href="#ulink_100ccb98-8144-5154-ac2b-ff6ce6de691d">53 Statements of support from the PAC and the IRA prisoners in Wakefield were as appreciative as ever, even if opportunities to reach receptive audiences were steadily diminishing.54
An Cumann Cabhrach, the charity that assisted with the welfare of prisoner’s dependents, continued to receive funds from its international associates, which in February 1978 included the Celtic Club of Melbourne, Australia, and Na Fianna Éireann (NFE) in San Francisco, California. Income of the level that had preceded the Birmingham bombs of 1974 was no longer available from UK sources, although newspaper sales and discreet donations continued.55 The international pro-prisoner networks contained elements with multiple lines of communication to the Republican Movement. The Cathal Brugha Slua of NFE, San Francisco, did not come under the umbrella of the Dublin HQ, yet produced republican activist Christina Reid, one of the IRA linked ‘Boston Three’ in 1990. She was an acquaintance of San Francisco-born IRA member Liam Quinn, who was jailed in Ireland and extradited from America to England in 1986.56
The task facing Sinn Féin and An Cumann Cabhrach was complicated by unanticipated developments in England and Ireland. The closure of Leicester Special Unit on 28 February 1978 created a new challenge in that two prominent Irish prisoners, Hugh ‘Hughie’ Doherty and Eddie Butler, were sent on a protracted tour of ‘local’ jails, where they were held in solitary confinement pending the refurbishment in Leicester. In February 1977 the men had received multiple life sentences with a thirty-year minimum, which the trial judge retrospectively wished to amend to ‘natural life’.57 Doherty ultimately spent two years in solitary confinement in Durham, where he was initially denied access to his personal books owing to the theoretically temporary nature of his stay.58 Leicester SSU did not reopen until 26 February 1980. Parkhurst Special Unit, the only other structure in England deemed suitable for the men, was not only full but contained Harry Duggan, Brendan Dowd and Joe O’Connell, all of whom the Home Office wished to separate from their former associates.59 The Clareman noted: ‘They obviously didn’t want the four of us [IRA co-defendants] together. It would be too political … too much of a statement’.60 Following a very rare escape, Parkhurst SSU had undergone a security upgrade between 26 November 1976 and 12 April 1977, which included the construction of an additional wall as well as an electrified inner fence. Whereas Harry Roberts had once planned an escape using bolt cutters smuggled into the prison by his Irish mother, a much greater degree of preparation was necessary following the additional security investment.61
Sinn Féin and the UTOM attempted to keep such matters in the news by picketing Winson Green (Birmingham), Leicester and Gartree in the months ahead, but made little headway in the context of other events.62 The POW Department of Sinn Féin claimed in 1980 that Doherty and Butler were ‘outstanding cases of victimisation’ in the English SSUs.63 Dowd was equally meritorious. Between August 1976 and June 1980 the Kerryman was in Bristol, Albany, Wandsworth, Armley, Strangeways, Parkhurst and Winchester for periods of two to three months. Frequent movement between solitary confinement cells induced disorientation, weight loss, hair loss and impaired vision. Republicans attributed the unusually harsh treatment to Dowd’s centrality to the appeals of the ‘Guildford Four’ and ‘Maguire Seven’, who were unjustly jailed for the actions of his London ASU. He was moved into the Leicester SSU in June 1980.64 Dowd was known to be a prominent IRA member, a former O/C in London and, from 1975, as ‘Dennis Power’, a disguise he used while living in Manchester.65
Prison Department scrutiny of Doherty and Butler in Leicester prior to its renovation probably derived from their knowledge that the men had explored various means of escape, which evidently inspired the improvement of the complex. The ‘Balcombe Street’ group, when on remand in Brixton following their televised arrest in December 1975, had been moved to Wandsworth when a criminal informer betrayed their plan to use smuggled explosives to blast through a toilet block wall to access a point where they could escape to freedom.66 Ironically, Brixton and Wormwood Scrubs were listed on targeting documentation found in a safe house used by the IRA and ASU at the time of their arrest.67 On arriving into Leicester’s cramped unit following sentencing and allocation, Butler, closely followed by Doherty, encountered tensions with several English occupants, and one in particular. High-profile prisoners such as John McVicar, Johnny Joyce and Freddie Sewell did not welcome the new arrivals, and Butler had ‘a bit of an altercation’ with an Englishman. This did not flare into a violent confrontation, however, a critical factor, as the IRA men had discussed ‘doing’ the main protagonist under such circumstances, regardless of consequences.68 The practise devised by Martin Coughlan, Martin Brady, Roy Walsh, Vince Donnelly, Billy Armstrong and other life-sentenced IRA men in 1970s’ England was to consistently retaliate with great force in order to deter opportunist attacks on isolated comrades.
On receiving an unsubtle warning from the two IRA men in the small TV room, the irritable Englishmen gradually adapted to their presence. Scope for assertion was boosted by the knowledge that their associates in Parkhurst were not facing significant threat and that the IRA throughout the Dispersal System were forming ad hoc alliances.69 Following McVicar’s release, two of the remaining Englishmen in the Leicester Unit were invited to participate in an escape for which one subsequently offered to furnish firearms. This was declined by Doherty, who knew that ‘dummy runs’ were being conducted nearby in preparation for moving a hoist adjacent to the wall. The specialised equipment was capable of lifting four men over an inner wall and the forty-foot perimeter boundary. There seemed to be no justification for intimidating unarmed staff with weaponry. However, the two Irishmen were ‘ghosted’ within days of involving others and they divined from the sudden decision to construct a roof over the small yard attached to the ‘Submarine’ that they had once again been thwarted by human agency.70
Doherty was held in a large but freezing cell in Durham where he jogged and slept in his clothes to keep warm during the cold Yorkshire winter. Beatings were common in the Segregation Block, and Doherty received his first of many in England when he refused to leave the yard when the stipulated daily period of one hour was abruptly cut short:
I seen the screw hitting the bell and I thought, “oh fuck, they’re going to come to get me”. I just grabbed the screw and let him have it and then he just collapsed. The next thing they just came in … all I could hear was Winney [McGee] shouting they’re killing me. No one seen it like, there were that many of them. I was down and they were all on top of me and they were punching and kicking each other but Winney got over the fence to help me. I got dragged into the strip cell and you’d be bollock naked for a few days and then up on adjudication and the usual … You’d be asked for your name and number. You’d just look at them. The Governor says, “I was in the RAF and I remember my number” and I says to him, “what is it?” He was absolutely rabid and then the penny dropped … I was dragged out again.71
After months of tedious application, Doherty was permitted access to the main prison library
