Jackie Kaye addressed a Conference on European Political Prisoners hosted by Sinn Féin in Liberty Hall, Dublin, on 21–23 April 1979. Attention was drawn to the PTA, which had already resulted in the deportation of around 200 Irish people from Britain and 4,000 temporarily detained.278 Pat McCarthy of the National Council for Civil Liberties in Britain appeared in a private capacity and explained how the PTA was being used to process exclusion orders against defence witnesses in political trials and increasingly targeted Britons who had protested Westminster’s policy in Ireland. Des Warren, a communist trade unionist whose activism had resulted in prosecution for illegal picketing, addressed the theme. Warren was one of the ‘Shrewsbury Three’ jailed in 1973 and was widely regarded in consequence as a former political prisoner.279 Fellow ‘Shrewsbury Three’ member, trade unionist turned actor Ricky Tomlinson, was less tolerant of mixing with IRA Volunteers in prison.280
Maintaining a physical presence in locations where IRA prisoners were held was an ongoing problem. Despite the best efforts of the small Tyneside Irish Solidarity Campaign, it required the input from Birmingham Sinn Féin’s Pearse/ McDaid cumann to bring the numbers protesting outside Durham on 27 May up to a modest fifty. The Midlands delegation, aided by members of the city’s UTOM group, traversed 430 miles to attend. Anne and Eileen Gillespie were in Durham, as was Hugh Doherty. Similar protests took place outside Wormwood Scrubs on 2 June, Wakefield on 24 June and Hull on 29 July 1979.281 British-based supporters of the Gillespies realised that if spared the constant stress of being ‘ghosted’, the sisters were far from their parents in Gweedore, Donegal, and the only republicans in the all female H-Wing.282 Unsympathetic authorities regarded them as having formed part of a Manchester ‘sub group’ of the major IRA network in Birmingham. It was noted that their brother, former resident of Manchester, was ‘wanted in the UK’ in relation to political offences but was living in the Twenty-Six Counties in 1978.283 The FCO was, nonetheless, sensitive to public claims that the Irishwomen were either innocent or worthy objects of interest by Irish politicians. On 26 May 1978 HAJ Staples of the FCO reported that he had taken Donegal Fine Gael TD Paddy Harte ‘mildly to task for having referred to the Gillespie case by name at last week’s Ard Fheis’. According to Staples: ‘He took this quietly and almost looked abash. He implied that he had let the name slip out unintentionally, and he had subsequently ensured that it did not appear in the written record’.284
The sisters improvised day-to-day strategies to preserve their personal security, composure, dignity and identity. To avoid seeking favour from a position of permanent disadvantage, both stopped smoking and never requested mail that they had reason to believe was arriving into Durham. Both took pains to dress and groom themselves as well as circumstances permitted. They guarded each other during alternate bathing sessions and countered the affront of strip-searching by nonchalantly discarding clothing before being ordered to disrobe. They only spoke Irish during exercise time on the yard and insisted on getting outside for the allotted time in virtually all weather conditions. Such stratagems irritated and confused staff, who at times encouraged disturbed prisoners to create trouble with the duo as a means of being shifted off a secure wing where the Irishwomen were required to remain. Friendly and fair-minded staff were either reprimanded or reassigned. Other factors were totally beyond the control of the Gillespies, not least disruptive cell shifts every month for eight years.285
NOTES
1.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
2.Coggan and Walker, Deaths in British prisons, p. 209.
3.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.
4.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
5.Times, 29 July 1978. See ‘Apologies to prison medical service doctors’ in British Medical Journal, 9 August 1980, p. 463.
6.Prison Service Journal cited in Times, 20 November 1972. Many held in C Wing spent time in Broadmoor and Rampton. Wakefield, Thousand days, pp. 16–17. R Watson Lee, Chairman of the Board of Visitors, HMP Parkhurst, described C Wing as being ‘pretty squalid’ to Justice May who had visited four days previously. According to Lee: ‘There are about 600 men in the prison system who should be in mental hospitals. This does not include the severely disordered psychopaths who are the lot of the Prison Service. We have about thirty prisoners who are mad and many others who are severely disturbed’. R Watson Lee to Justice May, 15 December 1978, NAE, HO 263/ 319.
7.Ronnie McCartney, 12 April 2008.
8.Times, 29 July 1978.
9.Bronson, Bronson 2, p. 275. Doug Wakefield was sent to the wing in September 1977 when there was an average of twenty inmates. He was convicted of killing a fellow prisoner in September 1978. Wakefield recalled: ‘C Wing is ostensibly a psychiatric unit for prisoners who are in need of urgent and qualified help’. Wakefield, Thousand days, p. 17. See also Hill, Stolen years, p. 210.
10.Cited in FRFI, June 1984, p. 12.
11.See World Medicine, 9 September 1978 cited in Republican News, 13 November 1978.
12.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
13.Hill, Stolen years, p. 199.
14.Irish Times, 7 October 1978.
15.Cited in Sunday Times, 22 October 1978. William Mullen examined allegations that Albany prison was being used for experimentation with drugs due to overcrowding. He cited Dr. McCleery’s revelations and found that the high tolerance of prisoners resulted in the administration of doses that rendered the recipients almost catatonic. Chicago Tribune, 19 November 1978. The NIO subsequently admitted that Largactil was being used in the H-Blocks, allegedly with permission of the prisoners being dosed. Irish Democrat, March 1979. See also Cohen and Taylor, Prison secrets, pp. 71–2. For medical evidence of primary and secondary effects of Largactil see BMJ Group and Pharmaceutical Press, British National Formulary, March 2011 (London, 2011), p. 219.
16.Guardian, 23 October 1978.
17.Report on the work of the Prison Department, 1983, p. 58.
18.Irish Times, 7 October 1978. See Chicago Tribune, 6 October 1978. Prison historian Dick Callan noted that two prisoners were allowed liaise between A and D Wing in a bid to ‘stabilise’ the situation and that the three who visited Blake found him unharmed. Callan, Gartree, pp. 46–9. The Prison Department wrongly claimed in 1979 that the prisoners ‘rejected an offer to send two of their number to see’ Blake. Report of the work of the Prison Department, 1978, p. 23.
19.Martin Brady, 12 April 2008.