Vicious Sentence on Young Irish Activist

from Irish Militant On May 5th Joe Dillon, 22, a republican and a member of the Dublin No.2 Branch of the ITGWU, was sentenced to five years in gaol. He had been charged with the attempted armed robbery of a Dublin Corporation rent office at Harmonstown Estate in December 1965. This was vicious miscarriage of justice by the Fianna Fail regime. The police force did not arrest Joe Dillon until six months after the incident. ‘Then, on the night of 6th/7th June 1966, he was taken from his home by members of the Special Detective Unit of Dublin Castle (who specialize in political cases), taken to Bridewell police prison and put on an identification parade with two other Republicans from the Raheny, Harmonstown area. Witnesses were produced - the rent collector, the owner of a car taken on the night before the attempted robbery and a number of local people who were in the rent office at the time. None of the witnesses identified any of the people on the parade. All the arrested men were released within a few hours - except Joe Dillon. Before his arrest he had been offered bribes by the Special Branch to inform on the IRA and other bodies. When he refused he was told that the Special Branch would "get him." A year later he has been brought to trial and found guilty of taking a car without the owner's consent and illegal possession of a revolver with intent to rob and endanger life. The only evidence was a thumbprint on the driving mirror of the getaway car. A state witness stated that this bore fourteen points of resemblance to Dillon's print. (Scotland Yard normally demands 21 points of resemblance before they will make a positive identification.) ‘The sentence was passed by Mr. "Justice" O'Caoimh, an in-law of De Valera and Fianna Fail Attorney-General for many years. Even he, never, to put no finer point upon it, noted for impartiality, had to admit that he was "probably in error when I impose a sentence of five years," and was "leaving myself open to criticism". Which was putting it mildly. No matter what the background to the case this should call forth the strongest protest from the Irish, British and world labour movement. But there is more to it. Joe Dillon w.s an active republican. For years the rump of the Irish Republican Army has acted as a substitute for a revolutionary movement in Ireland, functioning as a safety-valve to prevent the bourgeois state from bursting at the seams, and eternally throwing up new sterile bourgeois groupings. One such anti-revolutionary tendency is at present in control of the IRA and seems set to follow the path already trodden by De Valera and Co. Joe Dillon was one of the leaders of an opposition grouping inside the IRA which was moving towards a Marxist position. This is the real reason why the Special Branch decided to "get him" and C'Caoimh passed such a vicious sentence. The Fianna Fail tenants of power have a vested interest in maintaining the present "leadership's" control of the Republican Movement. So Joe Dillon gets this savage sentence, a) to remove him personally from the political scene, and b) to deter others from following in his footsteps. For these reasons, the largest possible protest on an international scale should be mounted. The Irish Militant appeals to its supporters everywhere to mobilize in conjunction with a protest movement in Ireland to demand Joe Dillon's release, and to demonstrate at Embassies and Consulates of the Irish Government. Resolutions of protest should be moved at all levels of the Labour movement and directed to Mr. Brian Lenihan, Department of Justice, Merrion St., Dublin 3.