Special status prisoners: The British government had decided to stand firm regardless of the consequences in the face of IRA hunger strikes three years before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, secret documents reveal.
"Any sign of weakness or compromise will be unlikely to produce the desired results," declared a secret Northern Ireland Office memorandum from January 1976, long before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979.
Secret government papers released today under Britain's new Freedom of Information Act reveal that already in 1976 the government under Harold Wilson had anticipated the fatal use of hunger strikes by paramilitary prisoners in protest against the phasing out of "special category status".
Special privileges, such as exemption from prison work and the right to wear civilian clothing, were granted to offenders arrested for illegal activities arising out of the civil disturbances in Northern Ireland.
The relevant offences had in that sense been deemed "political" and not "criminal".
But by December 1975 the British government had concluded that the re-classification of paramilitary offenders had been at once a political and disciplinary disaster.
Accordingly, it was accepted that special category status should be phased out, beginning on March 1st, 1976.
However, the transition was expected to provoke bitterness and resentment, and to burden the British government and the Prison Services of Northern Ireland with a bruising publicity battle.
The government's settled resolve was now to proceed by a "judicious mix" to level-up the conditions enjoyed by "ordinary" criminals by improving visiting rights and the like, while levelling-down the conditions enjoyed by newly-convicted paramilitaries toward those henceforth to be afforded regular inmates.
But to succeed, the policy would have to be fought for in the media.
In the interest of forwarding its campaign, the government's advertising agents had already been commissioned to produce an outline treatment "aimed at denigrating the types of criminals who are claiming political status".
Protest, both inside and outside the prisons, was certain to be intense in the government's view. But furthermore, it was appreciated that "the use of hunger and thirst strikes by selected prisoners will be one of the main methods by which prisoners will attempt to force the government to give way on the issue". However, it was to be made crystal clear from the start that the government would not be for turning, whatever the consequences.
"It should be made known," as the Director of Prisons in Northern Ireland put it, "that the administration will withstand pressure even after the death/s of prisoners". In 1981, 10 republican prisoners, led by Bobby Sand, died trying to force the British government to concede "political status".
The category of special status prisoners had been introduced in June 1972 by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, in response to a hunger strike staged by republican inmates in Belfast Prison.