against prison discipline, the offenders have been dealt with by the normal disciplinary procedures as any other prisoner behaving similarly would have been.137
Further discretionary pressure on the protesters was applied by means of restricting access to a newspaper to just one copy every two weeks. No personal property was allowed in the cells and mail deliveries were restricted to family members. Letters were removed by staff once they had been read and a single book a week was permitted on loan from the prison library.138 The authorities appeared confident of breaking the resolve of the Albany men to persevere and elected not to separate them by transfers or short-term lie-downs, an arguably justifiable invocation of Rule 43.
Relocating militants was not invariably without repercussions. Punter Bennett, however, was sent from Wormwood Scrubs to Strangeways to separate him from the inflexible Mick Murray. This shift had the knock on effect of prompting the transfer of Eddie Butler from Strangeways to Winson Green. The Castleconnell, County Limerick man had been held in solitary confinement since the temporary closure of Leicester Special Unit in February 1978, and it appeared as if greater utilization of the local jails under Rule 43 was increasingly common.139 In practical terms this ensured that Butler was held in isolation and subject to oppressive visiting conditions. Two ‘closed’ visits in the summer of 1978 and 1979 upset his family and matters only marginally improved from 8 May 1980 following the re-opening of Leicester SSU.140 Murray was isolated in Wormwood Scrubs by virtue of being segregated when on his personal protest. He was by no means the only IRA man capable or willing to act. Jerry Mealy was also held in the London jail’s solitary cells following transfer from Gartree in the aftermath of the October 1978 riot. In early December 1978 Mealy succeeded in entering a prison office with an iron bar and ‘completely demolished everything possible within reach before voluntarily handing the iron bar back to his guards’. Sinn Féin reported that Mealy ‘informed his guards that his action (demolition job) was his way of demonstrating his ‘solidarity’ with those picketing outside on behalf of all Irish POWs’.141 The unwritten IRA policy of avoiding direct physical attacks on prison staff in England was then observed. Mealy had no qualms about utilizing force if necessary. He had violently resisted arrest when grappled by police in 1973 and managed to punch the then Conservative Home Secretary Robert Carr during a prison visit.142
The IRA men in Wakefield wished to express support for Martin Brady, who was also languishing in segregation arising from the Gartree riot. As intended, the bizarre environment inherited from the F Wing’s days as England’s most infamous ‘Control Unit’ disconcerted the Belfastman:
You couldn’t walk over that white line [in the yard]. If you walked over the line, you were sent in. ‘Right, Brady, away you go’. That happened me many a time … You were walking in a circle, not thinking, you walked into someone else’s exercise yard. They think you are trying to do something. ‘Right, let’s go here’. It was a strict regime there. They came down heavy … You weren’t allowed cigarettes, you weren’t allowed read magazines and you weren’t allowed to get anything in. You were only allowed one letter a week … they took the bed off you at 8 a.m. until
7 p.m. at night. So you had nothing in your cell except a chair … When you got up you had your breakfast. Slopped out and did your exercises – press-ups etc. In the morning – the pipe was along the wall – in the winter it was freezing, in the summer it was boiling, but we got through that all right.143
The decision was taken that the republicans on the wings would engineer the means to join Brady in the block. On Christmas Day, 25 December 1978, Tony Clarke and Ray McLaughlin threatened to smash the windows of a staff office in C Wing before their unconventional wish was entertained. Similarly, Vince Donnelly, pulled the tie from a warder’s uniform in D Wing to provide a minimal pretext for joining his comrades. The largely peaceful demonstration had an unexpected sequel in that the strange behaviour of the IRA prisoners sparked a security operation in the Wakefield vicinity.144
The experience of most Irish republicans in English jails continued to be anomalous. In late 1978 a petition was handed into the British Embassy in Dublin calling for the release of Fr. Pat Fell on the grounds that he had been eligible for parole in April 1977. Signatories included Rev. Michael Diden, President of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, forty staff members and 500 students. Fr. Fell had been assistant priest at the All Souls’ Church in Coventry and was sentenced to twelve years for his activities as a senior IRA member in the sector. His more junior co-defendant, Frank Stagg, had died on hunger strike in Wakefield in February 1976.145 The FCO monitored the situation and offered to assist the British Embassy in Dublin ‘on how to react to enquiries about the petition’.146
Fr. Fell was ultimately freed in July 1981, by which time his case at Strasbourg was progressing slowly towards the victory achieved three years later.147 His profile had been relatively high in pro-republican sectors due to his clerical background and the incorrect acceptance by many that he was innocent. In New York, Michael Sheehan, columnist in the Clan na Gael paper Irish World, referenced his personal involvement in the campaign to emancipate IRA prisoners held in England in the mid-1940s. From September 1976, he interested himself in the fate of Fr. Fell and the privations endured by his English family. The story was subsequently front-page news.148 Action had been required in London when Frank Maguire MP lobbied the Home Office on behalf of Bishop Thomas Joseph Drury of Corpus Christi, Texas who wished to visit Fr. Fell on 25 August 1978. Drury was en route to Rome and staying with Sr. Clarke whom, it was noted, was ‘well known to P3 for her attempts to communicate with and visit IRA prisoners’. While Albany’s Catholic Chaplain, Fr. Parry, raised no objection, his colleague, Fr. Masterson, an acquaintance of the bishop, advised ‘he should not be permitted to visit Fell. He was apparently very pro-IRA, belonged to an American organization known as the [Ancient Order of] Hibernians, and had made some dangerous statements about the IRA in the American press’.149 Rev. Cosmas Korb, OFM, a New York associate of Sr. Clarke, had launched a letter-writing campaign on behalf of the priest in December 1979.150 Fr. Fell already had in excess of 300 contacts listed in his prison ‘letter-sheets’.151
The visit of Taoiseach Lynch to Prime Minister Callaghan in London on 27 November 1978 inspired a round of consultations between the Republic of Ireland Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Prison Department of the Home Office. Although occasioned by the necessity of face-to-face dialogue on the European Monetary System, it was appreciated that Lynch intended to ‘bring up’ the ‘treatment of Irish prisoners in Great Britain’.152 The British Embassy in Dublin had advised on 9 November that Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs had been challenged by Neil Blaney TD if he was ‘aware that Irish political prisoners in British jails are still being held in solitary confinement under conditions which are an infringement of the Convention on Human Rights’. Swift of the DFA advised British diplomats that the question would be addressed in the Dáil on 15 November. This, coupled with ongoing queries emanating from the Irish Embassy in London, all but ensured Lynch was bound to request information in London.153
