Fighting On

Internment without trial, and questioning of a suspect after charge, are two practices that were initiated during peacetime, for they always exist under the special conditions of the state at war, in Northern Ireland. It is usually worth looking at federated parts of any union state to consider what unconstitutional powers are contemplated for the entire state after try out at the edges, so to speak.

It is clear, too, that the powers being sought are highly inappropriate when set against even the remnants of our constitutional arrangements, and unpopular both within the country as a whole, and within the Labour party which sustains the ruling regime in all its unelected nastiness.

Either the regime does not intend to submit itself to democratic election again, or the permanent state security and use of force apparatus is exerting irresistible pressure upon the regime to comply with its wishes. Probably both are operating, and here is an example of the weakness of democratic response, but a small degree of encouragement that resistence is there at all, and that there are still institutional and peaceful means of resistence available.