Special Category. Ruán O’Donnell

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Sinn Féin in England was increasingly preoccupied with the political status campaign in Ireland. A planning meeting in London on 19 February 1978 preceded the 26 March Easter Sunday parade from Marble Arch to Kilburn Square. Advance publicity stated: ‘This year … the commemoration will have added significance. There is a growing campaign in Ireland demanding Prisoner of War status for all Republican prisoners and an end to the torture of prisoners in Long Kesh, Crumlin Road and Armagh prisons’.121 Sinn Féin (Britain) recognized that it would have to take the lead and that its role in the UK was to harness, as far as possible, ‘the revolutionary left and Irish prisoners groups’.122 Given the fractured nature of UK jurisdictions and its weak constitutional framework, Sinn Féin was essentially lobbying for reforms which, if granted by Westminster, would not automatically apply to imprisoned IRA personnel in England and Scotland.

There were limits to what could be achieved by an overstretched Sinn Féin, and the party’s efforts to build support in Britain were subject to well-orchestrated state obstruction. On 5 April republican strategist Jim Gibney was held in Manchester for the full seven days permitted by the PTA on travelling to address a National Union of Students conference. He was duly issued with an Exclusion Order which effectively nullified his contribution to any England-centred campaign.123 When the United Troops Out Movement conference met in Leeds on 22 April, Kaye’s speech on Irish prisoners in England competed for attention with an ultimately successful attempt to move a resolution pledging support for ‘the Republican Movement in the Irish Freedom Struggle’.124 UTOM comprised a breakaway from the original TOM with whom it differed in July 1977 on the primacy of ‘armed struggle’ vis à vis mobilizing the British public on the Irish question. British radicals in the late 1970s were stressed by the dilemma of urging an immediate, unilateral military withdrawal rather than pressing first for a Bill of Rights and other forms of legislation designed to promote parity between the two political traditions in the Six Counties.125 TOM had raised consciousness in Britain regarding the human price being paid by the military in the early-to-mid 1970s. Founder member Aly Renwick believed this informed the ‘Ulsterization’ strategy: ‘There was a period when they were at their wits end about what they were going to do about the North. They were quite close to going for withdrawal’.126

The 1978 Easter Sunday rally in Kilburn had created a platform for the PAC and Sinn Féin to canvas allied left wing groups. This was followed up by a 5 May PAC meeting in the NUFTO Hall, London, to address a two point agenda: ‘Prisoner of War status for all Irish political prisoners within the terms of the Geneva Convention and amnesty within the context of British withdrawal from Ireland’. Kaye chaired on behalf of the PAC and Jim Reilly of Sinn Féin (Britain) gave the main oration. The date selected for the event, the birthday of Karl Marx, was intended to honour his role, along with Friedrich Engels, in campaigning on behalf of Fenian prisoners imprisoned in Britain from the 1860s. The PAC had previously commemorated Marx, and the gesture was an example of the anti-imperialist dimension of the prisoner controversy in England.127 Dozens of organizations and individuals had been invited to send messages of support and the meeting received statements from the IRA PROs of Parkhurst, Long Lartin, Gartree and Albany.128 The message from Albany had been smuggled out of the Punishment Block where several IRA prisoners had been confined since 25 April 1978 when, according to the Prison Department, ‘a group of Republican prisoners refused to go to work when ordered to do so’ in order to protest visiting arrangements.129 The statement, with input from Eddie O’Neill and Ray McLaughlin, was substantial and militant in its rhetoric:

Revolutionary greeting to all Comrades gathered here to expose the crimes of British imperialism in Ireland. We urge all socialist comrades in Britain to show solidarity with the Irish revolution and to wake up to the fact that a victory for socialism in Ireland is a victory for socialism everywhere ... From our attempts to politicize British prisoners we realise the difficulty of your task. We have made progress through our examples of solidarity and undying hatred of the prison system. The prison regime attempts to make psychological cabbages out of Republican and socialist prisoners but it will never succeed. The carrot of parole holds no attractions for Republican socialists. They cannot buy us so they will never control us. This message comes from the block in Albany prison. We are down here as a protest over the apartheid-style visits given to Republican socialists and to innocent Irish framed for Republican operations. We are not only [Category] ‘A’ prisoners but we are segregated from other prisoners. We are unable to embrace our wives or girlfriends, our mothers and fathers … Victory will come through solidarity combined with positive action.130

While Amnesty International did not regard the IRA as ‘prisoners of conscience’, the organization had been critical of Britain for its harsh interrogation of prisoners in the Castlereagh Centre, and this lent credence to similar and well-founded allegations in respect of the H-Blocks and England.131 The 5 May event in London, and another in Manchester on 26 May, fostered common ground between the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and PAC on the wider question of political status.132 From December 1976, the RCG paper Hands off Ireland! was one of the most focused publications emanating from the British left on the conflict and a strong proponent of the contentious ‘troops out now’ position.133 TOM was divided on absolute demands for an immediate British military withdrawal from Ireland for fear of unleashing uncontrollable forces, a proposal vigorously opposed by Gerry Fitt of the SDLP, Garret FitzGerald of Fine Gael, and other anti-republican moderates.134 Two promising joint meetings held in May 1978 were interspersed by a third in London in which the Roger Casement Cumann of Sinn Féin unfurled its ‘first H-Block banner’. This debut, and the significance ascribed to it by its creators, illustrated the mounting preoccupation of the party structures in England with Long Kesh.135 In a telling development, the numerically small PAC formed a ‘Prisoners in Ireland’ sub-committee to concentrate on campaigning for republicans in the two Irish jurisdictions.136

As before, the most powerful and well-resourced organization of the British Left, the CPGB, refused to be drawn into a declaration of solidarity. The Stalinist CPGB remained wedded to a de facto policy of following the lead of communist affiliates in the North of Ireland, a body with disproportionate input from persons drawn from the Unionist as well as sectarian Loyalist community. This produced a glaring paradox whereby the CPGB voiced support for international leftist revolutionary organizations in Continental Europe, Africa and Asia, while condemning the closest equivalent within the UK and Ireland. Moreover, the stance of British communists necessitated ignoring Moscow’s general opposition to allied front groups backing sub-national elements. Irish communists were by no means immune to such tensions, and the far left was badly factionalised in the 1970s, not least by the ‘Two Nations’ tendency promoted by British Irish Communist Organization (BICO), which critics contended had conferred a degree of political legitimacy on a hardline Unionist position.137 Individual communists and far left trade unionists, however, were sympathetic towards Irish republicans. Although a well-known Spanish Civil War veteran turned his back on Eddie Caughey