HC Deb 15 March 1973 vol 852 cc1615-24

10.0 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss (Vauxhall)

The value of an Adjournment debate is that it enables a back-bench Member to bring before the House, and possibly through the Press before the country, apparent abuses by Government Departments, and it is particularly important that these things should be brought before the House when the civil liberties of a subject are involved, as they definitely are in the case which I want to put before the House this evening. Not only is an important issue involved, but part of my indictment is that the Government attempted to cover up the facts and to find an excuse for the action they took. That excuse was untrue or, in unparliamentary language, a lie.

The situation is simple. A constituent of mine, Mr. Thomas Quinn, is an accountant. He has lived in London for 26 years, he has not been in Ireland for all that time and he has no police record of any sort. He became involved in a body called the Northern Ireland Minority Defence Force Committee. That body appears to go about the country making noises and public gestures in defence of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. It is not doing anything effective of any sort but its members are trying to show that they are keen, active and militant. They have held meetings in various parts of the country, including Hyde Park, where no doubt inflammatory speeches have been made, but Mr. Quinn has spoken at none of these meetings and, therefore, he cannot be accused of making any inflammatory public speech.

For some reason which I find difficult to understand, that body considered it desirable to hold a propaganda meeting on 1st June last year in order to show I am not quite sure what but to act as a counter-measure to certain developments that were about to happen in Northern Ireland. It was a strange meeting to which journalists were summoned, so there was nothing private, secret or conspiratorial about it. They were summoned to a back room in a house at Cricklewood, and amongst those who attended was a representative of The Times to whom we are indebted for a description of what took place there.

Sitting behind a table there were eight or 10 men in hoods. They were trying to show, by means of a model on the table that they were discussing some military action concerning the city of Londonderry. A photograph was taken of them and published in The Times. On the table there were blocks of wood representing buildings in Londonderry.

According to The Times, the journalists were told: The men were discussing military tactics that could be used in fighting in the city of Londonderry and the Press officer there said: The men did not handle guns and explosives There had been some outdoor exercises such as map reading at such places as Hampstead Heath. As a result of this bit of tomfoolery, the police got active. No doubt they had had their eye on this organisation for some time. On 4th June, three days afterwards, they arrested three of the men who had been in this back room at Cricklewood where this strange meeting had taken place. One of the people arrested was my constituent, Mr. Quinn. He was charged, when the matter came to court, with treason-felony, a most serious indictment which, I believe, has not been preferred against anyone since the war. But treason-felony was the indictment against Mr. Quinn. Later Mr. Quinn was charged with other indictments —sedition, treason and an offence against the Public Order Act. That was on 4th June.

Mr. Quinn was then kept in confinement, on remand in custody, for seven and a half months. On 30th June he was committed for trial, which came up at the Central Criminal Court on 15th January. Meanwhile application had been made on several occasions for bail but had been refused on every occasion on the understandable grounds that the magistrate, in one case, and the judge, in another case, considered that it was inappropriate. because of the seriousness of the offence, the likelihood of continuance of the offence, the possibility of further charges, and the possibility of the defendant leaving the country. It was essentially because of the seriousness of the offence that Mr. Quinn was refused bail. As far as Mr. Quinn and I are aware, the only case against him is that he is a member of this organisation and attended that ridiculous meeting at the Cricklewood back room on 1st June.

It is understandable that the magistrate or judge, hearing that Mr. Quinn was being charged with an offence for which if found guilty he would have been liable to imprisonment for life—the offence is as serious as that—thought that it would be unwise to release him on bail because he might escape, possibly to Ireland. Therefore, from their point of view, in the circumstances it was not unreasonable, they believing that in the view of the prosecution a very grave offence had been committed, to keep the man in custody for this period. But when the matter came to court on 15th June, the indictment was dropped. The prosecution quashed the charge. The man had been in custody for seven and a half months on a charge which was never pursued when it came to court.

This is very serious. A man's liberty was taken away for this period because of a charge which the Director of Public Prosecutions presumably did not have sufficient evidence to pursue. If the authorities charge a man on such an indictment, they should pursue it or release him at an early date. They should not keep him in prison for seven and a half months and then, when the matter comes to court, simply say "We are not pursuing this." And all the other charges against him were withdrawn except one—the offence against the Public Order Act. For that he was given a suspended prison sentence.

This is a very serious and regrettable state of affairs. It should not have happened and it is right to expose it.

That is not, however, the end of this strange story. There followed an attempt by the legal departments, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the AttorneyGeneral—who was not personally respon- sible but accepted the information given to him by the department of the Director of Public Prosecutions at the time—to cover up this case.

Wanting to pursue this matter further, I asked the Attorney-General on 26th February. why the prosecution applied to have the charge of treason and felony against Mr. Thomas Quinn quashed, after he had spent many months in prison on remand. The reply was: This prosecution arose following publication in June 1972 of photographs in the Press of men in masks over a training layout table during a Press Conference given by an organisation called Northern Ireland Minority Defence Force. Those are the facts which I have put before the House, and they were apparently the sole grounds for making this charge.

The Attorney-General went on to say: Two counts of treason felony were included in the indictment by senior Treasury counsel together with other counts of seditious conspiracy, uttering seditious words and offences under the Public Order Act, because the evidence indicated that Mr. Quinn, and two others, had been engaged in activities which justified those counts. Here is the key sentence: When senior Treasury counsel at the trial was informed that the defendants intended to plead guilty to other counts, he applied for the counts of treason-felony to be quashed and the accused were sentenced on those other counts."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th February 1973; Vol 851, c. 282–3.] If it were true that the Treasury counsel had heard that the accused were prepared to plead guilty to minor offences there might be a reasonable case there. It frequently happens in court that the prosecution is prepared to withdraw a major charge under those circumstances. But it is completely untrue in this case.

Treasury counsel withdrew the charge before any indication had been given to him, before he had inquired, before anything had been said about the defendants pleading guilty or not guilty to the other charges. That excuse, presumably given from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and passed by the Attorney-General to the House, was wholly false. The Attorney-General must take full responsibility for that although I naturally do not accuse him of deliberately misleading the House.

I wrote to the Attorney-General telling him that according to my information this was not true. I pointed out the facts. He said he would look into the matter further. I have had a letter from him from which I will quote one paragraph. He said: I am however now told that when he that is, the senior Treasury counsel, decided that the prosecution would not proceed on these counts, he did not actually know that the defendants intended to plead guilty to other counts. That is a complete withdrawal from the first letter. He went on to say: He considered that if he applied to quash, there would then be no question of appearing to have influenced the defendants' pleas to the other counts in the indictment. That seems to be absolute nonsense. The Attorney-General made one excuse which was not true and he now makes another which does not make sense. It seems to me as a layman that the Treasury counsel did not proceed with the indictment because he had not got sufficient grounds for doing so.

I maintain that if a man is charged with a serious offence and is kept in prison for seven and a half months, the Crown should either continue with that prosecution and bring the man to justice or at an early date withdraw the charge and allow an application for bail to be considered.

When the matter came up at the Central Criminal Court and the papers were considered by Mr. Justice Park he said before sentencing the prisoners to suspended sentences that the group was: a small and ineffectual body presenting no threat to the security of this country. So Mr. Quinn—and I am not saying anything about the other two people because I do not represent them here, although I imagine their cases are similar to that of my constituent—has wrongly suffered seven and a half months in prison on strict security as a result of the actions of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Equally serious is that the explanations given to the House by the Attorney-General was plainly a false one.

It is to prevent the same sort of thing ever happening again that I raise this matter tonight. I hope we will receive from the Solicitor-General some explanation why all this happened and how it happened, and that an assurance will be given in the interests of British justice that it will never happen again.

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Marcus Lipton (Brixton)

I know Mr. Thomas Quinn. Before he became a constituent of my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) he was one of my constituents. I was amazed to receive a letter from him in Brixton Prison saying that he was facing this charge and had been remanded in custody for this length of time. It is amazing that a charge of this kind should have been maintained for so long against him. I would like the Solicitor-General to tell us on what date it was decided that there was no case to answer and that he would not be prosecuted on the treason felony charge. When and why was it decided not to proceed with this serious charge?

There was no question of any kind of a deal. There was no question of Mr. Quinn not being prosecuted on the treason felony charge if he pleaded to some less serious charge. There was no such understanding or undertaking.

10.18 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Michael Havers)

I very much regret that the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) saw fit to make such sweeping allegations on the lines that the Government had given statements full of untruths and that the explanations were a lie. This is a matter in which, had he made further inquiries, they would perhaps have convinced him that what he said was unjustified.

I hope the House will bear with me when I give the background. The picture painted by the right hon. Gentleman bears no relation to the truth. The indictment against the three men, of whom the right hon. Gentleman's constituent was one, in addition to alleging counts of treason felony alleged counts of uttering seditious words, conspiracy for sedition and an offence against the Public Order Act. In regard to the indictment —and it is impossible to take one man in isolation because one has to look at all three—one man, Callinan, pleaded guilty to most of the counts involving sedition. The right hon. Gentleman's constituent pleaded guilty to a serious offence, the count in the indictment under the Public Order Act, and it is right that the House should know what it was.

That count alleged against Quinn and a man called Callinan and a man called Marcantonio that On divers days between 4th March 1972 and 4th June 1972 within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court they took part in the control and managemnt of an association of persons called the Northern Ireland Minority Defence Force which was organised and trained for the purpose of enabling the said persons to be employed for the use or display of physical force in promoting political objects. Quinn pleaded guilty to that count, Marcantonio pleaded guilty to two other counts involving seditious words, and Callinan more than that.

When it is said that the explanation given by the Government is untruthful, let me give the House the facts. On 20th February at Hyde Park Corner, Callinan told those who listened to him—and there were a number—that this association, the Northern Ireland Minority Defence Association, had been formed to kill British troops in Northern Ireland and cause civil war; that the purpose of the meeting was to recruit men of all groups who were prepared to do military training and to travel to Northern Ireland to kill Broadmoor psychopaths and drive Ian Paisley and Brian Faulkner into the sea. Callinan invited volunteers to go for guns in Northern Ireland, to train them to a very high standard and equip them for the civil war that would start later that year and invited volunteers to come forward. And a number did and signed up.

On 19th March at the same place Callinan said there was no shortage of gelignite and young men to carry it to rip Belfast and Derry to the ground. Callinan said: Girls are now taught to use gelignite. We shall rip down every structure in Belfast". And he invited those who listened to him at Hyde Park Corner to Be a man get a gun and play your part". He went on: We are training volunteers.… There are guns in Ireland and we will take them from the free state army.… Stand up and fight … We are a para-military force". There was a Press interview of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke. The right hon. Gentleman said that Quinn spoke at no meeting and he mentioned the word "tomfoolery". He was there on that occasion at the end of May as the chairman of this para-military association. He had taken part in a number of meetings designed to raise forces in this country to go to Ireland and bear arms against Her Majesty and against British forces in Northern Ireland.

Let us have no nonsense about it being a bit of tomfoolery. He was chairman of this association and he took part in the meeting. Eight masked men stood around a table and there were maps and a layout said to be an area of Derry. A discussion of military tactics took place which could be used in fighting in Londonderry.

This right hon. Gentleman's constituent, who apparently had played so innocent a part, told those Press reporters who were present, after posing for Press photographers, that 500 trained fighters were ready to move to Northern Ireland if civil war broke out. He said that there were 800 paid-up members of the association. He said that it was not part of the IRA but was primarily in favour of the provisionals. He said that there were three units each of about 60 men in London and three more partial units in London. He said that there were other units in Birmingham, Bedford, Luton and Bristol and that further units were being formed in Manchester and Liverpool. He said that the men in masks were two platoons of his association undergoing a training session. Photographs were taken and they were published in The Times on 3rd June—a newspaper which circulates widely not only in England, Wales and Scotland, but also in Northern Ireland.

Certainly the police officers who investigated this matter had the strong impression that this was no piece of tomfoolery but a serious matter. Indeed, the history of the tragedy which has existed in Northern Ireland for the past four years has demonstrated time after time that quite small units, including teenagers, are involved. They are not kids playing at war. They use guns, explosives and are just as dangerous as—if not more dangerous than—those whom one would expect to behave in such a manner.

Let us look at the history of what went on. Over that year in 1972 there had been increasing violence in Northern Ireland. On 22nd February there was the explosion at Aldershot at which the Roman Catholic padre and six civilians were killed. On 5th March the Ulster death toll went up to a peak figure of 10 persons in a week. On 24th March there was the announcement of direct rule. On 16th April Ulster explosions rose to a new peak of 51 in one week. On 14th May Ulster deaths again reached 10 and on 3rd June this report appeared in the paper.

I wonder whether anyone in this House or outside can imagine the reaction in Northern Ireland when The Times published that grotesque photograph of these masked men around a table which apparently represented Londonderry, apparently being trained to deal with Londonderry by the force set up by the chairman Quinn who was subsequently, within two or three days, charged with, among other offences, that of treason-felony.

It is right that the House and everybody should know that there has always been ample evidence to support that charge. The offence charged fitted precisely the words of the Statute. There was clear jurisdiction where overt arts such as those committed by Quinn and the others had been carried out in this country. But the intended raising of arms and armies was to be carried out in Northern Ireland. These overt acts were committed in this country and the reason that the treason-felony charge was laid at that time, was, among other reasons, that it was not clear, because this was not a usual case, whether the other offences of sedition would have jurisdiction in English courts, the sedition being to commit offences in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Clinton Davis (Hackney, Central)

What the Solicitor-General said bears no relationship to what the learned judge said—that this was a small and ineffectual body presenting no threat to the security of this country.

The Solicitor-General

How easy it is to say that. It does not mean that that is the only view that may be taken about it. Those who were concerned closely with it, those who have read all the papers, do not necessarily share the view of the judge in this case. I for my part, having seen the photograph at a time when the violence, the deaths, the shootings and the explosions in Northern Ireland were mounting day by day, believe that to have the photograph published in The Times showing a lot of weird men wearing masks standing round a sand table, which they said was meant to portray Londonderry where they intended to carry out violent acts against Her Majesty the Queen and the Forces of the Crown, was a situation in which the people in Northern Ireland could do nothing but be upset by what they read.

The reason that the charge eventually was not carried through was that it became apparent that the other charges in that indictment were sufficient. Let me make one point clear to the right hon. Member for Vauxhall, who has made allegation after allegation against the Attorney-General, and, in a wider way, against the Government: there was nothing in that charge compared with the the other charges which made the slightest difference to bail. Any charge of sedition would have carried the same ruling against bail, because the Irish Act concerning extradition meant that any man charged with a political offence in this country who returned to Southern Ireland could not be extradited back to England for that offence. It mattered not at all whether it was a treason-felony, sedition or a Public Order Act charge. There was nothing to be gained by the Crown in making the charge treason-felony. If it were a political offence, and that man were released on bail and he returned to Southern Ireland, the inevitable consequence was that he could not be extradited.

Mr. Strauss

That is true of all the other charges against Quinn except in relation to the Public Order Act.

The Solicitor-General

The only matter left against Quinn, because he had not attended any of these speeches—though it should not be forgotten that he was the elected chairman who acted as chairman throughout the month of May—

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.