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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.
33.IRIS, 10 November 1979. See also Guardian, 2 November 1979.
34.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 24.
35.‘McCluskey part two: Gartree 1978’ in FRFI, February 1985, p. 14.
36.‘McCluskey part two: Gartree 1978’ in FRFI, February 1985, p. 14.
37.See Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
38.Hill, Stolen years, p. 201.
39.‘McCluskey part two: Gartree 1978’ in FRFI, February 1985, p. 14.
40.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 47.
41.See Coggan and Walker, Deaths in British prisons, p. 204 and Times, 24 August 1978.
42.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 46.
43.HC Deb 14 November 1978 vol 958 c136W.
44.Sunday Times, 22 October 1978.
45.HC Deb 22 November 1978 vol 958 c597W.
46.Guardian, 24 May 1979.
47.Times, 2 November 1978.
48.Peter Evans, ‘Why prison reform is long overdue’ in Times, 3 November 1978. See also Times, 24 August 1978.
49.Times, 7 October 1978.
50.Times, 21 October 1978.
51.Economist, 7 October 1978.
52.Guardian, 15 November 1978.
53.Irish political prisoners, p. 94. Republicans believed that IRA men Brendan Dowd, Eddie Byrne and Paul Holmes had been drugged against their wishes on various occasions. Byrne claimed that he had been given Paraldehyde after the Albany ‘riot’ which rendered him unconscious for three days and left him disorientated for a further ten. See The Irish Prisoner, No. 6, September/ October 1979 and McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 25. Byrne further claimed he was in 1977 ‘administered an unknown drug which resulted in experiencing hallucinations and feelings of suffocation. Since then I have refused to accept drugs which I fail to identify’. Eddie Byrne to the Editor, 25 July 1982, Irish People, 25 September 1982.
54.Times, 6 October 1978. Around 500 prisoners in Dartmoor, which then contained no IRA members, were locked down by staff on 6 October who feared a possible ‘flashpoint’ situation. Times, 7 October 1978.
55.Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 23.
56.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
57.Republican News, 10 March 1979.
58.AP/RN, 29 July 1982.
59.Republican News, 25 November 1978. Brady found that his mail was subject to an extremely high level of censorship. Monthly ‘closed’ visits permitted to F Wing inmates were also conducted with an exceptionally intrusive staff presence. He felt obliged to refuse visits under the circumstances. Ibid., 21 January 1979. See also IRIS, 15 November 1978. Hill caught a glimpse of Brady taking exercise on his own and was buoyed to him walking ‘with a cocky Belfast dander’. Hill, Stolen years, p. 203.
60.Hill, Stolen years, p. 202.
61.Republican News, 25 November 1978. McCluskey was held in a damp segregation cell prone to cockroach infestation for twenty-three hours a day. See Ibid., 24 March and 5 May 1979.
62.IRIS, 12 January 1979.
63.Irish political prisoners, pp. 73–4.
64.Republican News, 10 March 1979.
65.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
66.In June 1978 Brixton contained 412 cells shared by two men and 315 cells shared by three. The total population was 1,032. HC Deb 27 July 1978 vol 954 cc840–1W. The Certified Normal Accommodation of Brixton was enumerated as 649 in October 1975, at which time it held 968 inmates. HC Deb 14 October 1975 vol 897 cc668–73W. In 1980 the average prisoner spent less than twenty-three days in Brixton ahead of trial, although certain prisoners, including all suspected IRA personnel, spent much longer. Session 1980–8 … 19 January 1981, HM Prison Brixton, p. 77.
67.Times, 20 October 1978. See also Times, 22 August and 30 October 1978.
68.Times, 1 November 1978.
69.Times, 2 November 1978.
70.Newsline, 25 May 1983.
71.Cited in Times, 1 November 1978.
72.Cited in Times, 1 November 1978.
73.Newsline, 25 May 1983.
74.See Frank Norman to the Editor, Times, 25 October 1978 and PROP, Prison Briefing, No. 3, 1982.
75.PROP, Prison Briefing, No. 2, [London] 1982.
76.Guardian, 9 October 1978.
77.Guardian, 9 October 1978.
78.Guardian, 9 October 1978. PROP alleged Gartree staff had undertaken courses in the Wakefield Prison Officers Training School with a view to bringing their new unit on line. The Home Office dismissed this claim and Lord Harris criticized the airing of ‘wild allegations’ concerning the prison. Ibid. Harris visited the wrecked complex with John Farr MP. Construction of Gartree’s £395,000 F Wing began in January 1976 during the tenure of Governor George Lakes and it operated as a Segregation Unit for seventeen years. Dick Callan, Gartree, The story of a prison (Leyhill, 2005), pp. 40–1, 48–9.
79.Quoted in Guardian, 9 October 1978. A disproportionate number of Prison Service staff hailed from Yorkshire and Scotland. It was a matter of official record that ‘not many people born in London’ worked in Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton or Wandsworth. See Session 1980–8 … 19 January 1981, HM Prison Brixton, p. 81.
80.Times, 1 February 1980.
81.Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1980. See also Guardian, 25 November 1981.
82.Times, 3 November 1978.
83.Times, 3 November 1978. See also Guardian, 25 March 1978. Brixton, in 1980, had a notably high level of overtime due to the additional role of its staff in performing transport and security for court appearances. Around 80 per cent of persons rostered for free weekends were called in for duty until an industrial dispute led to more ‘normal levels’. Session 1980–8 … 19 January 1981, HM Prison Brixton, p. 78.
84.Jackie Kaye to the Editor in Irish Post, 14 October 1975.
85.Times, 3 November 1978.
86.Guardian, 8 January 1980.
87.Guardian, 8 January 1980.
88.Guardian, 12 January 1980.
89.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 80.
90.‘John McCluskey speaks’ in FRFI, March 1985, p. 14.
91.Times, 4 October 1975 and 1 July 1976 and Camden New Journal, 3 November 2011. Jenny Bourne, editor of Race and Class, knew Dick from his time working as a volunteer with the Institute of Race Relations, which published the journal. Nigerian Franklin ‘Frank’ Davies, who had a prior conviction for armed robbery, had attempted to join liberation movements in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and Mozambique in the 1970s. In 1974 Dick attended the Sixth Pan African Congress in Tanzania. He died in a swimming accident in Africa shortly after being released from Wormwood Scrubs in August 1988. Medical student Anthony ‘Bonsu’ Monroe, also West Indian, ran a school for black children with educational difficulties. The attempt to rob the weekly takings of the Knightsbridge Italian restaurant went awry when a staff member fled to alert police and the trio initially refused to surrender. Angela Cobbinah, ‘The Spaghetti House Siege of 1975’ in Camden New Journal, 3 November 2011. See also Jenny Bourne, ‘Spaghetti House siege: making the rhetoric real’, Race and Class, October 2011 and Moysey, Road to Balcombe Street, pp. 102–4.
92.Interview with Shujaa Moshesh (aka Wesley Dick) in FRFI, January 1989, p. 8.
93.Moshesh in FRFI, January 1989, p. 8.
94.Guardian, 8 January 1980.
95.Guardian, 8 January 1980.
96.Guardian, 12 January 1980.
97.Republican News, 13 November 1978.
98.Irish Times, 3 November 1978.
99.Michael Keating TD addressed the Beal na Blath Michael Collins commemoration in Cork in August 1983 at which time he alluded to a new type of constitutional settlement in the presence of fellow ex-Fine Gael/ Labour Coalition leader Paddy Cooney. Irish World, 27 August 1983.
100.DG Blunt to BR Gange, 10 October 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
101.Irish Voices, p. 150.
102.Republican News, 30 September 1978.
103.AP/RN, 29 April 1982.
104.Republican News, 30 September 1978. IRA prisoners were allowed to receive a maximum of two adults and one child who were all subjected to being ‘brushed down’ on security grounds. The republicans, however, were intensively searched before and after all visits. The IRA did not contest press accounts that Baker had been jailed for ‘conspiring to blow up the QE2 liner’. McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 34. See also The Irish Prisoner, No. 5, June 1979, p. 3.
105.PAC News, June 1978. Fr. Pat Fell and the innocent Hugh Callaghan did not take part in the protest. The men in the block sent a message to the PAC/ Sinn Féin meeting in London on 5 May 1978. Ibid. O’Neill was subsequently placed in solitary confinement for kissing his mother goodbye. Sunday Press, 1 May 1983. See also Sr. Clarke, ‘Ray McLaughlin’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
106.Irish Times, 2 December 1978.
107.Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany Notes’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
108.IRIS, 15 November 1978.
109.Irish News, 1 November 1978.
110.IRIS, 15 November 1978.
111.IRIS, 15 November 1978. Tony Cunningham wrote to the Daily Telegraph to assert that he was not a member of the IRA and was seeking improved visiting rights rather than repatriation. Daily Telegraph, 26 June 1980. His weekly applications to attend Mass were rebuffed and he was in July 1978 kept in the Punishment Block after his term had expired. Sr. Clarke, ‘Albany Notes’, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
112.Irish Times, 19 October 1978 and Republican News, 25 November 1978. He claimed: ‘The unit was designed to break you psychologically, to disorientate you. Everything’s white in your [seven by twelve foot] cell. The window faces north/ north-west, so that no sunlight ever penetrated. There’s also a white wall twenty feet high around the unit, and from your window you can see just the white wall or the sky – you become an expert on the different moods of the skies. Every cell is like a little prison on its own. It’s total isolation, you talk to nobody and the Screws are specially trained not to talk to you, or only in a very terse fashion. You couldn’t hear conversations elsewhere, either’. Quoted in AP/RN, 13 December 1984. He confided in his wife that ‘if he was in there long enough that he thinks it could get to him. You have to be very, very strong minded … I think they are using this unit to find out what the prisoners are made of’. ‘Interview with Mrs [Mary] MacLaughlin [sic]’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 5, January 1979, p. 13.
113.See Irish political prisoners, p. 73 and Irish Post, 16 September 1978.
114.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 46.
115.Irish Times, 30 October 1978. Tory MP Jill Knight was among those perturbed by such cases. When questioning David Taylor, Branch Chairman of the POA in Brixton in January 1981 Knight claimed: ‘I am told it is very, very worrying to a prison officer that he can be now be at the receiving end of a prosecution at the instigation of a prisoner. This is something which was never intended to arise because the rules are such that no prisoner should be able to prosecute a prison officer’. Session 1980–8 … 19 January 1981, HM Prison Brixton, p. 82.
116.Wakefield IRA PRO to editor, Irish News, 13 November 1978.
117.Gerry Cunningham, 25 September 2007.
118.Thomas and Pooley, Exploding prison, p. 98.
119.Quoted in Hands off Ireland!, No. 5, January 1979, p. 14.
120.Irish Times, 1 September 1976.
121.Irish Times, 26 January 1979. Joe Duffy, Paul Hill and Gerry Cunningham also gave evidence. McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 50. See also Guardian, 26 January 1979.
122.Republican News, 25 November 1978.
123.O’Doherty had maintained the protest in solitary from 10 September 1976 to 19 November 1977. O’Doherty, Volunteer, p. 203.
124.Republican News, 25 November 1978. Murray perceived his role, a resumption of earlier blanket protests, as ‘against the repressive prison conditions all the Irish political prisoners are held under’. Ibid. See also IRIS, 21 July 1979.
125.AP/RN, 7 June 1980.
126.Republican News, 25 November 1978. Stephen Blake was sent to Wormwood Scrubs following a ‘lie-down’ in Bristol. John McCluskey also arrived due to his role in the October Gartree protest. Ibid.
127.IRIS, 12 January 1979. Governor William Driscoll described ‘appalling conditions’ in Walton in the aftermath of February 1979 violence in which five warders were injured. Guardian, 13 February 1979.
128.Cited in Irish People, 25 September 1982.
129.Irish Times, 19 October 1978.
130.Republican News, 9 December 1978. Turton represented the PAC at the communist inspired World Youth Festival in Havana, Cuba, in late July/ early August 1978. Hands off Ireland!, No. 5, September 1978, pp. 7–9. The PAC expelled both the IMG and SWP from the November 1978 organizing committee due to alleged factionalism. FRFI, September 1982, p. 11. See also PAC, Press Statement, 28 October 1978, Private Collection (O Mathuna).
131.Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were hanged outside the New Bailey, Manchester, on 23 November 1867 despite a sizeable campaign for commutation of their sentences. Their bodies were soon moved into the grounds of the then newly constructed Strangeways Prison. The Manchester Martyrs Memorial Committee, founded by local Fenian Seamus Barrett, erected the monument in the early 1900s. See Herbert, Wearing of the green, pp. 53–8.
132.Jackie Kaye, ‘Case against the Tribunal’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 6, January 1979, p. 12.
133.See Quinlivan and Rose, Fenians in England, p. 166. Paul Hill taught the words to London armed robber Graham Little whom he first encountered in Wormwood Scrubs. He explained how the song had been sung during the Spanish Civil War in honour of a group of Republicans who fought to the death. This inspired Little to sing the song every morning at 6.00 a.m. Hill, Stolen years, p. 207. Ray McLaughlin heard Little’s ‘incessant chanting’ during a lie-down in Bristol and feared ‘it must be gibberish’. On raising it with him later and learning the true purpose of his recitation of what transpired to have been ‘The Internationale’, the two parted as ‘the best of friends’. The Irishman was then reading Sean Cronin’s biography of ex-IRA and Republican Congress leader Frank Ryan, a senior officer in the anti-fascist XVth International Brigade. Reamonn [Ray McLaughlin] to Eamonn [Eddie O’Neill], 1 November 1983, Private Collection (O’Neill). English prisoner Little endorsed the Bobby Sands portrait he painted and presented to the ISM with the slogan ‘Solidarity’. FRFI, April 1984, p. 16.
134.Republican News, 25 November 1978.
135.Republican News, 13 November 1978. See also IRIS, 15 November 1978 and 21 July 1979.
136.‘Visit of the Taoiseach: 27 November 1978’ enclosure with BR Grange to DG Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
137.‘Irish Republican Prisoners’, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
138.Republican News, 30 September 1978.
139.Republican News, 10 February 1979 and Irish political prisoners, p. 71.
140.Sr. Clarke, Miscellaneous MSS, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
141.IRIS, 12 January 1979.
142.O’Donnell, Special Category, I, p. 113.
143.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
144.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 49.
145.IRIS, 6 December 1978.
146.DG Blunt to BR Grange, 23 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. See also Grange to Blunt, 27 November 1978, Ibid.
147.The Irish Prisoner, No. 7 [1986].
148.Irish World, 4 and 11 September 1976. Frank Stagg’s story also remained in the foreground in America where the IRA conviction of Patrick Stagg and Sinn Féin activities of George and Joe Stagg were reported in detail. See Irish World, 18 September 1976. Sheehan moved from Ireland to Australia in 1951 and was involved in the Anti-Partition League which De Valera had promoted worldwide. On resettling in the US he was greeted by George Harrison, Liam Cotter and other leading republican activists. Irish World, 6 September 1980 and 11 December 1982.
149.See ‘Patrick Miles Fell: proposed visit by the Bishop of Texas’ [n.d., 1978], NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
150.See Rev. Cosmas Korb to the Editor, Irish World, 4 December 1979. See also Clarke, No faith, p. 107 and Irish Echo, 18 August 1984.
151.‘Patrick Miles Fell’ [n.d., 1978], NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
152.DG Blunt to BR Gange, 16 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
153.PJ Goulden to AL Free-Gore, 9 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
154.BR Gange to DG Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
155.J Murphy to David Blunt, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
156.D[avid] G B[lunt] MS notes, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
157.David Blunt to John Neary (First Secretary), 21 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. See also DG Blunt to M Paice (Home Office Prison Department), 18 December 1978, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. Blunt was also contacted regarding Stevie Blake to which he replied: ‘Mr. Blake has certainly been moved from prison to prison a large number of times. Such moves are never made lightly and in Mr. Blake’s case they have always been necessary in the interests of prison security or good order and discipline. The remedy seems to lie largely in Mr. Blake’s own hands … in the event of a transfer, every effort will be made by the prison authorities to notify Mrs [Mary] Blake of her son’s new location if a visiting order is outstanding’. Blunt to Neary, 4 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. Mary Blake lived in Wolfe Tone Place, Letterkenny, Donegal. Dick [O’Brien] to Sherrard [Cowper-Coles], 9 May 1978, Ibid.
158.Irish Times, 10 May 1978.
159.IRIS, 12 January 1979. The paper averred: ‘All the POWs retain their strength and determination in this struggle for their just demands and BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS’. The same issue carried a report of a meeting of major literary figures opposed to the situation in the H-Blocks. IRIS, 12 January 1979.
160.Fr. Piaras O’Duill, 12 July 2011.
161.See Framed through the Special Criminal Court, p. 34. Joe Stagg chaired the Irish Civil Rights Association until September 1978 when he resigned arising from his public comments concerning the allegedly excessive internal discipline of IRA prisoners in Portlaoise. Irish Times, 9 September 1978.
162.IRA prisoners in Long Kesh had reputedly made representations to the leadership of the Republican Movement to form such a body in the late 1970s. One claimed that the progression from ‘no wash’ to hunger strike had been deliberately delayed to permit time for the Committee to coalesce. See Maxwell Taylor and Ethel Quayle, Terrorist lives (London, 1994), p. 91.
163.See An Phoblacht, 8 March 1980 and Pat Walsh, Irish Republicanism and Socialism, The politics of the Republican Movement, 1905 to 1994 (Belfast, 1994), pp. 172–8, 184.
164.Republican News, 20 January 1979.
165.Jim Panaro, 11 November 2009. See AP/RN, 8 January 2008. Duffy passed away in late 2007 at which time Ann O’Sullivan of the POW Department noted in his obituary that he had been assiduous in confirming prison addresses: ‘Particularly important in relation to prisoners held in England. The process of “ghosting” … meant that we constantly had to trace the current whereabouts of these prisoners’. Ibid.
166.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
167.Observer, 28 March 1993.
168.See Kaye, ‘Case against the Tribunal’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 6, January 1979, p. 10.
169.PAC Statement in The Irish Prisoner, No. 5, June 1979, p. 2.
170.Kaye, ‘Case against the Tribunal’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 6, January 1979, pp. 11–12.
171.For a full listing of the attacks see IRIS, 12 and 21 January 1979. See also McGladdery, Provisional IRA in England, pp. 242–3 and Moloney, Secret history, p. 173. The incidents sparked a bizarre turn of events when an English policeman concocted a story of being fired upon by an IRA suspect in Farnham. The Sun headline on 18 December 1978 was ‘Find Bald Eagle’, a reference to Belfast republican Con McHugh who was then verifiably at home in Ireland. See The British media and Ireland, Truth: The first casualty, [London, 1979], p. 38.
172.Newsline, 19 December 1978. See also Republican News, 3 February 1979.
173.The Irish Worker, Bulletin of Clann na hÉireann, Vol. 1, No. 1, February/ March 1979.
174.Republican News, 21 January 1979.
175.Republican News, 21 January 1979. The PAC also campaigned on general issues concerning imprisoned republicans. It commissioned the short documentary ‘Prisoners of War’ which was sold from a Post Office box address in London. Republican News, 10 February 1979. See also AP/RN, 12 May 1979. The film was screened in Conway Hall on 6 April 1979. The Irish Prisoner, No. 5, June 1979, p. 5.
176.See Helen Stevens, ‘Building an anti-war movement in Britain’ in AP/RN, 18 August 1979.
177.Stevens, ‘Anti-war movement’ in AP/RN, 18 August 1979.
178.Special Branch, Minutes of Evidence, Wednesday 23 January 1985, Association of Chief Police Officers (London, 1985), p. 71. An official document noted: ‘The Special Branch enquire into the implications of any offence connected with firearms and explosives unless it is immediately clear that there is no security interest. They also provide information about extremists and terrorist groups to the Security Service or in the case of Irish Republican extremists and terrorist groups to the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’. Ibid.
179.Clarke, No faith, pp. 59–64.
180.Clarke, No faith, p. 63.
181.PAC News, June 1977.
182.See Sr. Clarke, ‘David McQuaid’, Clarke Papers (COFLA). McQuaid, Anthony Walsh and Cyril MacLachlan were all acquitted of the charges for which Liam Baker and Punter Bennett were convicted in 1976. McQuaid was charged with conspiracy to contravene the Explosives Act on 24 November 1975 and cleared of wrong doing in Winchester on 26 November 1976. Ibid.
183.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 51. See Guardian, 26 January 1979.
184.Lost Lives, p. 775.
185.IRIS, 17 February 1979.
186.See HC Deb 18 January 1979 vol 960 cc1998.
187.Paul Holmes, April 2011.
188.December 1977 to April 1978 witnessed concerted efforts to suppress Republican News by the arrest of its writers and printers. In related moves, detention of Sinn Féin members working in the party’s Belfast advice centres disrupted legal political activities by the organization. On 21 February 1979 charges ranging from IRA membership to conspiracy were dropped in relation to the twenty-one persons involved. See TOM, The British media and Ireland, Truth: The first casualty (London, [1979]), pp. 45–6 and Curtis, Ireland and the propaganda war, pp. 266–8.
189.The Irish Worker, Bulletin of Clann na hÉireann, Vol.1, No. 1, February/ March 1979.
190.Report of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis for the year 1978 (London, 1979), p. 9.
191.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 50.
192.Guardian, 12 March 1979.
193.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 52. Vince Donnelly coined the nickname for the red headed Clarke when Jimmy Ashe obtained a pair of ‘silver flash’ running shoes. Ibid., p. 53.
194.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 53.
195.See Bell, Secret Army, p. 472. The arrests were by no means ‘Irish luck’. Ibid.
196.Sunday Times, 29 June 1980.
197.Clarke and Johnston, McGuinness, p. 110. See also Irish News, 23 March 1979.
198.Clarke and Johnston, McGuinness, p. 111. Police agent Sean O’Callaghan reportedly ‘co-operated’ with Kathryn Johnston in producing his autobiography in 1998. Johnston and her husband Liam Clarke co-authored the McGuinness biography which advanced the controversial theory of Keenan’s arrest. Clarke wrote for the Sunday Times which defended a libel action taken by Armagh republican Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy with the aid of O’Callaghan and other witnesses. Irish News, 30 April 1998 and Sunday Times, 30 June 1995.
199.Brian Keenan, 26 May 2007.
200.Bell, Secret Army, p. 472. See also Nick Van Der Bijl, Operation Banner, The British Army in Northern Ireland (Barnsley, 2009), p. 112.
201.Guardian, 26 June 1980 and Clarke and Johnston, McGuinness, p. 111.
202.Brian Keenan, 26 May 2007.
203.Irish News, 26 March 1979.
204.Irish Times, 28 May 2008.
205.Alan Simpson, Duplicity and deception, Policing the Twilight Zone of the Troubles (Kerry, 2010), p. 65. Simpson claimed that Keenan was partly motivated by a ‘personal grudge’ arising from his acting as Shop Steward in the Grundig plant managed by Niedermayer. Ibid. In 1959–60 Keenan worked for English Elective (Guided Weapons Division) which manufactured the Thunderbird SAM in Luton. Brian Keenan to ‘Peter Flynn’ (Seamus O Mathuna), 10 December 1983, Private Collection (O Mathuna). See also Bernard Fitzsimons (ed) Weapons and Warfare (New York, 1978), Volume 23, pp. 2489–2490.
206.Simpson, Duplicity and Deception, p. 186.
207.Brian Keenan, 26 May 2007.
208.‘Behind closed doors, RTE One TV, 1 January 2010. Callaghan was conscious of his Irish heritage and often visited the Glandore, west Cork, holiday home of his son-in-law, Peter Jay. The appointment of Jay as Britain’s ambassador to the US in 1977 was controversial. Irish World, 21 May 1977.
209.See contributions of Gerry Fitt MP to the biannual debate on the PTA. HC Deb 21 March 1979 vol 964 cc1505–624 and Mason, Paying the price, p. 223. Judge Harry Bennett investigated allegations of police brutality in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre and Gough Barracks, Armagh. Dr. Robert Irwin, police surgeon with the RUC, claimed that ‘roughly 150–160 prisoners have shown themselves to me with injuries which I would not be satisfied were self-inflicted’. Cited in Bell, British Labour and Ireland, p. 19. Information provided by republicans suggested H5 in Long Kesh contained 134 prisoners of 140 on the Blanket protest in March 1979. It was claimed that eighty-three republicans had been assaulted in late 1978. Faul and Murray, H Block, p. 65.
210.See Bell, British Labour and Ireland, pp. 1–2 and AP/RN, 14 May 2004. Fitt heavily criticized Roy Mason during the debate. In a patronizing and inaccurate account Mason claimed that Maguire was shamed into abstaining by Fitt’s speech and was ‘an amiable boozer whose contribution to Parliament was roughly nil. That he’d managed to get himself elected at all was a mystery’. Mason, Paying the price, p. 223. See also Ibid., p. 216. For Maguire’s earlier interest in the Albany situation see Irish Post, 15 January 1977. Maguire visited Armagh Prison and Crumlin Road Prison on 2 July and 23 July 1979 respectively. Fr. Denis Faul and Fr. Raymond Murray, The British Dimension, Brutality, Murder and Legal Duplicity in N. Ireland, Booklet, November 1980, pp. 50–51.
211.See Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome Business, The Labour Party and the Irish Question (London, 1982), pp. 131–4.
212.For internal Labour Party and Conservative Party manifesto issues see Roy Hattersley, Fifty Years On, A prejudiced history of Britain since the war (London, 1997), pp. 269–75.
213.Seamus O Mathuna to Ruan O’Donnell, 14 April 2012, Private Collection (O’Donnell).
214.Holland and McDonald, Deadly Divisions, pp. 137–40, 236, Observer, 1 April 1979 and Potter, Testimony to courage, p. 213. Neave favoured a hard line in Ireland: ‘There must be change in security tactics. The Army and the local security forces must be released from their present low profile and go on the offensive … The time is ripe to smash the Provisional IRA’. Cited in Desmond Hamill, Pig in the middle, The Army in Northern Ireland, 1969–1984, (London, 1985), p. 198. See also Lost Lives, p. 779 and Mason, Paying the price, pp. 226–7.
215.Holland and McDonald, Deadly Divisions, p. 136.
216.HC Deb 3 July 1979 vol 969 c509W.
217.Times, 21 October 1978.
218.Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street years (London, 1993), p. 415 cited in Bourke, Ideas, p. 414.
219.Alan Clark, Diaries, Into Politics (London, 2000), p. 303
220.Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (London, 1995), pp. 467–8. Benn’s political diaries recorded: ‘We stood for a moment in Airey Neave’s memory and Shirley Williams suggested sending a letter of condolence, which was agreed. Joan Lestor asked what was meant by an agreed response to terrorism. Did it mean capital punishment? Jim said no’. Ibid., p. 468.
221.Deirdre O’Shea, 2 October 2008.
222.Nick Mullen, 11 March 2012.
223.Armstrong to Wilson, 27 October 1980, Private Collection (Wilson). Armstrong had ‘a few run ins with [Bunting] when he was a Stick [Official IRA member]’. Ibid. See also Lost Lives, pp. 840–41 and Sunday Independent, 12 August 2007.
