Corin Redgrave, writing in The New Statesman, March 6, 2000 edition, says a new bill in Britain would make it illegal to even speak up for the IRA.

Redgrave, who was a leader of the Worker's Revolutionary Party, says John Lennon never gave the WRP any money, and he is certain that he never gave money to the IRA.

Redgrave: "Yoko Ono has said that he did not. But neither her denial nor mine are likely to be widely reported. The lie, as is so often the case, has traveled three times around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on."

Redgrave says it matters a great deal that people are not reporting the truth of this matter - not just, as he says, "for the obvious reason that truth should always be preferred to falsehood" - but because a bill now going through parliament, The Prevention of Terrorism Bill, would have made John a criminal, not only for his alleged support of the IRA, but for things he sang and said.

According to Redgrave, donating the proceeds of John's song, "The Luck of the Irish" to the Irish Civil Rights movement - would now constitute a criminal act, according to this new anti-terrorism bill.

In 1972, at a rally in New York organized by the U.S. Transport Workers Union, which was also attended by members of the IRA, John issued a statement saying that he was protesting "against the killing of Irish people in the Civil Rights Movement."

Under Clause 11 of the terrorism bill, he would have been liable to ten years' imprisonment. Clause 11 makes it an offense to "invite support for a proscribed organisation" or to "arrange", "manage," or "assist in arranging or managing" a meeting that a person knows is "to support a proscribed organisation", or "to further the activities of a proscribed organisation", or is "addressed by a person who belongs to or professes to belong to a proscribed organisation".

Redgrave makes the point that if John were alive today and gave money to any party that supports the struggle of the Kurds against Turkish oppression, or that protests against the Russian authorities' torture camps in Chechnya, he would be liable to prosecution. The bill also includes groups organizing protests against genetically modified crops, or to a group protesting against the dumping of nuclear waste. The bill is designed to catch all of these activities and to make them illegal.

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