Government-level interest in the management of imprisonment in the EEC was manifested by the publication in 1978 of Treatment of Long Term Prisoners by the European Committee on Crime Problems. Penological research commissioned by a subcommittee of the Council of Europe examined six countries. The study incorporated Home Office-aided research on 215 inmates within English prisons and included a seminar hosted in Wakefield. When reviewing the publication for the Prison Service Journal, J Williams, Governor of Long Lartin, concluded that it contained ‘no startling new theories or propositions’.158 Project psychiatrist, Dr. Sluga, concluded that men who had served four to six years of long sentences under conditions of isolation were prone to ‘functional psycho-syndrome’. Symptoms included emotional and cognitive disturbance, infantile regression and difficulties in social interaction. Williams, however, noted the findings of psychologist Professor Smith in the English Dispersal System, where ‘general deterioration’ was not as strongly in evidence as might have been expected, although hostility towards the self was a major issue. The reviewer emphasised the positive conclusion that severe mental health threats were neither inevitable nor irreversible. Williams, moreover, stressed that ‘Resolution 76 (2) on the treatment of long term prisoners’, endorsed by the Council of Ministers in February 1976, recognized the practical difficulties of implementing certain reforms and the rights of individual prison regimes to reject recommendations they deemed inappropriate. The tone and content of the Williams review would have reassured his Home Office employers in that it downplayed the relevance of many potentially disturbing factors. It also indicated that the Dispersal System was in no danger of being exposed to serious criticism.159 Other international physiatrists differed on this key mental health point and reiterated contrary findings well into the 1980s and 1990s.160
Re-organization and resistance, February-July 1978
IRA prisoners in England appreciated in 1978 that their perspective on the armed struggle and specific interests were in danger of being occluded by the extremity of the conflict in Ireland and the mounting seriousness of the crisis in Long Kesh. Many had friends, associates and relatives enduring the grim and deteriorating ‘blanket protest’.161 April had witnessed the escalation to a ‘no wash’ protest in Long Kesh, during which prisoners incapable of removing bodily waste from their cells in the conventional manner of ‘slopping out’ began spreading it on the walls.162 Billy Armstrong communicated from Wakefield: ‘All my comrades both in this prison and the other prisons [in England] … are right behind them all the way, no matter what the consequences that might befall us’. This hinted that actions would follow, a threat which the IRA were more capable of delivering in 1978 than at any time since 1969.163 Martin Brady claimed:
We worked as a group – if one went down to the block we all went down to the block. We made sure they had company … They wouldn’t drive you crazy in solitary when you were downstairs … As our prisoners were coming in they were becoming more educated. Looking at our rights in jail, our human rights, fellows sat down over the years, passed tests … They seen we were educated and we were using the system for our own advantage … So we started building friendships with the gangsters and the robbers. We got on with them. Ninety per cent of them got on with us. They were good towards us … You got the odd screws that upped the tempo, to stir up trouble.164
His co-accused, Armstrong, noted: ‘There were two sorts of screws: the ones who were frightened of you, and the ones that pretended to like you. But at the end of the day they bottled out from fear that you would kill one of them before they got to you. The screws often set us up for other prisoners, but at the end of the day they hadn’t really the bottle for it’.165 Leading IRA member Brian Keenan reflected:
The screws were in no doubt that the IRA people, if it was necessary, wouldn’t hesitate to kill them, and I think that that type of common position had been created over a long period of time with IRA prisoners. And the screws knew how far they could go with this and by and large we just got on with our time and the only priorities we ever had were our families and escape attempts. Outside of that you just done time in the best you could.’166
Increasingly, prisoners utilized their growing numbers in English jails to form loose groupings represented by a PRO. Isolation in the Dispersal System, a comparatively minor numerical presence on the wings, and detachment from command structures in Ireland negated the functionality of an appointed O/C. Moreover, the very factors that militated against the selection of O/Cs ensured that the Governors could readily deny prospective leaders the mobility they needed to adequately function. Republicans in English prisons devised more reliable means of communication between each other and the outside world. This enabled the men to marshal their new strengths and experience towards significant, co-ordinated action.
The first major statement highlighted by the Republican Movement in 1978 originated in Wakefield in February. Irish prisoners alleged a ‘high level conspiracy by the Governor and his goons to ill-treat and intimidate the POWs’ and named ‘Big’ Mick Murray, Jimmy Ashe, Paul Norney and Billy Armstrong as having been ‘placed in the control unit for various periods of time’. The claim that the Control Unit remained in operation contradicted Government assertions that it had been closed in 1974. The IRA insisted ‘the only thing that had changed was its name, as they use the control unit as the [punishment] block and it is regarded by the screws as a place in which prisoners are broken … using sensory deprivation methods’.167 Immediate concerns were expressed for Norney who was then spending twenty-three hours a day in his cell and isolated during the remaining hour from other prisoners.168 His stay in the wing was extended by seven days when he defied his captors by running rather than walking around the small outside enclosure where he was permitted fresh air for up to one hour a day.169 The message contained an allusion to what had happened in Albany in 1976 and communicated the view that ‘all this harassment is to provoke us into taking some form of action’. Needling by the authorities placed the IRA in a quandary in that a mistimed unilateral protest could incite further repression and demoralization. Failing to act, however, risked giving the impression of conformity and weakness. Consequently, the February statement insisted: ‘We will take our stand when we are ready, not when the screws want to set us up’.170 Having outlined the short term issues in play at Wakefield, the prisoners solicited support for the ‘war for national liberation’ as ‘the best way’ to support political prisoners.171
The IRA PRO in Parkhurst published a greeting in Republican News in March 1978 which praised ‘revolutionary … and all those other prisoners at Parkhurst … without whose wonderful help the recent escape attempt would not have been possible’.172 This sincere, if somewhat inflammatory, statement testified to the existence of a small political cadre in the prison which claimed a role for itself within and without the Dispersal System. The propaganda potential of reaching a republican readership was clearly evident. Similarly, the Albany PRO drafted a letter in April which analysed the recent Workers’ Party/ Republican Clubs Ard Fheis. The ‘Officials’