Don't forget the Armagh womel

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ON THE weekend of 9-11 March, 200 women from Britain went POLITICAL STATUS *Ver to Belfast and Derry to celebrate International Women's Day.

For the last five years this has culminated in a picket of Armagh The women are continually harassed by the prison authorities.

Since November 1982, the governor, Thomas Murtagh, has introduced strip searching of all prisoners leaving and entering the jail. This particularly affects women on remand who have to make a court appearance every week. Quite often women are held on remand for 1½ to 2 years before coming to trial.

They are taken to a reception area and put in a small cubicle and told to remove their clothes item by item, including their sanitary towels if they have their period. These are all searched.

They then have to wait while the wardens (between two and ten) inspect first her front and then her back. If a woman refuses to strip she is forcibly stripped. The whole process is degrading Then they are taken to court to make the two minute appear- on the word of paid informers. There is no jury in the Diplor ance necessary and then back to jail. At no time do they have any Court and no collaborating evidence is needed to find someon contact with the public. Yet as soon as they get back they are guilty. The informers are offered huge amounts of money an strip searched again. The whole process is deliberate sexual the chance of a 'new identity'. One woman told us she'd bee harassment by the British state to try and break the women. offered £250,000. She could go to whatever country she wante As well as the picket, a conference was held on the Saturday. take whoever she wanted, if she'd inform on four men. In May There we heard from a woman, Mrs Grove, who had been shot trial will start where 65 people are being charged on the word c by a plastic bullet and lost the use of both her eyes. At the time Mrs Grove was shot, she was standing in her own front room and A resolution was passed at the conference for the soldier was standing outside on her footpath. Some riot!

Plastic bullets, which are only supposed to be used in riot situations and only fired below waist level, are used whenever and wherever the British army feels like using them. As well as 2. An end to the use of plastic bullets anywhere. killing people (like an eleven year old girl fetching a bottle of 3. An end to the "supergrass" system of non. milk for her mother) they can cause serious and maiming injury. evidence and an end to the no jury Diplock Courts.

The police and the army in Northern Ireland have always had 4. British withdrawal from Northern Ireland. wide and special powers of arrest and detention. But now they In the words of Ann-Marie Quinn, a prisoner use the so-called "supergrasses". People are charged and held feature" . (See below for the Tory answer to this horror).

Next most polluted estuary is the Tees. Industry pours cyanides, ammonia and organic chemicals that remove oxygen into the Tees. The last salmon seen was in 1937 and at times the river smells like "a thousand tom-cats"

Meanwhile, the waters of the Humber estuary contain a long plume of rust-coloured pollution and are treated to acid wastes.

Grading rivers according to the life they contain results in a league table with the River Test top with 239 points, the Thames at Chiswick with 61 and the Doe Lea with 3.

Despite the secrecy. it is known that flouting of limits is widespread, ranging from one third of all discharges in the North West to over 80% of discharges in Wales. Some companies have never met their limits.

The response of water authorities, which often have representatives of polluters sitting on them, is to make the controls less strict.

The CPA was intended to tighten up river controls and extend controls to coasts and estuaries. However, implementation was delayed several times under Labour, finally being scheduled for late 1979. Then the Tories got in ... and started a review that lasted three years. Implementation was set for July 1983, postponed to November, then to February 1984. We are still waiting.

Anyway, it seems the Tories may be about to implement the CPA. an Act which gives Water Authorities a duty to bring an end to pollution that injures plant and animal life in rivers. However, the Tories have made "transitional provisions" that mean that most discharges escaping current controls will be exempt.

Some discharges are blacklisted by the EBC and cannot be exempted (like discharge of the toxic mercury and cadmium into the Mersey). So the government is giving these "deemed consents" so that pollution may continue as before.

Helena Kettleborough Jail where 36 women republicans are held. and humiliating.

an informer.

go back and campaign for:

The resolution demanded: 1. An end to strip searches.

"Don't forget us.'

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173. April Page

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TOR THE WOMEN RIMAGU