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MacBride—Protecting the Rights of
Man
Mary Gaffney
INTERVIEW
Mr. MacBride was a member of Dáil Eireann from
1947 to 1958, Minister for External Affairs in the
Inter-Party Government 1948 to 1951, vice-president of
O.E.E.C. (Organisation for European Economic Co-
operation) 1948 to 1951, and president, Committee of
Ministers of Council of Europe, 1949-1950.
He was one of the initiators, sponsors and signatories
of the European Convention for the protection of
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom; one of the
founding members of Amnesty International and chair-
man of its international executive committee since its
inception in 1961; chairman of the World Assembly
for Human Rights and the Montreal Assembly for
Human Rights, secretary-general of the International
Commission of Jurists and chairman of the executive
committee of the International Peace Bureau.
I talked to him in his study. I first asked him about
Amnesty International, which helps obtain the release
of prisoners of conscience.
"I am chairman of Amnesty since it was founded
10 years ago and I have been chairman of the executive
since. It is a very useful organisation and does valuable
work with regard to prisoners of conscience. They are
persons who are in prison by reason of their religious
and political views and who have not participated
in violence. Strange as it may seem, there are vast
numbers of such prisoners in different parts of the
world, for example, Indonesia, South Africa and China,
although we have little information about China. But
we have a great deal of information with regard to
Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil. These are our
main headaches.
"Coupled with this retention of political and religious
prisoners, our great concern is the increase in brutality
in dealing with prisoners.
"The great increase in violence and brutality in the
world is reflected in the treatment of prisoners where
torture is quite frequently practised. Examples of this
are Greece and Brazil, where prisoners were system-
atically tortured with the knowledge and approval of
the government.
"Amnesty itself is expanding very rapidly. Last year
we had 100 new groups, which means we now have
between 800 to 900 groups all over the world. The
headquarters of the organisation are in London and
there the secretariat has to service each group and
supply them with information concerning prisoners."
Was he alarmed by the violence in the world today?
"Yes, it is very alarming, and it comes from govern-
ments who are to blame because of their bad example
in regard to violence. The tendency of governments,
when they are engaged in a war situation or in an
armed conflict, to use violence and brutality is in itself
a cause for the generation of brutality and violence.
Brutality is contageous, like a disease. If one country
uses it, another tends to use it; if a government uses it,
another government wil use it. And so brutality always
leads to counter-brutality in the world. That is quite a
frightening element.
"It probably comes from the fact that there has
been a general deterioration in moral standards, public
and private, in the world. Everything is being put in
question. In turn, this comes from the fact that there
has been such rapid advance in science and material
things which has not been matched by an equivalent
development of a sense of ethical and moral respon-
sibility on the part of the people. The Churches have
been completely outpaced by the advance and have
been unable to catch up with modern developments.
The churches are slow-moving. This is inevitable. They
do not change, and are now trotting behind the events
of the modern world. Whether these modern develop-
ments are good or bad is everybody's guess; but the
situation is that they have led to a complete break-
down of public and private morality."
Mr. MacBride feels that to counter-act this, a high
sense of responsibility must be developed among people
and among governments by trying to get the churches
to play a more progressive and more important role in
public life. But in order to play a more important role,
they have to be more credable than they have been
in the past.
"In the past, churches were regarded as part of
the establishment and were often aligned with govern-
ments. They depended on governments for financial
and other support, so they were always afraid to
criticise them or to get at cross purposes with them.
This means that the churches also suffered from the
credibility gap which is more noticeable with regard
to governments. People have really very little faith in
what a government says now. But the churches have
also suffered from the credibility gap. Therefore,
they will have to get away from being part of the
establishment, do a good deal of pioneering work and
provide a leadership based on public morality, human
rights and the defence of the weaker section of the
community".
Should all weapons and means of warfare be
destroyed
'One of the essential things in the world today is
complete disarmament. Another world war would in-
evitably lead to the use of nuclear weapons, which
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