overcome their fear. HANS-JÜRGEN SCHULZ controlled. Hundreds of thousands of controlled. Hundreds of thousands of people have come to public forums at which leading politicians have accepted critical questions. Police officers have opposi
The situation requires a decision. The SED Central Committee is meeting on November 8. Apparently concrete reforms are promised. Whether they really happen, ised. Whether they really happen, and now tar-teachg lley are, and how far-reaching they are, depends not on the SED but on the strength and combativity of the tion.
apologized publicly for attacking innocent people. All of this is intended to create the impression of a political liberalization. However, it has not worked. The possibility of a political radicalization may have been staved off so far. But more and more people are becoming active. The November 4 demonstration in Berlin was a new highpoint. The rulers thus face a grave decision. They have already reorganized themselves. On October 18 the venerable 77year-old General Secretary Erich Honecker and two other Politburo members (Mittag and Hermann, responsible for economic problems and propaganda) were removed for "reasons of health" , to be followed soon after by the president of the trade unions and the culture minister. They will not be the last to go.
Krenz responsible for general repression
Egon Krenz became leader. He had previously been the Politburo member in charge of defence and security with special responsibility for general repression. His appointment is thus hardly a clear signal that reforms are on the way.
In his inaugural speech he avoided any clear statement. It sounded like mockery when he said that the SED had already "placed itself at the head of the movement for a qualitative social change." The demonstrators see Krenz as the personification of the hated system, and he has been openly attacked. There are, however, forces in the SED fighting for a German perestroika. The regional secretary of Dresden, Modrow has explicitly workers are not able to make real use of these rights because their economic dependency and the way the system works prevent them. Only socialist democracy could make these rights real. The fact is, however, that the workers in the DDR would see even a formal guarantee of bourgeois rights as a step forward. So far their demands have been restricted to this, the ending of the SED's monopoly of political power and the release of political prisoners. All the demonstrations have been peaceful. There has been no pretext for massive repression.
For the first time, the movement has affected the factories.
Independent trade union founded in Berlin
There have been small and short-lived strikes and in one Berlin plant an independent trade union "Reform" has been founded. It has called for democratic rights, economic reforms along Soviet lines, an end to privileges, workers' participation and the right to strike. For the time being it is more of an idea than a reality; only some hundreds of employees have so far adhered to it. Nonetheless, it has set an example.
The mobilizations have created a political space for the establishment of opposition groups. The "New Forum", ', that raises general democratic demands and demands a dialogue with the authorities, is the most important formation. Formally it had already gained more than 100,000 signatures by the end of October and thus become a mass organization. The scarcely 5 100 original activists were overwhelmed,
But in the following days, 150,000 people But in the tollowing days, 130,000 people came onto the streets to protest. In the week after October 15, at least 400,000 were involved and in the following one well over 500,000. The spontaneous mobilization swept the country. This has changed the situation, even though the state apparatus has not really been shaken. Nonetheless, small groups of police have refused to attack demonstrators and been arrested.
In such a situation, it has become clear how isolated the bureaucracy really is. There have been no demonstrations in its support. It might like to stage a brutal crackdown like the one in China against the democratic movement (in fact, it solidarized with the actions of the Deng leadership). But it is politically unable to do so. If it did perestroika in the Soviet Union would lose its credibility throughout the world. And the DDR cannot exist without the political support of the Soviet Union. When police clubbing and mass arrests could no longer hold back the wave of protests, the tactic was changed. Regime adopts stalling tactic and makes promises
All demonstrations are being tolerated, even if the central organ of the Communist Party continues to talk about agitators and thugs. What everyone knows already is even being reported openly in the media. The regime is trying channel the demonstrations with a stalling tactic of vague promises and avowals of readiness to talk. Trips abroad are going to be permitted. There are going to be more consumer goods. And political prisoners (4,000 of whom are people who tried to "flee the country") are going to be amnestied.
The previously unapproachable state power is being opened up to dialogue with the citizens, although this remains strictly have overturned one of these pillars.
Hundreds of thousands of people have opposition.
The 1919 programme of the Bolsheviks stated that the bourgeois state only guarantees political rights in a formal sense. The
EAST GERMANY / IRELAND especially since they lack all the basic means such as printing equipment. Even so, councils of representatives have been set up centrally and regionally in every district. Shortly a daily paper is to appear. This would break the party's media monopoly. The"New Forum" is a composite movement without a programme. Bärbel Bohley, one of its leaders, has explicitly claimed this as an advantage. It calls for dialogue with the authorities and hopes for a non-violent, if not more or less conflict-free reform. In this it expresses the hopes of the great majority.
But other groups have emerged from the shadows. The "Democratic Breakthrough" has a socialist orientation and claimed 6,000 members at its meeting on October 29, when some 200 delegates elected a coordinating committee with Wolfgang Schnur as its president. The Social Democratic Party and the locally organized "Democracy Now", ", which also has a socialist orientation, have some 1,000 members each. The "United Left" may have a similar number of members. The latter is the most radical grouping with the clearest programme [the Bohlen Appeal— see /V 172] It will become public at the end of November. So far it has maintained its largely conspiratorial
Four victims of British frame-ups released, but others remain in jail
"JUST consider the course of events If this action Is allowed to proceed to trial....lf the six men win, it will mean the police were guilty of perjury, that they were guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were involuntary and were Improperly admitted in evidence and that the convictions were erroneous.... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right that these actions should go any further" — Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, upholding the appeal of the West Midlands police against a civil action taken by the Birmingham 6 in 1980. JOHN MEEHAN structure.
The next task for these groups is to find a way of organizing their massive potential support and to build a structure at every level. This would break the SED's political monopoly. It would also ensure that, in the event of the wave of demonstrations dying down, a force would continue to exist that could not be simply smashed.
West German left unable to meet challenge
The events have taken the West German socialist left — along with everybody else — completely by surprise. In itself that is not a problem. But if these demonstrations had taken place in Paris or Rio they would have been greeted with enthusiastic solidarity. On this occasion, the left has been struck dumb. The BWK (League of West German Communists) openly sided with the East German bureaucracy. This may put an end to the planned fusion with the VSP (United Socialist Party).
All the socialist organizations are now paying the price for their failure to take a clear position on the societies of "actually-existing socialism". Certainly they have criticized some particular aspects of these societies or even the system. But as soon as real opposition develops there, the socialist left suspects capitalist influences and, in the best of cases, adopts a neutral position. In doing this it throws away the possibility of making its 6 positions credible in the eyes of the workers.
HE Guildford Four were framed; so were the Birmingham Six; so were the Winchester Three; so was Judith Ward; so was Gilbert MacNamee. There are up to 20 innocent people who have been convicted in Britain in trials with "Irish/terrorist" connections since the early 1970s [see box].
The scandal was becoming so glaring that something had to be done. But as Lord Denning said so brutally - and accurately - to admit the frame-up would risk destroying the power and credibility of the British state. Why then did the releases happen now? Why are there so many similar frame-up cases?
Paul Hill, one of the Four, dismisses the state's explanation. The state knew "from day one" that the Four were innocent. That was the whole idea: jailing innocent people is an extremely effective way of terrorizing others. The message was: Irish = suspect. It didn't matter if you were not involved.
Once people see the cloak of state terror coming apart at the seams, then everything changes. The stakes in this and related cases are very high. They strike at the heart of the British state apparatus. Consider some of the cast in this frame-up alone (other "stars" appear later in similar show trials).
• Lord Donaldson, in 1974 the High Court Trial Judge. Now Lord, Master of the Rolls, Britain's senior judicial officer.
• Lord Roskill, who heard the appeal in 1977. Now Baron, a Lord Justice of
Appeal in Britain's highest court, the House of Lords. • Lord Havers, who was the Prosecution Counsel. Thatcher's Attorney-General 1979-1987, created a 'Life Peer' for his "services" to the government. • Peter Imbert, headed the police who surrounded an IRA unit in Balcombe Street, London in 1975. Imbert was present when this IRA unit claimed responsibility for the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings, giving detailed forensic information that could only have been known to the real bombers. Imbert pressed no charges. He is now Britain's topranking police officer, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London.
Are any of these illustrious people to be investigated? No — an "enquiry" headed by a retired judge, John May, has been set up, and five junior-rank Surrey police (one dead, one retired five years ago) are being scapegoated. This approach is designed to limit the damage already suffered by the police. There is a widespread
The accused is innocent until prove Irish..
International Viewpoint #173 • November 13, 1989
IRELAND
State frame-ups — the victims verdict was announced, immediately called for the release of the Birmingham Six.
His horror story concerns the death of his father Giuseppe. In a case directly con-
• The Gulldford Four: Paul Hill, Gerard Conlon, Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong were convicted, solely on the basis of uncorroborated contessions, of planting bombs In two pubs In Gulldford, Surrey in 1974. The confessions followed days of threats, beatings and - In the case of 17 year old Carole Richardson - the administration of drugs. They contained more than 150 Inaccuracles and contradiotions. • The Maguire Seven: convicted on the basis of Gerard Conon's confession They included Gluseppe Conion, Gerard's father. Although the last of the Seven was released in 1985, thier convictions have not been overturned and they remain uncompensated suspicion that one, at least, of the police officers who possessed evidence of the original frame-up was prepared to speak out in favour of the Guildford Four. What better way to prevent any further leakage, and protect the corrupt core, than to ruthlessly pursue those breaking the frame? Anyone familiar with Mafia treatment of former colleagues knows the logic and the pattern.
But the prospects for the State are bleak. The old terror tactics now provoke anger and outrage in Ireland. In 1988 the change in the popular mood in the formally independent 26 County Southern state forced the Dublin government's hand in the celebrated "Father Paddy Ryan" affair. (See IV 168 on Ryan's campaign in the EEC elections; a campaign for Ryan's extradition to Britain, on the vaguest charges of "terrorist crimes", was personally led by Thatcher. The Irish judiciary has now decided that there is insufficient evidence to warrant his prosecution). A contributory cause of this change was the rejection of the Birmingham Six appeal early in 1988. This in turn tended to make people suspicious of the Winchester Three frame-up. The Three had been arrested in the neighbourhood of King's massive estate, and charged with 'conspiracy'. There was no explosion, no ambush, no weapon, no event at all.
An odious feature of this show-trial was the behaviour of the then Northern Ireland Secretary-of-State, Tom King. The Three refused to make any statement while in police custody — a wise approach considering previous experience. They exercised their right to silence during their trial. It should be remembered that they were forced to spend more than a year in very
• The Birmingham Six: serving life sentences for the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, Convicted on the basis of confessions which had been bealen out of them and lorensic evidence' since wholly discredited. Their appeal against their convictions was turned down in January 1988 • The Winchester Three: sentenced to 25 years for con apiracy (see article). • Judith Ward: serving 30 years for allegedly bombing an army coach. • Glibert MacNamee: conVicted in 1987 on extremely dubious Iingerprint evidence' of conspiracy to cause explosions oppressive prison conditions. Such psychological torture is designed to curtail defendants' ability to conduct themselves well in court. King called a sudden news conference towards the end of the trial to announce that the "right to silence" was to be abolished in the North of Ireland. He said that anyone who exercised it was automatically suspect. A more blatant interference in the course of the trial could not be imagined. The Three -Martina Shenahan, Finbar Cullen, and John McCann - have appealed against 25 year sentences and await a date. This case is another time bomb under "British Justice"; instead of framing people on charges based on real events, the state has shifted the goalposts and alleges a "conspiracy". This avoids the need for physical abuse of suspects.
The released victims of the Guildford Four frame-up have no intention of keeping quiet. Why should they? Paul Hill spent an incredible 5 of his 15 years in jail in solitary confinement. He speaks with remarkable eloquence of his ordeal. No other British prisoner throughout the British prison system has spent so long in solitary. Hill was never given any explanation: "It's Stalinism. You could be taken on the word of absolutely anyone. They don't have to justify their reasons. For the last eight years I refused to work. I was a hostage and I wasn't going to work for my captors."
Gerard Conlon, the first of the Four to meet the public after the nected with the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven were also framed. One of them was Giuseppe, who died in prison in 1980. This is how his son Gerard remembers it: "He pulled the (oxygen) mask off and said he was going to die. He said not to worry, he had to die to clear my name. He told me to put my hands in my pockets when he died and not go off my head and attack prison officers who had treated him badly. I promised him. It was a very, very hard thing to do."
Conlon burns with indignation over British ruling class hypocrisy. "Innocent people should not be in prison...Britain does not have the right to speak on human rights. I'm going to dedicate as much time as possible to getting the Birmingham Six out of prison and to getting the Maguires' name cleared...I last saw Paddy Hill (of the Birmingham Six) at 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning when he was helping me push a cart with all my legal papers. I said "I don't know what is happening but if we get out I'll keep every promise I made to you guys."
The British Home Office [Interior Ministry] declared immediately after the Guildford Four were released that there would be no move on the Birmingham Six. It is a grotesque stance. Now that one frame up has collapsed, people have the confidence of a victory behind them — Guildford 4, British Justice O. The next score will be Birmingham 6, British Justice 0. And then Winchester 3, British Justice 0. Just as in the sporting world, Britannia no longer rules the waves or waives the rules.
Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill and the Irish people have all seen a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. A particularly evil chapter in the annals of British ruling class crime in Ireland is coming to an end. *
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