Quote:
Originally Posted by FuckingRotter
Now it seems that people in Northern Ireland could be subject to completely different laws and regulations from the rest of us....
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That is nothing new and was the case for over 50 years after partition when the Unionist government brought in the "Special Powers Act" in 1922. I googled up an interesting article about it, extract here:
"...Because the Ulster Unionist Party was the only party ever to form a government in this parliament, the 1922 Act was used 'almost exclusively on the minority Nationalist population'. Initially regulations under the Act were used mostly to curb immediate violence and disorder. One of the most controversial of these was internment without trial.
Political violence had declined dramatically by 1925, and the government gradually shifted its emphasis from broad measures designed to return civil order to the province to more preventative regulations aimed at suppressing the threat posed by republican aspirations.'Regulations such as internment and the establishment of curfews were used far less, and those such as the banning of meetings and parades, and restrictions on the flying of the Irish tricolour became more common. Between 1922 and 1950, the government banned nearly 100 parades and meetings, the vast majority of which were nationalist or republican.[8] No loyalist gathering was ever directly banned under the Act, although a few were caught in blanket bans against parades or meetings in a particular area.[9] From 1922 until 1972, 140 publications were banned, the vast majority of which expressed republican viewpoints."