– if one went down to the block we all went down to the block. We made sure they had company … They wouldn’t drive you crazy in solitary when you were downstairs … As our prisoners were coming in they were becoming more educated. Looking at our rights in jail, our human rights, fellows sat down over the years, passed tests … They seen we were educated and we were using the system for our own advantage … So we started building friendships with the gangsters and the robbers. We got on with them. Ninety per cent of them got on with us. They were good towards us … You got the odd screws that upped the tempo, to stir up trouble.164
His co-accused, Armstrong, noted: ‘There were two sorts of screws: the ones who were frightened of you, and the ones that pretended to like you. But at the end of the day they bottled out from fear that you would kill one of them before they got to you. The screws often set us up for other prisoners, but at the end of the day they hadn’t really the bottle for it’.165 Leading IRA member Brian Keenan reflected:
The screws were in no doubt that the IRA people, if it was necessary, wouldn’t hesitate to kill them, and I think that that type of common position had been created over a long period of time with IRA prisoners. And the screws knew how far they could go with this and by and large we just got on with our time and the only priorities we ever had were our families and escape attempts. Outside of that you just done time in the best you could.’166
Increasingly, prisoners utilized their growing numbers in English jails to form loose groupings represented by a PRO. Isolation in the Dispersal System, a comparatively minor numerical presence on the wings, and detachment from command structures in Ireland negated the functionality of an appointed O/C. Moreover, the very factors that militated against the selection of O/Cs ensured that the Governors could readily deny prospective leaders the mobility they needed to adequately function. Republicans in English prisons devised more reliable means of communication between each other and the outside world. This enabled the men to marshal their new strengths and experience towards significant, co-ordinated action.
The first major statement highlighted by the Republican Movement in 1978 originated in Wakefield in February. Irish prisoners alleged a ‘high level conspiracy by the Governor and his goons to ill-treat and intimidate the POWs’ and named ‘Big’ Mick Murray, Jimmy Ashe, Paul Norney and Billy Armstrong as having been ‘placed in the control unit for various periods of time’. The claim that the Control Unit remained in operation contradicted Government assertions that it had been closed in 1974. The IRA insisted ‘the only thing that had changed was its name, as they use the control unit as the [punishment] block and it is regarded by the screws as a place in which prisoners are broken … using sensory deprivation methods’.167 Immediate concerns were expressed for Norney who was then spending twenty-three hours a day in his cell and isolated during the remaining hour from other prisoners.168 His stay in the wing was extended by seven days when he defied his captors by running rather than walking around the small outside enclosure where he was permitted fresh air for up to one hour a day.169 The message contained an allusion to what had happened in Albany in 1976 and communicated the view that ‘all this harassment is to provoke us into taking some form of action’. Needling by the authorities placed the IRA in a quandary in that a mistimed unilateral protest could incite further repression and demoralization. Failing to act, however, risked giving the impression of conformity and weakness. Consequently, the February statement insisted: ‘We will take our stand when we are ready, not when the screws want to set us up’.170 Having outlined the short term issues in play at Wakefield, the prisoners solicited support for the ‘war for national liberation’ as ‘the best way’ to support political prisoners.171
The IRA PRO in Parkhurst published a greeting in Republican News in March 1978 which praised ‘revolutionary … and all those other prisoners at Parkhurst … without whose wonderful help the recent escape attempt would not have been possible’.172 This sincere, if somewhat inflammatory, statement testified to the existence of a small political cadre in the prison which claimed a role for itself within and without the Dispersal System. The propaganda potential of reaching a republican readership was clearly evident. Similarly, the Albany PRO drafted a letter in April which analysed the recent Workers’ Party/ Republican Clubs Ard Fheis. The ‘Officials’ were taken to task for claiming the mantle of 1916 Irish Citizen Army icon James Connolly whilst ‘feuding with progressive socialist groups and taking part in colonial run elections’.173 This referenced the violent struggle between the Official IRA and emergent INLA and IRSP which had claimed the life of Seamus Costello on 5 October 1977.174 Costello had been shot dead in Dublin by ex-England Official IRA prisoner Jim Flynn. Collective action permitted individual assertion and Fr. Pat Fell published a personal tribute to the assassinated Marie Drumm, shot in the Mater Hospital, Belfast by British-backed Loyalists on 28 October 1976.175 Criticizing opponents and praising comrades was very much the standard discourse of Sinn Féin cummain in Britain and Ireland. While such communications regularly emerged from Long Kesh, Portlaoise and Armagh, the input from England represented a bid for inclusion in the totality of prisoner affairs. Politically minded IRA men such as Eddie O’Neill, Ray McLaughlin, Gerry Cunningham, Paul Holmes, Ronnie McCartney, Joe O’Connell, Vince Donnelly, Tony Cunningham, Sean Campbell, Kevin Dunphy, Tony Madigan and Busty Cunningham were not easily excluded.176
Visits to Albany were disrupted in February 1978 when staff contacted Irish families at short notice to cancel their pre-booked Visiting Orders. Only two Irish prisoners were permitted to have simultaneous visits, and staff employed what Sr. Clarke termed ‘a new trick’ in which they interrupted sessions, claiming that the space was required for another family who would otherwise forfeit their slot.177 The IRA men conferred in mid-February when the Board of Visitors refused to compromise on the running of ‘closed’ visits, but could not decide on a specific plan of action. Three voted for a roof top occupation and four for non-cooperation. IRA prisoners in Ireland generally followed the direction of an O/C who was advised by an Adjutant and Intelligence Officer and, at times, the external leadership. Republicans in Albany commenced a policy of ‘non-cooperation’ with prison staff in early April when ‘visiting and other conditions seriously worsened’.178 This was unusual in that April 1978 witnessed the announcement of a Civil Service Pay Settlement that ended staff protests.179
Recourse to a more concerted protest followed the failure of a formal overture by Ray McLaughlin, via his solicitor Alastair Logan and Joan Maynard MP, to the House of Commons. Maynard’s question on visits at Albany and the Dispersal System elicited the disingenuous claim from the Home Office that the IRA were not subject to discrimination. Home Office denials and Board of Visitor intransigence set the scene for a confrontation.180 Indeed, Maynard’s methodical probing of the Home Office in June 1978 had revealed that Category A IRA prisoners were obliged to accept untypical visiting conditions explained in vague terms of ‘security reasons’.181 Logan revealed that the main proposal by Governor Lister to defuse the situation in April was to remove one of the two wall-to-wall
