the modified rope, a detail of which she disclaimed all knowledge.87
Information on the incident emerged on 7 January 1980 when Gillespie was prosecuted. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid the escape of four men from Wormwood Scrubs. The four were named in evidence as Nicholas Smith and IRA prisoners Paddy Mulryan, James ‘Punter’ Bennett and Stevie Nordone, who were all serving sentences of twenty years and over. Following Gillespie’s conviction it was claimed that Wesley Dick had originated a plot which would have freed ‘some of the most dangerous criminals in Britain’, although the West Indian was not charged with any offence.88 Dick, a politically motivated armed robber who had adopted the name Shujaa Moshesh in prison, had also been on good terms with Ray McLaughlin, who also encountered his co-defendants in the Category A circuits.89 John McCluskey described him as ‘the most politicized black prisoner that I’ve ever met in prison. He was constantly working to politicize other black prisoners and not only black. He worked with all the white prisoners he possibly could’.90
Dick was one of the three black radicals sentenced on 30 June 1976 for a misfired armed robbery attempt in London which precipitated the five day ‘Spaghetti House’ hostage - taking siege in Knightsbridge on 28 September 1975. Dick, Frank Davies and Anthony ‘Bonsu’ Monroe claimed membership of the socialist Black Liberation Army, an independent offshoot of the USA Black Panther movement, and insisted on political motivation when in custody. While the depth of this sensational identification was debated, the men consciously emulated the contemporary IRA by refusing to recognize the court and turning their backs on Justice Griffith-Jones in the Old Bailey. Advised by ex-Army major Sir Robert Mark and Commander Ernest Bond, Griffith-Jones rejected the defendants’ assertion of political and racial inspiration and imposed terms of seventeen to twenty-one years.91 Dick had met the IRA ‘Balcombe Street’ group and ‘some’ of the Guildford Four when on remand in Brixton in 1975. On entering the Dispersal System, he had political discussions with Shane Paul O’Doherty and other assertive republicans. He acknowledged that there was ‘a whole heap I learned when I was in prison, especially from people who were more conscious than me, mainly the Irish guys’.92 According to the West Indian:
In prison I was meeting people who were giving me the Irish liberation point of view. The first thing I noticed which impressed me was their commitment to the Irish struggle. They’re not half way guys … Any kind of English hostility against black and Irish prisoners the screws will support because it’s in their interest to keep prisoners divided as well as matching their own racism. We had a lot of political discussions, were involved in protests and strikes. They proved the level of their commitment. It was a learning process; I’m sure I learned more from them than they learned from me. They used to ask me questions about aspects of the black struggle.93
Such deep foundations underlay the spirit of cooperation divined in the attempted Wormwood Scrubs breakout of 7 October 1978. A search of Mulyran’s cell on the night of the planned escape uncovered incriminating contraband. A manuscript map of D Wing, scale drawings of keys, pages extracted from a street directory showing the Wormwood Scrubs neighbourhood and a stolen driving license were found inside his record player.94 The London court clearly accepted that Smith and the three IRA men had received the assistance of Gillespie in planning to escape. However, no ‘proceedings’ were initiated against the group in view of the ‘length of the sentences they are serving’.95 It emerged that a person acting on Mulryan’s behalf had sent a telegram to Gillespie urging postponement of the bid, although this was evidently not received. Judge Michael Argyle sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment on 11 January 1980 despite his unverified claim to have been subjected to ‘veiled threats’ from the republicans.96 The trial occurred after a long interval and the time lag, coupled with the minimal attempt to bring charges, facilitated the Prison Department by downplaying the seriousness of an escape conspiracy of potentially major repercussions. Any successful collaboration between IRA Category A prisoners, politicized black prisoners and resourceful British organized criminals was a dire prospect vis à vis the efficacy of the Dispersal System and anti-republican propaganda. The Home Office must have noted that October 1978 was a month in which the IRA prisoners under their control were deeply implicated in rioting and viable escape plans. This was not the full extent of the republican challenge.
The Blanket Protest in England
The drama in Gartree prison temporarily overshadowed an historic development in Albany, Isle of Wight, where five IRA men commenced a blanket protest on 8 October 1978.97 If the first major effort of its kind by the IRA in England since the 1940s, the methodology, mentality and stated objectives were exactly the same as its precursors. Refusal to wear prison uniform was the standard republican demonstration against criminal categorization. The death in Ireland of Tommy Mullins on 2 November 1978 served to remind the general public of the centrality of such modes of protest within the IRA. Mullins had undertaken a fifteen-day hunger strike and blanket protest when he was a republican prisoner in Wormwood Scrubs during the War of Independence, 1919–21. He went on to become a founder member of Fianna Fáil and retired as General Secretary of the party as recently as 1973.98 In 1978 neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael, the two largest political parties in Ireland, wished to be reminded of their shared armed republican heritage, despite separate annual political pilgrimages to Bodenstown, Kildare, the home of the grave of Wolfe Tone, ‘father’ of the ideology.99
In the course of a ‘valedictory visit’ by Irish Embassy First Secretary Richard ‘Dick’ O’Brien, David Blunt of the Republic of Ireland Department (RID) of the FCO was alerted to his concern ‘with developments during the past few months in certain British prisons, especially HM Prison, Albany’. O’Brien demonstrated awareness that the ‘unrest’ on the Isle of Wight had been ‘simmering for a while before being escalated by the July demonstrations’. In October 1978 the main fear expressed by the First Secretary was ‘that we may be approaching an “H-Block” situation in this country’. A restricted digest of the meetings was passed to the Prison Department which rejected any justification of discrimination claims made by Irish prisoners in terms of either treatment or punishment.100
Albany had been at the centre of IRA complaints since April 1978 when visiting, and general penal conditions had deteriorated.101 In a statement worthy of greater import than was granted, republicans claimed that matters in the complex were ‘fast approaching those of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh’.102 Irish Category A men received half-hour visits in tiny rooms attended by four prison officers and a policewoman if female visitors or children were present. Liam Baker took exception to a particularly obnoxious policewoman and lost all remission in consequence of his engagement in protests.103 Britons, including Category A men, simultaneously enjoyed two-hour visits in a large hall with fifty tables and low-key staff supervision.104 The contrast was by no means academic. Ray McLaughlin was fined for kissing his wife Mary goodbye in June 1978 and Eddie O’Neill was docked forty-nine days remission for claiming that a dog handler had called him an ‘Irish