Amid the H-block protests, a small band of loyalist prisoners also defied the authorities, writes documentary-maker Laura Haydon.
Ten years ago next April, a deal was signed which would lead to the release of Northern Ireland's paramilitary prisoners. It was the most controversial aspect of the Good Friday agreement, and brought devastation to many families bereaved through Troubles murders. The radical gesture rested on a principle fought for by republicans - special status for politically-motivated prisoners. More than 430 prisoners from both sides were freed. It could be said that the loyalists among them owed their freedom to the struggle and sacrifice of republicans, who had spent five years dressing in blankets, smearing their cells with excrement, and finally starving themselves in protest at being classed as criminals rather than political prisoners.
However, one small group of loyalist ex-prisoners can say that they did stand up and be counted in the fight for political status. In a little-known sidebar to the prison protest story, around 50 young loyalists refused to wear prison uniform and donned blankets when political status was first withdrawn in 1976. Most of them abandoned the protest after a few months, under pressure from the loyalist leadership, which felt they would be making common cause with republicans.
But a hard core of a dozen UDA and UVF mavericks defied their leaders, and wider loyalist public opinion, by remaining "on the blanket" for up to 3½ years. For some of them, it engendered a bond of understanding and solidarity with their republican counterparts.
My programme, The Other Side of the Blanket, features the voices of Billy "Twister" McQuiston, Sam Courtney and Norman Earle of the UDA, Jim Watt, a former UVF bomb-maker, and the former IRA hunger striker, Laurence McKeown.
McQuiston, a high-ranking UDA man and a leading light in the Ulster Political Research Group, today works closely with republicans such as McKeown on ex-prisoner welfare issues. His work with the West Belfast republican Spike Murray helped prevent a conflagration at last year's Whiterock Parade. "There was sympathy and empathy," he says in the programme. "We were both fighting the same regime, and it was a brutal regime, make no mistake about it. We had a lot of things in common."
Jim Watt, a former UVF prisoner with multiple murder convictions, speaks of being on the punishment block with republican blanketmen and hearing them being beaten and thrown into baths full of scalding water.
"Republicans were my enemy, if I could have shot every one of them on the outside, I would have gladly done it. But in there, when I heard the treatment and the abuse they were taking, I was sick to the pit of my stomach. And if I could've got the doors open and shot the prison officers, I gladly would've."
Others had less sympathy. Norman Earle, who remains an active member of the UDA in Taughmonagh, South Belfast, went on the blanket to press for segregation from republicans in the jail. "I wasn't worried how republicans were treated. After all, like myself, it was their actions that put them in jail in the first place."
For loyalists, the harsh treatment reserved for non-conforming prisoners caused alienation and confusion.
"We were being beaten, viciously at times, by people with union jacks and Ulster tattoos on their arms. The exact same tattoos we had on the other side of the door," explains McQuiston.
The fight for political status came to a climax in 1981 with the death of Bobby Sands and nine other republican hunger strikers. A few months earlier, Sands had been elected to Westminster as the MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in what was to be the first step on the road to electoral politics for republicans.
All four loyalists speak movingly in the documentary about their admiration for the sacrifice made by the hunger strikers. But their views were not shared by the wider loyalist community. "People on the outside were saying, 'Sure they're murderers anyway, let them die'," remembers McQuiston. "But I agreed totally with what they were doing." McQuiston had left the UDA at the time, but rejoined to try to prevent more extreme elements opening fire on young republicans who rioted on news of Bobby Sands's death.
Last year, Laurence McKeown invited Billy McQuiston and other loyalists to speak at a summer school marking the 25th anniversary of the hunger strikes.
"Billy spoke about the time Bobby Sands died and what he felt and getting into a row with other loyalists over it because he believed there should be political status and he should have had it also. It was the first time I'd heard anybody from the loyalist community speaking that way about it - it was refreshing."
Laura Haydon's documentary, The Other Side of the Blanket, can be heard on Newstalk 106-108FM tomorrow night at 9pm