British Ban TV-Radio Interviews With Pro-Violence Ulster Units

LONDON —  The British government imposed a ban Wednesday on broadcast interviews with groups that express support for violence in Northern Ireland, provoking cries of censorship and charges it was handing a propaganda coup to the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

Television and radio stations were barred “from broadcasting direct statements by representatives of organizations proscribed in Northern Ireland and Great Britain” and by representatives of Sinn Fein, the legal arm of the Irish Republican Army, as well as by the Ulster Defense Organization (UDA), an extreme Protestant group.

Home Secretary Douglas Hurd announced the ban in the House of Commons. He said that statements supporting or seeking support for those groups will also be banned. Newspapers will not be affected by the order.

The IRA is fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

The British government has vowed to starve IRA backers and other proponents of violence of what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has called “the oxygen of publicity.”

Hurd said: “The government has decided that the time has now come to deny this easy platform to those who use it to propagate terrorism.”

Britain’s National Council for Civil Liberties condemned the move as censorship.

The British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television News (ITN), which broadcast the country’s main television news bulletins, criticized the action as harmful to free and fair reporting.

ITN editor David Nicholas said: “We have always regarded it as our prime obligation to report the range of opinions which are allowed under a parliamentary democracy.

“The government still accords legal status to Sinn Fein and the UDA. These restrictions would have been easier to understand if they had made those bodies illegal.”

Opposition Labor Party deputy leader Roy Hattersley said the move was “trivial, worthless and counterproductive” and was a propaganda coup for the IRA that in no way would contribute toward its defeat.

A similar ban has been in force in the Irish Republic for almost 20 years.

Sinn Fein’s national chairman, Sean McManus, said in Dublin: “If we were in Eastern Europe, the British government would be crying foul at the banning from TV and radio of a legal political party. . . . (It) is afraid it lacks the skill to challenge our arguments in open debate.”