as they were assembling a cache of escape equipment that was neither readily utilisable nor, in all probability, securable from discovery if major protests commenced. IRA comrades asked Donnelly upon arrival to abandon his hunger strike owing to such ‘other developments’. The jail contained Ray McLaughlin, Tony Clarke, Michael Reilly, Sean Hayes and the innocent Paddy Armstrong on C Wing. Paul Norney, Jimmy Ashe and Mick Murray were on D Wing while Joe Duffy (aka Michael/ Joe Mooney) and Billy Armstrong were on A Wing. Murray had just emerged from sixty days in F Wing for allegedly assaulting a prison officer whom he deemed had been unacceptably confrontational. The Dubliner had difficulty speaking after spending two months in silence.218 F Wing windows comprised eighteen three-inch square blocks of semi-opaque glass set two feet into the wall at a height of seven feet. Two sets of bars covered the interior of the window and a wire mesh its exterior.219
Much of the escape kit, including two ‘shank’ knives and lengths of roping made from cloth material, was discovered in the jail on 2 July. Six of the ten IRA prisoners were punished with one month’s loss of privileges and loss of pay. The search was inspired by the discovery of wax traces on a ‘pass key’ belonging to a Prison Officer who had been on holiday, a find of enormous significance in that the bearer of a complete key could move between different parts of the complex.220 On 3 July, Armstrong and Donnelly were ghosted to Strangeways and Reilly and Hayes to Armley, Leeds. Reilly’s wife and family had travelled that day from Birmingham to see him in Wakefield. Donnelly had recently been prevented from receiving a visit from Frank Maguire MP and thereby lost an opportunity to confer on the wider situation.221 McLaughlin and Clarke were sent to Durham. The other IRA men did what they could to participate in events they knew to be imminent, but their contribution was necessarily minimal due to close confinement. Murray was returned to F Wing where, despite an initial sentence of fifty-six days’ segregation, he was still held seventeen months later.222 Ashe and Norney, who was already in ‘patches’ due to his escape attempt from Wormwood Scrubs, remained in solitary.223 Donnelly, Hayes and Armstrong received their own E List designations arising from the incident.224 Visitors to republican prisoners in several jails on 5 July were informed that a co-ordinated protest was planned in support of political status, repatriation and improved visiting conditions. The demands were restated in a statement from the Gartree PRO in the aftermath of the protest.225 News from the prisons prompted the creation of an ad hoc Irish Political Prisoners Support Group to spearhead demonstrations in London. The anticipated incidents commenced that night in Albany when republicans vandalized cell furniture.226
On 6 July, IRA prisoners in Long Lartin, Wakefield, Wormwood Scrubs and Parkhurst refused meals, although it was evident despite this impressive co-ordination that no major hunger strike had been initiated.227 Seven prisoners in Albany, who were already being held in the Segregation Unit, aka ‘Punishment Block’, were charged with ‘smashing their cells’.228 This entailed throwing chamber pots into the corridor, breaking furniture and, in some cases, gouging plaster from the walls. Loyalist Alex Brown, one of the group who attempted to bomb ‘Biddy Mulligan’s’ pub, joined the IRA - led strike and was beaten by staff for this courageous act of identification.229 Subjected to further restrictions on access to sanitation, attendance at religious services and visits, the republicans progressed along a path of confrontation that resulted in a full blown ‘blanket protest’ in October.230 The Prison Department disdained the ‘demonstration’, which was officially regarded in a cold, decontextualized manner as a refusal ‘to use the normal sanitary facilities’ resulting in the fouling of the landing floor and several staff members. Those responsible were reported as ‘choosing not to wear prison clothes for part of the time’.231
While there was ongoing concern for those subjected to the F Wing regime, it was the ‘no wash’ of Long Kesh which inspired the selected mode and rhetoric of the 6 July fracas in the House of Commons. Two Socialist Worker’s Party activists threw bags of horse manure from the public gallery onto the MPs sitting below whilst shouting questions about conditions in Long Kesh. The business of Parliament halted while the benches were hastily cleaned and the splattered MPs refreshed.232 One of the protesters was Yana Mintoff, daughter of Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff. The second was Irishman John MacSherry, who lived in London.233 Long Kesh and ‘solidarity with the H-Blocks’ was also the declared primary spur of IRA prisoner action in Gartee the following day.234
Gartree, 7 July 1978
The most serious Dispersal System incident occurred in Gartree where, on the morning of 7 July, Eddie O’Neill, Paul Holmes, Jerry Mealy, Ronnie McCartney, Phil Sheridan, Martin Brady, Brian McLaughlin and Paul Hill made it to the rooftop by the unconventional means of using John McCluskey as a human ladder.235 Aware that the staff expected something to occur, the chance to congregate in the yard and seize the initiative was not passed up. McCartney recalled: ‘We thought about the boys on the blanket and the women in Armagh … So the next day out on the yard we said: “Right, let’s hit the roof”’.236 Brady recalled: ‘McCluskey, a big giant … says, “I’ll push you up”’ and shoved the impressed Belfastman upwards ‘about twelve feet’.237 McCluskey, tall and powerfully built, boosted the others onto a low roof but could not follow before guard dogs approached at speed. O’Neill regretted that his ‘Uxbridge Eight’ co-accused had been ‘sacrificed’, but realised there was no other way of getting so many IRA men into position in the time available. McCluskey knew in theory how to neutralize trained guard dogs and was aware that a minor error in his unpractised technique would lead to a savaging. However, against all expectations, the trained dogs loosed on him were wary of approaching aggressively and he was not seriously hurt before being hauled off to segregation.238 Access to the upper roof of the prison services block was quickly gained from the lower level reached from the yard. Loyalist prisoner Sammy Carson, another ‘Mulligan’s Bar’ attempted pub bomber, tossed the republicans useful materials from his cell window.239 Banners and painted graffiti were displayed which referenced IRA demands for repatriation and political status, as well as affinity with the H-Block campaign.240 Slogans visible from the street stated ‘End H-BLOCK TORTURE’, ‘P.O.W. STATUS’, ‘SOLIDARITY’, ‘REPATRIATION’ and ‘H-BLOCK’.241 O’Neill had stitched a large Irish Tricolour together from three pieces of sheeting. This was held aloft by one of the protesters whilst showing the leftist revolutionary clenched fist. It was intended, from the outset, to remain on the roof until the London rally planned for 9 July had taken place. Two of the men donned blankets to visually bolster the connection with Long Kesh.242
