It was pertinent that the trial of twelve prison officers who had savagely beaten McLaughlin and others in Hull was then underway.115 Wakefield’s IRA PRO contended that the Donegal man had been ‘singled out by the prison staff for special treatment because of his participation in the Hull prison riot, and because he was one of the key witnesses’.116 Tyrone’s Gerry Cunningham, similarly, was also moved from London’s tough Wandsworth prison to Wakefield ahead of the trial. He received ‘plenty of verbal’ in F Wing on arrival but was not physically assaulted.117 The rare participation of IRA witnesses in a civil trial was cited as an explanation of the exceptional heavy security surrounding the sessions in York.118 The stakes were high for all concerned. Mary McLaughlin, in a November 1978 interview recorded in Birmingham, claimed that the failure to convict staff for their actions following the Hull riot ‘might lead to another’.119
Numerous Prison Officers were committed for trial at York Crown Court on 31 August 1978 to answer charges arising from one of the most important and destructive riots in modern British history.120 Ray McLaughlin gave evidence on 25 January 1979, an ideologically challenging task for an Irish republican, who tended and were at times required under pain of Óglaigh na hÉireann sanction, to withhold personal recognition of the judicial competency of such forums.121 Solidarity was expressed by other IRA men in Albany who, when ‘on the blanket’, withdrew their ‘co-operation’ from attending prison staff.122 This oppositional stance placed an onus on their jailers to mediate the permanently unequal relationship vis à vis captors and captives, either within their own immediate terms, or those they deemed permissible by superiors. A robust equilibrium was thus established by the IRA in Albany whereby public and politically essential compromises in York were not only justified by the objective of achieving a higher objective, but were materially counterbalanced by harmful sacrifice within the intensely private Segregation ‘Punishment’ Block.
Whereas Shane Paul O’Doherty and a small number of IRA men had resorted to the blanket in England in previous years, the concerted co-operation of the Albany group marked a departure in scale and policy.123 For pragmatic reasons, not least for clarity of key issues and the efficacy of republican propaganda, a blanket protest in Wormwood Scrubs was presented as an escalation of that underway in Albany. Mick Murray, who had just completed two weeks in solitary, joined Punter Bennett in refusing to wear prison clothes on 13 October.124 He was held in solitary for twenty-four hours a day in a cell painted completely white.125 The IRA in Wormwood Scrubs were irritated in the early part of the month when Paddy Mulryan was ghosted to Long Lartin and Eddie Byrne to Walton for alleged complicity in an escape attempt.126 Newry man Byrne had been sent to Wormwood Scrubs in late 1978 from which he had come very close to liberating himself from two years earlier. He was placed in segregation and had his arm in a sling arising from an assault. Byrne was reputed to be ‘refusing visits because of conditions there and threats against him and his wife by screws’.127 An American Congressman who made overtures to the Home Office regarding Byrne’s treatment was informed that the Irishman’s ‘behaviour since conviction has been poor … [and involved] many offences against prison discipline’.128
The PAC offered direct support while campaigning politically at a strategic level. The 26 November 1978 commemoration of the Manchester Martyrs in London was identified as an opportunity to reiterate public backing for the interlinked demands of political status, amnesty and a British military withdrawal from Ireland.129 An impressive turn out of 5,000 was achieved as most of the main leftist and union groups who had supported the July demonstration once again took to the streets. Chairman Peter Turton of the PAC called for a minute’s silence ‘for all the Irish political prisoners who have died in British jails’. Kevin Colfer of Sinn Féin (Britain) read a message from the Albany IRA men.130 Ironically, the three ‘martyrs’ executed in Manchester in November 1867 had been convicted of taking part in the successful springing of two high-ranking Fenians from a prison van. The memorial in Moston Cemetery was the heart of republican events in Manchester in the 1970s and 1980s.131 Marx, in fact, had organized a major public meeting in London seeking a stay in the execution of the doomed Fenians.132 Among those who attended Moston every Easter were leftists who appreciated that an Irish Fenian living in Britain, John Connell, had written the words to the socialist anthem ‘The Red Flag’.133
Baker, Guilfoyle and the two Cunninghams in Albany were kept in bare cells for twenty-three to twenty-four hours a day. Refusal to ‘slop out’ ensured that the staff regularly hosed them and their cells down in an ostensible and certainly robust attempt to improve sanitation. Infrequent escorts to the toilet obliged the men to dispose of human waste through the windows and, even if demeaning, the spreading of disinfectant in their cells was probably beneficial.134 Normal bedding was withdrawn and replaced with hard boards, provided only at night, covering a concrete base. Deprived of blankets during the day, the men had to wrap themselves in prison towels. Protesting prisoners were generally entitled to attend the chapel, but this fleeting relief from a tedious, fetid and claustrophobic routine was prevented by the authorities who alleged they had been disruptive. The repudiation of this allegation by chaplain Fr. Parry proved insufficient to secure the restoration of access. Although offered alternate religious services in a specially designated cell, the four avoided setting a precedent that was tantamount to a major compromise of principle.135 The Home Office, for its part, repeated in November 1978 that restrictions on attending Mass arose ‘because their behaviour has threatened the good order of the establishment’.136
A Home Office briefing document prepared ahead of the 27 November 1978 visit of Taoiseach Lynch to London misrepresented England’s ‘blanket protest’ situation as if it had arisen from a minor grievance by men with no political formation or aspirations:
Albany prison, on the Isle of Wight, has been particularly troubled in recent months by protests from Irish Republican prisoners. The point of contention has been the specially supervised visiting conditions applied in the interests of security to certain prisoners who present very high security risks. Not all Republican prisoners are subject to such visiting procedures, nor are all prisoners to whom the procedures apply Irish Republican prisoners. Certain Republican prisoners in Albany, however, have been protesting actively against the visiting arrangements since [25] April.
The protest started with a refusal by those concerned to work. Since then, they have also refused to go into the normal living accommodation in the prison, and, for certain periods, refused to collect their food, refused to use the normal sanitary facilities (a number of them have thrown the contents of their chamber pots at prison staff and over the floor of their cells)
