Fitt's change in attitude does not derive from any success in the civil rights struggle. still some 200 men interned in Long Kesh, and hundreds more men and women held in prison camps in Ireland and Britain. Indeed, Merlyn Rees has recently signed a further 23 detention orders despite his promise to end internment by Christmas.
Unemployment in Catholic areas remains about twice. as high as in Protestant districts, housing conditions in the nationalist ghettos are as miserable as ever, and the antiUnionist population of the Six Counties has been subjected to unprecedented terror by the British Army and its Loyalist allies throughout the last seven years.
Gerry Fitt, on the other hand, has come a long way since 1968. He now heads a 13-strong Convention party, as well as being a Westminster MP. He has been deputy leader of the power-sharing Executive which followed Sunningdale, and in the last few weeks he has been given the vision of becoming deputy premier in a coalition govemment neaded oy te new moderate bill craig une same Bill Craig who banned the Derry civil rights march of October 1968. This 5 October there are tion.
Altogether, 12 people died and more than 20 were injured in the wave of Loyalist violence last Thursday. in a statement claiming responsibility, the UVF revealed that they had top-level talks with British civil servants only hours after their murderous exploits, and that they were given five hours warning of the outlawing of their organisaThe UVF said that the talks had been initiated by the British Government, and claimed that they had offered to stand down and disband if the truce with the Provisionals was ended, the RUC sent into Republican areas, and the Provisional Sinn Fein and Irish Republican Socialist Party listed as illegal organisations. at Stormont Castle has admitted that the UVF's claims are 'in essence correct"
• In any case, the proscription does not appear to have overly concerned the UVF so far. Last Saturday its office in the Shankill Road in Belfast was still operating normally; the RUC did visit the oftice, but took no action. A member of the UVF in the office was quoted as saying: "It was business as usual."
The same day the self-proclaimed UVF chief-of-staff, Ken Gibson, walked into Ladas Drive Police Station in East questioning. 'I told them bluntly that I was a member of The told reporters afterwards. But the police simply asked him to leave.
It would appear that Rees's policy that the security forces should revert to their former level of activity means immunity for the rest of the leaders of the UVE.
was a Weekend of Action, which began with a picket of the Northern Ireland 27 September (where a petition with 4,000 signatures demanding that the charges be dropped was handed in), a torchlight procession on Sunday night, and a mass picket or the did balley on the opening day of the trial. The Statement of Complicity with the 14, with 600 signatures, was delivered to the Home Office on Monday morning.
had distributed 'Some Information for Discontenca solders earner In unt summer at a barracks in Arbroath, had And The Northern Ireland Office Office and the Home Office on Saturday released.
UNDETERRED News came through the same week end that four supporters of BWNIC, who ELLIOTIS There have been viola. tions ot it by the britisn, very bad viola tions, such as the murder of Leo Norney, the murder of Charles Irvine down in Rory O'Brady, Sinn Fein President, greeting Maire Drumm in Dublin court on tuesday), out supporters in Aberdeen were unacterred and Icanet ed the Army Recruiting Office there with the same leaflet. Young Liberals distributed the leaflet at a barracks in Lichfield on Saturday. Comrades in Germany distributed the leaflet to British soldiers in Hamburg, Krefeld, the Ruhr area, Werl and West Berlin, where two people were arrested but subsequently in Derry in normean treland, Tou people gave out 200 copies of the leaflet on 30 September to squaddies on the cameras. They were not arrested, but the RUC is forwarding the names and details to the Director of Public ProsecApart from Red Weekly, nine other lett libertarian and nacitist papers have