been prominent in the campaign against the force-feeding of IRA prisoners in 1974–5 and a vocal supporter of prisoners’ rights to humane treatment and, in the case of the republicans, political status. She was acting in 1978 on behalf of the Medical Committee against the Abuse of Prisoners by Drugging.50
The Board of Visitors imposed punishments on those deemed to be culpable, and did so with the confidence imbued by the recent High Court judgement that they had full legal authority, albeit subject to legal review. In October 1978 the Court of Appeal accepted that a prisoner had ‘residuary rights appertaining to the nature and conduct of his imprisonment’ and that decisions taken by a Board of Visitors were subject to re-examination. Outside courts had hitherto declined to rule on internal prison procedures on the grounds of jurisdiction.51 Those accused of rioting in Gartree, moreover, had communicated with London-based solicitors who would have been in a position to assist with their defence had the option of hearing criminal cases in an outside court been green lighted. PROP had welcomed this prospect as the ‘first test case’ of the post-Appeal Court decision, although the Board of Visitor process was followed in the event.52 Gartree rioters were ultimately sentenced to eighty-six days in solitary confinement, and those not serving life sentences forfeited a year’s remission of sentence. Time spent awaiting adjudication was not deducted and the net effect of the Board’s deliberations was that Jerry Mealy lost 440 days remission.53 Republicans alleged that IRA members, British anarchists and other political prisoners were singled out from the main body of those responsible. It could not be denied, however, that the IRA had been deeply involved in the disturbances, and their agency was noted in the Times.54 Many life-sentenced prisoners were moved due to the loss of accommodation which compounded the reduction in places occasioned by the Chelmsford prison fire in March.55 Being shifted after a hiatus in receiving visits ensured that the families of those ‘ghosted’ around England were uncertain where to re-establish contact.56
Paul Holmes was one of the few IRA men initially retained in Gartree where he received a sentence of 186 days in solitary despite having played no part in the riot due to his enforced isolation from events.57 He was then moved to Long Lartin where he served the additional sentence. Brian McLaughlin, who had only just been returned to Gartree from a ‘lie-down’ in Bristol, was also retained in the prison. After repeated requests for medical examination in the aftermath of the riot, McLaughlin was diagnosed with TB.58 Martin Brady was regarded as a ‘ringleader’ and was sent to Wakefield where he was promised a ‘hard time’ from staff. This threat was easily delivered within the hermetic confines of F-Wing.59 Paul Hill and Phil Sheridan arrived into Exeter, a local jail rarely used to hold IRA prisoners. Hill was quickly moved on to Winchester and Wakefield while Sheridan endured nine months in the ‘awful’, ill-appointed Exeter where the Segregation Block resembled ‘a subterranean dungeon’.60 Sheehan was dispatched via Wormwood Scrubs to Parkhurst. McCluskey and McCartney were shifted to Winchester and very quickly into the punishment block for protesting the local conditions. Whereas McCluskey was shortly afterwards moved on to Wormwood Scrubs for an extended bout of solitary confinement, McCartney’s refusal to co-operate with the staff and rejection of ‘closed’ visits resulted in his being detained in a ‘strong box’ cell in the Segregation Unit.61
Ronnie McCartney spent December 1978 and January 1979 in the ‘strong box’, during which time he was refused permission to attend religious services or use personal cash to buy Christmas cards for his family.62 The adapted cell was soundproofed by reinforced doors and walls: a combination of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation which, prisoners claimed, facilitated physical attacks by staff. The Winchester variant was painted in brilliant white, which accentuated the impact of the overhead light being left on constantly, and resulted in the lasting impairment of McCartney’s vision.63 While the hardships endured by all IRA prisoners in England featured in republican organs, the perception that McCartney had been particularly maltreated resonated in political prints for several months. His progress was reported following transfer to Hull in February 1979.64 His defiance in Hull, where he was held on ‘E-List’ in the Punishment Block, led to beatings and confinement in the ‘strong-box’. The special cell consisted of a concrete bed behind a heavy double door which ensured ‘no one could hear what was happening to you’.65
The highly visible and media-covered Gartree protest exposed the potential for violence within an overstressed penal environment. Overcrowding exerted strain across the network and ensured that prisoner pacification was a pressing matter in 1978 in the aftermath of expensive and embarrassing riots in the Dispersal System.66 Brixton staff, as part of an ambitious POA strategy involving forty of Britain’s 120 prisons, voted on 19 October to refuse admittance to an average of twenty-five remand prisoners per day from 5 November.67 Such threats, in the context of prisoner restiveness, obliged Home Secretary Merlyn Rees to seek ‘urgent’ Cabinet approval for an inquiry into the grievances of Prison Service employees. This was granted on 2 November.68 The POA were unequivocal in citing the Irish political dimension to the cusp of exaggeration, although many members would have realised that IRA personnel were due to give evidence in York Crown Court from 2 November when proceedings commenced against staff accused of offences committed during and after the Hull riot.69 It was significant that warders did not overreact in terms of physical assaults when their ascendancy in Gartree was restored.70
In the advent of the Home Secretary’s review, David Heywood, Assistant Secretary of the Society of Civil and Public Servants, pressed the case in a naked reference to the danger posed by IRA prisoners: ‘Riots on the scale of the recent Gartree disturbances might break out at several prisons at the same time. Violent prisoners and IRA extremists would be delighted to exploit the situation’.71 A joint letter to the Home Secretary from prison governors was similarly themed: ‘If the present trend continues there will be a serious loss of control, which has to be quelled by armed intervention, with the probability of both staff and prisoners being killed’.72 The allusion to an Attica - style massacre, if extreme and unprecedented in Britain, did not appear entirely unreasonable in the last years of the most violent decade of the century inside the country’s prisons. PROP had predicted a major incident for years and was unsurprised by the near manifestation of armed intervention in Albany in May 1983.73
Questions of control lay at the heart of most serious controversies of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Inmates were conventionally punished for dissent and violation of regulations by temporary loss of privileges and remission of sentence. Punishments included imprisonment in detached or small spaces engineered to promote desocialization,