Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 49

The Women of Armagh
by Gerry Coleman

Armagh Prison crouched gloomily in the middle of Armagh town, a dumpy, dreary 19th century building. What the women endured there isn't told enough. It soon became a hell-hole for the women on the "dirty protest" every bit as horrible as the men's experience.

The governor was, naturally enough, a man -- George Scott.

Some believe that being on the dirty protest was worse for a woman, citing vanity and feminine hygiene needs. Perhaps so. I rather think these considerations were the last things on their minds as they embarked on their protest. In any case, they were on "the dirty protest" and all that that implied from February of 1980 until the end of the Hunger Strike at the end of 1981 and their menstrual needs didn't make it any more pleasant.

The IRA prisoners' OC was Mairead Farrell. Murdered in a shoot-to-kill set up by the SAS in Gibraltar on active service in 1986, she became an icon of republican resistance. No one could meet her, or even see and hear her on a video interview, or see her image in a famous photo taken in her cell with the walls covered with feces and say this was the face and soul of a terrorist -- so beautiful, so honest, so sure of the course she was on.

It started slowly. Mairead organized a "limited protest" for political status, motivated by the same considerations as the men. At first they refused all prison work. Trouble began in May of 1978, after a disturbance among remand prisoners, when male screws in riot gear attacked and locked up the women for several weeks without being allowed outside their cells for exercise or the use the toilets. It was a hot summer and tempers boiled.

Scott was a hard man. The women complained, even as tension abated somewhat, of disregard for basic health and female sanitary needs.

Armagh hell over black skirts

Then Kevin Delaney, an IRA volunteer, died in a premature explosion near Portadown. The Catholic Church decided to take a public stand and refused his widow permission to bury her husband from a Catholic Church with a mass.

The Republican women in Armagh jail decided to commemorate his death with a ceremony. They dressed in outfits roughly fashioned on the black skirt outfits of Cumman na mBan. A week later, all hell broke loose.

On February 7, it was announced that there would be hot chicken and pie for lunch. The food had been god awful since '78, so the women actually looked forward to it and lined up for lunch downstairs. A prison official announced to the women that their cells were to be search while they were having lunch. What he didn't say was that they were looking for the black skirts.

The women were soon surrounded by over sixty male and female screws, some drafted from Long Kesh for the day's work. There was immediate chaos, plates and food flew, women were kicked, punched and beaten. They were dragged off to holding cells while theirs were searched and trashed. They were taken back to their cells after thorough body searches, but not for long. Men in riot gear and batons removed them in pairs for "adjudication", beating them all the way.

Some of this was described by Anne Marie Quinn in a "comm" to her mother: "Then Mairead Farrell shouted in that they wanted Eilis and three other women down to the governor as they were on report earlier in the week. Mairead got to B2 going towards her own cell when twelve female officers grabbed her. They took turns at trailing [dragging across the floor by arms, legs, hair, etc.] there. We could see this from our spyhole. Next we hear the screams form Anne Bateson, Eileen Morgan and Mairead as they were beaten and trailed from their cells to the prison authorities. Then the male officers ran up the two flights of stairs and called "Eilis O'Connor." Before we knew what was happening three men in riot gear and more behind them charged into the cell. I was banged against the wall with a riot shield and two men jumped me -- one jumped and dug his knees into my chest. I yelled in pain. The other twisted my anus. I called them names and they laughed in my face."

All over black skirts.

The Dirty Protest evolves

Their punishment was that they were locked up for 24 hours every day, so they had to use slop out pots for all of their sanitary needs and the food got even worse. But the women's pots were filling and not being emptied by the screws. They weren't allowed to slop out themselves, so they emptied them out the spy holes in their cell doors when they filled up. So the screws nailed the spy holes shut. The women started throwing their excrement out their windows, onto the street below. So they boarded the windows shut.

So up on the walls it went -- a full fledged dirty protest by 12 February 1980. One visitor to the prison described it like this:

"There's a sickly sweet 'hum.' The lights are on in their cells -- because the cells are blocked up -- and the women won't even use clean sheets when the old ones are due for replacement. They won't wash and they've no change of underwear. They have the excrement all round their cells. the only things spared are holy pictures. You see here and there pictures of the Blessed Virgin on the walls frames in shit. The Loyalist members of the prison visitor committee think that's dreadful."

In December of 1980, three women in Armagh Jail went on the first hunger strike in the second wave after the seven men were on for several weeks: Mairead Farrell, Mary Doyle and Mairead Nugent. There was some concern from the men over the women's participation. Try to stop them! They were very bitter to come off without any of their demands being meet by the Brits.

Immense suffering

Enduring the dirty protest for any length of time called for immense determination and spirit. Even for a healthy person, few could last a day or two unless they were totally committed. But for someone in ill health to begin with, it is an ordeal beyond description. Many of the men and women were in bad health because of injuries received during capture and interrogation, or from beatings by the screws. Marian and Dolours Price, for example, who achieved repatriation to Ireland to serve their prison terms by going on hunger strike, were force feed for over 200 days by the prison authorities before they got their demands. They ended up in Armagh jail. Both suffered terribly from the after effects of their forced feeding and treatment. Both had anorexia nervosa, a deadly disease. Marian was so psychologically destroyed that she would have surely died in prison if it were not for the intervention of Cardinal O'Fiaich who got her transferred to a hospital in the South.

Tim Pat Coogan interviewed Dolours in 1980 for his book On The Blanket in a chapter called "Eyewitness: Armagh":

"I talked with Dolours Price for a while. She was a particularly intelligent woman. Like her sister Marian, who was released, she suffered form anorexia nervosa, giving her a lemur-like air, though she counteracted the effects of the disease by dressing tastefully and was obviously keeping depression at bay with some effort. The forced feeding apparently destroyed the metabolic relationship between her body and eating and she found it difficult to keep up either her painting or writing because of the lack of stimulation in her surroundings or of any real incentive. 'One tends to forget what it's like on the outside...', she said."

A Wing

Coogan describes what is was like in A Wing, where the Dirty Protest was in full force. He was escorted there by the governor, Scott, after a visit with conforming prisoners exercising in the yard. "This was sickening and appalling," he wrote. "Tissues, slops, consisting of tea and urine, some feces, and clots of blood -- obviously the detritus of menstruation -- lay in the corridor between the two rows of cells." The women had had a change of clothes a week ago and they did not smell as badly as usual. They received a change of clothing every three months. They refused new sheets and slept only on blankets in this muck. He examined an empty cell smeared to the roof with feces; in one space not covered with excreta, a woman had written, "I am one of many who would die for my country; I believe in fighting the fight to the end; If death is the only way, I am prepared to die; To be free is all I want and many like me think the same."

"That last sentiment I certainly found to be the case," he said.

He went to Katrina Pettigrew's cell: "As the windows were shuttered form the outside to prevent them throwing their slops out into the street, the cell was dimly lit and Katrina's pale face seemed particularly pale and sickly." Then he visited Mairead Farrell, prison OC, and Sinead Moore. And although the women had just received clean clothes one week ago, they were beginning to smell. "In fact, I found the smell in the girl's cells far worse than that at Long Kesh, and several times found myself having to control feelings of nausea," he said. "Mairead and Sinead could have passed for two typical well-dressed Belfast women in their twenties were it not for the fact that they were in a narrow cell barely wide enough to allow tow beds, which was covered from top to bottom in their own excreta, and in which they were determined to stay until they were released through death, the ending of their sentences, or the concession of political status."

Mairead said, "We are in a war situation. We have been treated in a special way and tried by special courts because of that war, and because of our political activities we want to regarded as prisoners of war."

Pauline

A similar case was Pauline McLoughlin of Derry. Pauline suffered from stomach or intestinal distress which began during her time on remand. Charged in October of 1976, she was imprisoned until her trial and conviction in February 1978. During this time, she had great difficulty keeping food down after meals.

When she was sentenced, she joined her comrades in Armagh jail in B Wing on the protest for political status. Shortly afterwards, her father died. But because she was on the protest, her request to attend his funeral was refused. She also was denied food parcels from her family, which meant that she had to make do with prison food. With her stomach condition, it was like poison.

Pauline was variously declared unfit for punishment and was allowed to receive her weekly food parcels again and a visit, then as her condition improved, she would be put back on punishment. Then, of course, she would become sick again and so forth. This went on for some time, but she was deteriorating. At one point, she was taken from the prison hospital and brought to Craigavon hospital. There she was treated, but nothing was done to halt her weight loss and vomiting. Back in prison again, she not only had to lay in excrement and body fluids, but her own vomit as well.

She would faint when doing almost any activity, like climbing stairs or walking in the yard. On March 18, 1980, she was brought to the prison doctor who told her she was going to die. According to Brit prison regulations, a prisoner on protest, no matter how sick she or he became, could not be released from jail. Her case would be similar, he told her, to a hunger striker who could not be force fed, even to save his life. If she wanted to kill herself, that was okay with him.

The doctor really put it to her. He even recorded the conversation, in case there was a law suit after her death. He said that he, a strong, healthy man, could not endure the conditions on A Wing.

Pauline never said a word to him during the entire interview. Then she was taken back to her cell where defiantly she went back on the Dirty Protest with the other women. She was thin as a reed. Finally, her comrades succeeded in persuading her to come off to save her life.

Pauline was not unique. It would be a wonderment if this struggle created only Pauline, but it created thousands of Paulines, people who cared more for their fellow human beings than their own bodies or lives. They came form the hills and streets of Ireland's countryside and cities, the boys and girls next door and from the farm down the road.

Over one hundred thousand total years were served in various British, Irish, European and American jails by ten thousand Irish republican prisoners of war.

Sin e

This series is over, but what these men and women did will always be remembered. What they did will resonate throughout Irish history regardless of its course. If there is to be a happy ending, it is up to us to provide it.