prisoners, he snatched momentary shouted exchanges with Ray McLaughlin, Tony Clark and Stevie Blake whenever they appeared within earshot. Doherty had moved in different IRA circles in Ireland and Britain but shared bonds of republican politics. The Dispersal System also fostered a sense of comradeship. Occasional brief conversations were possible with Ann and Eileen Gillespie, who spent most of their sentence after 1 March 1975 in Durham’s H Wing. The all - female facility was located in the vicinity of the ‘cage’ compound where prisoners being held in solitary confinement received exercise and fresh air.72 Such modest and unguarded acts of solidarity were invariably seized: ‘They would shout to you … and you would shout back’.73 All three possessed strong County Donegal connections, as did Stevie Blake. Winnie Coyle, an Irish-Glaswegian who later married Hugh Doherty, travelled from Annagrey, Donegal to visit him in Durham on 28 August 1978. She found that her fiancée had ‘got thin and small but he was in good spirits’.74 Doherty had hitherto declined visits in Durham to spare his family hardship and was involved in an altercation during his reunion with Coyle arising from the oppressive conditions imposed on ostensible security grounds. Having made his point he promptly ‘disappeared’ on a lie-down to Winson Green, obliging Harry Duggan and Joe O’Connell to seek his whereabouts through the prison grapevine.75
Eddie Butler was moved via Strangeways in Manchester to Winson Green in Birmingham, where unsuitable security facilities entailed a protracted stay in solitary confinement. On being returned to Leicester SSU with Brendan Dowd, the IRA men were initially joined by just two other life sentenced prisoners: Harry Roberts and Donald ‘Black Panther’ Neilson. Roberts fatally shot two plainclothes detectives in August 1966; the detectives had incorrectly believed he and his associates may have been involved in an escape attempt from Wormwood Scrubs. The men in the van were actually professional criminals preparing to commit an armed robbery. Roberts used skills obtained in the British Army in Malaysia to avoid capture for three months and claimed at trial that the military had also taught him how to kill in the course of a brutal counterinsurgency. A third policeman was shot dead during the same incident by John Duddy. Whereas Roberts, who had an Irish mother, was well disposed towards republicans, Neilson was far more guarded.76 Neilson had also belonged to the British Military and did National Service in Aden, Kenya and Cyprus. He received four life sentences in 1976 for a lethal criminal rampage.77 Proximity to exceptionally violent men, however, was not a bone of contention for IRA members, many of whom were viewed with equal opprobrium and accepted the reality of their imprisonment in England. Friction was inevitable in the close confines of a sealed area within an otherwise non-maximum security complex.78
It was immediately suspected that the Prison Department were testing tolerances of newly restrictive administration under which hobbies and facilities were withdrawn. All four promptly cooperated in ‘decorating’ the main office with several days’ worth of human waste for which they were locked down. The next step was a planned assault on the Governor and Chief Security Officer during their daily inspection. Neilson declined to take part and physically removed himself from the equation by using the Rule 43 ‘own protection’ protocol to ‘go behind the door’. The remaining three were surprised to be unlocked the following morning as it was patently obvious they intended to escalate their protest, even if Neilson had maintained silence. Instead, the Principal Officer approached them in the kitchenette and requested a one-hour postponement of any action to which they assented. Ultimately, the Governor and Chief Security Officer arrived with a reinforced but non-threatening complement of staff and offered to meet most of the demands which had been previously presented in the form of a list petition. Mutual self-interest enabled such acts of compromise and accommodation in SSUs, which would have been all but impossible on standard prison wings where numbers, crowd dynamics and regulations impinged.79
Ennui was a major threat to the psychological health of O’Connell, Duggan, et al in Parkhurst SSU, a detached two-storey building developed from the former ‘punishment block’.80 Irregular communications with republicans in England and Ireland were generally possible over time but insufficiently frequent to counteract the limitations stemming from spatial isolation. Maintaining morale was a constant battle at times when the ‘Long War’, as reported in the mass media, was failing to deliver the strategic dividends hoped for by armed republicans: ‘What kept you going was what was happening on the outside. For the first few years it was very quiet. It looked like the IRA campaign had been driven into the dust. The Roy Mason [‘conveyor belt’] situation and all that – that the IRA were being defeated. Then gradually the IRA reorganised, especially in the North leading up to Warrenpoint [in August 1979]’.81 By the early 1980s the IRA in English prisons had perfected local organization and communications to the point that they were formulating policy documents for consideration by the Army Council and Ard Comhairle.
Parkhurst escape attempt, 24 February 1978
An IRA escape attempt from Parkhurst’s A Wing at 7.15 p.m. on 24 February 1978 revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the grouping at the time. In this instance, friendly relations built up over time between the republicans and black prisoners proved instrumental. Whereas the IRA cells were searched once or twice daily, Category B prisoners received far fewer checks for contraband.82 Compton Finnlader, a black South African, allowed the Irishmen to cut a hole through the planking of his cell floor and then breach the outer wall over a period of almost six months.83 While the IRA and Sinn Féin had close connections to the armed MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) established by Nelson Mandela and the broader African National Congress to the extent of providing weapons training, direct assistance and specialist equipment, Finnlader was not imprisoned for political offences in England.84 Stanley knives were used to cut through the wooden floor of Finnlader’s cell, A4/ 30, where a cavity separated the bottom of the top-landing tier from the arched ceiling of the accommodation below. Andy Mulryan and Noel Gibson then worked on dislodging the brickwork of the wall. This painstaking methodology ensured that much less effort had to be made to conceal the progressive damage once the floor entryway was adequately disguised.85
Gibson was an exceptionally militant prisoner from the outset. Following arrest after the shooting of a plain-clothed policeman in Manchester on 1 July 1975, he was plunged into what he recalled as a ‘very emotive and charged atmosphere’, during which ‘everyone got a hiding. It was all part of the hysteria and excitement, and probably fear on their part as well’. His detention was not without incident: ‘When I was arrested I had two teeth knocked out, my nose was broken, I was hospitalized afterwards’.86 Walsh had been punished for attacking a staff member in Wormwood Scrubs on 26 June 1975, and then for joining two other IRA prisoners, Martin Coughlan and Stevie Blake, in a highly destructive roof-top protest on 14–15 November 1975. His BOV adjudication recorded the men had damaged ‘90 per cent of the roof tile on the east side of ‘D’ Hall and 100 per cent of the glass in the roof of the same wall’, in addition to considerable ancillary acts of sabotage. This entailed contravention of Rule 47 (11) as well as Rule 47 (7), (18) and (20).87 The London incidents pertained to the assertion of political status, whereas Walsh and his comrades intended to escape from Parkhurst.
Andy
