"Ok, the British legal system is now a sick joke but the Irish shouldn't laugh too loud; their notion of justice is pretty weird too. Take the case of Gerry Rice.

In 1976 Gerry, his wife Gemma and their nine children moved into their dream home, a semi in Ballynahinch, County Down, Northern Ireland. They couldn't believe their luck: they'd got it at a knockdown price and there'd been none of the usual hassle over fixtures and fittings, carpets and curtains; it was as if the other people couldn't move out quick enough.

Time passed. Gerry began to smell smoke. Even when his fire was out he could still smell smoke and it was getting stronger all the time, poisoning his kids as they slept. It was obviously coming from next door's fire so Gerry tried a bit of sweet reason with his neighbour. That failed. Tons of polyfilla on his chimney stack also failed; the smoke still seeped through and one day it was so bad he had to call the fire brigade to get into his house. Gerry (a catholic) tried the catholic (SDLP) dominated council. It was a public health issue after all, and its chairman, Alfie Jameson, was Gerry's accountant and he'd been very helpful in fixing up a mortgage on the damn place. Sadly, Alfie and the other councillors did very little. Oh, Alfie Jameson acknowledged Gerry Rice's letters, yes, but he never quite got around to answering them.

One day, utterly frustrated, choked with smoke, Gerry hacked away at his chimney breast.

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He discovered Terralux blocks. These are slabs of clay with massive holes running through them. If you want to turn your home into a gas chamber it's ideal material because the smoke, instead of rising up your chimney, will drift through these holes and invade your rooms. Not surprisingly, to use the stuff on chimney breasts was forbidden by the housing regulations of the time.

Gerry went back to the council, a very embarrassed council: it was their surveyor who'd passed this house, and others, as fit for habitation and the council had whacked out a massive subsidy to the builder. If only Gerry would just keep quiet about it all and sell the house to another mug. No, Gerry was going to sue them.

A little pause in the narrative here. Do you remember that American TV series, The Invaders? The hero knows there are aliens on earth but each time he finds someone to listen to his case, lo and behold, that person turns out to be an alien too. Well, Gerry reckons that dealing with the catholic establishment in the County of Down is a bit like that. For instance a lawyer advised against suing the council, presented his bill and, months later, there he was in the local paper as the newly appointed chairman of the SDLP branch, standing between John Hume MP and Alfie Jameson.

Understandably perhaps, Gerry turned elsewhere for help: to the Commissioner for Complaints and to his local MP, a certain Enoch Powell. Old Enoch, with lofty disdain, refused to get involved so Gerry decided to stand against him at the 1979 general election, taking a few hundred votes off the man. But the Commissioner for Complaints was far more helpful. The council, he found, had failed to "exercise its statutory power to abate a nuisance which manifestly existed" and the Terralux blocks should never have been used in the first place. Victory surely. Gerry and Gemma went along to the next council meeting and there it was on the agenda, the Commissioner's Report, item 19, somewhere between graveyards and public lavatories. They got to it. The chairman read it out, asked for comments. Total silence. The chairman moved on to item 20.....

Furious, burning with a sense of injustice, Gerry and Gemma went home and talked into the small hours. They had payed rates all their lives so they were entitled to services; one of these services was building control; the council had failed to provide this so now Gerry, Gemma and ten children (she'd given birth the previous Christmas) were living in a death trap while the council refused even to discuss the matter. Okay, they decided, they'd abandon the house, they'd keep up the mortgage because that house was their proof, but meanwhile they'd find somewhere, anywhere, safe to live - and they'd start to fight back.

Another pause in the narrative. Pope John Paul came to Drogheda a year or so after that council meeting and made a famous speech: "As long as injustices exist in any of the areas that touch upon the dignity of the human person..... true peace will not exist." Now, I usually laugh when popes and bishops talk about social justice because their employees (priests) are denied it but, in this case the pope had a point: violence is a symptom of injustice. Catholics, of course, cheered themselves hoarse. But round about the same time, one of Gerry's children, enraged at the SDLP's treatment of his parents, said that he almost felt like putting a bomb under the council chamber.

Anyway, Gerry Rice scoured the countryside for a temporary shelter, found a disused mobile classroom and towed it back to a garage he owned (he's a mechanic by trade). The council promptly objected. He told them where to stick their objection. He rigged up a boiler in his garage to keep the classroom warm.

He erected a sign on the roadside: STOP CORRUPTION AT DOWN DISTRICT COUNCIL H/Q. Again the council objected. Legal writs began to fly..... Gemma got pregnant again..... He was in and out of court; he had lawyers to pay, mortgage payments on the house in Ballynahinch to keep up. Money drained away. He became ill, agoraphobic, unable to leave the house without Gemma by his side. Things could only get better. They didn't. The boiler exploded and his garage, his livelihood, went up in smoke. From somewhere he found the energy to rebuild the thing and the council, like some kind of pantomime villain, objected to the rebuilding and hauled him through the courts again.....

Where would I end this story if it were a novel? Maybe June, 1988 when the Nationwide Building Society finally repossessed Gerry's house to sell it at half its market value. Maybe earlier, July, 1987, when Alfie Jameson, one time accountant and councillor, now newly elected MP, made his maiden speech in the Commons as Gerry, Gemma and eleven children shivered in the disused classroom and listened to him on radio.

The truth is, the story doesn't end because Gerry and Gemma are still battling and they'll do so until they achieve justice. They'll suffer for it, of course. For example, a few members of the SDLP are trying to portray Gerry as a crank. I know the man. He isn't. But even if he were, even if his sense of grievance were totally unfounded, would that excuse supposedly catholic politicians driving his wife and eleven children into a disused hut? Would that excuse such bloody-minded vindictiveness?

So can I ask something of you all? Next time an SDLP spokesman comes on telly to talk about peace and justice in Northern Ireland, would you do Gerry Rice a favour, would you switch the thing off?

Jimmy McGovern
16 Willow Green
Liverpool L25 4RR"