Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 2

From Conveyor Belt to H-Blocks
1971 to 1976

While the 1981 Hunger Strike would electrify and transform the armed struggle and be for the current phase of the conflict what the Great Hunger would be for the Fenians and the 1916 Rising for the birth and development of the Irish Republican Army, its impact could hardly be anticipated by a young Nationalist named Ciaran Nugent on a fateful day in March of 1976 when he refused to wear the prison uniform that would signify his status as an "ordinary criminal".

It was to set in motion a series of events that have yet to be fully realized.

Special Category Status

For four years prior, IRA prisoners were given "Special Category Status", essentially as prisoners of war who were responsible to their own officers, could wear their own clothes, and did not participate in demeaning prison work, but also to acknowledge the obvious: hundreds of the men "behind the wire" were held without trial as the result of huge internment swoops the rough nationalist districts that began in the summer of 1971. The world looked askance that the nation that gave us "habeas corpus" didn't consider Irish people to have bodies. And the vast majority of regular convictions were not trails at all but self-confessions beaten out of suspects.

There was also a begrudging acceptance of the IRA's military standing and the bravery of its volunteers. In the early years, it was not uncommon for British soldiers to salute a fallen IRA soldier at a funeral procession as the coffin passed by.

Nonetheless, Special Category Status came about only as a result of the pressure put upon the British by the hunger strike in Crumlin Road Jail in 1972.

Lords Gardiner and Diplock: "normalization" and "criminalization"

Allowing special status to IRA prisoners did not sit well with the securocrats and the righteous pro-British establishment; it also ran counter to the "counter insurgency" efforts of a new high-powered commission -- which included the British army, police, its counter-intelligence agency, MI5 -- whose sole purpose was to break the IRA.

Simply put, the new strategy was to portray the conflict not as a war fought by soldiers, but as a law and order issue involving criminals and thugs being brought into control by the local police [the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Protestant dominated British army shock force] and the locally recruited military reserves [the Ulster Defense Regiment -- a more venomous and sectarian version of the regular British army].

The crucial step was taken as a result of the publication of a report from former British Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, on January 30, 1975: "The introduction of Special Category Status was a serious mistake." He recommended doing away with the unpopular term "internment" with the more acceptable "detention" taking its place with absolutely no difference in reality -- anyone could be detained almost infinitely. And he recommended building the "H-Blocks" to properly control the new criminal population.

By the time Gardiner made his recommendations the prison population in the Six-counties had rocketed from 727 to 2,848. A serious crime wave! But it was soon to rise to over 3,500 as a result of another puppet Brit commission under Lord Diplock which was to introduce the "Conveyor Belt System" of criminal justice for dealing with political offenses.

Parliament was orgasmic in its quick approval.

Special Category offenses under Diplock's recommended justice system suddenly became "scheduled offenses" to be dealt with by a single judge, no jury. Ordinary folks could be detained without cause. Bail was in effect suspended. Confessions were acceptable to convict even in the absence of any corroborative evidence, despite the widespread use of psychological and physical torture. In effect, this new directive encouraged tortured confessions. Diplock allowed as evidence in court statements from people not even present, therefore denying a defendant the right to confront or question his accuser. Perhaps the most sinister provision of all was that "the onus of proof" was on the political offense suspect to prove his or her innocence. The burden of the state in civilized societies is to present a decently developed case against an individual in order to prevent judicial tyranny. Now, Irish men and women were being asked to prove in court that they did not do some act or another to somebody or thing somewhere at some time. It was an absurdity, but it suited the British mentality and sense of justice where Ireland's rights were concerned.

The Orange Judiciary, the RUC and the British army went straight to state-terrorism heaven. The military and judicial conveyor belt was hooked up and greased with the new "emergency" laws and nationalists and republicans were feed into one end and emptied out into the other -- into the hellholes of the newly constructed H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

As far as "Special Category Status" was concerned, those who were treated with the above mentioned special methods -- special courts, special jails, special evidence, and special interrogation -- certainly felt special. But they were now suddenly just ordinary criminals.

British direct ruler of the Six-counties at the time, Merlyn Rees, stupidly called the rapists, murderers and thieves in his jails, in contrast to IRA political prisoners, "Decent Ordinary Prisoners." Men and women who rose up against an insufferable tyranny in self defense and fought aggressively for an ideal of justice and independence were, apparently, beyond contempt or compassion.

The Prisoners Fight Back

From time immemorial, Irish men and women have defied British attempts to break their spirit while in prison. Armed with little more than sheer will and contempt for their captors, Republican prisoners always carried the war into jail and have always stood the test.

Nonetheless, on 1 March 1976, all those convicted of "scheduled offenses" were to be considered criminals.

The first man to loose Special Category Status was a young man named Ciaran Nugent. At his sentencing, he said in reference to the prisoner clothes he was expected to wear, "They'll have to nail them to my back."

Later, when Ciaran stood alone before the screws who processed him, he was asked his clothes' sizes for a uniform. It was a crucial moment in Irish history. He replied, "You must be joking." Ciaran was thrown into a cell without any clothes and forced to cover himself with only a blanket.

Ciaran Nugent knew that he was no longer just Ciaran Nugent, but a symbol. He stood not only for his own beliefs and for his comrades', but for all the Irish men and women who suffered and died for Irish freedom down through the ages. Were they all criminal too?

Jackie McMullen was in the Crumlin Road Jail on remand waiting to be sentenced at the time Nugent was going through his ordeal. Naturally, all of the Republicans to follow where anxious to hear word of what Ciaran did and how he was being treated. McMullen recalled, "We were eager to hear where they had taken him and what had happened to him after court. Then we heard that he was in the punishment cells in B-wing in the Crum and that he was naked. Over the next few days we heard little else by confirmation of this original story and then he disappeared. They took him away -- we hadn't a clue where."

Next: The Blanket Protest Begins