sent to the Punishment Block, after which the much-persecuted McLaughlin was shifted to Wakefield and O’Neill to Gartree.105 ‘Ghostings’ were not isolated phenomena, and the universal withdrawal of facilities in Parkhurst due to industrial action by staff heightened tensions. The temporary closure of the prison’s once heavily protected workshops exacerbated an already fraught situation. By early December over 200 men in three of the four wings felt obliged to boycott the extremely poor quality sustenance on offer.106
In the aftermath of the July cell - smashing protest, the remaining IRA men in Albany were deprived of chamber pots in their cells and did not receive replacement furniture.107 Most declined to shave their beards from 18 July when informed that they would only be permitted to bathe only once per week.108 They were denied permission to attend weekly Mass on Sundays to limit communication with other prisoners, but were granted access to religious services on other days.109 This was ordinarily the responsibility of the Governor who under Prison Standing Orders was required to invoke Order 7A 3 (4) to disbar attendance. Circumstances determined that the option of rioting was impractical and a full-blown hunger strike was not warranted. Recourse to a protracted blanket-style protest on the core issue of repatriation was relatively appealing under the circumstances. Non-co-operation was the central concept. Strategic interests were addressed by IRA demands to be repatriated to their native country, while the initial cause of complaint against ‘forms of discrimination’ remained in focus.110
On 8 October 1978 Busty Cunningham, Tipp Guilfoyle, Tony Cunningham and Liam Baker demanded repatriation to Irish prisons where, despite the gruelling protest in the H-Blocks, their status as political prisoners would be much more defined. Family visits were generally less fraught in either of the two Irish jurisdictions than in England for prisoners who were not on protest. That fact that Baker had settled in Southampton and was married to a devoted Englishwoman was regarded as immaterial in view of the political context.111 Ray McLaughlin had only just emerged from a unilateral blanket protest in Wakefield’s F Wing and was incapable of resuming the tactic in support of Albany comrades, owing to what the PAC described as ‘severe psychological disorientation’.112 The Leeds branch of UTOM protested on his behalf outside the prison every Sunday. McLaughlin grew ill in Wakefield and had trouble with balance and speech when released to the wings.113 In retrospect, the militant Irishman highlighted the typically ‘bad communications’ on the planning stages of the blanket protest, which may have altered the situation in Albany had he been in full health.114
It was pertinent that the trial of twelve prison officers who had savagely beaten McLaughlin and others in Hull was then underway.115 Wakefield’s IRA PRO contended that the Donegal man had been ‘singled out by the prison staff for special treatment because of his participation in the Hull prison riot, and because he was one of the key witnesses’.116 Tyrone’s Gerry Cunningham, similarly, was also moved from London’s tough Wandsworth prison to Wakefield ahead of the trial. He received ‘plenty of verbal’ in F Wing on arrival but was not physically assaulted.117 The rare participation of IRA witnesses in a civil trial was cited as an explanation of the exceptional heavy security surrounding the sessions in York.118 The stakes were high for all concerned. Mary McLaughlin, in a November 1978 interview recorded in Birmingham, claimed that the failure to convict staff for their actions following the Hull riot ‘might lead to another’.119
Numerous Prison Officers were committed for trial at York Crown Court on 31 August 1978 to answer charges arising from one of the most important and destructive riots in modern British history.120 Ray McLaughlin gave evidence on 25 January 1979, an ideologically challenging task for an Irish republican, who tended and were at times required under pain of Óglaigh na hÉireann sanction, to withhold personal recognition of the judicial competency of such forums.121 Solidarity was expressed by other IRA men in Albany who, when ‘on the blanket’, withdrew their ‘co-operation’ from attending prison staff.122 This oppositional stance placed an onus on their jailers to mediate the permanently unequal relationship vis à vis captors and captives, either within their own immediate terms, or those they deemed permissible by superiors. A robust equilibrium was thus established by the IRA in Albany whereby public and politically essential compromises in York were not only justified by the objective of achieving a higher objective, but were materially counterbalanced by harmful sacrifice within the intensely private Segregation ‘Punishment’ Block.
Whereas Shane Paul O’Doherty and a small number of IRA men had resorted to the blanket in England in previous years, the concerted co-operation of the Albany group marked a departure in scale and policy.123 For pragmatic reasons, not least for clarity of key issues and the efficacy of republican propaganda, a blanket protest in Wormwood Scrubs was presented as an escalation of that underway in Albany. Mick Murray, who had just completed two weeks in solitary, joined Punter Bennett in refusing to wear prison clothes on 13 October.124 He was held in solitary for twenty-four hours a day in a cell painted completely white.125 The IRA in Wormwood Scrubs were irritated in the early part of the month when Paddy Mulryan was ghosted to Long Lartin and Eddie Byrne to Walton for alleged complicity in an escape attempt.126 Newry man Byrne had been sent to Wormwood Scrubs in late 1978 from which he had come very close to liberating himself from two years earlier. He was placed in segregation and had his arm in a sling arising from an assault. Byrne was reputed to be ‘refusing visits because of conditions there and threats against him and his wife by screws’.127 An American Congressman who made overtures to the Home Office regarding Byrne’s treatment was informed that the Irishman’s ‘behaviour since conviction has been poor … [and involved] many offences against prison discipline’.128
The PAC offered direct support while campaigning politically at a strategic level. The 26 November 1978 commemoration of the Manchester Martyrs in London was identified as an opportunity to reiterate public backing for the interlinked demands of political status, amnesty and a British military withdrawal from Ireland.129 An impressive turn out of 5,000 was achieved as most of the main leftist and union groups who had supported the July demonstration once again took to the streets. Chairman Peter Turton of the PAC called for a minute’s silence ‘for all the Irish political prisoners who have died in British jails’. Kevin Colfer of Sinn Féin (Britain) read a message from the Albany IRA men.130 Ironically, the three ‘martyrs’ executed in Manchester in November 1867 had been convicted of taking part in the successful springing of two high-ranking Fenians from a prison van. The