Today I asked for a debate on the Adjournment on the matter of representations to the British Government for the repatriation to Ireland of the Price sisters and other forcibly-fed prisoners. In this respect I would appeal to the Government to indicate to the House what they have been doing in this respect, what they are doing and what they intend to do in order to bring home to the British Government that whatever may have been their justification for gaoling these people, the Winchester Eight as they are now commonly known, there can be no justification on any grounds for the manner in which at least four of these eight are now being treated.
We cannot in this House escape the traditional revulsion that we in Ireland have had against forced feeding. We cannot but recall the situations in the past when our people objected again and again to any such practice and we cannot but point the finger at the medical profession in Britain today, some of whose members are assisting in and supervising this most brutal method of torturing the four prisoners in question, namely Feeney, the two Price sisters and Gerard Kelly. Hugh Feeney is held in Wormwood Scrubbs and therein is being treated in an inhuman manner, a manner that if persisted in as at present—it is being persisted in in the case of Gerard Kelly in the prison in which he is held and in the cases of Dolours and Marian Price in Brixton—can only have, if it has not already had, the effect that none of these four young people will ever be the same again.
I wonder how far this Government have gone in this matter. When they were in Sunningdale, when so much could be given for so little, in my estimation, I wonder why something more was not got on this particular matter by the delegation from this Government. Though it might be regarded as, perhaps, of small consequence in regard to and in comparison with other matters of more weighty importance, in the minds of the Government and the delegation there present, I did, at the request of the families of two of these four who are being forcibly fed, bring this matter to the notice of one of the Ministers on that delegation before he left to go across to Sunningdale to try get the delegation to talk on this matter at Sunningdale and to do something about it.
I am not now talking in retrospect. I am talking about what I did at that time. Without any publicity about it, I went to a Minister who was on the delegation and whose name I will not give here and asked him through his colleagues to raise this matter at the table when they had there the man who counted, Mr. Heath. I do not know what was done. I do not know what efforts were made as a result but in so far as repatriating these suffering people is concerned, many weeks of torture have been continuing and there seems to be no let up. The sad picture is that the medical profession are participating in this. I am glad to see, as a result of reading the secretary's report in the newspapers, that our Medical Association will totally dissociate themselves from the British Medical Association whose members in Britain are participating in this foul deed that is being perpetrated daily not only on the two men in question but, far worse, far more horrifying and revolting, on the two young Price sisters.
The Government can do something about it, if they are as concerned about this as they appeared to have been about making the Sunningdale fiasco work. If they were, I have no doubt we would have our people repatriated to their own territory to serve out the savage sentences that were handed out to them, sentences which as far as I can understand are beyond the maximum laid down under the British law under which they were tried.
Another aspect of their trial and of their being found guilty and of the manner in which they got these heavy sentences, should not go without mention. It is a rather remarkable fact that it should have been at that particular court area in Winchester that these people were tried, where the jury, composed of local residents can be regarded as being drawn from, perhaps, the most conservative of the Conservatives in Britain. It is rather remarkable that such a trial did not take place in London or some other such centre. Then, again, it may be that there was the danger in such circumstances that some people who might not be pro-establishment, who might not be Conservative, who might be Liberals or Labour or Irish or of Irish extraction or Jamaican, who held no particular brief for the establishment of the day, might find themselves called for jury service and that their view as jurors might be tempered with some mercy rather than the manner in which the jury who were called in the actual trial helped the court and the judge to impose these brutally savage sentences. Even in the circumstances that occurred, had the Winchester jury and judge even an inkling that such treatment as has been going on would be perpetrated on those people, I do not believe, even in the circumstances of this trial being held where it was with a jury that was predisposed to find these people guilty and to applaud the heavy sentences that should be given, that that same court and that same jury, had they known what was to follow, would have been so savagely and so brutally oppressive as to give the sentences they did.
What are we in this House doing in this matter? I ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs what has he done, what is he doing about it and what does he propose to do about it? Has that Minister or any other Minister—I believe efforts must have been made— or the Taoiseach adverted to the fact that we are not setting out to create any precedent, that we have enough precedent being set by the return to British jails of British soldiers who have been sentenced in this land of ours in the Six County courts? If these can be repatriated to serve out the sentences they have received in the Six Counties for offences committed there, surely there is every reason why these eight people and all others who may be undergoing any particular sentence in Britain for any political offence, should be entitled to be returned to their homeland to serve out those sentences.
Has the Minister and the Government brought this to the attention of the British Government and to the attention of Mr. Heath? Have they pointed out the particular cases? Have they gone to the trouble to find out the details of the offences committed by members of the British forces in the Six Counties who, having been sentenced, have been returned to Britain to serve those sentences? Why should there be this particular outlook so far as British offenders in the Six Counties are concerned, a place where they should not be and have no right to be, why should there be this facility provided for them and yet denied to Irish people who, whether you agree or disagree with their outlook, or what they allegedly did or attempted to do, you cannot but hold the view that they are at least entitled to the same rights and privileges, if we could call them so, as British soldiers who have been sentenced in the courts in the Six Counties, namely, repatriation to serve their sentences in their own land. They would then be nearer their own families who are also suffering, maybe not equally, but very greatly.
Do we know or do we care about those people? Is there anything we can do to help to make it easier financially for their families to visit them on the occasions when they are entitled to have visitors? Are we aware in the case of the Prices that the members of their family are put to the pin of their collar financially to make the trip across to visit those two sorely tortured members of their family in Brixton? They are beggaring themselves in order to find the money to do so. Are we prepared to help them or are we much more concerned to talk, as we did today, about prices rather than the Price sisters?
Side by side with that, what is involved in the forced feeding of the Price sisters bears no comparison. It is a sad reflection on this House and every Member of it that we are here today giving more time talking about the census that should be taken of the geese population rather than giving time at Question Time to a matter such as this. These are realities, although they may be brutally told. It is a fact that we seem to have lost all touch with reality in regard to the people who are suffering in British prisons today because of the views they hold. These views are not any different to those held by people such as Terence MacSwiney, Thomas Ashe and other great patriots who have suffered in like manner through hunger strike and, in one case, forced feeding. We like to be associated with the remembrance of these great patriots. We like to condemn what was done to them but today in our midst the same sort of treatment is being meted out not to male inmates of any prison but to female inmates of those prisons and we are doing nothing about it.
I hold the view that the general public can do little about this. I have told members of my own organisation no later than last Sunday night that while we can try to push our representations through public opinion, that is not enough to move Mr. Heath or his Government to take the action that is necessary. While we can push the members of the Opposition, Fianna Fáil, into action on this matter, again it is only indirectly that they can act through the Government. The Government must be the instrument through which the public, who are grieved by this treatment meted out in those prisons, to the Price sisters in particular, can have their voices heard. It is only by the Government's insistence on the British Government that we can have those four forcibly fed people brought back to Ireland alive. We have not very long. It may even now be debatable that if they were now returned whether they would ever be the same again. I do not believe they will. However, even at this late stage, when it is quite clear that nothing that is being done to any of these four people, and particularly the two young Prices, will break their determination to stick it out, action should be taken by the Government. Britain has tried to break them as she has tried to break so many of their kind in the past, but she cannot do it. It now resolves itself into continuous daily brutality. Imagine the spectacle of strapping down human beings, inserting into their mouths something like what you would put into the mouth of a horse you were about to break, tying them down, putting blocks into their mouths and then with tubes pouring 24 ounces of fluid into them. This is going on day in and day out while we keep trying to forget that it is happening. We read the papers and we listen to the news media but how little do we see in the Press trying to mould public opinion to press this Government to intercede with the British Government to bring this tragedy to an end? How often do we see any up-to-date information given?
During the last couple of weeks two of our daily newspapers made an effort and in one particular case there was a mock-up of the forced feeding operations shown on the front page. This should be done more often. I appeal to the news media and those behind them to portray this often and keep us up-to-date on what is happening. They should not run away from it like the Government are running away from it and the Opposition are running away from it. We are all running away from it and are not facing up to the reality of the situation. We find all sorts of reasons in this House for devoting our time to defending various issues, all of them important in their own way, but surely there can be nothing more important to an Irish Parliament sitting in Dublin than the suffering of these people in British prisons.
Can we expect any action on the part of the Government? Can we, through the Fianna Fáil Opposition, get some pressure that will spur the Government into the action that is necessary to tell Mr. Heath that he, his Sunningdale. Mr. Faulkner and the lot can stuff themselves until we get these people back?
Surely that is not asking too much. It is not throwing anything away. From my point of view it would be a grand thing if they and Sunningdale were stuffed. Cannot the Government use this as a lever on the British Government today to bring these people back and bring to an end this sorry, tragic spectacle, which in this day and age is being perpetrated on the suffering prisoners and particularly the two young girls in Brixton.
May I ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs, through his Government, and with the authority and weight of his Government behind him, to take action and go after his opposite number in the British Government to try to get through to Mr. Heath that he is not dealing with animals, that he is not entitled to use the old warlord style which British Premiers of the past seemed to think they were entitled to use in their dealings with the Irish. These prisoners are not animals; they are human beings, and are entitled to be treated as such. May I ask the Government, in the name of the Irish people, to take action in this matter. Do not think that I am a lone voice in this House. I am not. In my estimation, the Government would be acting on behalf of the majority of the Irish people if they were to "put the foot in" with Mr. Heath and try to get repatriation in these particular cases. I ask the Minister and the Government not to go away with the idea that the public are not concerned about this. They are. The signs are rather threatening at the moment. If any or all of these prisoners should die—and I hope they do not——
