Communist Party of the Irish Republic Statement on Prisoner of Conscience, Cait Trainor

The actions of RSF's Cait Trainor are a lesson in defiance for all of those in Ireland faced with unjust fines.

The violent and undemocratic nature of the pro-capitalist statelet in the North was visible for all to see as Republican activist and Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle member Cait Trainor was imprisoned on Saturday by the British political police force for taking part in a peaceful protest. The British state does not appear to have any sense of shame given that the original protest was against the draconian selective internment of Martin Corey who remains in jail after 2 1/2 years without trial or charge.

You would think that any democrat would be justified in taking part in such a protest. It was however, as it often is in Ireland, left up to Republicans to take the lead. The British state's response was to trawl those involved before a court and convict them of a criminal offence. No democrat would consider paying any fine that would result from such an abuse of process. The British state's response to this further act of peaceful defiance was on Saturday to impose its violent nature and jail Cait Trainor. She was jailed as she attended yet another protest in support of Republican Prisoners Of War.

This should not surprise us. A system in the North in which the British Secretary of State can detain former prisoners at a whim, where the Prosecution Service can bring charges against Republicans that rarely end in any conviction, but which still result in them being interned for years until charges are formally withdrawn, in a system that subjects prisoners to degrading strip searches. And Britain's allies in the 26 Counties are no better, where people can be arrested for attending the funeral of their family members, where the opinion of a Superintendent is sufficient to have a person jailed and where a non-jury court also sits without hardly a word from the liberal "human rights defenders".

If Martin Corey, Marion Price, Cait Trainor, and all those who have been detained for their political beliefs are not prisoners of conscience, then who is? There are organisations which claim to work for Prisoners of Conscience, but they refuse to get involved, they lack the kind of moral courage that those interned for their beliefs possess. Again we shouldn't be surprised when we learn that the Director of Amnesty International in Ireland is a former Progressive Democrat and that the British Justice Minister in the North sits on their Board.

But while these brave democrats remain in jail, they provide all of us in Ireland with the inspiration to do as they have done. Not to cower in front of intimidation, not to be intimidated by threats of fines or imprisonment, but to bravely stand up for our beliefs, to resist the attacks that the capitalist and imperialist system throws at us.

The British and the 26 County states are at war with the Irish people. Stormont, Westminster, Leinster House, have all shown that they cannot represent the interests of the Irish working class. Only by following the defiant example of the likes of Cait Trainor, an example that throughout history has given us the boycott and the refusal to engage with the institutions of the capitalist and comprador classes, only by following this example and pledging our allegiance to a 32 County Irish Workers Republic, can we resist successfully the violence that the bourgeois state directs towards us.

We salute you Cait Trainor and all those who are not intimidated by threats of fine or imprisonment. We call upon all those faced with such threats to follow the example set and to resist!

Communist Party of the Irish Republic
29th October 2012
Ends