Dublin helps London

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DOMINIC McGlinchey, the reputed head of the Irish National Liberation Army, was captured in County Clare two weeks ago and handed over to the British authorities in Northern Ireland within 24 hours.

It was a holiday, so the heating was turned off and the judges had to sit in their overcoats to decide McGlinchey's fate. He is the first to be extradited from the South to the North and the extradition is an important event in cementing a common DublinLondon "law and order policy"

The following is the page editorial of the Sinn Fein paper, An Phoblacht. THE extradition of Dominic McGlinchey - passed over the border from gardai [Southern Irish police] to RUC in the last dark hours of St Patrick's Day - marks one of the blackest spots in all the long years of Free State collaboration.

Whatever fine legal distinctions are drawn Or judicial sophistry engaged the realit in. is a piece of political treachery which lies squarely at the door of the coalition government.

Over the last decade, British and loyalist politicians have clamoured for this ultimate collaboration the final, submission of a Dublin government to British rule in Ireland.

In spite of the most repressive legislation in the form of the Offences Against the State Act, in spite of the harassment and imprisonment of countless republicans, in spite of the disastrous financial cost of guarding the Britishimposed border from the South, in spite of Section 31 censorship, in spite of the political hounding of Sinn fein, in spite, even, of the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Act, they have always demanded this final capitulation in the form of extradition.

And the reason is that extradition means that Dublin is acknowledging the sectarian and brutal RUC as an "impartial police force'; it is giving its official blessing to the infamous Diplock courts, show trials and all; it is accepting Britain's attempt to criminalise the Irish struggle for freedom; it is finally cementing a joint Dublin/ London approach to the North as fundamentally a 'law and order' or 'security' problem rather than a political one.

All of this, in short, amounts to the craven acceptance by Dublin of Britain's presence as unchallenged occupier of six counties of Ireland and the abandonment of the national objective.

What further step is necessary for the Free State government to drop all pretence and apply for admission to Britain's 'united kingdom'?