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1.United Irishman, February 1978.
2.Minutes of Anglo-Irish Meeting, Iveagh House, Dublin, 5 May 1978, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (Belfast), CENT/1/7/6.
3.Irish World, 30 April 1977.
4.See Times, 8 and 14 November 1978.
5.See John Sutton, ‘PFF–the breakaway trade union’ in Nicki Jameson and Eric Allison, Strangeways, 1990, A serious disturbance (London, 1995), pp. 86–7. Sutton was a founder member of the putative Prison Force Federation (PFF) which was ‘born out of anger at the lack of representation for non-supervisory grade prison officers’ in 1979. The PFF’s attempt to split from the POA was obviated in 1980 by the parent union and conservative vested interests. Ibid.
6. Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978 (London, 1979), p. 11.
7. Daily Telegraph, 21 February 1979. The ‘average daily [prison] population’ in England and Wales in 1978 was an unprecedented 41,796. Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 3. 11,016 shared cells and 5,082 were held three to a cell. Ibid., p. 4.
8.See The Listener, 26 January 1978. See also Republican News, 11 March 1978 and Irish World, 28 January 1978.
9.Irish World, 21 January 1978.
10.Irish World, 28 January 1978.
11.See Airey Neave, They have their exits (London, 1953) and Saturday at MI9, The inside story of the underground escape lines in Europe in World War II (London, 1969).
12.Fr. Denis Faul and Fr. Raymond Murray, Ballykelly, RUC Special Branch Interrogation Centre, pamphlet ([1973]).
13.Dermot Keogh, Jack Lynch, A Biography (Dublin, 2008), p. 414. See also Pat Walsh, Irish Republicanism and Socialism, The politics of the Republican Movement 1905 to 1994 (Belfast, 1994), pp. 178–9.
14.See Angela Davis, If they come in the morning: Voices of resistance (New York, 1971) and http://www.biography.com/people/angela-davis-9267589.
15.See Ronald Hayman, Sartre: A biography (London, 1987).
16.Socialist Challenge, 2 March 1978.
17.Republican News, 11 March 1978. Litterick suffered a heart attack in March 1977 at a time when his comments on the Irish community of Birmingham being harassed under the PTA and description of Prince Phillip as a ‘useless, arrogant parasite’ was deemed to warrant police protection. Irish World, 26 March 1977.
18.See Alastair Logan to the Editor, Guardian, 25 March 1978.
19.Guardian, 27 July 1978.
20.Times, 26 March 1983.
21.Prior Report, I, p. 3. See also Prior Report, II, pp. 129–30.
22.Cited in Prior Report, I, p. 2.
23.Cited in Prior Report, I, p. 2.
24.Cited in Prior Report, II, p. 19.
25.Prior Report, I, p. 3.
26.Prior Report, II, p. 35. See also Prior Report, I, p. 3.
27.Irish Times, 10 May 1978.
28.Prior Report, I, p. 14.
29.Prior Report, II, p. 132.
30.Walmsley, Special Security Units, pp. 22–23.
31.Walmsley, Special Security Units, pp. 22–23.
32.Cited in Republican News, 11 February 1978.
33.Republican News, 11 February 1978 and EC Zeeman, ‘Catastrophe Theory’ in Scientific American, April 1976, pp. 65–83. Ray Mitchell of the Prison Service College and Dai Curtis of the Officers’ Training School were Wakefield-based members of the Prison Service Journal’s Review Committee. See PSJ, No. 33, New Series, January 1979, p. 17. University of Southampton sociologist Roy King, a member of the Parole Board for England and Wales, noted ‘it is no accident that the worst prison troubles in living memory have occurred in the dispersal prisons … extreme security actually provokes trouble’. Times, 14 March 1978.
34.See Edward O Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (New York, 1975) and Catherine Driscoll, ‘Sociobiology’ in The Standford Encylopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.standford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/sociobiology.
35.HC Deb 8 June 1978 vol 951 c207W.
36.Clarke to Kilbracken, 28 January 1978, MS draft letter, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Kilbracken renounced his British citizenship after Bloody Sunday in 1972. He was later in direct contact with leading Provisionals John Joe McGirl in Leitrim and Ruairi O’Bradaigh in Roscommon. Kilbracken condemned the death of Frank Stagg on hunger strike in 1976 and was persuaded by republicans to maintain his opposition to the PTA rather than resigning from the House of Lords. Saoirse, February 2012, p. 15. See also Irish Times, 25 November 1977.
37.Sunday Tribune, 27 May 1984.
38.Clarke to Kilbracken, 28 January 1978, MS draft letter, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Sr. Clarke had recently received news from visitors to Sean Smyth and from Wally Heaton. Ibid.
39.PAC News, August/ September 1977
40.Hibernia, 16 December 1977.
41.John Kilbracken to Fr. [Denis] Faul, 23 January 1978 Clarke Papers (COFLA). See also Disturbance in D Wing, p. 15.
42.Kilbracken to Faul, 23 January 1978 Clarke Papers (COFLA). Longford had been disconcerted by the IRA attempt on the life of his son-in-law, Hugh Fraser MP on 22 October 1975. Fraser supported the death penalty and narrowly missed being killed on the day that the Guildford Four were wrongly convicted. See Clarke, No faith, pp. 93–4 and Moysey, Balcombe Street, pp. 108–9.
43.See Lieutenant-Colonel HEC Willoughby, ‘Family life in Northern Ireland’, Typescript (Victoria Barracks, Windsor, 12 November 1975). The document was endorsed: ‘This leaflet contains information on various aspects of family life in Northern Ireland as it is expected to apply to the 2nd B[attalio]n Coldstream Guards which will start an 18 month tour in September 1976 at Ebrington Barracks, London[d]erry [sic]’. Ibid.
44.Clarke to Kilbracken, 28 January 1978, MS draft letter Clarke Papers (COFLA). See also Merlyn Rees, Northern Ireland, A Personal perspective (London, 1985).
45.HL Deb 7 February 1978, cc922–3.
46.Gerry Cunningham, 25 September 2007.
47.AP/RN, 29 July 1982. McLaughlin commented: ‘When we explained to the English prisoners the nature of British imperialism in Ireland and that we were not-as the British gutter press daubed us- “mindless terrorists” out to kill innocent British civilians, they were able to see for themselves the victimization of republican prisoners by the prison administration’. Ibid.
48.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006.
49.Alison Liebling, ‘Prison Officers, Policing and the Use of Discretion’ in Theoretical Criminology, 2000, Vol. 4, p. 341.
50.Eddie O’Neill, 23 June 2006.
51.Republican News, 28 January and 4 February 1978. Niall Fagan, who had been present on Bloody Sunday, addressed the Sinn Féin parade at Hyde Park. Ibid. For an analysis of ideological ‘sectarian’ divisions between elements of the British left on Ireland, including differences between the allied PAC/ RCG and IMG/ SWP/ UTOM, see Hands off Ireland!, No. 6, January 1979, pp. 3–4.
52.An Phoblacht, 18 February 1978. UTOM split from TOM on 2 July 1977. Fight Racism! / Fight Imperialism!, September 1982, p. 11. For an RCG account see Diane Fox, ‘Building an anti-imperialist movement, resonant declarations v revolutionary propaganda’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 3, November 1977, pp. 13–15.
53.An Phoblacht, 15 February 1978.
54.Republican News, 4 February 1978.
55.An Phoblacht, 8 February 1978.
56.Karen McElrath, Unsafe haven, The United States, The IRA and Political Prisoners (London, 2000), pp. 70–1 and Francie Broderick, Gerry Coleman, Peter Hegarty and Jack Kilroy (eds.) Where is Liberty?, The prosecution of Irish Republicans in the United States, Pamphlet (Ohio, 1995), p. 30.
57.Sr. Sarah Clarke, ‘Hugh Doherty’, Sr. Sarah Clarke Papers O Fiaich Library, Armagh (COFLA). Twenty-five charges against the Balcombe Street group were rejected by the jury and a murder charge in relation to the bombing of the Hilton Hotel was reduced to manslaughter when it was accepted that ‘police had failed to clear the hotel after 20 min[ute]s warning’. Ibid.
58.See Jackie Kaye, ‘Irish political prisoners in England’ in AP/RN, 26 May 1979 and John Higgins et al, Irish political prisoners in England, Special Category ‘A’, An account of prison life in England based on the experiences of Irish Republican John Higgins imprisoned between 1976 and 1979 (Dublin, 1980), pp. 70–1 and AP/RN, 13 May 1980. Hugh Doherty was in Leicester in January 1978 when solidarity notices were published in Belfast. Republican News, 7 January 1978. He had his books in Durham by July 1978 when Ray McLaughlin was sent in on a ‘lie down’ from Wakefield. Doherty left reading material in the recess area for McLaughlin to collect, including Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. Ray McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, The prison diary of the IRA Volunteer Raymond McLaughlin (Dublin, 1987), p. 44. Eddie Butler was moved to solitary confinement in Manchester prison in February 1978. IRIS, 12 January 1979.
59.Irish political prisoners, p. 71. Scotland’s only Special Unit at Barlinnie, Glasgow, was generally not used for the few IRA prisoners held in the separate jurisdiction during the Troubles. Ibid. Belfast republican Matthew ‘Gerry’ Ward, who received five years for IRA activities in Scotland, was released on 24 October 1975 having passed through Peterhead and Perth. Sr. Clarke, ‘Mathew ‘Gerry’ Ward’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
60.Joe O’Connell, 7 June 2008.
61.Joe O’Connell, 7 June 2008.
62.Republican News, 24 March 1979 and AP/RN, 26 May 1979.
63.Irish political prisoners, p. 71.
64.Sr. Clarke, ‘Brendan Dowd’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). See also Jackie Kaye, ‘Irish political trials in England’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 2, June 1977, pp. 2–4.
65.Michael Herbert, The wearing of the green, A political history of the Irish in Manchester (London, 2001), p. 164.
66.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006.
67.See ‘List of names found after IRA terrorist siege at Balcom[b]e Street’, December 1975, NAE, PREM 16/ 676. The Prison Department headquarters at 89 Eccleston Square was also listed. Ibid.
68.Eddie Butler, 21 December 2007.
69.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006. In Parkhurst SSU Joe O’Connell claimed: ‘You were in with the same people day after day, year after year. You were sort of fed up looking at each other. But we did get on fine. There were very few [problems] even with the English prisoners here was the odd falling out. Not too serious. There was the few serious falling out among the English prisoners that were in there. The pressure would get to them different ones’. Joe O’Connell, 7 June 2008.
70.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006.
71.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006.
72.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006. For H-Wing see Elaim Genders and Elaine Player, ‘Women Lifers: Assessing the experience’, The Prison Journal, 1990, Vol. 70, pp. 46–57.
73.Hugh Doherty, 23 June 2006.
74.Sr. Clarke, ‘Hugh Doherty’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
75.Winnie Doherty, 7 June 2008. Doherty was assisted on her trips to prisons in the North of England by members of TOM. She was initially ‘a bit nervous of them because they were so English’ but later mused: ‘would we be so good to them?’ Ibid.
76.Guardian, 27 October 2014.
77.Shari-Jayne Boda, Real crime: four crimes that shocked a nation (London, 2003).
78.Pat Magee, ‘Comments on Leicester SSU’, MS, 19 December 1989, Private Collection (Pat Magee).
79.Eddie Butler, 21 December 2007.
80.Walmsley, Special Security Units, p. 34.
81.Joe O’Connell, 8 June 2008.
82.Tony Madigan, 7 March 2008.
83.Irish political prisoners, p. 82.
84.Leading republican Gerry Kelly stated: ‘We are as one with the ANC’. Gerry Kelly to the Editor, FRFI, May 1987.
85.AP/RN, 20 January 1983.
86.Noel Gibson quoted in AP/RN, April 1998.
87.‘Walsh-BOV Adjudications’ in A Aylett [For the Treasury Solicitor] to BM Birnberg & Co, 28 September 1990, Private Collection (Walsh).
88.Roy Walsh, 9 March 2008 and Andy Mulryan, 17 November 2008. Communication difficulties ensured that AP/RN claimed that the attempt occurred in 1978 ‘several months’ before the March 1979 roof top protest. AP/RN, 20 January 1985. Sr. Clarke noted ‘around March [19]78 Roy Walsh & Noel Gibson tried to escape from Parkhurst’. Sr. Clarke, ‘Roy Walsh’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Sean Kinsella was the centre of a black joke when a London prisoner learned he had been a barber in Monaghan at the outset of the Long War. With reference to a heavy caliber revolver he quipped: ‘What does he part your hair with then, a forty-five?’ McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 33.
89.Tony Madigan, 7 March 2008.
90.Roy Walsh, 9 March 2008.
91.Roy Walsh, 9 March 2008.
92.Noel Gibson, 24 August 2008.
93.Sean Kinsella, 3 August 2007.
94.Noel Gibson, 24 August 2008.
95.Irish political prisoners, p. 84.
96.Andy Mulryan, 17 November 2008.
97.Roy Walsh, 9 March 2008.
98.Sean Kinsella, 3 August 2007.
99.Irish political prisoners, p. 84 and ‘Walsh-BOV Adjudications’ in A Aylett [For the Treasury Solicitor] to BM Birnberg & Co, 28 September 1990, Private Collection (Walsh).
100.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 25.
101.Sr. Clarke, ‘Roy Walsh’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
102.Shane Paul O’Doherty, The Volunteer, A former IRA man’s true story (London, 1993), p. 207. Jack Duggan, a Tipperary IRA man settled in Manchester, was held in solitary in Dartmoor for over two years in the 1940s ‘with nothing in the cell but a compressed paper pot and a bible’. He and other republicans on protest were forcibly dressed by guards once a week when obliged to appear before the Governor. United Irishman, February 1968.
103.O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 207 and ‘An Irish prisoner and Home Office lies’ in The Irish Prisoner, No. 11 [1987], pp. 10–11. See also Conlon, Proved Innocent, p. 185. Whitehead also assisted Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four. Gerry Conlon, University of Limerick, 18 March 2014.
104.O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 209.
105.Jimmy Kelly, a West Belfast republican and occasional resident of Southampton, England, received a five-year sentence on 27 January 1976 for contravening the Firearms and Explosives Act. He progressed from Winchester to Long Lartin and Wormwood Scrubs by January 1977 and was present when O’Doherty was transferred. See Sr. Clarke, ‘James Kelly’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). In 1975 Derry republican socialist and former MP Bernadette Devlin contacted progressive London solicitor Mike Fisher to assist Kelly’s defence. Fisher, an innate liberal of Catholic and Jewish parentage and educated in Mount St Mary’s Jesuit boarding school in Sheffield, became one of the most important lawyers willing to take ‘Irish cases’. Guardian, 28 January 2015.
106.O’Doherty, Volunteer, pp. 209–10.
107.O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 210.
108.Derry Journal, 17 February 1978. For overview of ‘just war’ concept and theology see Charles E Rice, Divided Ireland, A cause for American concern (Notre Dame, 1985), Chapter IX.
109.O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 211.
110.PAC News, February 1978, p. 1.
111.O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 211.
112.Eddie O’Neill, 1 February 2008. O’Neill was held with O’Doherty in Wakefield but not close enough for the pair to converse. He gained that impression that the Derryman ‘wouldn’t talk to any of us … He wouldn’t talk to anyone’. See also Irish Post, 14 September 1985 and O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 228.
113.Republican News, 4 February 1978. Sid ‘Seanna’ Walsh had already spent a year on the blanket in H5. Walsh spent over twenty years in prison and was selected to read the IRA’s standing down statement on 28 July 1995. Ibid. See also An Phoblacht, 1 March 1978.
114.See An Phoblacht, January 2014, p. 4 and Prison Struggle, Paper of the Relatives Action Committee, March [1980].
115.See Republican News, 11 March 1978.
116.See Jim Reilly and Jacqueline Kaye to Editor, Republican News, 18 March 1978. London Sinn Féin leader Jim Reilly addressed the Workers Revolutionary Party conference in Wembley on 26 February. Ibid., 11 March 1978. His socialist inclinations and trade union work appealed to several left wing groupings with which Sinn Féin interacted on prisoner issues. See RCG tributes in AP/RN, 4 October 1980 and FRFI, November/ December 1980, p. 16. For Livingstone and Ireland see Curtis, Ireland and the propaganda war, pp. 207–11. Kaye, an English leftist who had met Eamon Smullen on a work camp in 1960s Cuba, became drawn into prisoner support when he was jailed on arms charges in England in 1969. See Jackie Kaye, ‘What price peace?’ in FRFI, October/ November 1999, p. 6.
117.PAC Statement in PAC News, July 1977.
118.Eolas, April/ May 1977, p. 12.
119.Eolas, April/ May 1977, p.11.
120.See Des O’Hagan, Letters from Long Kesh (Dublin, 2012). O’Hagan’s twenty-two short articles were published by the Irish Times in 1972, arising from an agreement with its liberal editor Douglas Gageby. The collected edition did not appear until 2012. See Ultan Gillen, ‘Introduction’ in Ibid., pp. xi-xii. Earlier feuding between the Official IRA and the nascent INLA/ IRSP disturbed Belfast IRA men in England: ‘Is there not enough Irishmen being killed without them knocking each other off?’ Billy Armstrong to Leo Wilson, 10 March 1975, Private Collection (Wilson). Armstrong understood the tensions were caused by Official IRA inaction vis à vis ‘religious assassinations’ by British backed Loyalists. Ibid. Wilson had polled 4,000 votes in the South Antrim constituency of the October 1964 general election at which time Sinn Féin was banned in the Six Counties. Involved in the Civil Rights movement, he was a leading member with Clara Reilly and Fr. Brian Brady of the Association for Legal Justice in Belfast. See An Phoblacht, January 2014, p. 4.
121.Republican News, 3 March 1978.
122.Republican News, 3 March 1978.
123.Republican News, 22 April 1978 and IRIS, 17 February 1979. Forty-seven exclusion orders were issued between March 1978 and March 1979. HC Deb 21 March 1979 vol 964 cc1505–6. Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan and writer of ‘The Patriot Game’ rebel ballad, was among the more socially prominent people detained under the PTA in Liverpool. Irish World, 10 November 1979.
124.Republican News, 27 May 1978. Jim Reilly of the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle represented the party in Leeds. Kaye and Alastair Logan participated in the Independent Public Enquiry into the abuse and torture of prisoners in Ireland, which convened in Dublin in May 1978. They described the workings of the PTA and the Irish prisoner experience in England. Ibid. Peoples Democracy claimed that by early 1978 Sinn Féin ‘remained ambiguous about the value of united work’ on prisoners and tended to recognize only groupings which supported the armed struggle. The RAC, closely linked to Sinn Féin, gradually excluded ultra-leftist political parities such as the Irish Workers Group which had demanded speaking rights at rallies without investing sufficient effort in the campaign. Ultimately, the PDs also ‘lost any formal position in the campaign’. See Prisoners of Partition, H-Block/ Armagh, A Peoples Democracy pamphlet, New edition, p. 12. See also IRIS, 24 March 1978.
125.See Jim Johnson, ‘Lessons of TOM’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 1, December 1976, pp. 13–15. See also Workers Power, The British Left and the Irish War (London, 1983), p. 38. UTOM reverted to the TOM designation in 1979. Ibid.
126.Aly Renwick, 16 November 2007.
127.PAC News, June 1978. For the 1977 Marx commemoration in Highgate Cemetery see PAC News, June 1977.
128.PAC News, June 1978. Messages of support were received from Sean Mac Stiofain, Michael Mullen (General Secretary of the ITGWU), Frank McManus, Frank Maguire MP, Joan Maynard MP, Maureen Colquhoun MP, Eddie McAteer, Phil Flynn, Women and Ireland, Black Aid, UTOM, IRSP (Dublin), PROP, ICRA, RCG, IMG and Revolutionary Communist Tendency. Members of the Stagg, Gaughan, Dowd, Donnelly, McCaffrey, Fox, Nordone, Madigan, Butler, Campbell, Hackett, Mulryan, Armstrong, Kinsella, Norney, McLaughlin, Byrne, Coughlan, Gibson and Kelly families registered their approval. Republicans John Joe McGirl, Joe O’Neill (Bundoran Urban District Council), Vincent Conlon and Frank Glynn (Galway City Council) were also listed. Nancy Jenkinson, widow of Noel, and Mary Stagg, mother of Frank, joined members of Michael Gaughan’s family in expressing approval. Ibid.
129.BR Grange to DG Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
130.‘Irish POWs Albany’ in PAC News, June 1978. Fr. Pat Fell and Hugh Callaghan remained on the wings in Albany. Ibid.
131.An Phoblacht, 22 April and 10 June 1978. See also IRIS, 31 March 1978, p. 3. Amnesty International refused to support repatriation and its view that convicted IRA personnel did not quality as ‘prisoners of conscience’ ensured very little attention was paid to their situation. IRIS, 28 April 1978, p. 4.
132.Republican News, 13 May 1978. London Sinn Féin activists Kevin Colfer and Tony Kearns highlighted the H-Block situation at a Kilburn meeting. The Michael Gaughan Cumman of Glasgow Sinn Féin also co-operated with RCG in Scotland. See Ibid., 1 July 1978. Ibid.
133.See Hands off Ireland!, No. 1, December 1976. Jim Reilly contributed and article to the May 1978 edition. David Yaffe, Frank Richards, Sheila Marston and Brian Mitchell were leading RCG members. See also Revolutionary Communist, Theoretical Journal of the Revolutionary Communist Group, No. 2, May 1975.
134.Times, 24 August 1978.
135.IRIS, 18 May 1978, p. 9.
136.PAC News, June 1978.
137.See Geoff Bell, British Labour and Ireland: 1969–97, Pamphlet, (London, 1979), pp. 29–35. Bell wrote from the perspective of the rival IMG.
138.Eddie Caughey, 16 September 2008.
139.Republican News, 10 June 1978.
140.PAC News, June 1978. See Anthony Coughlan, C. Desmond Greaves, 1913–1988: An obituary essay, Pamphlet (Dublin, 1991).
141.Irish Times, 12 October 1981.
142.Ciaran De Baroid, Ballymurphy and the Irish War, Revised Edition (London, 2000), p. 200.
143.Republican News, 17 June 1978. See also Bell, British Labour and Ireland, pp. 20–21.
144.See Fr. Desmond Wilson to the Editor, Irish People, 5 February 1983. See also Andrew Boyd, The informers, A chilling account of the Supergrasses in Northern Ireland (Dublin, 1984).
145.Keara O’Dempsey (President) and Albert Doyle (Vice President), Brehon Law Society, to Chief Justice Lord Lowry in Irish People, 19 September 1983.
146.Peter Grimes, a Westmeath native resident in London, claimed in October 1976 to have been 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. See also Ibid., 10 June 1978. The establishment of the IRSP and INLA in Lucan, County Dublin, on 8 December 1974 ensured that TOM received briefings on their political outlook. INLA Chief of Staff Seamus Costello addressed the TOM convention in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 18 September 1976. See Seamus Costello, 1939–1977, Irish Republican Socialist (Dublin, [1979]), pp. 65–9. For Drumm see Maire Drumm Commemoration Committee, A rebel heart, Maire Bn. Ui Dhroma, pamphlet, October 2001. On 8 August 1980 leading IRSP and INLA member Ronnie Bunting was arrested in Belfast with TOM member Francis Barry. Both were released without charge. Holland and McDonald, INLA, Deadly Divisions (Dublin, 1994) p. 157.
176.See McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, pp. 34–8. Other IRA prisoners moving in and out of Albany in late 1977 and early 1978 included Liam Baker, Paddy Mulryan, Fr. Pat Fell, Pat Christie and Sean Kinsella. Hugh Callaghan of the ‘Birmingham Six’ was also in the prison but did not participate in the IRA protests. Ibid. See also Sr. Clarke, ‘Anthony Cunningham’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
177.Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
178.IRIS, 12 January 1979.
179.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 12.
180.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, pp. 38–9. The Chairman of the Albany Board of Visitors was a retired Royal Navy Admiral whom the IRA believed to be a member of the Conservative ‘Monday Club’. Ibid., p. 39.
181.See HC Deb 21 June 1978 vol 952 cc205–6W.
182.Alastair Logan to Joan Maynard, 5 May 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
183.Ray McLaughlin to Alastair Logan, 28 April 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
184.Logan to Maynard, 5 May 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
185.Lord Harris to Joan Maynard, 11 July 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. The republicans claimed that their visitors were also required to undergo strip-searching and as this was untypical of Category A men such policies constituted ‘discrimination’. [David] Blunt to [Brian] Gange, 10 October 1978, Ibid. Maynard was also in contact with the NIO regarding IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks. See Joan Maynard to Don Concannon, 22 February 1979 in Faul and Murray, H Block, p. 93.
186.PLV Mallet (RID, FCO), ‘Letter from Miss Joan Maynard MP’, Memo, 2 June 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
187.PAC News, August/ September 1978.
188.Tony Madigan, 7 March 2008.
189.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 40.
190.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, pp. 40–41. McLaughlin arrived in Wakefield in May 1978. Irish News, 13 November 1979.
191.AP/RN, 17 October 1985.
192.Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany Notes’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
193.Tony Madigan, 7 March 2008. Terence MacSwiney, a senior member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin, died on hunger strike in Brixton on 25 October 1920 when asserting his status as a political prisoner. He famously declared on taking office as Lord Mayor of Cork: ‘It is not they who can inflict most but they who can suffer most will conquer’. Quoted in Dave Hannigan, Terence MacSwiney, The Hunger Strike that rocked an Empire (Dublin, 2010), p. 11.
194.See Brendan O’Brien, The Long War, The IRA and Sinn Féin, 1985 to today (Dublin, 1993), p. 294.
195.‘Albany POW Statement’, Hands off Ireland!, No. 5, September 1978, p. 24 and PAC News, June 1978.
196.Gartree PRO in Republican News, 10 June 1978.
197.Republican News, 21 January 1979.
198.Hill, Stolen years, pp. 195–7. Hill, following the privations of Hull, regarded Gartree as ‘a liberal establishment. I wear a sweat shirt and trainers. The screws are not so aggressive. But it’s no good. I can’t settle in. I should not be in prison, I am innocent. I argue and demonstrate’. Ibid., p. 197.
199.AP/RN, 29 July 1982. See also O’Donnell, Special Category, I, p. 428.
200.AP/RN, 29 July 1982.
201.Republican News, 10 June 1978 and Irish political prisoners, p. 13. Noel Moore Boyd was also named in connection to the Kilburn attack while associates Alexander Brown and Archibald Brown were charged with related offences. Boyd and Carson appeared in court on 4 March 1976. They were convicted on 12 October 1976, receiving terms of between ten and fifteen years. Sr. Clarke, ‘Biddy Mulligan’s Explosion’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Boyd was on good terms with Gerry Conlon and several IRA prisoners in Long Lartin. Conlon, Proved Innocent, p. 199. Three members of the ‘Manchester Loyalist Association’ were charged with possession of firearms on 26 February; David Anderton, Robert Watson and Malcolm Rough. PAC Bulletin, March 1976.
202.Republican News, 10 June 1978. The person referred to as ‘Gudd’ in the published account was convicted English Loyalist John Gadd. Sr. Clarke received information that Tommy Thompson, regarded as a leading Loyalist in England, was one of the very few on the Category A list yet even then received ‘preferential treatment’ when in Hull. See Clarke to Kilbracken, 26 January 1978, MS letter draft, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
203.Cohen and Taylor, Prison secrets, p. 56.
204.Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, 1983, p. 17.
205.In 1974 two Loyalists jailed in England were granted temporary transfers to the North of Ireland ‘to receive visits’ over a period of twenty-three to twenty-seven days. One was granted a permanent transfer in 1975 and the second was downgraded to Category B in 1976. The Category B Loyalist received a second temporary transfer of twenty-nine days in 1978. See HC Deb 21 June 1978 vol 952 c205W.
206.HC Deb 21 June 1978 vol 952 cc205–6W.
207.HC Deb 21 June 1978 vol 952 cc205–6W. Rees noted: ‘Prisoners and their visitors [in Wakefield] are allowed to embrace at the beginning and end of visits held under these conditions’. Ibid.
208.Irish News, 5 July 1995.
209.HC Deb 11 July 1978 vol 953 cc494–5W.
210.Lord Harris to Joan Maynard, 22 June 1978, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
211.Martin Wright to Fenner Brockway, 16 May 1978, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
212.Wright to Brockway, 16 May 1978, Clarke Papers (COFLA). See also Lord Harris to Fenner Brockway, 12 July 1978, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Brockway had a long history of intercession for political prisoners in England. At the height of the IRA ‘Border Campaign’ of 1956–62 he sought compassionate parole for EOKA prisoner George Ioannou, a comrade of republican prisoners in Wakefield who planned a joint escape. See Fenner Brockway to RA Butler, 25 July 1958 in Vias Livadas, Cypriot and Irish political prisoners held in British prisons, 1956–1959 (Nicosia, 2008), p. 219.
213.Martin Wright to Sr. Sarah Clarke, 27 February 1980, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Wright recommended the services of Offenbach & Co; George E Baker & Co (Alastair Logan) and BM Birnberg & Co (Gareth Pierce). Wright reminded Sr. Clarke that prisoners were obliged to use all ‘internal procedures’ before contacting a private solicitor. Ibid.
214.For Kelly and Feeney see Andersonstown News, 14 April 1975.
215.Republican News, 10 June 1978.
216.Republican News, 22 July 1978 and Irish World, 15 July 1978.
217.Republican News, 22 July 1978. Donnelly began fasting in Long Lartin due to the refusal of the staff to authorize an exploratory x-ray. This rebuff, and simultaneous axing of a milk supplement he needed for his health provoked the hunger strike. The move to Wakefield aroused suspicions that the ‘same regime’ which ‘murdered’ Stagg was threatening Donnelly. Ibid. Stagg and Gaughan were commemorated in Leigue Cemetery, Mayo, on 16 July 1978. Daithi O Conaill gave the oration. Irish Times, 17 July 1978.
218.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, pp. 42–3. Duffy was sent on a ‘lie down’ from Wormwood Scrubs to Wandsworth on 29 December. On completion of the twenty-eight days he was moved to Wakefield and a further ‘lie down’ in Bristol. Republican News, 22 March 1978. When in Wormwood Scrubs Duffy attacked a prison officer who had assaulted him previously. Sr. Clarke, ‘Joe Duffy/ Mooney’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). ‘Joe Duffy’ was the name used by Dubliner Michael J Mooney when convicted in England. Irish People, 5 February 1983. See PAC News, February 1978, p. 1.
219.FRFI, March 1984, p. 12.
220.Irish Times, 4 August 1978.
221.Republican News, 5 August 1978. Armstrong met Eddie Butler in Manchester. Butler had been in the block for seventeen weeks. They were denied normal outdoor exercise rights as the authorities had commenced building a ‘wire cage’ to prevent helicopter escapes. Armstrong to Wilson, 25 July 1978, Private Collection (Wilson). Butler received just an hour long ‘closed’ visit from his mother and a sister who had traveled from America. Republican News, 5 August and 30 September 1978. Armstrong claimed that the Wakefield move occurred on 3 July, although McLaughlin indicted 5 July. McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 43.
222.Republican News, 29 July 1978. In 1978 F Wing retained its Control Unit style regime of cold meals, a rule of silence, minimum communication with staff, isolation from other prisoners and dim lighting. Ibid. Ray McLaughlin recalled: ‘When you’re let out, you’re unable to speak. All your reactions slow down and it takes a little while to understand what anybody says to you. It probably takes at least a month to be able to cope again with a conversation and all the normal prison things’. Cited in AP/RN, 13 December 1984.
223.Republican News, 5 August 1978.
224.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 44.
225.See PRO Gartree in Republican News, 5 August 1978.
226.Republican News, 29 July 1978.
227.Irish Times, 7 July 1978. See also Sr. Clarke, ‘JJ Coughlan’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
228.Times, 8 July 1978.
229.The Irish Prisoner, No. 5, June 1979, p. 3 and Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
230.Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
231.Gange to Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
232.Republican News, 22 July 1978.
233.IRIS, 7 July 1978, p. 5. See also Times, 21 October 1978.
234.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
235.Republican News, 22 July 1978. For Brian McLaughlin see AP/RN, 29 July 1982.
236.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
237.Martin Brady, 10 April 2008.
238.John McCluskey, 2 August 2007. McCluskey claimed: ‘When you’re in solitary, the Screws have got total control over almost every aspect of your life, your food, books. For reading material they give you comic books. They’re supposed to give you an hour’s exercise but most times they cut it down to half an hour. You always lose weight in solitary’. Quoted in AP/RN, 13 December 1984. Gartree’s dog handlers were apparently more successful on 2 March 1978 when they apprehended a man using a grappling hook to scale the inner fence. Dick Callan, Gartree, The story of a prison (Leyhill, 2005), p. 44.
239.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
240.Irish political prisoners, p. 92.
241.Irish political prisoners, p. 92 and Times, 8 July 1978.
242.Republican News, 5 August 1978.
243.Irish Times, 7 July 1978. Dianah Jeffrey, Stacey Charlesworth, Sandra Lester and Stephanie Pugsley were arrested. Ibid.
244.Faul and Murray, H Block, p. 114.
245.Republican News, 22 July 1978. In late 1978 Logan was National Convener of the International Tribunal on Britain’s Presence in Ireland. See Faul and Murray, H Blocks, pp. 117–18 and Irish Times, 7 December 1978. Logan delivered a minibus acquired by Luton area Sinn Féin for the use of prisoners’ families in Ireland. The vehicle had been repaired having been badly vandalized by police ‘looking for something’. Michael Holden, 23 June 2008. The history of Gartree prison recorded many minor incidents in 1978 but not the IRA protest that rated discussion in the Commons. See Callan, Gartree, pp. 44–5.
246.Irish World, 12 March 1977. See also Irish Press, 28 February 1977.
247.Times, 8 July 1978.
248.Michael Holden, 23 June 2008. See also Irish World, 24 April 1976.
249.Irish Post, 2 September 1978.
250.Republican News, 24 June 1978.
251.Republican News, 24 June 1978. Other marching delegations included Harringey Trades Council and the NUJ Book Branch. Ibid. See also Hands off Ireland!, No. 5, September 1978, p. 3.
252.FRFI, September 1982, p. 11.
253.Republican News, 22 July 1978. Kaye of the PAC, Jim Reilly of Sinn Féin spoke at Hyde Park, as did representatives of the RCG and UTOM. A message from Daithi O’Connell was read. Ibid.
254.Republican News, 30 September 1978. The issue advertised the first edition of the re-formatted PAC News. Ibid. See also PAC News, No. 1, August/ September 1978.
255.Irish World, 15 July 1978.
256.Irish Times, 10 July 1978.
257.Irish Times, 10 July 1978. Redgrave, narrator of the film ‘The Palestinian’, attended its Belfast premier in Turf Lodge on 30 July. Republican News, 29 July 1978.
258.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 45. See also IRIS, 13 July 1978, p. 6.
259.Republican News, 29 July 1978. See also FRFI, September 1982, p. 11.
260.Republican News, 22 July 1978.
261.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008, Irish political prisoners, p. 92 and Martin Brady, 10 April 2008. A busload of supporters was en route to Gartree when they learned the roof protest had finished. Republican News, 29 July 1978.
262.Sr. Clarke, ‘Gartree’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
263.Irish political prisoners, p. 94. Mick Sheehan, the only other IRA prisoner in Gartree in July 1978, was too physically ill to participate in the roof top demonstration. By escaping punishment he was in a position to smuggle tobacco, matches and newspapers to his comrades in the Punishment Block. See Hayes (ed.) In prison in England, p. 23.
264.Sr. Clarke, ‘Jerry Mealy’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). Mealy had received ‘open’ visits in Gartree. Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
265.Irish Times and Times, 10 July 1978.
266.Armstrong to Wilson, 27 September 1978, Private Collection (Wilson).
267.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 45. McLaughlin recalled: ‘I was given a towel to wrap around me but no blanket. My bed was removed from the cell between 6.00 a.m. and 8.00 p.m. The only time that I was allowed out of the cell was at 7.00 a.m. to slop out. During the weeks that I spent on the blanket, I never talked to another prisoner and only very infrequently to the screw. When my wife visited me in October she informed me that there was no support among the other POWs throughout England for a sustained blanket protest. So I decided to come off the protest’. Ibid., pp. 45–6.
268.Wakefield IRA PRO to editor, Irish News, 13 November 1978. See also Irish News, 8 September 1978.
269.Republican News, 5 August 1978.
270.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 26.
271.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 26.
272.Republican News, 26 August 1978.
273.Irish World, 26 August 1978. See also Ibid., 2 and 30 September 1978.
274.IRIS, 1 September 1978, p. 2.
275.Faul and Murray, H Blocks, p. 44. Nine Articles of the Convention were identified as having been transgressed (3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 18). These included breaches on ‘degrading treatment’, ‘impartial tribunals’, ‘freedom of association’ and utilization of solitary confinement. Ibid.
276.Statement of Archbishop Tomas O Fiaich, 1 August 1978 in Faul and Murray, H Blocks, p. 28.
277.For reaction to O Fiaich’s comments see Hibernia, 3 August 1978, Irish Times, 5 August 1978 and Irish Press, 2 August 1978. In January 1978 O Fiaich, in his first major interview after becoming Primate, stated his opinion that the British ‘should leave’ Ireland. Irish World, 21 January 1978. He regarded Cork IRA leader Tom Barry, an acquaintance, as a man devoted to ‘freedom for the Irish people to be themselves and to be masters of their own country’. O Fiaich cited in Meda Ryan, Tom Barry, IRA Freedom Fighter (Cork, 2005), p. 14.
278.See Irish World, 26 August 1978.
279.Sr. Sarah Clarke to the Editor, Catholic Herald, 1 September 1978.
280.Mason, Paying the price, p. 210.
281.NIO, 1 August 1978, ‘Comment by Northern Ireland Office spokesman on Archbishop O’ Fiaich’s statement’, PRONI, NIO/12/68.
