aspects of the black struggle.93
Such deep foundations underlay the spirit of cooperation divined in the attempted Wormwood Scrubs breakout of 7 October 1978. A search of Mulyran’s cell on the night of the planned escape uncovered incriminating contraband. A manuscript map of D Wing, scale drawings of keys, pages extracted from a street directory showing the Wormwood Scrubs neighbourhood and a stolen driving license were found inside his record player.94 The London court clearly accepted that Smith and the three IRA men had received the assistance of Gillespie in planning to escape. However, no ‘proceedings’ were initiated against the group in view of the ‘length of the sentences they are serving’.95 It emerged that a person acting on Mulryan’s behalf had sent a telegram to Gillespie urging postponement of the bid, although this was evidently not received. Judge Michael Argyle sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment on 11 January 1980 despite his unverified claim to have been subjected to ‘veiled threats’ from the republicans.96 The trial occurred after a long interval and the time lag, coupled with the minimal attempt to bring charges, facilitated the Prison Department by downplaying the seriousness of an escape conspiracy of potentially major repercussions. Any successful collaboration between IRA Category A prisoners, politicized black prisoners and resourceful British organized criminals was a dire prospect vis à vis the efficacy of the Dispersal System and anti-republican propaganda. The Home Office must have noted that October 1978 was a month in which the IRA prisoners under their control were deeply implicated in rioting and viable escape plans. This was not the full extent of the republican challenge.
The Blanket Protest in England
The drama in Gartree prison temporarily overshadowed an historic development in Albany, Isle of Wight, where five IRA men commenced a blanket protest on 8 October 1978.97 If the first major effort of its kind by the IRA in England since the 1940s, the methodology, mentality and stated objectives were exactly the same as its precursors. Refusal to wear prison uniform was the standard republican demonstration against criminal categorization. The death in Ireland of Tommy Mullins on 2 November 1978 served to remind the general public of the centrality of such modes of protest within the IRA. Mullins had undertaken a fifteen-day hunger strike and blanket protest when he was a republican prisoner in Wormwood Scrubs during the War of Independence, 1919–21. He went on to become a founder member of Fianna Fáil and retired as General Secretary of the party as recently as 1973.98 In 1978 neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael, the two largest political parties in Ireland, wished to be reminded of their shared armed republican heritage, despite separate annual political pilgrimages to Bodenstown, Kildare, the home of the grave of Wolfe Tone, ‘father’ of the ideology.99
In the course of a ‘valedictory visit’ by Irish Embassy First Secretary Richard ‘Dick’ O’Brien, David Blunt of the Republic of Ireland Department (RID) of the FCO was alerted to his concern ‘with developments during the past few months in certain British prisons, especially HM Prison, Albany’. O’Brien demonstrated awareness that the ‘unrest’ on the Isle of Wight had been ‘simmering for a while before being escalated by the July demonstrations’. In October 1978 the main fear expressed by the First Secretary was ‘that we may be approaching an “H-Block” situation in this country’. A restricted digest of the meetings was passed to the Prison Department which rejected any justification of discrimination claims made by Irish prisoners in terms of either treatment or punishment.100
Albany had been at the centre of IRA complaints since April 1978 when visiting, and general penal conditions had deteriorated.101 In a statement worthy of greater import than was granted, republicans claimed that matters in the complex were ‘fast approaching those of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh’.102 Irish Category A men received half-hour visits in tiny rooms attended by four prison officers and a policewoman if female visitors or children were present. Liam Baker took exception to a particularly obnoxious policewoman and lost all remission in consequence of his engagement in protests.103 Britons, including Category A men, simultaneously enjoyed two-hour visits in a large hall with fifty tables and low-key staff supervision.104 The contrast was by no means academic. Ray McLaughlin was fined for kissing his wife Mary goodbye in June 1978 and Eddie O’Neill was docked forty-nine days remission for claiming that a dog handler had called him an ‘Irish bastard’ in the exercise yard. Most of the IRA prisoners and one Loyalist were sent to the Punishment Block, after which the much-persecuted McLaughlin was shifted to Wakefield and O’Neill to Gartree.105 ‘Ghostings’ were not isolated phenomena, and the universal withdrawal of facilities in Parkhurst due to industrial action by staff heightened tensions. The temporary closure of the prison’s once heavily protected workshops exacerbated an already fraught situation. By early December over 200 men in three of the four wings felt obliged to boycott the extremely poor quality sustenance on offer.106
In the aftermath of the July cell - smashing protest, the remaining IRA men in Albany were deprived of chamber pots in their cells and did not receive replacement furniture.107 Most declined to shave their beards from 18 July when informed that they would only be permitted to bathe only once per week.108 They were denied permission to attend weekly Mass on Sundays to limit communication with other prisoners, but were granted access to religious services on other days.109 This was ordinarily the responsibility of the Governor who under Prison Standing Orders was required to invoke Order 7A 3 (4) to disbar attendance. Circumstances determined that the option of rioting was impractical and a full-blown hunger strike was not warranted. Recourse to a protracted blanket-style protest on the core issue of repatriation was relatively appealing under the circumstances. Non-co-operation was the central concept. Strategic interests were addressed by IRA demands to be repatriated to their native country, while the initial cause of complaint against ‘forms of discrimination’ remained in focus.110
On 8 October 1978 Busty Cunningham, Tipp Guilfoyle, Tony Cunningham and Liam Baker demanded repatriation to Irish prisons where, despite the gruelling protest in the H-Blocks, their status as political prisoners would be much more defined. Family visits were generally less fraught in either of the two Irish jurisdictions than in England for prisoners who were not on protest. That fact that Baker had settled in Southampton and was married to a devoted Englishwoman was regarded as immaterial in view of the political context.111 Ray McLaughlin had only just emerged from a unilateral blanket protest in Wakefield’s F Wing and was incapable of resuming the tactic in support of Albany comrades, owing to what the PAC described as ‘severe psychological disorientation’.112 The Leeds branch of UTOM protested on his behalf outside the prison every Sunday. McLaughlin grew ill in Wakefield and had trouble with balance and speech when released to the wings.113 In retrospect, the militant Irishman highlighted the typically ‘bad communications’ on the planning stages of the blanket protest, which may have altered the situation in
