‘war news’ columns of a type eschewed by mainstream media.166 From a British perspective, the Irish People newspaper was regarded as: ‘Essentially Sinn Féin’s An Phoblacht with any left wing comment laundered out so not to alarm more conservative Irish-Americans’.167
Statements from the PAC and RCG were increasingly uncompromising with respect to other groupings with whom they cooperated from time to time on the Irish question. The extremity of Long Kesh and ‘similar conditions’ in Albany increased their opposition to the perceived ‘bourgeois’ equivocation and moderation of the International Tribunal organization in particular.168 The numerically small and avowedly ‘independent’ PAC was also concerned with ensuring it was not perceived as having a ‘special relationship’ with the more resourced RCG, despite close collaboration on several demonstrations and newspaper distribution arrangements prior to June 1979.169 In restating the clear political agenda of the PAC, Kaye commented on 14 November 1978 that: ‘The campaign of Irish prisoners for Prisoner of War Status in both England and Ireland is a crucial issue. Prisoners in this country have never had political status, yet they have never accepted criminalisation. The campaign of the prisoners in the H Block and the campaign of the women prisoners in Armagh have brought that central issue to a climax and to a crisis. There can be no standing on the sidelines, no impartiality’.170
The prospect of generating political pressure on the ground in England by uniting a spectrum of left wing organizations on the prisons theme ran into more serious difficulties in December 1978. Bomb attacks on commercial premises in Liverpool, Bristol, Coventry, Southampton and London on 17 and 18 December injured several civilians and fuelled a backlash against IRA tactics by groups which had hitherto offered conditional support. The blasts followed a lull in IRA actions and there had been no sustained series of major incidents since January/ February 1976.171 Criticism from Socialist Worker and pro-People’s Democracy Socialist Challenge was not unexpected, but the contention by the Worker’s Revolutionary Party that the bombings were counterproductive struck a raw nerve. WRP organ The Newsline called on 19 December 1978 for ‘IRA militants to immediately and unconditionally reject these terror tactics and those who advocate them’. This not only distanced the formerly staunch WRP from the IRA but encouraged activists to breach the constitution of Óglaigh na hÉireann.172 Clann na hÉireann, representing the Official Republican Movement in Britain, sensed the discomfort of Sinn Féin in England and criticized the party’s efforts, in what they described as ‘frantically looking to the growing rag bag of Irish ultra-left organizations without finding the answers they seek’.173 As with the CPGB, individual CNH members who did not migrate into the IRSP in the late 1970s were far more sympathetic towards those waging the ‘armed struggle’.
The stance of the WRP contrasted with the unambiguous support offered by the PAC which, in a Republican News notice advertising the Bloody Sunday commemoration, declared its view that ‘only an unremitting struggle against British Imperialism will bring Peace and Justice for the Irish people’.174 The PAC message was printed directly above one placed by the IRA in Wakefield which expressed gratitude to those who participated in the commemoration and called for ‘all organizations to unite on the issue of supporting the war for national liberation in Ireland’.175 Inserts from the Irelande Libre group in Paris and the French Friends of Ireland could not cancel out the reverses sustained in relation to the English radicals. A subsequent assessment theorized that the PTA had minimized Irish engagement in political campaigns in England and ‘left the field clear for the representatives of small groups who had no base in the Irish population’.176 Certain ‘far left’ elements, it was claimed, retained an ‘anti-Republican prejudice’, which complicated the task of building support for the ‘troops out now’ position advocated by Sinn Féin.177
The National Joint Unit at New Scotland Yard, comprising detectives of the Metropolitan and detached provincial police Special Branches, coordinated ‘enquiries and applications from police forces in Great Britain concerning people held under prevention of terrorism legislation’.178 Liaisons with the Heathrow Airport - based National Ports Office, Home Office, MI5 and individuals within Ireland’s Special Branch provided scope for comprehensive surveillance, tracking and interdiction of known suspects. However, Irish communities in Britain believed that the danger of unjust convictions remained acute. This was illustrated on 26 January 1979 when thirteen Irish citizens were seized under the PTA in Braintree, Essex and remanded to Brixton. Those detained were members of the local ‘Irish Society’ whom the prompt combined efforts of lawyers Mike Fisher and Michael Mansfield ultimately kept out of prison. Fr. Brian Brady and Sr. Sarah Clarke responded with urgency to the situation while providing humanitarian assistance.179
Sr. Clarke mobilized many of her overseas contacts to intervene on behalf of those detained. A link provided by Fr. Faul in Paris alerted Rita Mullen of the Irish National Caucus in Washington DC. The INC was headed by Fr. Sean McManus, brother of Fermanagh ex-Republican MP Frank McManus. Such proactivity was not universally appreciated. Brixton’s security vetted Catholic Chaplain, Fr. Evans, accused the nun of ‘bringing the Catholic Church into disrepute’.180 It transpired that the arrests had been sparked by the hunt for Gerry Tuite, a leading IRA activist from Cavan held responsible for several major incidents in 1978. He had stayed with one of those arrested in Braintree and was linked to a car hired in the area which was later found laden with explosives. Two small explosions had damaged police property in Braintree on 11 May 1977, but none of those detained faced charges in this respect.181 Lack of physical evidence and confessions, as well as innocence of illegality, ensured that the Old Bailey jury rejected allegations that the thirteen were engaged in a conspiracy. Numerous persons charged in connection with IRA activities in England spent up to a year in maximum-security prisons prior to being tried and acquitted.182
Although less contentious in terms of media reportage in England, a wave of IRA attacks on prison officers in the North of Ireland was a major concern for imprisoned republicans and those by whom they were guarded. Ray McLaughlin was questioned about the IRA strategy in January 1979 in York Crown Court when giving evidence against Hull staff who had assaulted Irish and British prisoners. His argument that those working in the Six Counties were acceptable targets by virtue of being armed ‘mercenaries who had chosen to take part in the attempted criminalization of Irish political prisoners’ only marginally differentiated them from their colleagues in the Dispersal System.183 Ultimately, the IRA decided that killing prison staff in England was an inappropriate use of resources and would probably lead to the deaths of imprisoned comrades. The organization was certainly capable of taking such severe action at will. On 3 February 1979 the Belfast Brigade shot Patrick Mackin, a Liverpool-Irish former head of the prison officers training school in Millisle, County Down.184 There were then 350 IRA prisoners ‘on the blanket’ in Long Kesh enduring horrendous conditions of confinement, with many being routinely assaulted by staff.185