Special Powers – 100 Years of Partition
At the inception of partition and the birth of the rotten little statelet they call ‘Northern Ireland’, the ruling class sought to provide the state with as much regulatory and security powers as to ensure its survival.
One of the most repressive pieces of legislation ever introduced, ‘The Special Powers Act’, was one of the first acts of the new ‘Parliament of Northern Ireland’. Its sweeping powers gave the North’s Minister for Home Affairs drastic powers to suspend and restrict civil liberties. It’s imposition was unprecedented, in that it enabled the government to ‘take all such steps and issue all such orders as may be necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order’. It allowed the new regime to take any steps at all which it thought necessary and it was used almost exclusively on the minority population; Irish nationalists.
The Act was heralded by unionists as necessary to maintain the constitutional structure of the state, the state that they controlled – in short, it was a question of ensuring their continued dominance and the reign of Orange supremacy over that minority.
The surrender of many counties in previous years to the new Free State in the south, in order to ensure a protestant majority, was simply not enough. Those catholics now living within the state would face arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and ensure that they knew that, should they stay within its borders, they would remain second class citizens.
The Special Powers Act conferred wide powers of arrest without warrant, including search and questioning, upon the Royal Ulster Constabulary [RUC] and ‘B’ Specials, as agents of the Minister. The same Minister who had the power to detain whomever they wanted, and to put them before jury-less courts, to hang them, flog them, and prevent coroners’ inquests whenever it deemed it against state interests. It allowed for the prohibition of public meetings and processions, and for the banning of organisations and what it deemed seditious literature, including newspapers.
Additionally, it gave the state power to make further regulations, each with the force of a new law, without consulting parliament, and the ability to delegate that power to any policeman.
Most notably, it allowed the state to impose curfews, and to imprison whomever it wanted without trial; which it did in every decade since its inception until 1975 when ‘internment’ as we knew it came to an end.
Little wonder then that John Vorster, the South African Minister for Justice during the apartheid regime, when introducing a new coercion bill in 1963, commented that he “would be willing to exchange all the legislation…for one clause of the Northern Ireland Special Powers Act.”
Eventually repealed in 1972 as Stormont fell and the war raged on, it was replaced with the equally repressive ‘Emergency Provisions Act’, an Act that introduced the much-loathed ‘Diplock Courts’, formally introducing juryless trials. It was designed, according to the state, for ‘the detention of terrorists, the preservation of the peace…’ and ‘…the maintenance of order’.
Over many decades the British state has benefitted from the reintroduction and re-packaging of various forms of ‘new’ legislation, which has conveyed upon the RUC and, subsequently, the ‘Police Service of Northern Ireland’ [PSNI] a number of similar measures that were previously subject to challenge.
As each new Act of repressive powers neared an end, brought about by public campaigns, legal processes, or people power, the state had learned that its preparedness would allow the re-introduction of those powers in a different form or under a different name.
The defeat of those powers used arbitrarily against the Irish nationalist population of the state, quickly replaced with other measures, allowed the PSNI to go about its business as it did before. More worryingly, it has allowed the state to further legally refine each power as it is re-enacted within new legislation, creating a scenario where those powers often deemed the most discriminatory, are now more difficult to curtail.
In January of 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 breached privacy rights afforded by the European Convention on Human Rights. This section gave the PSNI the power to indiscriminately stop and search people without reasonable suspicion. Additionally, it allowed the state to designate huge areas within which this could happen.
Following its repeal, the PSNI quickly put to use the new ‘Justice and Security Act’, which had been brought to bear just years previous and no doubt in anticipation of the ending of Section 44. This new Act now allows the PSNI to enter any premises it ‘reasonably suspects’ may contain ‘munitions’; it allows them to stop and forcibly search any individual it deems may be carrying ‘munitions’ or ‘wireless apparatus’.
As an indication of the overuse of these repackaged powers over the past decade, over 374,000 people have been forcibly stopped and searched by the PSNI – the equivalent of one fifth of the population of the Six County state, with children as young as 13 years of age being subject to such searches. Whilst the PSNI holds the third highest Stop & Search rate for British state forces, it had the lowest arrest rate, corresponding to other figures indicating that the powers it utilises are being overused.
Indeed, there has been a 74% increase in PSNI Stop & Searches since 2005, and the PSNI’s refusal to record the community background of those they subject to Stop & Search is no doubt motivated by the desire to mask the sectarian and politically motivated nature of their force.
The past 100 years of this state, the length of its existence, has seen the consistent use of various legislative powers against the mostly Irish nationalist population; from the Special Powers of the 1920’s, to the modern powers of the 2020’s, the failed little statelet is relentless in its quashing of opposition.
And it will not stop, unless it is stopped.
As those in power in the Six Counties move to mark the centenary of its foundation, a significant date, let us remember what was significant about it; 100 years of special powers.
ENDS
