidence. A recent Economic and Social Research Institute survey showed 85 per cent of people have a "very positive" attitude to the Garda Siochana, though it was also noticeable that this figure was significantly lower among young people. We have also seen how severely confidence has been eroded in inner city areas of Britain and the United States and how easily the same pattern could unfold here.
This paper has consistently argued that the causes of crime, particularly drugs related crime in our big cities, are extremely complex. Some, though not all, of these causes are economic. In a week which has shown our economy growing, hard questions need to be asked about a society which tolerates soul destroying levels of unemployment in areas of our inner cities and condemns their inhabitants for turning to drugs and crime.
As long as it didn't spill over to affect respectable, middle class society we preferred to ignore the terrible destructive potential of the burgeoning drugs trade. Having failed to provide safe and adequate resources to treat addicts, we are now demanding tougher action against those who have moved in to meet the demand for drugs.
Fortunately, the Government, and Nora Owen in particular, have remained steady in resisting the most hysterical of these demands. The Government's package of proposals announced this week contains much that is welcome - more resources for the police and the courts, a determination to make the various agencies work effectively together and, most importantly, a beady eye to be trained on the organisation and efficiency of the Garda Siochana. But, we tamper at our peril with those long established civil liberties which form the basis of our society - the right to silence, bail, freedom from detention.
If the past 25 years have taught us one lesson, it must be that hard cases make for bad law. Panic measures introduced in response to public demand for tough action do little to deter the criminal but put the innocent at dreadful risk. That at least is what happened in Britain when the PTA was passed by both Houses of Parliament in less than 24 hours. We must not let it happen here.