Published: 15 December, 2011
by PETER BERRESFORD ELLIS

During the period 1969-1997, at various times, a total of 500 men and women were serving terms of imprisonment in England in relation to IRA activity.

By the spring of 1977, of 27 presumed Irish Republicans serving life or “indefinite” terms, 11 were destined for exoneration as victims of miscarriages of justice. Many more were serving lesser sentences, imprisoned on questionable evidence.   

Large numbers of prisoners sustained injuries from beatings in prison, and by 1977 several prisoners had died in suspicious circumstances.
Of these, Michael Gaughan was killed while being forcibly fed and Noel Jenkinson “officially” died of a heart attack.

Seán Ó Conaill was allowed to die through inadequate medical attention (after a cancer diagnosis was apparently ignored), while Frank Stagg died as a result of his injuries while on hunger strike.

Professor Ruán O’Donnell, author of Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, calls it “an iniquitous and bizarre phase in the history of British justice”.

With the passing of the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), an atmosphere of fear pervaded the Irish communities in Britain. In the first seven years of the PTA some 5,000 “suspects” were arrested and held – of which 7 per cent were charged, and 98 per cent of those found innocent.

Arrests were often based on little more than the “suspects” being members of Irish cultural organisations. The phrase “innocent until proved Irish” was popular.

The conflict which brought this about had begun in the mid-1960s as a campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland – a campaign against the oppressive Unionist legal system, which had been admired by both Hitler and Johannes Forster of Apartheid South Africa.

The conflict was allowed to escalate into full-scale guerrilla warfare to reunite Ireland, which had been undemocratically partitioned in 1922, thus depriving one third of the population under Unionist control of any hope of equal citizenship.

The oppressive British reaction to civil rights marches was a disaster. Nationalist communities armed themselves and began to fight back. British troops were sent in and the “Long War” commenced.

From 1973, IRA units had began to concentrate on taking their fight to Britain itself, and the result of the campaign led to a significant Irish prison population.

Irish republican prisoners in Britain were at first recognised as “political” by use of a “special category” status, which was available from June, 1972.

However, Britain’s Labour Party leadership had never been able to understand the “Irish question” – not even at the time of the 1916 uprising or the subsequent War of Independence, 1919-21. Michael Foot, in 1949, had actually written a paean of praise about the Unionist regime in the Daily Herald.

Perhaps it was no surprise, therefore, that it was Labour which started to pursue policies in 1976-77 which ensured not only an escalation of the conflict, but serious confrontation with IRA prisoners in Britain as well as Northern Ireland.

Government Ministers Merlyn Rees and Roy Mason began a “criminalisation” of prisoners, as well as deploying Special Forces (notably the SAS).

Republican prisoners refused to be criminalised, rejecting both prison uniforms and prison work requirements.

Left naked in their cells, conditions deteriorated into a spiral of punishment and protest which, by 1981, cost the lives of dozens of prisoners and warders.

For centuries, the hunger strike had been a standard protest of Irish political prisoners against the British. This was now used in an effort to obtain the return of the prisoners’ political status.

Throughout the “Long War” it was obvious that successive British governments viewed the conflict with a simplistic and misleading analysis. As Professor O’Donnell points out: “Mason’s autobiography revealed his incapacity to grasp the most basic political nuances demanded of his office.” Mason’s interpretation of the conflict was that it was an inexplicable sectarian civil war in which Britain had no interest or involvement except the role of “keeping the peace”.

Obviously, unless he was being disingenuous, Mason was totally ignorant of the history of these islands.

Labour’s policies, so enthusiastically taken up by the Thatcher administration in 1979, ensured and fuelled the continuance of the “Long War”.

But by the late 1970s it was clear to any intelligent and informed commentator, both in Ireland and in Britain, that no purely military solution could be achieved by either side.

Professor O’Donnell’s book shows how, in spite of their fears, many ordinary people came together in various movements in Britain to protest about the conditions that Irish prisoners were facing in Britain, as well as against the wider conflict.

Prisoners Aid Committees, lawyers struggling to challenge the injustices, the IRA prisoners themselves, with their alternative prison structures, discipline, planning and participation in escapes, successful and unsuccessful, prison riots and protests, are all documented in this excellent book.

• Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons Vol 1: 1968-1978. By Ruán O’Donnell. Irish Academic Press, Dublin, hardback £45 / paperback £19.95
• Peter Berresford Ellis, historian and novelist, is the author of many works including A History of the Irish Working Class (1972), and Eyewitness to Irish History (2006).