The insurgent youth of Belfast have been on trial at Winchester.
Confronted by all the power of a state which has at its disposal vast forces of coercion, and a court ateeped in the tradition of centuries of oppression, the defendants in the London bombings case displayed courage, defiance and confidence of eventual victory. "EVERY SAFEGUARD' Paul Holmes explained, before being sentenced, that: We took every safeguard that no injury was done to any person. There was always a very minimal risk, It was the fault of the police force in London .. What we want was harm to property and to the Government's pride. This fell on deaf can, they were not being tried for damage to persons or property.
for refusing to permit the BriImperialist state to have a mono. pely on violence.
Marian Price, like the other defendants, demanded to be sent back to her sentence in ireland, and innounced that she would go on ger strike until this demand, and scal status, were granted to her.
our Price forecast that the Asbly in the North of Ireland was med to failure, and said:
mains to be seen whether the SDLP prove themselves to be greater traitors than the men of 1921.
A QUESTION OF CLASS Mr. "Justice" Sebag Shaw revealed his indictiveness when he sentenced Dolour Price and Hugh Feeney, both Socialists, politically trained in the Peoples Democracy. to 30 man, and Marian Price to 25 years, on the conspiracy charges. This was in addition to the life sentences umposed on them, along with five of the defendants. He later had to ace these when he was told that the limit for conspiracy was 20 years, Sebag Shaw cynically told Rosin MeNeamy, who had been broken down by the police, and was acquitted: I don't know what dangers will confront you when you leave this court... If you have friends in Ireland still, you tell them about your experiences here, so that they may know what to expect if they follow your example.
Eamonn McCann made the most apt comment on Ine Ina. when Hiberni of 2 November he wrote: "In the end it is like everything else a question of class. Sir Peter Rawlinson, Sir Joseph Maloney, Mr. Justice Sebag Shaw, the press corps, the solid burghers of the town.. only by a preternatural leap of imagination could they ever understand Paul Holmes of Butler Strect in Ardoyne. And in the ahsence of understanding wherein lies the basis for judgement?" CAMPAIGN It is to be hoped that the blatant class injustice of the Winchester trial will spur into action those on the left who have quailed before public opinion, while the Republican Movement has fought on the streets of the Six Counties, and in the courts, prisons, and internment camps of Britain and Ireland.
Sinn Fein in Britain is launching a campaign on behalf of the Winchesteri prisoners, and other Irish Republican prisoners, demanding political status and the right for them to serve their sentences with their comrades in Ireland. Within the context of a long term campaign to obtain the release of Irish political prisoners, these demands are important and pressing: there must be the broadest and most active support for them.
If the struggle against increasing legal repression in Britain can catch fire from the spirit of the Winchester defendants, then this will benefit not only Irish prisoners, but the building workers involved in another class trial at Shrewsbury, and other militants — lrish and British, black and white — whom the British state is trying to entrap in the web of its conspiricy laws. The British Army is in Ireland Irish question: What we want is a