Top Issue 1-2024

18 October 2001 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Back issue: Blanket men don their own clothes

Blanket men don their own clothes




AN ATTEMPT by the British administration at Stormont to use the 28-day moratorium announced by Direct Ruler Jim Prior, in his statement after the ending of the H-Block Hunger Strike, to just slowly phase in prisoners receiving and wearing their own clothes has been successfully challenged.

The Brtis attempted to set the pace by stating that prisoners could only receive their own clothes after they had a visit and this would have led to ridiculous situation where one prisoner in a cell could have been on the Blanket until his visit in mid-November and his cell-mate could be receiving exercise and association now because he had a visit during the week.

The prisoners inserted a statement in last Saturday's Irish News calling upon their relatives to send in their clothes, regardless of whether or not they had visits, beginning last Monday, 12 October.

The immediate reaction of Stormont was to issue a statement emphasising the sequence in which clothes were to be delivered to the prison and to place an advertisement in Monday's Irish News to this effect. But when it came to the crunch, the Long Kesh administration were directed to accept the clothing and deliver it to the prisoners. The alternative was that the British would have been seen to been stubborn and awkward.

So, by the time prisons' minister Lord Gowrie visited the jail on Wednesday, many of the 400 Blanket men were off the Blanket and wearing their own clothes.

Those republican prisoners, where they amounted to substantial numbers, immediately began claiming association and recreation and meals in the canteen served by republican nominated 'orderlies'.

By last Wednesday, prisoners with their own clothes had received only an hour's association, one hour's daily exercise and were going to the canteen for their meals. An attempt by a senior prison officer to introduce ordinary orderlies in H3 on Tuesday was resisted by the men and they won the rather fragile and perhaps temporary right to nominate their own men for these duties.

On Wednesday, Gowrie returned from the Tory Party conference in Blackpool and visited the H-Blocks. At that conference, Prior was forced to declare the obvious - that no deal had been struck to end the Hunger Strike - and was under pressure to give an undertaking to withdraw his promise that Gowrie would visit Long Kesh and talk to the prisoners once the Hunger Strike ended.

He dodged the issue, but what actual effect on British attitudes and commitment to getting the H-Blocks out of the way, IRA activity in Britain and Ireland will have, remains to be seen. The Brits will, of course, attempt to sell the prisoners as short as possible, but they are aware that if they sell them too short they risk leaving roots in the soil out of which could sprout further prison crises, which will only bring international attention to the war in Ireland.

An Phoblacht, Saturday 17 October, 1981




An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland