This resolution, as this distinguished Committee knows, addresses itself directly to the substantive issues in Northern Ireland. First, the resolution calls for the immediate end to the unconstitutional and hated internment policy: the mistreatment, even torture, of prisoners, which have been authenticated, must be ended immediately.

The resolution goes even further. It requires these reforms to extend not only to law enforcement but also to housing, employment, and voting rights. Incidentally, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, these were reforms that were promised by the British Government in 1968. Further, the resolution provides for the withdrawal of all British troops.

As I pointed out, I believe that the basic problems in Northern Ireland can only be solved by reunification. This legislation calls for the abolition of the Ulster Parliament and the convocation of all interested parties to reunify Ireland. I have not been content to just introduce this resolution. I urged the President, before his summit conference with British Prime Minister Heath at the end of last year, to exert U.S. influence in a constructive manner to end the tragic civil

war.

I am confident that this subcommittee will take steps to alleviate the crisis in Northern Ireland. This subcommittee's action is in accordance with the fundamental concepts of nondiscrimination, fairness, democracy, self-determination, and justice.

The terror of the conflict is expanding every day. Increasingly, chaos and destruction are becoming commonplace. No one desires another massacre of citizens or soldiers. Diplomatic relations are being unnecessarily strained. If ever there was a need for our assistance and a reversal of developments, it is now. I thank Chairman Rosenthal and the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify on the steps to be taken to end the violence that has plagued the people of Northern Ireland.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES J. DELANEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, I am glad to have this opportunity to express my strong support for H. Res. 653, a resolution I was happy to co-sponsor, which calls for peace in Northern Ireland and the establishment of a united Ireland.

To understand the profound bitterness and frustrations that underlie the tragic situation in Northern Ireland today, we must recall some of the cruel history which contributed to the present crisis.

Nearly 400 years ago, the Government of Great Britain established plantations in Ireland, whereby aliens were placed in stewardship over an unwilling people. Later, in the early 1700s, the infamous English penal laws stripped the Irish Catholics of the most basic human rights. They were prohibited from buying land or engaging in commerce, and were excluded from all areas of political life. Their religion was subjected to ferocious attack, and they were forbidden to maintain schools. This was the beginning of an era when informing on one's neighbors was recognized as an honorable service. In the words of one observer, the Irish became insignificant slaves, fit for nothing but to hew wood and draw water.

Of the Penal Code, Edmund Burke said it was "a machine as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degredation of a people, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man."

The crisis in Northern Ireland today is the bitter legacy of those earlier days. Today, as then, it is a land governed not by love, but by fear. Not by the confidence of the people in the laws and their attachment to the constitution, but by means of armed men and entrenched camps.

Americans are rightly concerned about the continued violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland, not only because of our traditional close ties and affinity to the Irish people, but because the repression and violence and discrimination is contrary to our concepts of fairness and justice.

I strongly believe that our government at the highest level must make it a matter of the highest priority to urge full respect for the civil rights of all the people of Northern Ireland, and the termination of all political, social, economic, and religious discrimination.

Further, the current internment policy must be abolished, and persons detained thereunder set free. Law enforcement and criminal justice must be placed under local control that is acceptable to all parties. British forces must be withdrawn and immediate action taken with a view toward the unification of all Ireland.

Since the British Government refuses to move positively toward the establishment of a just and permanent peace in Norhtern Ireland, I strongly urge that the United States Government give prompt consideration to the imposition of economic sanctions against Great Britain.

In view of our long dedication to the principle of self-determination for all people, we must make it abundantly clear that we will make no exception to our advocacy of this noble principle in the case of Northern Ireland.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT F. DRINAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS

THE CRISIS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for providing me this opportunity to testify on behalf of the resolutions before you which seek to express our concern about the tragic situation in Northern Ireland. I am the sponsor of one of these resolutions, H. Res. 803, which is identical to Representative Hugh Carey's H. Res. 653.

I commend this Subcommittee for holding these hearings. Your involvement is itself an important step in demonstrating to the world that the United States of America will not ignore the deprivation of the civil and political rights of any minority anywhere in the world when those rights are systematically threatened. We all realize that we should not and cannot physically intervene in the internal affairs of another country; we have tried to do so before, with dismal results. Nevertheless, our common morality compels us to exercise such powers of persuasion as we possess whenever minority rights are jeopardized.

If we can agree on one thing, it is that the problem of Northern Ireland defies simple solution--a truism in light of the 600 to 700 years this conflict has existed. If the United States truly wishes to exert its influence in restoring peace to the Six Counties, then it must realize from the outset that its task is not to assess blame or point fingers or take sides. Rather, its task is conciliatory. We are dealing with two of America's oldest and staunchest allies with whom we have the closest cultural ties. Only in an atmosphere of conciliation and mutual friendship can the United States play a significant role in reducing the potential for violence in Northern Ireland.

In the past several years, more than 200 lives have been lost in Northern Ireland and millions of dollars of property damage has been done. What, we may ask, are the basic sources of friction in Northern Ireland great enough to cause such massive destruction of life and property? In my judgment, there are three sources, one immediate and two longer-range. The immediate source of conflict is the Stormont government's internment policy, first instituted in August, 1971. Internment is, in Representative Carey's well-chosen words, "a classic act of international illegality." Few things are as abhorrent to the Anglo-American legal system than the notion of imprisoning people without the prospect of trial or detaining them merely because they might commit a crime. And in Northern Ireland internment takes a particularly vicious form based on the Special Powers Act of 1922 in force in Northern Ireland and nowhere else in the United Kingdom, an Act which the Prime Minister of South Africa openly admires because it is stronger that his own racist version.

CONDITIONS OF INTERNMENT

Conditions at the three internment camps in Northern Ireland are unspeakably bad. The prisoners-over 90 percent of them Catholic-are regularly beaten, intimidated and humiliated. As Amnesty International, a world investigating organization with headquarters in London, concluded in its judicious report on the internment camps:

"These men generally were not severely brutalised (if a comparative standard can be employed to measure any such dehumanising activity) but they were subjected to calculated cruelties, imposed on them solely for the entertainment of their captors. The beatings and verbal abuse in these areas were clearly of such an unsophisticated type that it cannot be supposed that they were employed to ease the future extortion of information from the detainees. Rather, it served as a summary punishment for being suspect."

Nothing in the past few months has exacerbated the tension or been responsible for bloodshed more directly than the internment policy. Any American effort to reduce tensions in Northern Ireland must begin with a deliberate denunciation of this violent policy.

The second source of friction in Northern Ireland is the blatant economic and residential discrimination perpetrated by the Protestant majority against the Catholic minority. Nothing is more indicative of this discrimination than the astonishing case of the government-owned Harlan and Wolfe Shipyard in Belfast, the largest government-operated business in the whole of Northern Ireland. Of its 9,000 employees, 8,700 are Protestant.

As journalist Brian Moore wrote upon his return to Belfast last year, "there is something old and rotten still alive here: there are not enough jobs to go around, and religious issues help to mask the truth, which is, in large part, that this Ulster is the backward fief of a Conservative oligarchy, a group which makes up only 9 percent of the population yet owns 92 percent of the land." Whether religious persecution originally caused economic discrimination or vice versa is for our purposes unimportant; what matters is recognizing that Catholics in Northern Ireland must face economic discrimination of a type which is brutal and pervasive. Such discrimination must be terminated if peace is to be restored.

POLITICAL DOMINANCE BY MAJORITY

The third source of friction in Northern Ireland is the total political dominance of the majority over the minority. Gerrymandered election districts prevent Catholics from achieving local political control even in areas where they are a majority. The 52 members of the Lower Chamber at Stormont are also elected from distorted districts, depriving the Catholic population of the representation to which their numbers entitle them. Compounding this inequity, the Upper Chamber is appointed by the Lower, which only serves to reinforce the injustice of the electoral system.

Proposals for peace in Northern Ireland, therefore, must include among their provisions the abolition of the Stormont government and either direct rule from the British Parliament at Westminster or massive reform of existing constitutional and political arrangements. No government which dedicates itself to the suppression of the Catholic minority, as the Stormont government has, deserves to remain in power in Northern Ireland.

Our efforts at peacemaking, however, must not be limited only to encouraging reform in the foregoing areas. We must also urge immediate implementation of the reforms in housing, employment, law enforcement and voting rights which the government of the United Kingdom has promised for four years. Had those reforms been effected in 1968 when they were originally proposed and passed by Westminster, a great deal of needless bloodshed would have been avoided.

We must urge the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland, to be gradually replaced by local peacekeeping forces or United Nations forces. As the events of "Bloody Sunday" recently made clear, the presence of British troops in Catholic ghettos only serves to focus resentment. After our experience here in America, one can legitimately wonder whether military forces will ever be able to deal successfully with civilian unrest. They certainly have not in Northern Ireland, where their presence is directly responsible for much of the loss of lives.

A very strong case can be made for United Nations intervention. The U.N. has involved itself several times in the internal affairs of nations, the most obvious cases being its investigation of apartheid in South Africa and its action during the Cyprus crisis in 1964.

The intervention in Cyprus, in fact, suggests many parallels with Northern Ireland. Critics of U.N. involvement in Northern Ireland have stated that the Security Council does not have power to intervene unless a crisis poses a definite threat to international peace-which, they argue, the fighting in Northern Ireland does not. But the preamble of the Security Council's resolution in 1964 refers to the situation in Cyprus as "likely to threaten international peace and security," without alluding to any imminent threat.

U.N. CHARTER CITED

Other critics have argued that under Article 2(7) of the United Nations Charter, the U.N. may not properly concern itself with "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." Again, the parallel with Cyprus is striking, because in 1964 it was Britain itself which requested U.N. intervention, arguing that:

Article 56 of the Charter makes it clear that no country can say that the human rights of its citizens are an exclusively domestic matter. A country that denies its citizens the basic human rights is by virtue of Article 56 in breach of an international obligation."

The U.N. could play a positive peace-keeping role in Northern Ireland just as it did in Cyprus, and its reasons for intervening are every bit as good now as they were eight years ago.

And finally, we as Americans must urge the eventual unification of Ireland. The partition of 1920, now more than 50 years old, was designed as a temporary measure. Historically, geographically and economically, Ireland is one nation, and peace ultimately depends upon its being made one nation again. Here, perhaps, is where America can most directly help, by extending any diplomatic aid necessary to bring the interested parties to the conference table and by serving as an impartial mediator as the details of reunification are negotiated.

House Resolution 803 and the other resolutions which resemble it express the United States Government's deep concern over the present situation in Northern Ireland. These resolutions do not urge American intervention, nor do they embroil the United States in the internal affairs of another nation. They express our moral concern over the violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland. As Subcommittee Chairman Rosenthal so eloquently said in his opening remarks:

"The burden of finding solutions to these problems rests primarily on the countries involved. Yet no man of conscience can rest easy with that assertion. And no country can subsist any longer behind the fiction that the nation-state system allows or demands that injustices can continue simply because they occur wholly within national borders."

I am particularly disturbed by the Administration's attitude expressed by Assistant Secretary of State Martin Hillenbrand that "we should (not) make declarations which in effect substitute our judgment for that of other democratic countries as to whether they do or do not face conditions of civil conflict which cannot be controlled by ordinary judicial processes." I submit that we should indeed make such declarations and that we are morally committed to do so when blatant civil injustices are being committed on such a scale as this.

William Butler Yeats once wrote of men under crisis that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." Mr. Chairman, we are dealing with one of the oldest, most persistent struggles in the western world, and we delude ourselves if we think the solution is easy or apparent. However, we must strike a balance between doing too much and doing nothing. We must express our outrage and do everything within our power to help; but we must retain the dispassion which we as outsiders can contribute to a possible solution.

STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL J. FLOOD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Many millions of Americans claim Irish heritage. Many of them are fully conscious of the origin of their families and the reasons for their presence in America. Some, however, may not fully appreciate that the strength of America has been bought to substantial degree as a by-product of colony policies. Our Nation in fact grew at the expense of Ireland which is the only nation in Europe with fewer people than a century ago.

It is not just a question of the 1840's but a question of a political and economic policy which was designed to prevent the native Irish achieving their full potential within the island of their birth.

The Fenian revolution of which many citizens of Pennsylvania partook was designed in 1867 to overthrow this immoral grip. It failed then but its spirit did not die and again in 1916, we saw the Irish people prepared to die to fulfill their national aspiration.

It is not entirely to our credit that having entered the First World War on behalf of little nations, we chose to ignore the pleas of the new Irish Republic in 1919. However, that nation struggled into existence and was then dismembered under the threat of war in order to preserve the British Imperial interest and to pay the price for the support of the Unionist Party to the governments of the day. That act and its consequences are now before the House today when once again Irishmen and Irishwomen are dying in order to seek self fulfillment within their own country. We have heard much of the so-called loyalist and their service to the Crown of England. I think it worth mentioning that in the last great war, there were 8 Victoria Crosses awarded to men of Irish origin. This decoration is the highest award that can be bestowed by Britain and was awarded to these 8 Irishmen, 7 from the 26 counties of the Republic and one from the Falls Road in Belfast. And yet today veterans of the British Army are being arrested, detained without trial and placed in what can only be described as a concentration camp because they dare to express their desire to be free.

It has been said that we in America have no right to intervene in the internal affairs of a friendly foreign country but Ireland is and always has been the breaker of rules and the maker of precedents. It is our common duty, indeed our obligation, to come to the assistance of the Irish people and I can only pledge my support for the Carey Resolution with the final suggestion that the term "unification" be amended to read "re-unification."

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM J. GREEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. Chairman: I would like to congratulate this Committee for having full hearings in this most perplexing subject. I also thank you for permitting me to express my feelings along with the other distinguished Members who have expressed views. Hopefully, they will aid you in your deliberations on the resolutions dealing with Northern Ireland.

When John Kennedy departed Ireland at the end of his 1963 trip there, he made the following statement:

"This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection. . ."

This statement is true for many Americans. According to the last census, there are over 13,200,000 persons of Irish descent in the United States, and this figure probably does not take into account second, third, and fourth generation Irish. There are many Irishmen in my own Congressional District. I am of Irish descent myself.

Many of these Americans have very strong ties to people in their homeland. Because of these ties, they are heartsick at the situation there.

They see that the struggle in Northern Ireland is a struggle for human rights. They see that it is a fight by an oppressed people to eliminate the effects of a law-The Special Powers Act-which permits arrest without warrant, imprisonment without charge, bail, trial, or recourse to habeas corpus, forcible entry and search of homes, punishment by flogging, and arrest for criticism of the government, and which prohibits peaceful assembly and the printing of newspapers offensive to the Stormont Government.

They see also that it is a struggle for decent housing, educational and employment opportunities.

They were encouraged when Great Britain first appeared to seek a solution to the situation in August of 1969.

However, their hopes have been thwarted. The violence has not stopped. Since the arrival of British troops, over two hundred and fifty people have been killed or injured in Northern Ireland, including the thirteen deaths that resulted from the onslaught by British troops on January 30-"Bloody Sunday."

There are now 15,000 British troops in Northern Ireland, and yet the violence continues daily. Just this past Monday, two buildings used by Catholics in Belfast as community relations and social centers were destroyed by fire. Bomb explosions destroyed two Catholic owned pubs.

Thus, the British troops have not been useful in stopping the violence. The reason for this is quite simple. The British Government has steadfastly refused to take control and seek a solution to the situation. The British troops have been taking their orders from the Stormont Government, the same government that, in the past, prolonged the weighted voting system for property owners and recruited the hated B-Specials on a sectarian basis to ruthlessly enforce the Special Powers Act.

Nor has the injustice ceased. The British Army has interned over seven hundred and forty Irishmen since its arrival, despite Britain's own time honored principle of habeas corpus.

LOOKING ELSEWHERE FOR SOLUTIONS

And so the Irish people have begun to look elsewhere for a solution. One of the places they have looked is the United States. Many Americans are also looking to the United States for a solution to the problems in this troubled land. It is quite natural that they should look to this country for help, since this country has always promoted struggles for freedom all around the world.

It has been almost two years now since 104 Members of Congress, including myself, sent a letter to President Nixon urging him to use the moral powers of the United States to persuade Great Britain to guarantee the rights of all Irishmen. It has been a month since the Honorable Patrick Hillery, Irish Foreign Minister, met with Secretary of State Rogers and urged that this government provide its "good offices" and "good advice" to England.