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