This Side of Silence. Tobias Kelly
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way for the independence of Cyprus.
Internment and Northern Ireland
Trouble, when it came, came much closer to home. Following the outbreak of civil unrest in the late 1960s and a bombing campaign by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), internment without trial was introduced in Northern Ireland on 9 August 1971. More than 340 arrests of Republicans were made on the first day alone. By the end of the week, allegations of brutality had made their way into the British press (Sunday Times 1971). In response to the allegations, the British Conservative government, led by Edward Heath, set up a Committee of Enquiry in late August 1971. The committee was chaired by Sir Edmund Compton, a former civil servant and a man who, according to former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, was “one of the shrewdest, cleverest, and nicest, men in Whitehall” (Dalyell 1994). The committee’s mandate was to “investigate allegations by those arrested … of physical brutality” (Compton 1971, 1). However, almost all the internees refused to cooperate, fearing reprisals from the British security forces. The British army did not contest the use of four interrogation techniques—wall-standing, hooding, noise, and a bread-and-water diet—but argued they were an essential part of the security operations. There was an initial denial that sleep deprivation was used, but this denial was later dropped. The Compton Committee reported in November 1971 and made the general finding that what had become known as the “five techniques” were in use, but the committee made few specific statements on individual cases (Compton 1971). Most famously, the report concluded that the use of the five interrogation techniques was justified given the circumstances in Northern Ireland at the time.
Under continued pressure, the Heath government set up another committee to look at the future of interrogation methods. The Parker Report was led by Lord Parker of Waddington, formerly the most senior judge in England and Wales. It also included Lord Gardiner, who as Lord Chancellor had been the head of the English judiciary. Earlier in his career, Parker had been a supporter of corporal punishment, whereas Gardiner was one of the founders of Justice, the British branch of the International Commission of Jurists. The brief of the Parker Report was more specific than the Compton Report, namely to “consider whether, and if so, in what respect, the procedures currently authorized for the interrogation of persons suspected of terrorism … require amendment” (Compton 1971, iii). Looking at the medical risks posed by the five techniques, Lord Parker concluded that if the interrogations were conducted with care, the effects of the use of the five techniques were acceptable, as even under normal domestic circumstances it was reasonable for detainees to be subjected to some discomfort (Parker 1972, 40). He also argued that the techniques, if used correctly, could elicit useful information (1972, 5). As such, the report concluded that given the civil unrest in Northern Ireland, it was wrong to rule out use of the techniques on moral grounds (1972, 7). However, Lord Gardiner refused to let his name appear on the report and issued his own minority version. In his report, Gardiner was far more concerned about the physical and mental impacts of the use of the five techniques, quoting the medical evidence before the committee that it was impossible to set firm objective limits on the use of the techniques, as people had individual thresholds as to what they could endure (Gardiner 1972). He was also worried about the effect the use of the five techniques would have on Britain’s international reputation, as they “marked a departure from world standards we have helped to create … (and) gravely damage our own hard won reputation” (1972, 21).
The Heath government was somewhat bemused by the uproar. Both the prime minister and his home secretary, Reginald Maudling, argued in Cabinet committee meetings that it “had to be remembered that the lives of British soldiers and of innocent civilians depended on intelligence. We were dealing with an enemy who had no scruples and we should not be unduly squeamish over methods of interrogation in these circumstances.”38 Heath expressed exasperation that the accusations against British troops amounted to the claim that “anyone not given three-star hotel facilities suffered hardship and ill-treatment.”39 There was also a feeling that similar techniques had been used elsewhere by the British army—in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Brunei, and Aden—without the same level of fuss. Indeed, a 1966 publicly available report by Roderic Bowen QC, a former deputy speaker of the House of Commons and Liberal MP, had implicitly cleared many of the same techniques for use against the counterinsurgency in Aden (1966). Bowen had pointed out that soldiers were bound by the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, however, he made it clear that “permissible techniques” could be used to overcome resistance to interrogation.
The key distinction being made by the Heath government, as well as by the Compton and Parker reports was between “brutality” on the one hand and “ill-treatment” on the other. There is hardly any mention of torture. Even Gardiner in his minority report argues that words such as torture are vague and open to doubt, and therefore he does not use them (1972, 15). For Parker and Compton, the distinction between brutality and ill-treatment, which has no legal meaning, rests on the intention of the perpetrator. Brutality is a worse form of ill-treatment. Compton defined brutality as “an inhuman or savage form of cruelty, and that cruelty implies a disposition to inflict suffering, coupled with indifference to, or pleasure in, the victim’s pain” (1971, 15). Compton’s report found that British soldiers had been responsible for forms of ill-treatment but not brutality. What is noticeable here is the emphasis on morals rather than on legality, and for Compton the use of the five techniques was morally justifiable. The Parker Report was not explicitly mandated to look at the legality of the techniques, but given that it included two men who had been the most senior members of the English judiciary it is hardly surprising that it did. In its investigations the Parker Report revealed that the British army had never considered whether their interrogation techniques were legal under domestic law and had only made the vaguest references to the Geneva Conventions. The regulation of interrogation, such as it existed, had been primarily done for functional and disciplinary ends—to make sure it worked and was controlled. The majority Parker Report thought the techniques were morally justifiable but almost certainly illegal, and therefore the government should take further advice. Gardiner in his minority report argued that the use of the techniques was both immoral and illegal, and that the idea of legalizing the use of such techniques was abhorrent.
Although torture was widely referred to in the protests against the treatment of Republican detainees, it was far from the default term used to describe the techniques. The initial Sunday Times article that broke the story on mainland Britain referred only to “brutality,” setting out the allegations of what it called “psychological pressuring … virtually unrelieved harassment and psychological intimidation” (Barry and Jacobsen 1971, 5). Amnesty International published a report of its own inquiry in early 1972 and did not use the word torture once in the main body of the text, instead referring to “ill-treatment” and “brutal treatment” (1972). One of the first written accounts of the treatment of internees was by Seamas O Tuathail, a Sinn Fein member and journalist, who was rounded up in mid-August 1971.40 He accuses the British army of “brutality and torture.” The same phrase is widely used in other publications.41 “Torture” is used to describe the physical act, but brutality is the multiplier referring to both the cruelty of the perpetrator and the suffering of the victim. “Torture” here does not stand alone as a moral harm. There is also little direct reference to the law or human rights in general. Where O Tuathail makes reference to the ECHR, it is to the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of arbitrary arrest, rather than the prohibition of torture.
The Heath government was privately adamant that the techniques were morally justifiable and initially planned on publicly stating as much.42 However, the government also recognized that, under the current laws in Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as in most other places in the world, the use of the techniques was illegal.43 The law in question was that of assault, and mention was made only in passing of international obligations. After considering the possibility of passing legislation to legalize the techniques or to take a conscious decision to continue acting illegally and then passing a law to indemnify those involved, it was decided to simply state that the techniques would not be used in the foreseeable future. Heath therefore stood up in the House of Commons and declared, “The Government … have decided that the techniques … will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation…. If a Government