induced and threatened into becoming an informer by the Special Branch when in custody following a raid on his east London apartment. Irish World, 9 October 1976. He was rearrested on 1 September 1977 on charges of ‘withholding information’ relating to ‘terrorist’ crime. Although bailed on surety of £5,000, he was required to have no contact with the IRSP. His associate, Harry Driver, was arrested in Kent and remanded in Maidstone Prison ahead of trial for possession of explosives. In early December 1977 Grimes was sentenced to three months imprisonment. Sr. Clarke, ‘Peter Grimes’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). He was rearrested in Golders Green under the PTA in May 1979 during investigations into the assassination of Airey Neave MP. Although released without charge, the NCCL provided the press with a 22 November 1978 statement made by Grimes in the presence of solicitor Harriet Harman in which he claimed to have been pressed to act as an informer. Guardian, 3 May 1979.
147.Irish Times, 10 May 1978. For the case of Fr. Pat Fell see Irish Times, 21 March 1981. See also PAC News, August/ September 1977 and Daily Telegraph, 30 April 1979.
148.Irish Post, 3 September 1983.
149.Prison Standing Orders (1977). See also Prior Report, II, p. 33.
150.Times, 15 May 1978.
151.HC Deb 25 January 1978 vol 942 c593W.
152.Irish Times, 16 May 1978.
153.Irish Times, 16 May 1978.
154.Report of the Independent Public Inquiry into Abuse and Torture of Irish Prisoners, Pamphlet, (Dublin, 1978). Judge E Bloch and lawyers Paul Bjkaerk and Juan Maria Bandres headed a panel which also comprised Yann Goulet, Uinseann Mac Eoin, Ken Quinn, Brendan O Cathaoir, Breandan O Cearbhaill and Dr. Donal McDermott. Ibid. In a 1980 interview ex-IRA Chief of Staff Sean Mac Stiofain claimed: ‘I regard our struggle in Ireland, the struggle of the Basque people, the struggle in Zimbabwe, in Southern Africa, in Southern America-anywhere in the world-as one struggle’. Quoted in FRFI, March/ April 1980.
155.IRIS, 26 May 1978, p. 2.
156.Deposition of Micheal MacLochlainn in Independent Public Inquiry, p. 10.
157.IRIS, 26 May 1978, p. 2.
158.J Williams review in Prison Service Journal, No. 3, New Series, January 1979, p. 17. Continental European oversight may have been more compelling had the IRA succeeded in assassinating Christopher Tugendhat, Britain’s EEC Commissioner, in December 1980. Irish World, 17 January 1981.
159.Williams review in Prison Service Journal, No. 3, New Series, January 1979, p. 17. See also Joe Sim, Medical power in prisons–The Prison Medical Service in England (London, 1990).
160.GD Scott and Paul Gendreau, ‘Psychiatric implications of sensory deprivation in a maximum security prison’ in Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 337–341.
161.See Armstrong to Wilson, 6 March 1979, Private Collection (Wilson). Best wishes were imparted ‘to your son Padraic [Wilson] and comrades on the Blanket. Let them know they are not forgotten’. Ibid.
162.IRIS, 28 April 1978, p. 3.
163.Armstrong to Wilson, 28 February 1978, Private Collection (Wilson). Visits of Cardinal O Fiaich to the H-Blocks were keenly followed. Armstrong to Wilson, 3 March 1980, Private Collection (Wilson).
164.Martin Brady, 10 April 2008. Paul Hill’s memoir included a blackly comic account of a viewing of ‘The Long Good Friday’ film in Parkhurst in which a fictional IRA unit in England is portrayed as taking on and ultimately besting a leading East End London gangster played by Bob Hoskins. This evidently ‘created a lot of tension between the IRA prisoners and the armed robbers and Cockneys’. Hill, Stolen years, p. 137. Hoskins was socially familiar with a number of London gangsters and attested to the good character of hitman John Bindon during his murder trial. Bindon, ironically, was reputed to have ‘contacts in the IRA’ and had gone on the run in Ireland when wanted for a gangland killing. ‘Starring John Bindon’, Granada TV, UTV, 15 February 2007. Bindon had a cameo role as an amphetamine dealing London gangster in the 1979 film ‘Quadrophenia’ based on the 1973 audio recording by ‘The Who’ rock band.
165.Billy Armstrong, ‘Fighting all the way’ in AP/RN, 22 February 2001.
166.Brian Keenan, 26 May 2007.
167.‘Wakefield letter’ in IRIS, 24 February 1978. Murray was charged with assaulting two prison officers and in addition to fifty-six days in F Wing lost five months remission of sentence. Ashe received fourteen days in the block after an attack by an English prisoner. Stevie Blake was returned to F Wing from a ‘lie-down’ in Durham before being moved on to Albany. PAC News, June 1978.
168.‘Wakefield letter’ in IRIS, 24 February 1978.
169.Sr. Clarke, ‘Paul Norney’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
170.‘Wakefield letter’ in IRIS, 24 February 1978.
171.‘Wakefield letter’ in IRIS, 24 February 1978.
172.Republican News, 25 March 1978.
173.Albany PRO to Editor, Republican News, 22 April 1978. They claimed that the Worker’s Party ‘have in fact rejected revolutionary politics and have gone up the blind alley of pragmatism in taking part in elections in both the Six Counties and the Free State. This must ultimately lead to further splits in their movement’. Although both harsh and prophetic, this condemnation was accompanied by an acknowledgement that the Officials contained ‘good individual socialists’, a rare accolade from Provisional prisoners. See Irish Voices, p. 152.
174.Lost Lives, p. 736.
175.Fr. Padraig Fell to Marie Drumm Memorial Committee in Republican News, 20 May 1978.
