February 3 1975
THERE is little to be gained by further debate of the Gardiner Report; but at least we can be allowed to hope that the British Government’s answer to the Report’s recommendations will not long be delayed.
General reaction to the Report has been so muted as to occasion surprise in view of the fact that so many groups took such pains to make submissions to the Gardiner Committee of their considered views.
The Committee was to consider, above all, the question of internment or detention without trial, a concept which was rejected in the majority of submissions. Gardiner did not recommend ending detention forthwith, but preferred to suggest that only the Government “could take the grave decision on when to end it”, adding that it “cannot remain as a long-term policy”.
Gardiner, like other Committees and Commissions, can only recommend. A decision on detention must come from the Secretary of State [Merlyn Rees]. In view of the pusillanimity which has characterised so many of the British Government’s actions when dealing with the Northern problem, detention is likely to remain with its prolonged effects which Gardiner finds “inimical to community life”.
There has, at least, been general agreement that nothing is to be gained by altering the category of “political prisoner” which is now generally accepted. Nothing can be done to exercise control over those detained and how they organise themselves, when men are detained in compounds.
This creates a relationship between detainees and prison authorities akin to prisoner-of-war status.
This area has been surfeited with Commissions, Committees of Inquiry and other investigatory bodies sitting in judgement on the North. It is not the good intentions of those who serve on these that we question. It is the seemingly systematic bankruptcy of positive findings and the tendency to evade fundamental issues.
Meanwhile, the prospects for a ceasefire are fading with each day. Mr Rees has now ruled out further gestures in the direction of peace after last week’s bomb blitzes on Belfast, Derry and provincial centres, and the ambush death of an RUC sergeant in Donaghmore, Co Tyrone.
After cataloguing these incidents, it would almost seem as if a carefully orchestrated scenario had been worked out to ensure that there could be no further moves towards peace talks, nor of more releases from Long Kesh.
Irish News editorial on the futility of outputs from committees and commissions such as the Gardiner Report which was tasked “to consider, in the context of civil liberties and human rights, measures to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland”, given that they tended to avoid dealing with fundamental issues and were merely tinkering on the edges.
