Northern Ireland: in brief (7)
01 January 1991
Northern Ireland: in brief
artdoc June=1994
* Border roads: The British and Irish governments recognise 291
border crossing points between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
One hundred and three of these are subject to closure orders.
Hansard 20.11.93. col. 781
* France: phone-tapping inquiry: the inquiry into the phone-
tapping cell involved in the `Irish Three' case and the bugging
of journalists and political figures has taken another twist (see
Statewatch, vol 3 no 3 & vol 4 no 1). Two of the men involved
former gendarme Colonel Christian Prouteau (then head of the
Elysée security cell) and Gilles Ménage, then head of President
Mitterand's private office, have refused to answer the questions
of the investigating judge, Jean-Paul Valat now he is seeking yet
again to question them. The scandal has also spread from the
President's office to the Prime Minister's. One of the phone-tap
victims Le Monde journalist Edwy Plenel includes information in
a new book which shows that codes on the transcripts of
intercepted phone conversations involve the Inter-Ministry
Communications Group (GIC) which authorises phone-taps and is
responsible to the Prime Minister. The codes also show that the
phone lines used belong to the DGSE (overseas intelligence
service), which is theoretically accountable to the Defence
Minister. European, 25.3.94.
Review: Coca Cola Criminology
Terrorist Threat to Safe Shopping, Centre for the Study of Public
Order, 27 pages, £10.
British criminology has finally discovered the IRA, in all but
name. Two academics at the University of Leicester's Centre have
produced a report which seeks to analyse the cost to commercial
interests of IRA attacks on business premises.
The report is interesting for three reasons. First, its
characterisation of terrorism is irresponsibly misinformed.
Second, it is less concerned with the safety of shoppers than
with the threat to retail profits, and thirdly, the report uses
survey evidence from a sample of shoppers to advocate the
installation of a predictable array of surveillance technology,
including identity cards.
An adequate response to terrorism, the report begins, must be
premised on `a thorough understanding of the changing nature of
terrorist activities' (characterised as a shift from political
and military targets to economic and commercial ones) as well as
`an appreciation of terrorist motivations' (terrorists are
essentially irrational, `they allow no debate, nor are they
susceptible to reason' and largely immune to deterrent
penalties).
Although it is evident from the incidents mentioned (the
Brighton bomb, the Downing Street mortar attack, the Baltic
Exchange) that it is the IRA threat which is under discussion,
the report manages to avoid mentioning the IRA by name, except
once when reference is made to MI5 taking over the lead role in
combatting the IRA in Britain. This quite extraordinary omission
means that we are expected to understand terrorism without
knowing which groups are which, what their political aims are and
how they relate to other groups and political movements, and
finally, what the current state of the conflict happens to be.
The report is sharper when discussing the economic costs of the
IRA's bombing of English cities. At stake here is a £368 billion
per annum market. It suggests three types of costs. Firstly,
there are the direct costs of repairing the damage and getting
back to normal. The Bishopsgate bombing, for example, displaced
20,000 workers and generated a repair bill of at least £350
million, a bill which is eventually passed on to consumers.
Secondly, there are the indirect costs incurred through the
disruption and loss of trade, lower employee morale and lost
productivity. And thirdly, there are longer-term consequential
losses - the erosion of customer confidence. Whole areas come to
be avoided, particular stores boycotted and other `significant
change