that they had reason to believe was arriving into Durham. Both took pains to dress and groom themselves as well as circumstances permitted. They guarded each other during alternate bathing sessions and countered the affront of strip-searching by nonchalantly discarding clothing before being ordered to disrobe. They only spoke Irish during exercise time on the yard and insisted on getting outside for the allotted time in virtually all weather conditions. Such stratagems irritated and confused staff, who at times encouraged disturbed prisoners to create trouble with the duo as a means of being shifted off a secure wing where the Irishwomen were required to remain. Friendly and fair-minded staff were either reprimanded or reassigned. Other factors were totally beyond the control of the Gillespies, not least disruptive cell shifts every month for eight years.285
NOTES
1.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
2.Coggan and Walker, Deaths in British prisons, p. 209.
3.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
4.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
5.Times, 29 July 1978. See ‘Apologies to prison medical service doctors’ in British Medical Journal, 9 August 1980, p. 463.
6.Prison Service Journal cited in Times, 20 November 1972. Many held in C Wing spent time in Broadmoor and Rampton. Wakefield, Thousand days, pp. 16–17. R Watson Lee, Chairman of the Board of Visitors, HMP Parkhurst, described C Wing as being ‘pretty squalid’ to Justice May who had visited four days previously. According to Lee: ‘There are about 600 men in the prison system who should be in mental hospitals. This does not include the severely disordered psychopaths who are the lot of the Prison Service. We have about thirty prisoners who are mad and many others who are severely disturbed’. R Watson Lee to Justice May, 15 December 1978, NAE, HO 263/ 319.
7.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
8.Times, 29 July 1978.
9.Bronson, Bronson 2, p. 275. Doug Wakefield was sent to the wing in September 1977 when there was an average of twenty inmates. He was convicted of killing a fellow prisoner in September 1978. Wakefield recalled: ‘C Wing is ostensibly a psychiatric unit for prisoners who are in need of urgent and qualified help’. Wakefield, Thousand days, p. 17. See also Hill, Stolen years, p. 210.
10.Cited in FRFI, June 1984, p. 12.
11.See World Medicine, 9 September 1978 cited in Republican News, 13 November 1978.
12.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
13.Hill, Stolen years, p. 199.
14.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
15.Cited in Sunday Times, 22 October 1978. William Mullen examined allegations that Albany prison was being used for experimentation with drugs due to overcrowding. He cited Dr. McCleery’s revelations and found that the high tolerance of prisoners resulted in the administration of doses that rendered the recipients almost catatonic. Chicago Tribune, 19 November 1978. The NIO subsequently admitted that Largactil was being used in the H-Blocks, allegedly with permission of the prisoners being dosed. Irish Democrat, March 1979. See also Cohen and Taylor, Prison secrets, pp. 71–2. For medical evidence of primary and secondary effects of Largactil see BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press, British National Formulary, March 2011 (London, 2011), p. 219.
16.Guardian, 23 October 1978.
17.Report on the work of the Prison Department, 1983, p. 58.
18.Irish Times, 7 October 1978. See Chicago Tribune, 6 October 1978. Prison historian Dick Callan noted that two prisoners were allowed liaise between A and D Wing in a bid to ‘stabilise’ the situation and that the three who visited Blake found him unharmed. Callan, Gartree, pp. 46–9. The Prison Department wrongly claimed in 1979 that the prisoners ‘rejected an offer to send two of their number to see’ Blake. Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 23.
19.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
20.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
21.‘John McCluskey part two: Gartree 1978’ in FRFI, February 1985, p. 14.
22.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
23.‘McCluskey part two: Gartree 1978’ in FRFI, February 1985, p. 14.
24.Times, 7 October 1978.
25.Callan, Gartree, pp. 48, 54–5.
26.Eddie O’Neill, 19 July 2007.
27.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
28.Hill, Stolen years, p. 201.
29.Times, 3 November 1978.
30.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
31.Times, 7 October 1978.
32.See Home Office Statement on the Background, Circumstances and Action Subsequently Taken relative to the Disturbance in D Wing at HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs on 31st August 1979; Together with the Report of an Inquiry by the Regional Director of South East Region of the Prison Department (London, 1982), Appendix 8. A Circular Instruction issued on 29 May 1979 cited Prison Rule 44 and Standing Order 3E to advise on tactical aspects of MUFTI utilization. Ibid., p. 62. The units comprised a ‘Section’ of five men under the command of a Senior Officer. The use of more than one ‘Section’ entailed the formation of a ‘Team’ under the command of a Principal Officer. Ibid. The decision to disband MUFTI units was taken in November 1988. Times, 22 November 1988.
