Gartree’s IRA PRO published a notice in June 1978 which alleged that privileges were being extended to Loyalist prisoners beyond those normally available to Category A men. The Leicestershire prison had a strong cohort of republicans in the summer of 1978 which included Phil Sheridan, Eddie O’Neill, Martin Brady, Peter Short, Brian (aka Donal) McLaughlin, Paul Holmes, Jerry Mealy, Ronnie McCartney, John McCluskey and Paul Hill. Whereas the innocent Hill was included in the ‘Republican POW’ company due to his many acts of solidarity, IRA member Michael Sheehan was listed as simply an ‘other Irish political prisoner’ along with the wrongly convicted Pat Maguire and Gerry Hunter.196 Rolls were often inaccurate due to the constant shifting of Category A men and were open to misinterpretation. Although present in the jail, Brady had spent virtually all his time in segregation due to punishments imposed for the Hull Riot.197 Hill had also been subjected to lie-downs in Armley and a fractious induction to Gartree, where he spent three days in the ‘strong box’ for insisting that a razor found in his cell was not his own property.198
Brian McLaughlin hailed from the Claudy area of north County Derry and was jailed in October 1976 for conspiracy to cause explosions in Birmingham with the Pat Christie-led grouping of Peter Toal, David Owen and Mick Reilly.199 The men were among those who assumed prime responsibility for the Midlands sector following the arrest of the experienced IRA cluster headed by Dublin’s Martin Coughlan in November 1974. Republicans were reserved in detailing McLaughlin’s political background, which, according to printed sources after his release on 7 July 1982, stemmed from the experience of being attacked by the Parachute Regiment in Derry city on 30 January 1972. He had ran past Rossville flats on ‘Bloody Sunday’ when an unarmed man at his side was one of fourteen mortally wounded by British soldiers. According to McLaughlin: ‘That was the turning point for me … From that moment on I realised there was only one answer to British violence and occupation-unconditional British withdrawal’. A year on remand in Winson Green, Birmingham, was followed by temporary incarceration in Liverpool ahead of allocation to Gartree where other Irish republicans were held.200
The Gartree spokesman highlighted the fact that two of the four Loyalists were given assignments as trustees despite being Category A prisoners. One, John Gadd, worked as an assistant to a Church of England chaplain and was accused of having viewed files pertaining to the IRA prisoners. Another, Harry James, cleaned the special visiting area set aside for the republicans and was deemed to pose a risk to the well-being of their relatives by virtue of being present when they arrived. Sammy Carson, serving fifteen years for attempting a no - warning bomb attack on ‘Biddy Mulligan’s’ pub in Kilburn on 20 December 1975 received the prized job of wing orderly and, according to the PRO, was permitted to take Open University classes and receive normal ‘open’ visits. The fourth Loyalist, Norman Skinner, was evidently not as well situated as his comrades but his relative lack of patronage, consideration or progression within the complex was typical of all republicans.201
The thrust of the republican argument was that Loyalists were treated as if they were classified as Category B and by virtue of receiving enviable conditions of employment in the jail, were seen as gifted opportunities to jeopardize the personal security of the IRA prisoners and their families. The IRA did not, however, advance specific allegations, and relations with Loyalists were far better than would have been the case in contemporary Crumlin Road prison. The disparity of work allocation substantiated republican allegations of being persecuted. The PRO was highly explicit when citing unfavourable comparisons between the privileges bestowed on Loyalists and their concurrent denial to republicans serving similar sentences for similar offences. Sheridan and Short were named as men who had been, for all intents and purposes, wronged by the Governor for failing to take account of their relatively short sentences.202 For most prisoners, the ongoing IRA campaigns in Ireland and England ensured that they were unlikely to be reclassified as Category B in the foreseeable future. The process of re-categorization, moreover, was secret, as a test case taken against the Home Office confirmed in May 1977.203 Justice Cantley, who presided at several major IRA trials, including that of Brendan Dowd, had made the negative ruling arising from a challenge by a man classified as Category A in 1968. Cantley upheld the right of the Home Office to prevent prisoners making ‘representations against their classification’ and the authority of staff to withhold pertinent information on file. The general lack of standardized policy regarding security classification was tackled by a Prison Department working party in 1981 without immediate impact.204
Questions posed by Joan Maynard in the Commons on 21 June 1978 revealed that two unidentified Loyalist prisoners had benefited from special, temporary and permanent transfer arrangements between 1974 and 1976.205 Home Secretary Merlyn Rees also divulged an extraordinary statistic when he confirmed that of eighty-four prisoners in England subject to having ‘visits in closely supervised conditions in the interests of security’, no less than seventy-one were ‘thought to have Republican links’. This represented a vast over-representation of IRA prisoners within the population, a fact played down by referencing ‘security’ fears to mask outright discrimination.206 Rees also detailed the manner in which furniture, partitions and staff positioning was used to create a ‘closely supervised’ visit in Wakefield. In June 1978, a mere thirteen non-IRA Category A prisoners were obliged to endure ‘closed’ visits in the entire maximum security network. This offered strong evidence that republicans were genuine in describing their real position in the Dispersal System as ‘Special Category A’, a term with no official Home Office recognition.207
It was also clearly relevant that no IRA prisoner qualified for short-term relocation in order to receive accumulated visits. The criteria for temporary transfers within the UK consisted of the agreement of the Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In Whitehall, the NIO assumed full responsibility for ‘permanent’ transfers.208 Only those born in the Six Counties or those who had spent ‘a very long time’ living there could be considered, and only then if the authorities were satisfied that suitable and secure accommodation was available. Those regarded as ‘badly behaved’ by a prison governor or persons deemed ‘likely’ to misbehave during transfer were ineligible. All applicants had to have served two years since allocation following sentence.209 The case of Billy Armstrong was specifically considered following private high-level representations from Joan Maynard and Martin Wright, who had attempted to enlist the aid of veteran progressive Lord Fenner Brockway. Lord Harris was