Baker, Guilfoyle and the two Cunninghams in Albany were kept in bare cells for twenty-three to twenty-four hours a day. Refusal to ‘slop out’ ensured that the staff regularly hosed them and their cells down in an ostensible and certainly robust attempt to improve sanitation. Infrequent escorts to the toilet obliged the men to dispose of human waste through the windows and, even if demeaning, the spreading of disinfectant in their cells was probably beneficial.134 Normal bedding was withdrawn and replaced with hard boards, provided only at night, covering a concrete base. Deprived of blankets during the day, the men had to wrap themselves in prison towels. Protesting prisoners were generally entitled to attend the chapel, but this fleeting relief from a tedious, fetid and claustrophobic routine was prevented by the authorities who alleged they had been disruptive. The repudiation of this allegation by chaplain Fr. Parry proved insufficient to secure the restoration of access. Although offered alternate religious services in a specially designated cell, the four avoided setting a precedent that was tantamount to a major compromise of principle.135 The Home Office, for its part, repeated in November 1978 that restrictions on attending Mass arose ‘because their behaviour has threatened the good order of the establishment’.136
A Home Office briefing document prepared ahead of the 27 November 1978 visit of Taoiseach Lynch to London misrepresented England’s ‘blanket protest’ situation as if it had arisen from a minor grievance by men with no political formation or aspirations:
Albany prison, on the Isle of Wight, has been particularly troubled in recent months by protests from Irish Republican prisoners. The point of contention has been the specially supervised visiting conditions applied in the interests of security to certain prisoners who present very high security risks. Not all Republican prisoners are subject to such visiting procedures, nor are all prisoners to whom the procedures apply Irish Republican prisoners. Certain Republican prisoners in Albany, however, have been protesting actively against the visiting arrangements since [25] April.
The protest started with a refusal by those concerned to work. Since then, they have also refused to go into the normal living accommodation in the prison, and, for certain periods, refused to collect their food, refused to use the normal sanitary facilities (a number of them have thrown the contents of their chamber pots at prison staff and over the floor of their cells) and, on occasions, refused to wear prison clothing. Where this behaviour has constituted offences against prison discipline, the offenders have been dealt with by the normal disciplinary procedures as any other prisoner behaving similarly would have been.137
Further discretionary pressure on the protesters was applied by means of restricting access to a newspaper to just one copy every two weeks. No personal property was allowed in the cells and mail deliveries were restricted to family members. Letters were removed by staff once they had been read and a single book a week was permitted on loan from the prison library.138 The authorities appeared confident of breaking the resolve of the Albany men to persevere and elected not to separate them by transfers or short-term lie-downs, an arguably justifiable invocation of Rule 43.
Relocating militants was not invariably without repercussions. Punter Bennett, however, was sent from Wormwood Scrubs to Strangeways to separate him from the inflexible Mick Murray. This shift had the knock on effect of prompting the transfer of Eddie Butler from Strangeways to Winson Green. The Castleconnell, County Limerick man had been held in solitary confinement since the temporary closure of Leicester Special Unit in February 1978, and it appeared as if greater utilization of the local jails under Rule 43 was increasingly common.139 In practical terms this ensured that Butler was held in isolation and subject to oppressive visiting conditions. Two ‘closed’ visits in the summer of 1978 and 1979 upset his family and matters only marginally improved from 8 May 1980 following the re-opening of Leicester SSU.140 Murray was isolated in Wormwood Scrubs by virtue of being segregated when on his personal protest. He was by no means the only IRA man capable or willing to act. Jerry Mealy was also held in the London jail’s solitary cells following transfer from Gartree in the aftermath of the October 1978 riot. In early December 1978 Mealy succeeded in entering a prison office with an iron bar and ‘completely demolished everything possible within reach before voluntarily handing the iron bar back to his guards’. Sinn Féin reported that Mealy ‘informed his guards that his action (demolition job) was his way of demonstrating his ‘solidarity’ with those picketing outside on behalf of all Irish POWs’.141 The unwritten IRA policy of avoiding direct physical attacks on prison staff in England was then observed. Mealy had no qualms about utilizing force if necessary. He had violently resisted arrest when grappled by police in 1973 and managed to punch the then Conservative Home Secretary Robert Carr during a prison visit.142
The IRA men in Wakefield wished to express support for Martin Brady, who was also languishing in segregation arising from the Gartree riot. As intended, the bizarre environment inherited from the F Wing’s days as England’s most infamous ‘Control Unit’ disconcerted the Belfastman:
You couldn’t walk over that white line [in the yard]. If you walked over the line, you were sent in. ‘Right, Brady, away you go’. That happened me many a time … You were walking in a circle, not thinking, you walked into someone else’s exercise yard. They think you are trying to do something. ‘Right, let’s go here’. It was a strict regime there. They came down heavy … You weren’t allowed cigarettes, you weren’t allowed read magazines and you weren’t allowed to get anything in. You were only allowed one letter a week … they took the bed off you at 8 a.m. until
7 p.m. at night. So you had nothing in your cell except a chair … When you got up you had your breakfast. Slopped out and did your exercises – press-ups etc. In the morning – the pipe was along the wall – in the winter it was freezing, in the summer it was boiling, but we got through that all right.143
The decision was taken that the republicans on the wings would engineer the means to join Brady in the block. On Christmas Day, 25 December 1978, Tony Clarke and Ray McLaughlin threatened to smash the windows of a staff office in C Wing before their unconventional wish was entertained. Similarly, Vince Donnelly, pulled the tie from a warder’s uniform in D Wing to provide a minimal pretext for joining his comrades. The largely peaceful demonstration had an unexpected sequel in that the strange behaviour of the IRA prisoners sparked a security operation in the Wakefield vicinity.144
The experience of most Irish republicans in English jails continued to be anomalous. In late 1978 a petition was handed into the British Embassy in Dublin calling for the release of Fr. Pat Fell on the grounds that he had been eligible for parole in April 1977. Signatories included Rev. Michael Diden, President of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, forty staff members and 500 students. Fr. Fell had been assistant priest at the All Souls’ Church in Coventry and was sentenced to twelve years for his activities as a senior IRA member in the sector. His more junior co-defendant, Frank Stagg, had died on hunger strike in Wakefield in February 1976.