The
only thing promising to puncture the tedium of the
last Monday of August 1979 was the visit I was expecting
to receive from my mother. It was my first since Christmas
eight months earlier. I felt the grip of the inevitable
tension that so many others had experienced before
they ventured outside the cell on that infrequent
journey to see friends or family. It would be untrue
to say that the cell was a safe place - it wasn't.
The screws on occasion often beat prisoners in their
cells. But it was the only place during the blanket
protest where a state of relaxation could be attained.
There was anonymity or invisibility that came with
being enclosed in the cell, a blending in with its
greyness. There we were just like wildebeest: every
body stood the same chance as the next when the predator
came along sniffing prey. Once inside it, with the
spy hatch smeared with dirt, we were out of view of
the screws. It brought with it a certain comfort -
out of sight out of mind. Unless they had a particular
reason for coming to your cell you were left pretty
much to your own devices behind its steel door. Stepping
outside it always brought a prisoner to the immediate
attention of the blanket screws. On the wing proper,
or the walk to and from the visits, and in the visiting
area itself, the panoptical gaze of the administration
was permanently fixed upon us. It was no coincidence
that most assaults occurred outside the cell.
Fred
Staunton, or Smig Mor as we called him, (big chin)
was the screw who escorted me down to
the visits. His manner was indifferent. Even when
I refused to give my number to a screw on the way
back from the visits - I had bagged my visit so didn't
have to jump through the hoops that they put in front
of us on the way down in order to get one - he simply
shrugged as if to say to his colleague 'your problem,
not mine.' Apart from that, what stands out most from
the visit was my mother telling me that Lord Mountbatten
had died in an explosion on a boat. At that time all
she knew was that there had been suggestions of a
bomb but other explanations had not been discounted.
I had some knowledge of Mountbatten, courtesy of my
father, an avid viewer of weekly television programmes
featuring the English aristocrat years earlier.
On
returning to the wing I passed the news, or 'sceal'
as it was colloquially called in the blocks - the
first duty of anyone returning from a visit. Some
cheered. Myself and Martin Livingstone discussed it
out the cell windows. Ours was a mixture of hope and
puzzlement. Hope that he might be unveiled as some
senior British secret operative directing something
sinister; puzzlement because he had never seriously
figured in our world of 'legitimate targets.' Why
would the 'RA want to kill Mountbatten? He didnt
strike us as a senior figure in the British
war machine. Unlike Airey Neave who had been
blasted by the INLA four months earlier Mountbatten
had never gained notoriety for his involvement in
Ireland. Some on the wing had never heard of him.
For most, however, if the RA did it, good enough.
Later
in the evening the circumstances behind his death
became clearer to us when H5 began to shout the news
they had gathered throughout the day over to our block.
But of even more interest were reports that six soldiers
had been killed in Ardoyne. It went up to eight, then
to ten. At that point we stopped believing it
the Ardoyne IRA, somebody quipped to wind up our Ardoyne
comrades, couldnt kill ten cats. The wind, as
it so often did in the H-Blocks, played havoc with
the acoustics. One night a voice would sound as if
it was feet away another, it would be almost
inaudible.
The
blanket men in H5 were telling us that British soldiers
had been ambushed and killed in Warrenpoint. The wind
distorted that, leaving us in H4 thinking we were
picking up Ardoyne. The following morning
we realised something major had occurred. The wing
shift we received was tougher than usual. Wing shifts
were always tense occasions, although, unlike in H3
under the control of the brutal Pat Kerr - later killed
for his actions by the Provisional IRA - they were
never particularly violent. That morning, the search
procedure was rougher, the hair tugs, grips and arm
locks applied by the screws, more vigorous; the kicks
to force us down so that we might straddle the mirror
naked, enabling them to scrutinise the back passage
for contraband, were applied with greater force than
normal.
In
our fresh cells as we prepared to foul them up again,
we sat emboldened, our morale high. The first visits
of the day, a source for much sought after information.
Our comrades had delivered a blow to the most murderous
regiment to visit Ireland since the Black n
Tans. We were delirious with joy. Seven years earlier
the Paras had visited a war crime on an unsuspecting
civilian population. Now it was pay back time. It
seemed then we were unstoppable our day had
come.
It
was all an illusion. Twenty-five years on, our day
is as far away as ever. Only last month a Para formation
stood in Ardoyne prepared to kill unarmed nationalists.
It gave a different meaning to those events a quarter
of a century ago which so exhilarated us. What appeared
to be a landmark on the road to victory was little
more than an act of revenge.
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