On receiving an unsubtle warning from the two IRA men in the small TV room, the irritable Englishmen gradually adapted to their presence. Scope for assertion was boosted by the knowledge that their associates in Parkhurst were not facing significant threat and that the IRA throughout the Dispersal System were forming ad hoc alliances.69 Following McVicar’s release, two of the remaining Englishmen in the Leicester Unit were invited to participate in an escape for which one subsequently offered to furnish firearms. This was declined by Doherty, who knew that ‘dummy runs’ were being conducted nearby in preparation for moving a hoist adjacent to the wall. The specialised equipment was capable of lifting four men over an inner wall and the forty-foot perimeter boundary. There seemed to be no justification for intimidating unarmed staff with weaponry. However, the two Irishmen were ‘ghosted’ within days of involving others and they divined from the sudden decision to construct a roof over the small yard attached to the ‘Submarine’ that they had once again been thwarted by human agency.70
Doherty was held in a large but freezing cell in Durham where he jogged and slept in his clothes to keep warm during the cold Yorkshire winter. Beatings were common in the Segregation Block, and Doherty received his first of many in England when he refused to leave the yard when the stipulated daily period of one hour was abruptly cut short:
I seen the screw hitting the bell and I thought, “oh fuck, they’re going to come to get me”. I just grabbed the screw and let him have it and then he just collapsed. The next thing they just came in … all I could hear was Winney [McGee] shouting they’re killing me. No one seen it like, there were that many of them. I was down and they were all on top of me and they were punching and kicking each other but Winney got over the fence to help me. I got dragged into the strip cell and you’d be bollock naked for a few days and then up on adjudication and the usual … You’d be asked for your name and number. You’d just look at them. The Governor says, “I was in the RAF and I remember my number” and I says to him, “what is it?” He was absolutely rabid and then the penny dropped … I was dragged out again.71
After months of tedious application, Doherty was permitted access to the main prison library accompanied by eight staff and a guard dog. Deprived of any face-to-face contact with other prisoners, he snatched momentary shouted exchanges with Ray McLaughlin, Tony Clark and Stevie Blake whenever they appeared within earshot. Doherty had moved in different IRA circles in Ireland and Britain but shared bonds of republican politics. The Dispersal System also fostered a sense of comradeship. Occasional brief conversations were possible with Ann and Eileen Gillespie, who spent most of their sentence after 1 March 1975 in Durham’s H Wing. The all - female facility was located in the vicinity of the ‘cage’ compound where prisoners being held in solitary confinement received exercise and fresh air.72 Such modest and unguarded acts of solidarity were invariably seized: ‘They would shout to you … and you would shout back’.73 All three possessed strong County Donegal connections, as did Stevie Blake. Winnie Coyle, an Irish-Glaswegian who later married Hugh Doherty, travelled from Annagrey, Donegal to visit him in Durham on 28 August 1978. She found that her fiancée had ‘got thin and small but he was in good spirits’.74 Doherty had hitherto declined visits in Durham to spare his family hardship and was involved in an altercation during his reunion with Coyle arising from the oppressive conditions imposed on ostensible security grounds. Having made his point he promptly ‘disappeared’ on a lie-down to Winson Green, obliging Harry Duggan and Joe O’Connell to seek his whereabouts through the prison grapevine.75
Eddie Butler was moved via Strangeways in Manchester to Winson Green in Birmingham, where unsuitable security facilities entailed a protracted stay in solitary confinement. On being returned to Leicester SSU with Brendan Dowd, the IRA men were initially joined by just two other life sentenced prisoners: Harry Roberts and Donald ‘Black Panther’ Neilson. Roberts fatally shot two plainclothes detectives in August 1966; the detectives had incorrectly believed he and his associates may have been involved in an escape attempt from Wormwood Scrubs. The men in the van were actually professional criminals preparing to commit an armed robbery. Roberts used skills obtained in the British Army in Malaysia to avoid capture for three months and claimed at trial that the military had also taught him how to kill in the course of a brutal counterinsurgency. A third policeman was shot dead during the same incident by John Duddy. Whereas Roberts, who had an Irish mother, was well disposed towards republicans, Neilson was far more guarded.76 Neilson had also belonged to the British Military and did National Service in Aden, Kenya and Cyprus. He received four life sentences in 1976 for a lethal criminal rampage.77 Proximity to exceptionally violent men, however, was not a bone of contention for IRA members, many of whom were viewed with equal opprobrium and accepted the reality of their imprisonment in England. Friction was inevitable in the close confines of a sealed area within an otherwise non-maximum security complex.78
It was immediately suspected that the Prison Department were testing tolerances of newly restrictive administration under which hobbies and facilities were withdrawn. All four promptly cooperated in ‘decorating’ the main office with several days’ worth of human waste for which they were locked down. The next step was a planned assault on the Governor and Chief Security Officer during their daily inspection. Neilson declined to take part and physically removed himself from the equation by using the Rule 43 ‘own protection’ protocol to ‘go behind the door’. The remaining three were surprised to be unlocked the following morning as it was patently obvious they intended to escalate their protest, even if Neilson had maintained silence. Instead, the Principal Officer approached them in the kitchenette and requested a one-hour postponement of any action to which they assented. Ultimately, the Governor and Chief Security Officer arrived with a reinforced but non-threatening complement of staff and offered to meet most of the demands which had been previously presented in the form of a list petition. Mutual self-interest enabled such acts of compromise and accommodation in SSUs, which would have been all but impossible on standard prison wings where numbers, crowd dynamics and regulations impinged.79
Ennui was a major threat to the psychological health of O’Connell, Duggan, et al in Parkhurst SSU, a detached two-storey building developed from the former ‘punishment block’.80 Irregular communications with republicans in England and Ireland were generally possible over time but insufficiently frequent to counteract the limitations stemming from spatial isolation. Maintaining morale was a constant battle at times when the ‘Long