See also PAC, Press Statement, 28 October 1978, Private Collection (O Mathuna).
131.Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were hanged outside the New Bailey, Manchester, on 23 November 1867 despite a sizeable campaign for commutation of their sentences. Their bodies were soon moved into the grounds of the then newly constructed Strangeways Prison. The Manchester Martyrs Memorial Committee, founded by local Fenian Seamus Barrett, erected the monument in the early 1900s. See Herbert, Wearing of the green, pp. 53–8.
132.Jackie Kaye, ‘Case against the Tribunal’ in Hands off Ireland!, No. 6, January 1979, p. 12.
133.See Quinlivan and Rose, Fenians in England, p. 166. Paul Hill taught the words to London armed robber Graham Little whom he first encountered in Wormwood Scrubs. He explained how the song had been sung during the Spanish Civil War in honour of a group of Republicans who fought to the death. This inspired Little to sing the song every morning at 6.00 a.m. Hill, Stolen years, p. 207. Ray McLaughlin heard Little’s ‘incessant chanting’ during a lie-down in Bristol and feared ‘it must be gibberish’. On raising it with him later and learning the true purpose of his recitation of what transpired to have been ‘The Internationale’, the two parted as ‘the best of friends’. The Irishman was then reading Sean Cronin’s biography of ex-IRA and Republican Congress leader Frank Ryan, a senior officer in the anti-fascist XVth International Brigade. Reamonn [Ray McLaughlin] to Eamonn [Eddie O’Neill], 1 November 1983, Private Collection (O’Neill). English prisoner Little endorsed the Bobby Sands portrait he painted and presented to the ISM with the slogan ‘Solidarity’. FRFI, April 1984, p. 16.
134.Republican News, 25 November 1978.
135.Republican News, 13 November 1978. See also IRIS, 15 November 1978 and 21 July 1979.
136.‘Visit of the Taoiseach: 27 November 1978’ enclosure with BR Grange to DG Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
137.‘Irish Republican Prisoners’, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
138.Republican News, 30 September 1978.
139.Republican News, 10 February 1979 and Irish political prisoners, p. 71.
140.Sr. Clarke, Miscellaneous MSS, Clarke Papers (COFLA).
141.IRIS, 12 January 1979.
142.O’Donnell, Special Category, I, p. 113.
143.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
144.McLaughlin, Inside an English jail, p. 49.
145.IRIS, 6 December 1978.
146.DG Blunt to BR Grange, 23 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. See also Grange to Blunt, 27 November 1978, Ibid.
147.The Irish Prisoner, No. 7 [1986].
148.Irish World, 4 and 11 September 1976. Frank Stagg’s story also remained in the foreground in America where the IRA conviction of Patrick Stagg and Sinn Féin activities of George and Joe Stagg were reported in detail. See Irish World, 18 September 1976. Sheehan moved from Ireland to Australia in 1951 and was involved in the Anti-Partition League which De Valera had promoted worldwide. On resettling in the US he was greeted by George Harrison, Liam Cotter and other leading republican activists. Irish World, 6 September 1980 and 11 December 1982.
149.See ‘Patrick Miles Fell: proposed visit by the Bishop of Texas’ [n.d., 1978], NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
150.See Rev. Cosmas Korb to the Editor, Irish World, 4 December 1979. See also Clarke, No faith, p. 107 and Irish Echo, 18 August 1984.
151.‘Patrick Miles Fell’ [n.d., 1978], NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
152.DG Blunt to BR Gange, 16 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
153.PJ Goulden to AL Free-Gore, 9 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
154.BR Gange to DG Blunt, 21 November 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
155.J Murphy to David Blunt, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
156.D[avid] G B[lunt] MS notes, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763.
157.David Blunt to John Neary (First Secretary), 21 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. See also DG Blunt to M Paice (Home Office Prison Department), 18 December 1978, 14 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. Blunt was also contacted regarding Stevie Blake to which he replied: ‘Mr. Blake has certainly been moved from prison to prison a large number of times. Such moves are never made lightly and in Mr. Blake’s case they have always been necessary in the interests of prison security or good order and discipline. The remedy seems to lie largely in Mr. Blake’s own hands … in the event of a transfer, every effort will be made by the prison authorities to notify Mrs [Mary] Blake of her son’s new location if a visiting order is outstanding’. Blunt to Neary, 4 December 1978, NAE, FCO 87/ 763. Mary Blake lived in Wolfe Tone Place, Letterkenny, Donegal. Dick [O’Brien] to Sherrard [Cowper-Coles], 9 May 1978, Ibid.
158.Irish Times, 10 May 1978.
159.IRIS, 12 January 1979. The paper averred: ‘All the POWs retain their strength and determination in this struggle for their just demands and BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS’. The same issue carried a report of a meeting of major literary figures opposed to the situation in the H-Blocks. IRIS, 12 January 1979.
160.Fr. Piaras O’Duill, 12 July 2011.
161.See Framed through the Special Criminal Court, p. 34. Joe Stagg chaired the Irish Civil Rights Association until September 1978 when he resigned arising from his public comments concerning the allegedly excessive internal discipline of IRA prisoners in Portlaoise. Irish Times, 9