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Friends
and Comrades,
The
Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association wish
to thank the organisers of this conference for giving
us the opportunity to tell of our experiences in the
prison struggle. We would also like to take this opportunity
to send our solidarity and greetings to all those
groups and individuals who are gathered here today.
Prisons,
by their very nature, are instruments of control and
isolation. This has particular significance in relation
to political prisoners, who generally see themselves
as part of a coherent organised and revolutionary
grouping. The aim of the prison administration then,
is to disrupt the cohesion that exists between political
prisoners in order to reduce them down to isolated
individuals. This is to stop the possibility of any
kind of unified action, and also to sap the will of
the political prisoner who is then faced with the
entire machinery of oppression that makes up the prison
system.
As
in any freedom struggle, the existence of the prison
is in itself a political tool. It is a breeding ground
for human rights violations by prison administrators
and officials. It can also benefit the status quo
by being a harsh and brutal place where the state
is able to dispose of unwanted or troublesome members
of society, and can further be used as a threat against
those who may consider supporting or joining revolutionary
and insurgent organisations. The end result is that
the state can attempt to deny the political legitimacy
of the liberation struggle and instead portray it
as a criminal conspiracy.
Prison
struggle has had an important place in Irish History
for these very reasons. During the blanket protests
(and later the 1980/81 hunger-strikes) Long Kesh,
then the main prison in the north of Ireland, became
known to many as "The Breakers Yard". This
was because the sole reason it existed was to smash
the Republican liberation movement by physically and
mentally destroying those whom it held hostage behind
its walls.
The
reason it did not succeed was because those who ran
the prison, along with those in the British government
who issued the orders, underestimated the strength
and determination of the Irish Republicans who resisted
them. People like Bobby Sands and his nine comrades
who were later to die on hunger-strike understood
their own position as political prisoners and were
willing to suffer every hardship; beatings, scalding,
mental and physical torture and ultimately death,
rather than accept the label of 'criminal'. Instead
of defeating the Republican struggle by initiating
a policy of pain and brutality, the outcome was the
opposite. The deaths of the 10 hunger-strikers and
the sufferings of their fellow prisoners went on to
inspire many more generations of young people to carry
the struggle forward.
It
is with great irony then, that some of those young
men who heeded the call to defend the Republic recently
found themselves in a situation not far removed from
the one that the 10 hunger-strikers experienced so
many years before.
The
background to this has been the failed Good Friday
Agreement which was signed up to by all the political
parties (including Sinn Fein) in 1998. Within it was
the signing away of political status for prisoners.
After that date any person involved in military action
against the British Forces would receive no special
category status and instead would be imprisoned as
a criminal. This was seen, correctly, by many as an
attempt to hold Republicans to a political compromise
whilst effectively stamping out any armed revolutionary
challenge.
The
situation for Republican prisoners changed almost
immediately, with those who accepted the signing of
the Good Friday Agreement being released under an
amnesty and Long Kesh being closed down. From then
on Republican prisoners were to be sent to the smaller
Maghaberry Jail. When those opposed to the Agreement
were captured, whilst involved in Republican military
activity, they found themselves in a general prison
population amongst thieves, drug dealers and Pro-British
paramilitaries. They also found themselves separated
from their comrades and at the mercy of abusive prison
staff and criminal elements.
The
isolation, and small number of Republican prisoners
meant that resistance to the regime was at first disorganised
and weak. However the gradual influx of anti-agreement
Republicans into Maghaberry Jail over the months changed
all that. This meant that it was eventually a lot
harder to keep political prisoners isolated from each
other and the prison administration had to deal with
well co-ordinated protests such as cell smashing and
incidents of sabotage.
These
incidents came to a head in 2003 when a decision was
made by the prisoners to push for segregation from
Pro-British paramilitaries and criminal prisoners.
This was firstly because Republicans being granted
a wing of their own by the prison authorities would
be a de facto recognition of their political status,
and secondly to help preserve the safety of political
prisoners, who up until then had to cope with a hostile
and life threatening environment.
The
main campaign took the form of mass cell wrecking
and then proceeded onto a no-wash protest, similar
to the blanket protest in Long Kesh during 1980/81.
This meant a refusal of the men to shower or shave
and spreading their faeces around the cell walls.
Although it was a hardship for the men involved, it
gave them a psychological advantage over the prison
officers who began to refuse to enter the cells to
clean them or started to argue with the administration
for extra pay to do so. However, on many occasions
riot squads or 'control and restraint' personnel were
sent in to physically assault and remove the prisoners
to other parts of the prison. This resulted in some
prisoners needing urgent hospital treatment as the
prison officers again attempted to break the protest
and return the prison to normal.
The
parallels with the situation that created the hunger-strikes
were clear and many ordinary Republicans in the community
outside began to let their feelings be known. Rallies
and militant action, such as occupying the Prison
Service headquarters and the BBC headquarters by The
Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association were
getting more frequent media attention highlighting
the unfolding problem.
This
became a major problem for pro-Agreement parties who
wished to assure the world that British rule had been
'normalized' in Ireland and that anti-agreement prisoners
either did not exist at all or had little or no support.
The
result was that the prison administration slowly backed
down, and through continuing consultation with prisoners
and their representatives are at present establishing
a separate wing for the Republican prisoners in Maghaberry
Jail. The situation still remains tense, as the administration
is at times reluctant to grant what the Republican
prisoners rightly struggled for.
The
lesson to be learned from our experience is that isolation
is used by states and prison regimes as a counter-insurgency
strategy. It is an assault upon the very foundations
of any revolutionary movement that struggles for justice
and human dignity and must be opposed by whatever
means we have at our disposal. However, we must not
be down hearted, for revolutionaries are born out
of such injustice and each one is a ray of hope. In
the words of one such revolutionary; "out of
the darkness comes the light, and out of despair comes
a means to fight back".
Beir
Bua.
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