R v Secretary of State for Home Affairs, ex p O'Brien
R v Secretary of State for Home Affairs ex parte O'Brien [1923] 2 KB 361 was a 1923 test case in English law that sought to have the internment and deportation of Irish nationalist sympathisers earlier that year declared legally invalid. In March 1923 between 80 and 100 suspected Irish nationalists in Britain were arrested by the police and sent to the Irish Free State under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920 (ROIA). One of the detainees, Art O'Brien, challenged his detention in a test case at the Divisional Court. The case eventually went to both the Court of Appeal and House of Lords, who decided that the internments were illegal because the Irish Free State was an independent nation and so British Acts of Parliament no longer applied to it. The decision effectively illegalised the ROIA and led to the immediate release of O'Brien and the other detained individuals, who sued the British Government for false imprisonment. The government pushed through the Restoration of Order in Ireland (Indemnity) Act 1923, which limited the money they had to pay the detainees, who eventually received £43,000. O'Brien himself was re-arrested and found guilty of sedition, and was imprisoned until 1924. Background Following the Irish War of Independence the Irish Free State was set up as an independent British Dominion covering most of the island of Ireland. After a brief civil war between the pro-Free State forces and members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who wanted any independent nation to cover the entire island the status of the Irish Free State was confirmed, and the IRA forced underground. The IRA had supporters in the United Kingdom, working openly as the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL), and the Free State government shared the names of these supporters with the British authorities, who kept a close eye on them. Between February and March they provided information on individuals that they said were part of widespread plots against the Irish Free State being prepared on British soil. On 11 March 1923 the police in Britain arrested IRA sympathisers living in Britain including Art O'Brien, the head of the ISDL. Sources disagree on numbers, giving either approximately eighty or approximately 100. The arrested men were placed on special trains and sent to Liverpool, where they were transferred to Dublin via a Royal Navy destroyer. It later transpired that not only were many British citizens (Art O'Brien himself had been born in England), at least six had never even been to Ireland before. The next day the arrests were publicly queried in the House of Commons, and a Labour backbencher Jack Jones started a debate on the subject in the afternoon. W.C. Bridgeman, the Home Secretary, said that he had directly ordered the police to arrest the ISDL members under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, and that he had consulted the Attorney General who considered it legal. Divisional Court A few days after the arrests the solicitors for one of the deported