The need for the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, established 30 years ago, is as great as ever, writes Carl O'Brien
Thirty years on, Prof Kader Asmal still recalls the sense of tension inside the packed graduates' memorial hall on a summer's evening in 1976. At the time, Prof Asmal was a law lecturer in Trinity College Dublin. The conflict in the North was at its height. The government was about to declare a state of emergency. Ever-expanding security measures such as seven-day detention for interrogation were being introduced. The Special Criminal Court had been reactivated and Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act had been enforced. The so-called "heavy gang" within the Garda was operating with impunity.
"There was a state of permanent fear at the time," recalls Asmal. "The police were keeping files on just about anyone. People were afraid of being picked up. We had never seen anything like seven-day detention. There was a genuine sense of disorientation and we wondered what was going to happen next."
That gathering of academics, lawyers, students and public figures, concerned at the rapid erosion of basic rights and freedoms, became the founding meeting of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL). The executive committee that evening included Sen Mary Robinson, future president of Ireland, Donal Barrington, later appointed a High Court judge and Prof Asmal, anti-apartheid campaigner and future minister in the South African government. Some politicians dismissed it as a middle-class talking shop. Radicals said it was too conservative. Some in government insisted it was a front for the Provos.
However, few could have predicted, given its precarious financial state and fluctuating membership, that it would go on to play a key role in many of the defining legal, moral and social debates of the next three decades.
An examination of the ICCL's key concerns in the late 1970s show how much the State has changed in 30 years. The principal areas of "immediate" concern included: a proper system of legal aid in civil and criminal cases; freedom of information legislation; equality for women; a campaign for children's rights; protecting the rights of psychiatric patients and ending capital punishment.
Other priorities at the time, such as the need for an independent complaints procedure in the Garda, show how progressive changes can sometimes take decades to achieve. In the face of criticism and lobbying for reform on this issue, following the allegations surrounding the "heavy gang" in the late 1970s and the Sallins train robbery in the 1980s, the government began to take steps to implement new custody and complaints procedures from 1984 onwards.
"It was only after there were some significant miscarriages of justice that the government began to take what we were saying seriously," recalls Tom Cooney, then an ICCL executive member. "There was a fear in government that it would end up before the European Court of Human Rights."
Despite this, it took another two decades before the Government would comprehensively address the issue through the establishment of the Garda Ombudsman's office and the Garda Inspectorate.
Early on, the ICCL created a big impact by putting the issue of divorce on the political agenda. One of the catalysts was the publication of The Case for Divorce in the Irish Republic by William Duncan, which sparked controversy in the media and was the subject of debates in the Oireachtas.
It was a subject no mainstream political party dared touch at the time, even though Duncan advocated the introduction of "not just any divorce law . . . but a divorce law which would reflect concern for the family and the institution of marriage". Yet, within a short period of time a divorce action group was established which, in turn, led to the first divorce referendum of 1986 and, ultimately, the introduction of divorce following a second referendum a decade later.
THE BROADER QUESTION of equality for all, especially legal recognition of lesbians and gays, was another defining issue for the ICCL. On paper, at least, Ireland during the 1980s had the worst legal regime for lesbians and gay men in western Europe.
"There was no recognition or protection of any sort and gay men faced a total ban on any type of sexual activity," says Chris Robson, a long-serving executive member on the ICCL. In association with groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (Glen), an intensive lobbying campaign helped result in the enactment of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, which decriminalised gay sex and fixed the age of consent at the same level as for heterosexuals.
"It was an exhilarating moment," says Robson. "I remember the chair at the time, Dan Sullivan, saying that as a group we tend to prevent worse things happening, or else secure minor advances. Yet here was a clear victory which transformed thousands of lives."
It's wrong, however, to suggest the ICCL was always on the winning side, or that it was all plain sailing for the group.
Most of its campaigns flew in the face of prevailing social or political mores. The organisation was in a state of almost constant financial crisis. For most of its existence it operated on a shoestring budget, working out of a temporary office, decrepit buildings and members' homes. There were also internal problems.
An internal debate on pornography and freedom of expression led to rifts in the organisation and a serious fall-off in membership. A reorganisation of the ICCL, together with more secure sources of funding from groups such as the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and, later, from Atlantic Philanthropies, saw the group play a key role in promoting respect for international human rights treaties and influenced aspects of the Belfast Agreement.
THESE DAYS, GIVEN the progress made over the last 30 years and the establishment of various watchdog bodies by the State, some people question whether there is a need for an ICCL anymore.
"Many of the council's aims have yet to be fully achieved," says the ICCL's new director, Mark Kelly, an international human rights lawyer who spent 10 years with the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).
The reform of the Garda is a case in point. While the establishment of accountability mechanisms such as the Garda Ombudsman might be considered the end of a long-running campaign by the ICCL, Kelly says its campaigning efforts are only beginning.
"We have a significant role in monitoring the extent to which these new bodies effectively transpose international human rights law into domestic practice," he says.
Overall, according to Kelly, the ICCL's focus for the years ahead is threefold: fostering a human rights culture; promoting justice; and securing equality (such as recognition for all of equal rights in personal and family relationships). In advancing these aims, he says the ICCL will continue its role as a "creative irritant" with Government.
"It's not a question of a narrow, sectoral, single-issue organisation seeking to ensure that its own moral standards prevail. There is a corpus of human rights law, much of which Ireland has signed up to, but not everything that could be done is being done to implement it. It is an important part of the ICCL's role to highlight that gap, and to suggest how it can be remedied."
Carl O'Brien is author of Protecting Civil Liberties, Protecting Human Rights: 30 Years of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties
The ICCL: what is it?
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties is a non-governmental organisation working to defend and promote human rights and civil liberties in Ireland.
It was founded in 1976 by, among others, Mary Robinson (former president of Ireland), Kader Asmal (Professor of Law and member of the South African government), and Donal Barrington (former Supreme Court judge). Its members and officers through the years have included many leading academics, lawyers and public figures.
Over the past three decades, the ICCL has campaigned in the sphere of civil liberties andhuman rights reform, using international human rights standards to assess State law and policy.