Bernadette Devlin McAliskey civil rights activist, witness to Bloody Sunday, leading spokesperson for Smash H-Block campaign in 1980-81 and former MP for mid-Ulster spoke at a Scottish meeting on 14th June 2012 entitled "From Belfast to Belmarsh" which called for the end to internment and detention without trial, freedom for Marian Price, defence of civil liberties and to fight Islamophobia. Marian Price was convicted of being involved in a 1970's London bombing and went on hunger strike to demand her right to be transferred to a jail nearer her home in Northern Ireland according to prisoners rights. After over a month she was force-fed 3 times daily for 167 days. Eventually weighing less than 5 stone and suffering from TB she was released in the 1980's on a royal pardon. But politicians and police working for the British state in Northern Ireland were not happy and have kept rearresting her on any pretext. Any time anything happened she was hauled in and accused. She is now coming up for 60 years of age. The latest pretext for arrest was when on a windy day at an Easter Rising commemoration she held steady a corner of a piece of paper containing a declaration that a militant was attempting to read out in the windy conditions. So she was accused of aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation. She was released by a court but the secretary of state kept having her rearrested again. So they are basically overruling the royal pardon. They even claimed to have lost the royal pardon, the only case in the whole history going back to the time of Walter Raleigh. Bernadette mocks secretary of state Owen Paterson's handling of the case: "He has "secret information" that Marian Price might be, I love the use of the English language, he has secret information, secret intelligence they call it. I'm not a good person. I try, I'm not good. Every time I get "Owen Paterson" and "intelligence" -" [gestures and laughter] "Owen Paterson has secret intelligence, which is not his own, got it from somebody else, we're not allowed to know who. MI5, not MI6 cos that requires 2 hands!" [holding up 6 fingers] "M.I.5 told Owen Paterson on the QT she would bring the entire United Kingdom down!" Marian has been put in solitary confinement and her health is already damaged from the force-feeding in the 70's. "Marian's case has been raised by major human rights organisations e.g. Amnesty." "And by the Administration of Justice which is a group, an NGO in NI that has for many years highlighted the abuses and has standing at the UN. So Marian's case with the human rights con-fraternity is raising significant concerns about what is happening in NI. It's a most critical case." Bernadette goes on to describe how anyone is considered "dissident" if they are involved in anything that advocates change or criticises the government in any way and are targetted by the state. Even a trade unionist, a feminist, an anti-cuts activist can be persecuted and black-listed against working. She herself after being an elected politician and activist was unable to get a paid job until 1998. People were also afraid to give her a job in case they were targeted. "No one was brave enough to allow me to wash their floors. And there's a whole generation of us could never work - but the devil made work for idle hands!" she said amidst laughter in the hall. Now she is 65 and of pension age, "I work for my living and I love to work for it as long as I am fit because like everybody else it's the only way I have money. I have to earn it -- unlike the bankers. But I can now come to my place of work. What I see in the work that I do, I see poverty, I see homelessness, I see racism, I see sectarianism that is as deep if not deeper than it was when I was 21 years of age. And for saying that out loud, people are afraid to speak in case they lose that piece of wages they used to have." She talks of people sticking together for human rights and says "it starts with us having the courage to say to the dogs of war: "You will not do it in Guantanamo Bay, you will not do it in Belmarsh, you will not do it in Belfast without us linking arms together, exposing you and trying to stop you. And that has to start with small steps. It has to start with us making people aware that they're doing the same thing to all of us" and she describes how they try to sow fear and turn people against each other but finishes by saying: "We have got to say "You touch one of us, and you touch all of us. And we've got to start right here." And the meeting finished with a standing ovation in the packed hall in Glasgow. Part 1: http://youtu.be/izL5J4LE7MQ

• published: 26 Jul 2012
• views: 1642