INSIDE THE MAZE:AN INTERESTING glimpse into the mindset of IRA prisoners is given by a copy of an IRA "comm", or communication, which had been intercepted by Maze prison staff.
Those interned in 1971 were effectively treated as prisoners of war and “special category status” was confirmed in 1972. Later the British government decreed that for crimes committed after March 1st, 1976, “special category status” was withdrawn. Republican prisoners were determined to resist this policy of “criminalisation”. The first post-March 1st offender, Ciaran Nugent, refused to wear prison clothes handed to him, saying to the guards, “You must be joking me – if you want me to wear prison gear you will have to nail it to my back”. The “blanket protest” had begun, soon to become the “dirty protest” and would lead on to the hunger strikes in 1980-1. By 1979, over 300 republican prisoners were involved.
At Long Kesh, renamed HMP Maze, political prisoners were being transferred from Magilligan and Nissen huts on the site to a complex of cellular blocks: the H Blocks. The prime aim was – in addition to frustrating escape attempts – to prevent communications between different cells of prisoners. Brendan Hughes took charge of the spreading protest. Hughes, interned in 1973, had escaped in a refuse truck to become Belfast commander of the IRA. Recaptured after seven months, he was sentenced to 14 years and lost special category status after being involved in a fracas with prison officers. Known as “Dorcha” or “the Dark” for his dark complexion, he acted as officer commanding the IRA’s fourth battalion, inside the Maze.
Punished by the guards for refusing to wear prison clothes, prisoners embarked on a “dirty protest”, smearing excrement on their cell walls and pouring urine out of smashed observation panels in their cell doors, using religious magazines as funnels. Hughes, with the aid of his intelligence officers, co-ordinated the protest by using comms – messages etched on cigarette papers and toilet paper and wrapped in household cling-film, secreted in bodily orifices, or under their foreskins. These in turn were carried by visiting family and friends.
The archive contains a letter found on December 7th, 1978, in a cell in H Block 6. The unidentified writer of this comm sought to speed up the vetting of republican prisoners being organised to join the protest. This comm mentions “congressmen” – probably a reference to the visit in August 1978 of Joshua Eilberg (Democrat, Pennsylvania) and Hamilton Fish jnr (Republican, New York) to Britain and Ireland on behalf of the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee for Irish Affairs.
Their report alleging violations of human rights, though ignored by US president Jimmy Carter, was widely publicised.
The comm begins: “Well I got your letter today, I ripped it up shortly after I read it . . . I’m telling the 10 [IRA camp intelligence officer] to clear as many as possible, if a bloke is cleared it gives him a bit more incentive to go on the blanket, it puts him in a better frame of mind. What do you think?. . . I was thinking of clearing as many as possible within reason of course and informing the Dark and big Al. [Name of prisoner] says he needs as much statements and sketches of cells – screws beating prisoners etc about this year’s 24-hour hunger strike . . . I want to make sure that when we do get MAX publicity on everything, oh yes my policy on washes, a man will have to have a very serious illness for me to give him permission to wash, see this nonsense about sweat rashes, pimples, hair falling out and boils its not on . . . [Name of prisoner] says everything is going great out there – mind those congressmen well they issued a statement over there saying they fully supported the blanket, it shouldn’t be long now if haven’t got it by March then we will have it shortly after that cause that when header Nugent gets out. When he gets in front of the camera and starts talking about two and a half years on the protest”.
Beneath the letter a prison official added this note: “Applicant Nugent, who when he completes his sentence in March, will be the first protesting prisoner to be released from HMP Maze”.