Last Saturday, on International Women's Day, the Morning Star carried a report of the brutal treatment Republican women prisoners are receiving in Armagh jail.
It was a fitting tribute to the women who are suffering beating and wardens because of their request for political Slopping ceased. They are facing similar treatment to the men in the A Block.
The Morning Star article points out that the women in Armagh are being persecuted not only for their Republicanism but because they are women:
punching male out of their cels has also been subjected to "This is the extreme violence and Northern Ireland are hands of British intimidating ILUOL demonstrating that day Day outside not know from the executive of the have done women l Roe, an IMG member of NUS The Women's Committee did not agree. It had already decided to have a session at the forthcoming women's conference on the 29 and 30 March on violence against women in the North of Ireland. But when they took agenda to the executive they refused to ratity it.
The Women's. Committee decided, in the PAULINE ROE, International Marxist Group member on the NUS executive, has had her mailings censored because the Party argues that the torture of women in Armagh jail is 'irrelevant to women students in Britain. face of such plough ahead regardless. prepared advertising the session.
But when I went to Belfast on 24 February they interrupted the mailing and took out all the information about Armach interview with a woman student whose relatives were in Armagh jail.
in Scotland, line with NUS policy. the of the Irish Women's Perturbed CRATY showed.
seems to wish.
Communist manoeuvres, to The mailing was — incuoing an When Pauline first visited Belfast she was taking the women's campaign into the colleges Wales and the North of Ireland in, She made contact with the Belfast Women's Collective and with the women on the executive Union of Students.
Campaign has work
women in the North of Ireland.
it's not up to us to tell women ir Ireland what their needs are. We will campaign on all issues of Irish women's rights.' But one issue that women in the North of Ireland, as in other parts of Europe, are quite perturocu Republican prisoners as the sucessful picket of 500 women on International Women's "Their plight as women who suffer from not only physical but sexual degradation because of their commitment to fight for the freedom of their country cannot be ignored — as the NUS 'As English feminists it's our government, our army and our responsibility to challenge and break the barriers of silence in Britain (Spanish section of the Fourth International).
It's no wonder Armagh they said 'No comment!' 'The NUS which you can help:
As British with the Court, Hamstead Birmingham for a speaker. *If you executive urging attitude the this.
evidence about Day interested contact phone Sue on 0232 40465.
BERNADETTE Devlin-McAliskey speaking at a rally of three thousand people in Bilbao in the Basque country, held a fortnight ago to support the election campaign of the LCR-LKI The LKI stood candidates on a common slate with iwo other revolutionary organisations, when the Morning Star phoned up the NUS about the women in If you are interested in helping break down the barriers of silence about Armagh jail in Britain there are the following four ways in *Contact Pauline Roe, Flat 32, Hamstead Road, Handsworth, are a student write to the NUS them to ieconsider their . women In jail. If possible get your student union to back you in *Women Against Imperialism in Belfast are organising a tribunal to investigate the case for political status in jails in Ireland and to hear the the maltreatment of women Pat Arrowsmith and Jill Tweedie have agreed to act as judges. The Armagh 11 have decided to boycott their court hearing and attend the tribunal instead on 9 April *A delegation is planned to visit Armagh jail and demand to see the conditions in which the prisoners are kept. If you or your union is imperalism, on Broadway, Belfast 12 not Women