Did the equine VD, which now threatens the bloodstock industry in Ireland and Great Britain, originate in this country? PAMELA READHEAD reports on the history and financial repercussions of the disease that has swept the paddocks.

In the past few months, and in particular since the Ferenka dispute in Limerick, the Marine Port and General Workers Union has emerged as the media's No. 1 trade union bogeyman. But the truth behind the headlines is rarely as simple as the harassed subeditors would like to think. LIAM O'TOOLE analyses the recent history of the MPGWU and, in particular its 'troubled relations with the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

The appeal by an English girl and three Irishmen, currently being heard at the Old Bailey in London, 'says something most unpalatable about the attitudes of English courts to Irish people and their acquaintances'. John Shirley wrote the ITV documentary 18 Months to Balcombe Street, and is co-author of a Penguin on the English police, The Fall of Scotland Yard.

By JOHN SHIRLEY

An investigation into the Garda fingerrprint affair reveals the following disquieting results:

• The former Minister for Justice, Patrick Cooney, seriously misled the Dail on the matter, either knowingly or unknowingly.
• Several senior Garda officers were and possibly still are involved in a systematic cover-up of the 'mistaken' fingerprint identification.
• The 'mistake' in the affair was of such seriousness as to question the reliability and integrity of the entire Garda fingerprint section.

Short articles from the Magill File, October 1977

AN irritant in Anglo Irish relations at present is the personality of the British ambassador, Walter Haydon. Jack Lynch cannot abide the man, all because of an incident at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Garret FitzGerald has been reviled for excluding women from his shadow cabinet, but the fact is that it isn't his fault. He offered the Posts and Teleegraphs "shadow" to Joan Burke, who took 24 hours to think about it and then turned it down.

TWO MORNING newspapers have indulged in the ludicrous journalistic excercise of writing on the treatment of prisoners while being denied access to the prisoners themselves. Inevitably the reports were hopelessly biased and selective. Dave O'Connell, Vice President of Sinn Fein (Provisional), recently emerged from Portlaoise jail and has given us this first hand account of conditions there.

THE LABOUR Party is gearing itself for its bi-annual purge and as usual the target is what remains of the left wing. The Labour bosses, however, might just pause before completing their purge file and contemplate . the inclusion of one Brendan Halligan.

On the 80th Anniversary of the Petrograd Rising should we celebrate the Russian Revolution. By Paul Foot