new optimistic description can be justified is very doubtful tensity that is dangerous to those in control. attacked by police battalions. marchers of the same epoch were similarly harassed. dozens of occasions police and special constabulary groups have invaded reinhabitants, sometimes with fatal results. Fatalities have also occurred in owners and industrialists ha dook ght the case of Samuel Devenney. In 1968 Against this background look at the case of he Unionist Government had been faced with a new phenomenon: a mas: movement of people determined to revolt against their living conditions, the of young students and workers traversed the North from Belfast to Derry carrying banners calling for houses, work, and an end to the system of répression. Attacked along the route by police and police supporters the march reached Derry in battered condition, to an enthusiastic popular reception. This was too much for the police. They felt that the popular movement had gone too far. So that night hundreds of uniformed members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary invaded the Bogside, this was reported by one eye-witness:
of these wagons with shields, dustbin lids and batons. side of the street and put batons through doors and windows. My mother is physically handicapped and was in smashed her window I came downstairs and ically handicapped myself, 4'6" police surged round me at the door, one put a baton against my throat and pushed me in to the hallway. My mother then struggled out to me and one of them pushed her against the wall with a bin lid, One shouted "We should have given you this 50 years ago another shouted "Ha ha one man one vote" they broke the windows and then they used vile obscene language then they moved back into the middle of the street and pelted my mother and I with stones By sa ma one else intra ver present, and dealed stement, bulary has taken to boasting of the "new passive non-retaliatory role" of his policemen. By inference this senior officer admits that the Northern Ireland police force has played an active repressive role in the past. Whether his During 1969 the Royal Ulster Constabulary invaded the sium Bogside area of Derry on three occasions. To many English people the idea that dozens of policemen raid slum areas, smash windows, break down doors and beat inhabitants senseless is incredible, for the English are very ignorant of their own colonial history and almost unbelievably naive about the function of police forces. In Ireland, the first of England's exploited possessions, the population has had a series of object lessons teaching just how the forces of law and order react when legitimate protest by subject people reaches an inDuring 1913 the Royal Irish Constabulary ably assisted the British Army in smashing workers' organisations which had sprung into existence to combat a massive employers" lock-out designed to break the trade union movement. So vigorous were police attacks on picket lines and demonstrations that James Connolly's Irish Citizens' Army was obliged to provide armed protection. By this action he carned the admiration of the Clydeside shipyard workers who were engaged in a similar struggle as well as the firm solidarity of the slum dwellers of Dublin whose tenements were repeatedly Since the incorporation of the Northern Irish state into the U.K., the Royal Ulster Constabulary has understood its role to be the armed wing of the Unionst Party. Together with the sectarian B Specials, now in course of being replaced by the Ulster Defence Regiment, they used physical violence to put down any individual or grouping that acted against the Unionst power clique. The vigrous republican movement was hampered by arbitrary detention, and savage personal oppression. Unemployed Action Groups in the slump period of the 1930s were attacked by police and specials. Hunger This pattern of police violence has persisted till the present time. On sidential areas in Belfast, Derry, Armagh and elsewhere and have attacked small country towns and isolated areas. And there has been one recurring feature of these incidents: nothing was ever done to identify assailants. For a 969 a People's Democracy march "About 2a.m. Sunday morning I heard the wagons coming up Lecky Road. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw the R.U.C. jumping out They went to each bed in a downstairs room. When they inster anand st. the in veight. These shouting "Get in Fenian and My mother asked them why and other television cameras were present, and detailed statements from the victims of the outrage. Even the Cameron Committee, orced to conducted a half-hearted investigation of some of the in the North, conceded that the police had behaved in the members of the new"passive non retaliatory" force On April 19th the North Derry Civil Rights Association planned a march into Derry expressly to protest against the failure of the government to deal with the policemen, specials, and others responsible for the attacks on marchers and slum dwellers of Bogside. The Minister of Home Affairs. Robert Porter, issued an order prohibiting the march. Under protest, the Civil Rights group decided to respect this ban. But local Orangemen, having succeeded in subjugating the Minister, were taking no chances. dred men, armed in the customary fashion, assembled at Burntollet bridge This group consisted almost precisely of the same individuals who had been involved in the attack on January 4th. The Special Constabulary was well represented. In Guidhall Square a small crowd gathered to protest about prohibition of the march. While this meeting was in reached the crowd at Burntollet, and the men, already prepared for action against any Civil Rights group, piled into cars and headed for the city. Meanwhile alter skirmishes, the crowd in Guidhall Square had moved in a body towards Victoria Barracks protesting against the failure to act against the policemen responsible for the attack on individuals and houses on January 5th. The barracks has a certain emotive significance to Derry citizens; they associate it, not with a foreign garrison, but as a housing place for a gan of licensed thugs. Skirmishes broke out, and a wholesale attack began. Paving stones were dragged up. objects hurled and police driven into the building. Police reinforcements poured into town, and a full scale battle developed through the streets of Derry.
It was during this that the police broke into the Devenney home with the consequences described by Ann Devenney in the interview beginning on the next page. I was in Derry on the night of April 19th. I spoke to the Devenney children very soon after the attack. And I am quite satisfied that the interview well describes what happens.
Then as the situation seemed about to quiten, the police repeated the medicine used to quell the popular spirit on January Sth. A force several hundred strong rushed through the Catholic slum area, batoning, beating and stoning. Shots were fired by the police, one into the hallway of 16 Hamilton Street. The real, primary, and justified cause of public discontent in Derry,— police-attack on people in their own houseSam Devenney had a history of heart disease and tuberculoisi. He never recovered from the beating administered by the forces of law and order. And he died a few months later.
The names of some of the attackers are popular knowledge. Others could have been, and can easily be identified by any competent enquirer. For exaple, attention was drawn to the Devenney house by the fact that a couple of local people ran into the hallway to escape marauding policemen. This inspired an officer to announce the address by radio walkietalkie and call for reinforcements to pursue these individuals. The maker of this call can easily be identified. He must also know who were the senior officers involved in the attack.
The present emphasis on the Devenney case is not inspired by any desire for revenge against individuals felt by the family of the dead man or others. Rather do the people feel that the old pattern must be broken, that we must all see demonstrated that the physical force branch of the Unionist GovernThree hunprogress, information -was repeated.