Read Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Online
Authors: Ed Moloney
While the conflict in the H-blocks was fundamentally about who controlled and defined the prison regime, Hughes was conscious of the big picture. The prison protest could help Gerry Adams rebuild the movement and give it an issue around which Sinn Fein could agitate; this was one reason why he had accepted leadership of the protesting prisoners. But this raised a question about who ran the protest. Traditionally, the prisoners themselves made all the key decisions but during the blanket protest, the needs and agenda of the outside leadership would intrude in important ways.
I saw the situation in the blocks as a tool to help the leadership on
the outside – specifically Gerry – to build up a propaganda machine.
The Army [IRA] leadership needed an issue that would help them
organise street protests … to rebuild the Republican movement on
the outside. I was very conscious of that. Myself, Tom [McFeely],
Bobby [Sands], who became more and more a central figure, would
discuss this aspect with as many people as we could at weekly Mass.
The outside did not try to push us at any time to escalate, there was
no attempt to do that. If anything we were left to our own devices.
They would give advice but they would not encourage anything at
all. It was up to us how we would escalate the protest. I was quite
conscious of the need to escalate things [and] I was quite conscious
that outside could really do with an issue. [But] it was basically left
to ourselves in the blocks … That was always the case or it was supposed
to be the case, right through the whole Republican struggle,
not just the 1970s, right back till the 1920s. The decisions on the
inside were exclusively taken by the prisoners [but] at times it was
hypocritical and not true. Even before I left the cages, people knew
I was going to be appointed O/C of the blocks. But by and large the
decisions of the prisoners were theirs to make. But obviously there
are contradictions in that because, for instance, during the hunger
strikes there was a large input by the leadership on the outside.
Another example were the five demands.
¶
I had nothing to do with
them. They came from the outside … I was a bit concerned about
this because … we had been demanding political status or special-
category status. The outside came up with the so-called five demands,
without any great input from the prisoners themselves. Danny
Morrison was sent into the prison on a visit to explain the five
demands to me … [They were formulated as] humanitarian
demands that no one could really object to, whereas they could
object to political status. The British government would find it easier
to implement the five demands rather than give in to political status.
It was an attempt to lessen problems for the British government …
But as I say, we did not devise them. I think probably Gerry [played
a big part], him and probably Danny Morrison. I don’t even know,
that’s how much input I had into it; I can’t say with any great
certainty who came up with the so-called five demands, but
certainly it didn’t come from within the prison
.
The opportunity that Brendan Hughes had been seeking to intensify the protest came in March 1978, with increasingly violent confrontations between prison officers and IRA protesters in the bathrooms and showers of the blocks. It was a short journey from there to the dirty protest.
…
you were allowed one shower a week. And it was at the discretion
of whichever screw was on [duty] at the time whether you got a
shower or whether you didn’t get a shower. And going to the showers
was an ordeal in itself because you had to go through the humiliation
and the snide remarks. And often with a lot of the younger ones
there was brutality and beatings and slappings. And we made a
decision to stop taking showers. So the order was given … From
my point of view, it was a tactical move. This was the first attempt
to escalate the protest. So that was the beginning of the no-wash
protest. The reaction from the prison authorities was to bring in
basins of water every morning and [this was done by] orderlies, or
‘ordinary decent criminals’ who … got bonuses for this work: extra
cigarettes and tobacco and … more food. And these people would
come round every morning. The door would open and a small basin
of water would be thrown in. Often cells were missed. And sometimes
empty basins were thrown in so there was no water to wash
with. So the order was given to smash the basins and stop washing
altogether. By not going out to take showers that meant you did not
get out to go to the toilet. So the wastage, the excreta and the urine
built up in the small chamber pots that everyone had. So the prison
authorities organised for this to be collected … The orderlies would
come round with a large bin, they came to the door and you emptied
your wastage into it … quite often it was thrown back into a cell –
they would pick a cell, and the wastage would be dumped into it. So
the order was given to stop co-operating with this waste collection
.
By mid-1978 there were over three hundred prisoners on the protest and, to accommodate the growing numbers, a third H-block, H4, was turned over to the protesters. Because of the refusal to slop out, the prisoners threw their waste under the doors and soon the cells became filthy and stinking. When prison staff removed furniture from one wing, prisoners elsewhere smashed their furniture and beds. The furniture was removed from all the protesting cells after that. The warders began dousing cells with heavy disinfectant which caused some prisoners to pass out and so the cell windows were broken to create some ventilation. After the prisoners had started to smear their cells with excreta the authorities sealed the windows, a move ostensibly prompted when the protesters threw other waste outside but whose effect was to intensify the stench inside each cell. The dirty protest that Cardinal O Fiaich would soon compare to the Calcutta slums had begun.
A lot of this was caused … by the reaction of the prison authorities
to us becoming organised. But certainly underneath it all was this
intent on our part to escalate the whole thing. I had no intention at
that time of ending up in the dirty protest. I had no idea where this
was going to finish. In fact, before it ended, I got really frightened at
the momentum that this had taken on. I mean it was like getting on
a bike at the top of a hill. Your intention is to get to the bottom of
the hill. But you’ve no idea what obstacles you’re going to meet on
the way down. It gained its own momentum to the point … that
if the screws did something, we reacted to it. We wrecked all the
furniture, the beds, the chairs, the tables … and we smashed the
windows. So we were left with wreckage and this was co-ordinated
between the two blocks. The brutality just seemed to be stepped up
and stepped up and I was quite often fearful that someone was
going to be killed. Once the excreta went up on the walls, I don’t
think they knew how to handle it. But they found a way of doing it.
What they did was to empty one wing and shift us – ‘wing shifts’
they were called. This took place in the early hours of the morning
and they just came in … and systematically, cell by cell, a man was
trailed out, spread-eagled across a mirror, which lay on the floor,
to check the rectum, which was a totally ineffective way of finding
contraband that was there, it was … degrading; the whole point of
it was to degrade. I don’t believe they ever found anything by mirror
searches. Maybe once or twice, when some, some fool had it hanging
out. But largely, when you put something up your rectum it goes up
and a mirror isn’t going to find it. So it was an attempt to degrade
and brutalise. And it was a frightening experience, the mornings of
wings searches. And the most frightening bit was to be the very last
man. They would take all day sometimes or a good part of the day
to shift a wing of men – I think there was maybe fifty men in a
wing, forty to fifty men in a wing. You can imagine what it was
like – I remember really well the cries and the thumps and you knew
exactly what was happening. But for the last two men to be moved
across from the dirty wing to the clean wing it was an everlasting
day. The last two men had to listen to all this. I had to go through it
as well. But by and large I escaped most of the brutality because I
think … they were more careful with me. And so … I can’t
remember ever being beaten. [The prison authorities] accepted that
I was who I was … but they never ever made any sort of approach
to me. I remember —— coming into my cell. I had already gone
through the wrecking of Crumlin Road jail with this man. And I
knew how devious he was. He was … a … one of the most brutal
people. I don’t know how he survived … he was a … But I
remember him coming into the cell and just standing looking at
me – the cell was just filthy. I had a blanket round me, with a long,
long beard and long hair. And I remember the sarcastic look on his
face. Another memory I have, and I’ll never forget the man till the
day I die, a Labour Party MP called Don Concannon … strutting
down the wing and cells being opened for him to have a look. And I
remember him laughing at the men lying in these cells with blankets
round them and filthy. It was another telling memory of that man.
I don’t know where he is now, I hope he’s dead
.
||
Towards the end of 1978 the screws were brutalising prisoners,
and they decided to introduce compulsory haircuts and forced washing
for all the blanket prisoners … I sent an order round at the time
telling the prisoners to fight physically and to resist this. Well, the
first person who was force-washed and shaved was a guy called
Muffles Trainor who was in the cell with me. He went on a visit one
day with the long beard, dirty and filthy. And I remember him being
a bit late coming back from the visit. And he came back from the
visit and he was thrown into the cell, spotlessly clean … I remember
one particular screw, Girvan, a big fat screw who loved his job, who
loved doing this, standing laughing. Muffles was a wee bit slow, and
when I say ‘slow’, he wasn’t backward, but he never spoke to me the
whole time in the cell. He just lay on his back and shook his head
from side to side, and he would laugh to himself. I never knew what
he was laughing at. He was that type of a character. He was the
least violent type of person, so he was an easy target. And it was a
message to me … that this was going to happen [everywhere]. But
when they started to move in to
H3 to do the forced washing and the
shavings, myself and Bobby – by this time Tom McFeely had been
moved somewhere else, and it was just myself and Bobby. Bobby was
always in the next cell, for some reason … If he wasn’t in the next
cell to me, he was very, very close by … Whether it was pure luck or
…
intentional, I don’t know, but he was always there. So when they
started this forced washing we had a long discussion [that lasted]
most of the night. They had already force-washed some of the boys
in H3
. Bobby and I believed that if we didn’t find some way of stopping
this, then the whole protest would be … in major trouble. I
knew there were going to be casualties; I knew people were going to
get hurt and possibly killed. But I knew if that happened that the
prison administration would be in trouble. I knew we were taking
a great risk. And it was the second … hardest decision that I took
during the whole prison situation, to send an order over telling
naked men to fight these screws who were coming in with batons,
helmets, all the protective gear. It was a really agonising decision to
make. But the order was given and I remember the silence. It was
shouted over that night to Joe Barnes to fight back. Bobby shouted
over the order in Gaelic and there was total disbelief. I don’t know
if there was any great understanding of the real danger, [that] this
whole protest could fall apart. Men were going to be hurt anyway by
getting trailed out and thrown into a bath and scrubbed with hard
brushes and shaved in a most violent way. So we discussed all this, as I
say, for most of the night before the order was sent over … it took
five or six times for Bobby to shout that over before it sank in. I know
how hard it was for people to accept this. And I don’t think people
really know how hard it was for me to give the order. Me and Bobby … certainly discussed the possibility that men could squeaky-
boot
**
the next morning, that they could not face having to fight these
people. We discussed all that, and decided that we had to take the
chance. I don’t believe anyone squeaky-booted the next morning.
There were casualties … two men taken to hospital … Tom Boy
Louden and Martin Hurson.
††
I remember it well, the squeals and
the shouting the next morning. About 8 a.m., they came in, implemented
it and the men resisted. I think it did work … the screws
got so frightened that somebody was going to get killed that they
stopped the forced washing. I remember talking to Kevin Lappin
afterwards – and Kevin Lappin was the Principal Officer – that was
his reasoning … they, or Stormont was afraid … that somebody
was going to get killed and they stopped the forced washing. So as
far as I’m concerned the tactic worked
.