with progressive socialist groups and taking part in colonial run elections’.173 This referenced the violent struggle between the Official IRA and emergent INLA and IRSP which had claimed the life of Seamus Costello on 5 October 1977.174 Costello had been shot dead in Dublin by ex-England Official IRA prisoner Jim Flynn. Collective action permitted individual assertion and Fr. Pat Fell published a personal tribute to the assassinated Marie Drumm, shot in the Mater Hospital, Belfast by British-backed Loyalists on 28 October 1976.175 Criticizing opponents and praising comrades was very much the standard discourse of Sinn Féin cummain in Britain and Ireland. While such communications regularly emerged from Long Kesh, Portlaoise and Armagh, the input from England represented a bid for inclusion in the totality of prisoner affairs. Politically minded IRA men such as Eddie O’Neill, Ray McLaughlin, Gerry Cunningham, Paul Holmes, Ronnie McCartney, Joe O’Connell, Vince Donnelly, Tony Cunningham, Sean Campbell, Kevin Dunphy, Tony Madigan and Busty Cunningham were not easily excluded.176
Visits to Albany were disrupted in February 1978 when staff contacted Irish families at short notice to cancel their pre-booked Visiting Orders. Only two Irish prisoners were permitted to have simultaneous visits, and staff employed what Sr. Clarke termed ‘a new trick’ in which they interrupted sessions, claiming that the space was required for another family who would otherwise forfeit their slot.177 The IRA men conferred in mid-February when the Board of Visitors refused to compromise on the running of ‘closed’ visits, but could not decide on a specific plan of action. Three voted for a roof top occupation and four for non-cooperation. IRA prisoners in Ireland generally followed the direction of an O/C who was advised by an Adjutant and Intelligence Officer and, at times, the external leadership. Republicans in Albany commenced a policy of ‘non-cooperation’ with prison staff in early April when ‘visiting and other conditions seriously worsened’.178 This was unusual in that April 1978 witnessed the announcement of a Civil Service Pay Settlement that ended staff protests.179
Recourse to a more concerted protest followed the failure of a formal overture by Ray McLaughlin, via his solicitor Alastair Logan and Joan Maynard MP, to the House of Commons. Maynard’s question on visits at Albany and the Dispersal System elicited the disingenuous claim from the Home Office that the IRA were not subject to discrimination. Home Office denials and Board of Visitor intransigence set the scene for a confrontation.180 Indeed, Maynard’s methodical probing of the Home Office in June 1978 had revealed that Category A IRA prisoners were obliged to accept untypical visiting conditions explained in vague terms of ‘security reasons’.181 Logan revealed that the main proposal by Governor Lister to defuse the situation in April was to remove one of the two wall-to-wall tables from the unsuitable space provided to enable visitors to embrace their relatives. The result was the repositioning of two staff members who usually sat in the corridor inside the small room when in use.182 McLaughlin apprised Logan that in addition to a loitering female ‘matron’ or WPC, ‘there are still at least four security employees listening in on every visit, two of these sit about three feet behind the prisoner and the other two behind the visitor’.183
This supposedly irenic-minded adjustment was deemed unsatisfactory by prisoners, especially when it was balanced by a new policy of strip-searching before and after sessions. According to Logan:
It is making it impossible for visits to take place. The Governor knows full well that the individuals concerned will not voluntarily submit to a strip search. Strip searching is normally only carried out accompanied by what is known as a “spin” when the prisoner’s cell is thoroughly searched by a team of Officers to find out if he have any unlawful material … If he is right and the prisoners decide not to accept visits under these conditions, he will have got over the problem which the visits have been causing by constant complaints.184
Lord Harris insisted on 11 July 1978 that this reform was ‘purely a security precaution and not, as the [George E Baker & Co] solicitors appear to be suggesting, a control or punishment measure’. Harris rejected calls to investigate what he believed to be baseless ‘allegations … that Irish Republican prisoners are discriminated against’.185 The FCO, which preferred questions on prison policy originating in the Irish Embassy to be redirected to the Home Office, viewed Maynard as ‘an active supporter of the “Troops Out Movement”’ and Logan as a solicitor who had ‘close connections with IRA prisoners in this country, and an active propagandist for them’.186
Refusing work in Albany entailed confinement in the Segregation Block for terms of fourteen to fifty-six days. All the republicans, baring the abstaining Fr. Pat Fell, and innocent ex-Official IRA man Sean Smyth, were confined in the Block by 25 April. On rejecting an invitation from the Governor to resume their ‘duties’ as normal after a twenty-four hour period of enforced reflection, the recalcitrant men were returned to cells set aside for the obdurate and disobedient.187 Tony Madigan favoured the option of taking to the roof, but the discovery of rope ladders in his cell, along with paint he intended to use to daub slogans once in situ, negated the plan: ‘The visits again were a bone of contention. The lads then said we’d all refuse work and again I disagreed … I thought you caused them more problems being up in the general population than you can be isolated in the Block. If you let them isolate you, you are not threatening them … We were down there for ten months’.188 Every effort was made to frustrate the efficient running of the unit by such means as banging doors, shouting, singing and making noise in contravention of regulations. This inspired English prisoners to join in and offer a united front of defiance to staff.189
Two focused bouts of agitation won a Derry criminal a light bulb in his cell and Busty Cunningham access to the weekly bath he was nominally permitted. Success, however, entailed repercussions from an establishment that could not be seen to weaken in the face of protesting prisoners. Beatings during future ‘lie downs’ were promised, and the core of the IRA group was disrupted by swopping Eddie O’Neill for Tipp Guilfoyle in Gartree, and Ray McLaughlin for Stephen Blake in Wakefield.190 Once delivered, Guilfoyle declined to wear prison uniform in Albany and spent fifteen months in segregation in consequence.191 Blake was initially located on a standard wing but became embroiled in a ‘fracas’ when he refused the demeaning job of sewing uniforms.192 Madigan did not believe much had been achieved in the Block by what he termed the ‘Terence MacSwiney Syndrome’, whereby republicans sought moral victory by endurance and self-sacrifice rather than mere infliction. The question of stepping up resistance by means of sabotage, however, had been raised as an alternate strategy.193
The May 1978 statement released by the Albany men to the Sinn Féin/ PAC Karl Marx commemoration in London evidenced their appreciation of the utility of political propaganda. A constant stream of publicity from the jails was necessary to ensure the refreshment and wide dissemination