the British Embassy in Dublin ‘on how to react to enquiries about the petition’.146
Fr. Fell was ultimately freed in July 1981, by which time his case at Strasbourg was progressing slowly towards the victory achieved three years later.147 His profile had been relatively high in pro-republican sectors due to his clerical background and the incorrect acceptance by many that he was innocent. In New York, Michael Sheehan, columnist in the Clan na Gael paper Irish World, referenced his personal involvement in the campaign to emancipate IRA prisoners held in England in the mid-1940s. From September 1976, he interested himself in the fate of Fr. Fell and the privations endured by his English family. The story was subsequently front-page news.148 Action had been required in London when Frank Maguire MP lobbied the Home Office on behalf of Bishop Thomas Joseph Drury of Corpus Christi, Texas who wished to visit Fr. Fell on 25 August 1978. Drury was en route to Rome and staying with Sr. Clarke whom, it was noted, was ‘well known to P3 for her attempts to communicate with and visit IRA prisoners’. While Albany’s Catholic Chaplain, Fr. Parry, raised no objection, his colleague, Fr. Masterson, an acquaintance of the bishop, advised ‘he should not be permitted to visit Fell. He was apparently very pro-IRA, belonged to an American organization known as the [Ancient Order of] Hibernians, and had made some dangerous statements about the IRA in the American press’.149 Rev. Cosmas Korb, OFM, a New York associate of Sr. Clarke, had launched a letter-writing campaign on behalf of the priest in December 1979.150 Fr. Fell already had in excess of 300 contacts listed in his prison ‘letter-sheets’.151
The visit of Taoiseach Lynch to Prime Minister Callaghan in London on 27 November 1978 inspired a round of consultations between the Republic of Ireland Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Prison Department of the Home Office. Although occasioned by the necessity of face-to-face dialogue on the European Monetary System, it was appreciated that Lynch intended to ‘bring up’ the ‘treatment of Irish prisoners in Great Britain’.152 The British Embassy in Dublin had advised on 9 November that Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs had been challenged by Neil Blaney TD if he was ‘aware that Irish political prisoners in British jails are still being held in solitary confinement under conditions which are an infringement of the Convention on Human Rights’. Swift of the DFA advised British diplomats that the question would be addressed in the Dáil on 15 November. This, coupled with ongoing queries emanating from the Irish Embassy in London, all but ensured Lynch was bound to request information in London.153 A briefing document was compiled in part from correspondence sent by Lord Harris to Joan Maynard in July, supplemented by a Prison Department document of 21 November attributing much of the underlying problems to ‘continuing claims made by their supporters outside prison that Irish Republicans convicted of criminal offences are “political” prisoners who should not be subject to the normal rules and regulations of prison life’.154
While the meeting of Lynch and Callaghan passed off without public discord, the Irish Embassy felt an obligation on 14 December 1978 to raise the treatment of Tyrone IRA prisoner Sean Campbell with the Republic of Ireland Department in Downing Street, London. David Blunt was informed that Campbell had cancelled a visit from his wife and three children in August 1978 when the Governor of Wandsworth refused to exercise his discretion to permit an extended time slot. Campbell regarded a counteroffer of an additional fifteen minutes for the reunion of a family separated for three years as unacceptable. The Embassy’s Administrative Attaché related the Irishman’s additional claim to have been denied permission to meet the Visiting Committee on 29 November 1978 where he intended to assert that ‘letters he had sent to his mother and brother had not been received by them’.155 Handwritten notes by Blunt acknowledged further serious allegations of impropriety, not least Campbell’s accusation that a letter posted to the Irish Embassy on 7 March 1978 was among the correspondence ‘destroyed by the Prison’.156 While awaiting comment from the Prison Department on a possible diplomatic incident, Blunt responded to the Embassy query by posting a photocopy of the Visiting Wandsworth Prison leaflet to their nearby Grosvenor Place address.157 The FCO and Irish Embassy omitted reference in their basic written exchanges to the highly germane fact that Campbell was party to a major ECHR case in Strasbourg and very much a ‘special’ Category A prisoner.158
By January 1979 the situation in Albany had gone from bad to worse. The republican magazine IRIS reported that the ‘barbaric treatment’ continued: ‘Screws are still hosing out the cells, the POWs and their bedding with hot water, depriving them of their chamber-pots, and causing undue delays in permitting toilet usage’. The four faced mail restrictions, twenty-three hour lock up and remained barred from attending Mass in the main chapel’.159 IRIS was edited by Fr. Parais O Duill, who had - first hand knowledge of the English prison system, arising from his efforts to save Frank Stagg’s life in 1976.160 He was also prominent in addressing injustice in Ireland. In March 1978 O Duill was denounced in the Special Criminal Court, Dublin, for his efforts to defend the four IRSP defendants framed by Irish authorities for the Sallins train robbery. His associate, Joe Stagg, brother of Frank, was also censured in the juryless court which had wrongly convicted the ‘IRSP 4’.161 O Duill’s organizational ability and experience of prison issues made him the ideal chair of the influential National H-Blocks/ Armagh Committee, which acted as the key co-ordinating body for protests inspired by the blanket protests and 1980–81 hunger strikes.162 His former IRA credentials lessened fears within the Republican Movement that persons interested primarily in opportunist ‘anti-imperialist’ politics lacking commitment to the Armed Struggle would dilute the campaign. Advocacy of ‘regard for human rights’ by O Duill in March 1980 posed no threat to concurrent republican efforts.163
Prisoners and Armed Struggle
‘The “Special Prisoners” in England’ feature was carried by Republican News in January 1979 and concentrated on the harshness endured by Martin Brady in Wakefield. Two significant points were made by ‘Oscair’, which effectively signalled the leadership’s policy towards the prisoners in England. Brady was cited as opining: ‘Conditions will not improve much until a victory has been achieved over the H-Block issue at home in Ireland’. This addressed the uncomfortable but obvious fact that the Long Kesh campaign was being prioritized over a potential drive to highlight the injustices of the Dispersal System. It was important, however, to stress that the prisoners in England were not seeking pre-eminence and, in fact, were fully behind the grim struggles in Long Kesh and Armagh. ‘Oscair’ balanced the de facto downgrading of the England campaign with a declaration that ‘The POWs in England must not be allowed to become the forgotten prisoners … they are in need of support and solidarity’.164 In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mike Duffy of Irish Northern Aid compensated by organizing a ‘Prisoners Writing Campaign’ which annually channelled thousands of letters and cards to IRA members imprisoned in Ireland and England.165 Quantities of Irish People and other Irish-American titles arrived