Читать книгу Special Category - Ruán O’Donnell - Страница 9

Introduction

By the late 1970s it was evident that Irish Republican Army members would continue to accumulate in the prisons of Ireland and England. This was a direct result of the violent conflict in the North of Ireland which displayed no signs of short-term abatement. The most deadly, extensive and persistent insurgency in Western Europe after the Second World War seemed interminable. Neither the IRA nor the British Government credibly reaffirmed rival and incompatible predictions of imminent military victory. The leading Belfast republican Gerry Adams used the prescient phrase ‘long war’ to describe ongoing events in September 1976, when his pamphlet, Peace in Ireland? A broad analysis of the present situation was released into what State censorship rendered a select group of avid supporters within Sinn Féin’s private distribution net, mortal enemies who monitored such communications, and persons capable of vicarious access. Written in the penal compounds of Long Kesh, County Antrim, under author-noted ‘prison restrictions’, Adams argued that the underlying causes of the late-twentieth century variant of the perennial Anglo-Irish crisis encompassed a British imperialist interest in Ireland as well as an untenable reactionary mentality in the Twenty-Six County Establishment in Dublin.1

Covert British strategists, meanwhile, manoeuvred night and day to defeat the IRA using a combination of greatly enhanced intelligence gathered since the ‘ceasefire’ of 1974–75 and focused responses to the republican challenge. Tactics included assassination of known opposing activists by Special Forces supplemented by malleable pro-Unionist ‘death squads’, who aimed to intimidate prospective republican supporters by seemingly random killings of socially ambitious nationalists. Others were simultaneously and indiscriminately shot and bombed in an apparent bid to induce paranoia, inertia and communal distress, in tandem with generally unsuccessful efforts to provoke republicans into diverting their scant resources towards politically compromising acts of retaliation. Severe interrogation of detained IRA suspects complemented the utility of ‘special legislation’ which not only generated greater numbers of confession-predicted convictions in the total absence of physical evidence, but also imposed maximal psychological pressure on those held for up to seven days. Republicans referred to this crudely effective process as the ‘conveyor belt’. Persons convicted by juryless ‘Diplock’ courts in Belfast were pitched into the ultra-modern ‘H-Blocks’ where, from March 1976, former benefits of ‘political status’ were not extended.2

Armed IRA activity in Britain was confined by tradition and modus operandi to the territory of England where analogous forms of counter-insurgency were rarely, if ever, applicable. Explosions and shootings in England provided greater publicity and international reportage than the far more frequent and deadly attacks in the North of Ireland. This incentivised the Republican Movement to provide the logistics necessary to underwrite hazardous activity in England. If the highly trained British Military reinforcements deployed to the North of Ireland in August 1969 could not defeat the IRA, it was equally clear in 1978 that republicans waging unilateral and illegal ‘armed struggle’ would not triumph by the intensity of their insurgency alone. ‘Operation Banner’ proved to be the longest and one of the least decisive campaigns in the history of the British Army, a professional North Atlantic Treaty Organization constituent that had waged wars across the globe. In seeking to widen the political discussion, Adams addressed the fluctuating republican campaign in England from various perspectives:

IRA violence has spilled over into England … many people have died or been seriously injured as a result. This recent overspill fits the pattern which has evolved over the decades. English people should be interested in what their country’s army is doing in Ireland. Sadly, this interest has only come when the problem has involved them directly … British soldiers are dying on Irish streets and there are periodic bombings in England itself. Two Irishmen, Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, have died on hunger strike within the last two years, in English gaols, and Irishmen and women are still being brutalized in prisons in England.3

He claimed that ‘revolutionary violence’ should be ‘controlled and disciplined’; a strategic caution which, he implied, included an IRA front in England alongside far-sighted ambitions to mobilize progressive allies in Britain.4 The mid-term objective of evolving a variant of ‘armed struggle’ in England, however, was complicated by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which simplified the harassment of legal pro-republicans, as well as anti-war advocates in Britain. During the heyday of the PTA, the most tenuous UK-located population were Irish-born permanent residents and migrants who comprised Britain’s main ‘foreign’ population. Entitled by birth to ‘British’ passports if born on the island of Ireland prior to the declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, all who eschewed this option still availed of reciprocal rights to free travel between the neighbouring islands. Introduced by the Labour Government in November 1974 amid the furore ignited by the IRA’s unintentional infliction of heavy civilian casualties in Birmingham, the draconian PTA had been prepared by the previous Conservative administration and was primed for promulgation whenever the republican campaign in England attained momentum.5 At this crucial and parliamentary moment, following the October 1974 casualties sustained in bomb attacks on ‘soldiers pubs’ in Guildford and Woolwich, the British public were not advised that the PTA contingency was inherently discriminatory and of limited value in apprehending IRA ASUs.

Upper echelons of the British Military, contrary to vacuous assertions of imminent victory over the IRA by Roy Mason, knew the Republican Movement was too embedded in Irish communities to be readily destroyed. This was the assessment of a secret dossier entitled ‘Northern Ireland: Future Terrorist Trends’ complied by Brigadier James Glover of the Ministry of Defence’s Intelligence Staff on 2 November 1978. Under unusual circumstances, the IRA obtained a copy from an unoccupied vehicle and published it in full in An Phoblacht on 10 May 1979. Brigadier Glover claimed that having adopted a more functional cellular structure in the course of 1977, ‘The Provisional IRA (PIRA) has the dedication and the sinews of war to raise violence intermittently to at least the level of early 1978, certainly for the foreseeable future’.6 While Glover’s possibly disingenuous overview expressly excluded consideration of IRA attacks in Britain, which had garnered disproportionate media attention since the 1920s, it was implicit that such operations would continue. Further prison losses in England were consequently assured, even though it was obvious that many IRA Volunteers temporarily active in the country were never arrested. The MOD document recognized that the IRA leadership intended to maintain attacks until Britain made a ‘declaration of intent … to withdraw from Northern Ireland’ and had instituted ‘an amnesty for all “political” prisoners, including the release of all PIRA prisoners in goal on the mainland [sic]’.7

The Dispersal System

Sentenced and remanded prisoners in the common jurisdiction of England and Wales were held in accordance with policies developed by the Mountbatten Committee in 1966, and revised by an expert panel headed by Sir Leon Radzinowicz in 1968. This entailed the segregation of prisoners deemed a danger to the public within the ‘Dispersal System’ of maximum-security prisons. From 1970, the network included Gartree, Long Lartin, Wakefield, Hull, Parkhurst, Albany and D Wing of Wormwood Scrubs. Prisoners were also allocated to the Special Security Units (aka ‘Blocks’) of Leicester and Parkhurst and, if undergoing punitive segregation, F Wing of Wakefield. H-Wing in Durham was used for actual and presumed female IRA prisoners, the only facility deemed suitable for sentenced Category A women in England. Most Irish republicans had previously been remanded in custody ahead of trial in Brixton and Wandsworth in London or, if detained in the Midlands or North of England, Walton in Liverpool and Winson Green in Birmingham.8 Whereas the notorious Control Unit in Wakefield was remodelled following a liberal backlash in 1974 as ‘F Wing’, the retention of ‘Special Wings’ repudiated the humane dimension to the Mountbatten Report and resulted in the use of the two modern SSUs in Parkhurst and Leicester. Maximum-security detached ‘prisons within prisons’ were largely preserved owing to the presence of IRA personnel in England. Penologists Roy D. King and Sandra Resondihardjo, following insights from Home Office specialist Roy Walmsley, noted that SSUs were ‘used primarily for the custody of Irish terrorist prisoners’.9

Mountbatten categorized prisoners in England and Wales on a scale of A, B, C and D. Persons accorded the most restrictive rating, Category A, could in theory progress to lower levels as their sentence elapsed and parole loomed.10 Security classifications of sentenced prisoners were determined by the Home Office after trial and prior to allocation to a Dispersal Prison. A ‘special Home Office committee’ met every three weeks in St. Anne’s Gate and was understood in 1987 to solely administer those presumed to be Category A men and women. According to Tim Owen, ‘classification into the other categories is made in the various regional administrations of the Prison Department’.11 Decisions of the ‘Category A Committee’ were communicated to prisoners via relevant prison authorities in the late 1980s.12 Suspected Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army members were generally rated ‘Provisional Category A’ prior to sentencing and were evidently earmarked for assessment by the ‘special’ Home Office committee in consequence. Ratings of Category A prisoners were annually reviewed in a process reputedly informed by governors and ‘other staff at the establishment’.13 Yet, the vast majority of IRA prisoners commenced and ended their sentences at the top security tier, contrary to the concept of incremental reclassification. In 1983, the Inspector of Prisons admitted there were ‘no standard procedures’ for changing a prisoner’s category, by which time Irish republicans demonstrably fell within the discretionary area.14 Until 1992, the specific criteria used to reach such decisions remained classified, even from governors made responsible for managing their long-term detention. It transpired that persons convicted of ‘murder (except of a family member), armed robbery, rape and terrorism’, as well as ‘any offence under the Official Secrets Act’ were liable to be allocated as Category A.15 They were accompanied when moving within prisons by teams of staff members, including dog-handlers and officers required to update journals which logged prisoner location and activities in considerable detail. Cell searches and moves were far more frequent for Category A prisoners. They were obliged to receive visits from a limited pool of vetted family members under close observation. The Approved Visitors Scheme operated in an exceptionally strict fashion for the relatives of IRA prisoners, with the effect that only immediate family had any real prospect of occasional access following in-depth probing by the Special Branch.16

The 1964 edition of Prison Rules, an amended Home Office codex setting down general administrative practices in the jails of England and Wales, provided multiple means of sanctioning those deemed recalcitrant. The most commonly employed regulation, Rule 43, permitted governors to segregate a prisoner if it was believed the ‘good order and discipline’ of the prison had been threatened or was likely to be disturbed.17 A variant known as ‘Rule 43 own protection’ enabled prisoners who believed themselves to be under threat to be housed in isolation, a resort referred to as ‘going behind the door’.18 The pre-emptive form was widely applied to the IRA in English prisons who were additionally subjected to exceptionally frequent jail shifts referred to as ‘ghosting’ and twenty-eight day periods of ‘lie-downs’ in ‘local’ prisons. Temporary accommodation outside the Dispersal System entailed solitary confinement in ‘local’ prisons that were invariably ill-equipped to hold maximum-security men. Irish republicans in England were involved in numerous breaches of Prison Rules throughout the 1970s in their efforts to assert political status. Those who did not feature prominently in protest actions were still liable to be denied optimum parole conditions and, therefore, served high proportions of their sentences. The cumulative effect of such treatment resulted in the IRA being referred to as ‘Special Category A’, a term with no formal legitimacy under the 1966 Mountbatten Report. Deprivation of liberty, if an occupational inconvenience for career criminals, challenged ideologically motivated political prisoners to redirect their energies towards confronting the Dispersal System.