I have heard the term "boxed about the ears"-is what they are doing to Gerry during the interrogation scenes "boxing" hi
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gaffer_gamgee — 17 years ago(July 21, 2008 12:29 PM)
I think "boxed around the ears" is just a synonym for "clip round the earhole", "I'll give you a thick ear" etc and nothing to do with a specific form of torture or whatever. The sort of thing parents say to wayward children.
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aulfla76 — 17 years ago(October 06, 2008 07:22 PM)
Paul Hill's autobiography 'Stolen Years' was slightly more graphic about the torture. He suggested that the duration and the disinformation played a part in his confession. The police managed to pin an additional murder of a British soldier on Hill in the process.
Physical violence - squeezing of the testicles was alluded to by many detainees - combined with sleep deprivation, threats to friends and family (direct and indirect), disinformation if someone kept me awake for a week or so and threatened my family, I would probably admit to the assassination of Jesus Christ himself. Then again maybe some people are more tough. I imagine they were easier to break than the real hardened IRA volunteers who actually committed the bombings.
I digress. My brother told me that pulling on the ears is called the Eskimo Ear Pull - very painful but a sport in some climates. -
rice-1 — 17 years ago(October 31, 2008 02:54 PM)
I guess torture is a relative thing.
Having ones ears pulled does not appear to me to equal the torture dealt out by the IRA prior to murder.
Also your quotes from Amnesty International are hardly neutral coming from that organisation.
As for Paul Hill, why would he have admitted to another murder when none of the others felt the need to? -
aulfla76 — 17 years ago(November 01, 2008 04:30 PM)
Firstly, with regard to Paul Hill's conviction for the murder of soldier Brian Shaw, Hill was convicted mostly on the basis that he was still resident in Belfast at the end of 1972. That conviction was overturned in 1994 due to a complete absence of evidence - which makes his confession a case of police opportunism because the events surrounding Shaw's death are notoriously unclear. Also, at that time (1974), the Surrey Police needed a legitimate link between the Guilford Four and the IRA and it "solved" an unsolved murder in the process. To the best of my knowledge, no effort has since been made to find out the truth about what happened to Brian Shaw.
I agree that the IRA did dole out excessive and violent torture in an effort to achieve their aims- mostly within the Catholic community - counter-productive and ideologically unsound, in my opinion. They attacked the wrong people and, in doing so, they alienated themselves from a rational political basis and their supposed population base. It was morally and politically unjustifiable by any equivocation, tactically pointless and I personally find it reprehensible.
However, the IRA was a guerilla/paramilitary organisation not a police force - in much the same way that the UDA/UVF/LVF were not legally empowered to police Protestant communities or Catholic communities - although they still did so. The RUC, MI5, MI6, the British army and the British judiciary are, by their own claim, representative of the democratic will of Britain itself and are, therefore, subject to the moral and legal standards they impose upon society itself.
The point that I think people are trying to make is that the British government and the security forces were extremely hypocritical in their application of justice in Ireland and with regard to the Irish. They have always been reluctant to call the situation in Northern Ireland a war - preferring the term 'police action' but nevertheless applied measures that would be considered excessive in war.
As for this specific case, it was not a mere case of one little bully-boy policeman pulling someone's ears - there were other less savoury methods employed that were not shown in the film. Also the film failed to convey the duration of the interrogations - seven days without sleep. I believe that threats to family were without doubt the most severe measure employed - and considering the rumoured collusion (then and now) between the British, the RUC and Loyalist paramilitaries, it was a very real threat. Additionally deprivation of sleep, food and water over a period of seven days can make such threats and schoolyard bully-boy methods all the more effective.
I do not doubt that you, rice-1, would consider such methods of torture to be mild. I imagine that we would all like to believe that we would be tough enough to resist such 'torture' - whether this is a case of wishful thinking, rampant egotism or genuine stupidity. I sincerely doubt that the torture employed was anything akin to the dramatic torture pornography of 'Saw' or 'Hostel' so prevalent in recent social discourse - but it was effective and it was illegal, immoral and hypocritically applied principally to Republican suspects. Moreover, it was coercion, pure and simple, and in terms of power relations the actions of the British/RUC/Security Forces was no different than that of the IRA in fact, the spate of denial and equivocation that has ensued makes it far more like the self-interested moral justifications of rapists and child abusers who endeavour to place guilt upon their victims.
The issue with the film, I believe, is not the torture specifically rather that the Guilford Four were scapegoats that the British knew to be innocent - officially after the Balcombe St. Gang was arrested in 1977 and a fact that was conceded in the 1987 Home Office memorandum regarding their appeal. The British police tortured innocent Irish people to provide the British public with a show-trial in the full knowledge that it was a perversion of justice - their own justice, noy just the Irish conception of justice.
I understand your reluctance to concede that Amnesty International (UK) are unbiased to a certain degree, especially after reading your post history. However, I was thinking that the recorded testimony of Lord Gardiner, former Lord Chancellor and legislative reformer, combined with the findings of The European Court of Human Rights, a democratic and impartial legal body, and the evidence of those working in British Intelligence such as Frank Steele, who was active in MI6 in Ireland in the 70s and had witnessed British decolonisation in Kenya - would merit reconsideration of the issue of police torture in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
I believe that the innate hypocrisy of the British/Unionist agenda in Northern Ireland unwittingly gave the IRA undue legitimation for their actions. It served to deepen the division between Republicans and Unionists, institutionalised the use of violence and co -
tonedelarone-423-494737 — 13 years ago(December 01, 2012 09:54 PM)
you sir are an ill informed buffoon. put your crayons down and ask your babysitter to stop dictating your drivel. As a resident of N.Ireland this film took a massive leap into expossing a tiny bit of the abuse of power being exercised here for a long time. Its got alot better
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VirtualMark — 13 years ago(March 05, 2013 05:07 PM)
So you think it's ok to torture an innocent person - just because the IRA have committed crimes?
Is it also ok to rape someone? Other people have done it, so by your logic that makes rape ok?
Or perhaps you're just an idiot? -
Flora_Poste — 9 years ago(April 03, 2016 04:37 PM)
"Boxing your ear" is punching somebody on the ear or on the side of the head near the ear. If you've seen "It's a Wonderful Life," then you've seen a kid get his ear boxed. Mr. Gower punches George Bailey on the ear when George refuses to deliver the wrong prescription to a patient. George's ear starts to bleed, and then he can't hear properly with that ear for the rest of his life.
I think the damaged ear kept George out of military service during WWII, as well.
To get "boxed about the ears" is to have multiple blows rained down on both ears or both sides of the head. It has nothing to do with pressing ears or stretching ears.