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On
Saturday the 10th of August the Irish Republican Prisoners
Welfare Association staged a white line picket in
West Belfast. Between 50 and 70 people took part as
the moving picket snaked its way between traffic from
a mural on the Whiterock Road to another one close
to Albert Street. It was colourful, loud and good
humoured and received a hearty response from passing
motorists who sounded their horns.
Over
the years I have attended a number of white line pickets
either related to Sinn Fein sponsored events, Republican
Sinn Fein protests in support of prisoners or campaigns
aimed at highlighting the situation of the Palestinians.
This one was different - the RUC marshalled it both
top and tail. After the event one of those participating
was menaced by the RUC in town who pulled their land
rover alongside him and doled out abuse about his
presence at the picket. A political activist and socialist
who is well known on the ground, he has no republican
affiliations and is resolutely opposed to the armed
struggle of any republican body. The RUC knew this
also but were intent on making the point - attend
any protest for republican prisoners and you will
have your cards marked.
His
presence at the picket was not that of some atypical
solitary individual expressing solidarity with prisoners.
While the IRPWA for the most part handles the needs
of Real IRA prisoners - although it stresses that
it will assist any republican who is inside - what
struck me about Saturday’s activity was the eclectic
range of people who turned up. There were socialists,
members of Sinn Fein youth, IRSP, independent community
activists and writers, along with individuals associated
with Fourthwrite and The Blanket magazines.
One American woman on holiday re-jigged her itinerary
so that she could join the picket. Republican prisoners
have always had the ability to touch a nerve within
the nationalist community. In some ways there is a
resonance from 1916 - the people on the streets may
abhor the activities that led to them becoming prisoners
but once incarcerated, there is a marked intolerance
towards any abuses that the British penal system may
try to inflict upon them. That sentiment, although
sometimes dormant, has always weaved its way like
a tawny sinew through the consciousness of northern
nationalism. The British have never yet managed to
amputate it.
One
member of Sinn Fein Youth whom I spoke to said that
he was there because he acknowledged that the prisoners
were political. While it has been reported that one
key republican leader speaking at a family meeting
in the Short Strand earlier in the year said that
he would not support the claims to political status
by those in jail, it is a concept that has not yet
been bought into by those who make up the grassroots
of the Provisional Republican Movement. Seemingly,
too many republicans died to secure political status
that it is almost heresy for some republican leader
to abolish it even quicker than Merlyn Rees did in
March 1976. Earlier this year Republican Sinn Fein
pointed out that Continuity IRA prisoners in Maghaberry
had received letters of support from Sinn Fein politicians.
One of these, Gerry Kelly, stated at the time:
Republicans
died in a long, hard-fought battle for political
status. That political status should still be there
and the demands of prisoners in Maghaberry should
be met ... Bear in mind, I myself protested for
political status and a change in prison conditions.
It is a fact that loyalists are attacking prisoners
in Maghaberry and segregation is an important issue,
just as it was in the 70s and 80s. Irrespective
of what those prisoners think of me, some of them
are my constituents and I will do all I can to help
them.
Speaking
to a 32 County Sovereignty Movement activist who attended
the picket, I was told that it was an ‘awareness
raising exercise’. He felt that Westminster,
Stormont and Leinster House were united in their determination
to punish those opposed to the Good Friday Agreement.
This was a ‘blanket attempt to suppress the rights
of people. And it is always at its most severe within
the prisons.’ He pointed to the deliberate medical
neglect in Portlaoise which has resulted in the death
of one prisoner, Kevin Murray. A similar regime of
official indifference to health concerns prevails
in Britain’s Belmarsh prison ‘where Aidan
Hume is set to lose a leg’. Expressing satisfaction
at the turn out he claimed that it allowed people
of whatever political persuasion or none to show solidarity
with those in jail.
Another
32 County Sovereignty Movement member on the picket that day,
when asked did the campaign of the Real IRA not make
it much more difficult to generate support for prisoners
who were viewed as belonging to the organisation which
carried out the Omagh bomb, felt that there were problems
that needed to be addressed. However, he stated that
those who feel they have a right to carry on fighting
can recall the words of the Sinn Fein president Gerry
Adams who once claimed that not electoral support
but the British presence provided the mandate for
armed struggle.
Small
wonder that the Sinn Fein leadership shout, in a bout
of revisionist pique, ‘mischievous’ at those
who remind them of their own words of yesteryear.
Yet, if the prisoner issue is to be tackled at root,
yesteryear is going to have to be revisited, not revised,
time and time again. History is not a blackboard that
can be flannelled clean. Those who think it is may
raise enough dust through their frenzied efforts at
erasure but once it settles the trace remains for
all to see. And that awkward word ‘why’
makes itself heard yet again. As one participant asked
upon seeing a long time Tyrone prisoner-support activist
on Saturday ‘why is her support wrong today but
right in 1981?’
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