Of Prisons and Polities: the Black Panther Party, Irish Republican Army and Radical Socio-Political Organization, 1966-1983 Title

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MARIANNA BROWN DIETRICH COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES

DISSERTATION

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

Doctor of Philosophy For the Degree of

Of Prisons and Polities: The Black Panther Party, Irish Republican Army and Radical Socio-Political organization, 1966-1983 Title

RACHEL ALAYNA OPPENHEIMER, B.A., M.A. Presented by

History Accepted by the Department of

David Miller August 2, 2017 Readers (Director of Dissertation) Date

Nico Slate August 2, 2017

Date Joe W. Trotter August 2, 2017

Date

Approved by the Committee on Graduate Degrees

Richard Scheines August 3, 2017

Dean Date

Of Prisons and Polities: The Black Panther Party, Irish Republican Army

and Radical Socio-Political organization, 1966-1983

Rachel Alayna Oppenheimer, B.A., M.A.

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of the College of the Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Carnegie Mellon University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

August 1, 2017

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A dissertation requires considerable support to complete, and I have been fortunate to have such support in excess. From people who offered emotional support, to those who read partial drafts and chapters, my work has benefitted greatly from numerous outside sources. The following deserve to be mentioned by name.

I must first thank my committee, Doctors David W. Miller, Nico Slate, and Joe

Trotter. Their knowledge and patience has been invaluable. My thanks also go out to

Doctors Kate Lynch and Wendy Goldman who both served as director of the graduate program during my time at CMU and who have provided advice and guidance along the way. I am also thankful to Dr. Donna Harsch for offering me temporary housing when it looked as if I might need it, unexpectedly.

I must also thank numerous friends and colleagues. Kaaz Naqvi, Andrew Ramey,

Jay Roszman, and Cassie Miller all read and provided feedback for early chapter drafts.

John Weigel, and Avigail Oren provided considerable moral support and helped me move apartments in the midst of finishing a dissertation draft. Lizeth Whaley checked up on me and encouraged me. Sarah Rodgers, Susan Moore, and Jenny Raterman, Annie Donley, and Debbie Lowman kept me laughing and reminded me that there was a world beyond my dissertation. Erin Eilbeck Sykes, Stacie Niemesch, and Sarah Emerson Honkala asked about the progress of my work, and helped me get back to work after my mother’s death.

I will be forever grateful.

I owe a considerable debt to the staffs of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and

Stanford Special Collections and University Archives. Each helped to make relatively

brief archival visits disproportionately beneficial to my dissertation. I thank Stanford’s staff, especially, for their help in photocopying and mailing materials to me.

The archives I visited in Belfast could not have been more welcoming and helpful. Ross Moore and Alistair Gordon of the Linen Hall Library did the literal heavy lifting for my project, bringing me box after box of material in addition to teaching me the ways of various stubborn Linen Hall Library photocopy machines. I also owe thanks to much of the PRONI staff. Claire Mawhinney was the first person I met at the Public

Records Office, and she helped to orient me, welcome me to the archive, and remained a friendly and welcoming face throughout my time there. Wesley Geddis and Alan

Robertson pointed me in the right direction at various times, helping me to find new material. David Huddleston helped in this vein and assisted me in securing a visit to the

Maze/Long Kesh. Graham Jackson aided me in my attempts to gain access to freedom of information documents. I thank Kelly Copeland, Ryan Bowman, Craig Murray, and

Andrew Toland who, subsequently, had to order all those freedom of information files for me, got me in touch with staff members to help with my research, and answered all manner of questions that I probably could have just googled myself. Marie Lennon, Paul

Rea, and John Rea copied forests’ worth of paper on my behalf and never complained about switching my seat. I owe special thanks to Gavin McMahon for all the work he did for me, (see getting files, copying, and answering obvious questions) while making me, and later, my sister, feel at home from the very beginning. It’s the rare archive where the historian can get music recommendations alongside their documents.

My thanks go also to Jack Duffin and Séanna Walsh at Coiste na n-Iarchimí for helping me to secure interviews for this project. Thank you to Coiste and Tar Anall for

providing meeting places for these interviews. I thank Mr. Walsh, Joe Doherty, Phil

McCullough, Jim McVeigh, John O’Hagan, and Sinéad for taking the time out of their schedules to meet with me and for agreeing to share their stories. Le Meas, go raibh maith agat. I am also thankful to Louis West who met my sister and me in a remembrance garden, and, upon finding out about my project, invited us into his home for tea and sources. I will not forget that unexpected kindness.

Finally, I owe to my family more thanks than a simple acknowledgements section can hold. To my mother, Reneé Oppenheimer, I am profoundly sorry that I did not finish this before you passed away. Thank you for never making me doubt that you would be proud of me. Bruce and Devon Oppenheimer have held me together through this project.

Thank you, Dad, for taking care of Rawley while I finished writing, and doing everything else in your power to make sure I could complete the dissertation. Thank you, Devon, for fielding late night phone calls, calling to make sure I woke up when I needed to, helping to convince insta-friends to give me sources in Belfast, and about a million other things.

If I have missed thanking anyone, please consider it a symptomatic of a brain winding down from the intensity of writing a dissertation, not a personal slight.

I thank you all for the support you have shown me. It only makes me more likely to feel that I can call on your assistance and friendship again someday. Consider yourselves warned.

Rachel Oppenheimer

July 15, 2017

iii

ABSTRACT

Of Prisons and Polities: The Black Panther Party, Irish Republican Army and

Radical Socio-Political organization, 1966-1983

This dissertation uses the idea of a moral polity as an organizing concept to help understand how the Irish Republican Army and Black Panther Party understood their own actions and the imprisonment of large numbers of their members. In referring to the “moral polity” this study describes socio-political structures and relations created by people who are animated by a series of collectively held ideas about how authorities and populations should interact. The collectively held ideas that provide the foundation for a moral polity emphasize reciprocities between authorities and a population living under those authorities, fairness and justice between these two parties, and trust between the authorities and that population. Moral Polities promote human dignity and the welfare of the community, and the beliefs that undergird them are formed in opposition to established socio-political structures. The first chapters reveal the moral polities created by the BPP and IRA, looking first at precursors of these moral polities and then focusing on the opposition their creators faced from the governments and security forces of the United States, Northern Ireland, and Britain. As the Panthers and IRA espoused a radical reordering of society based on their collectively held beliefs, they threatened power structures who resorted to counterintelligence and internment without trial in their attempts to quell the threats they saw coming from the BPP an IRA, which in turn resulted in in large numbers of prisoners. The last chapters examine the decline of the Black Panther Party and the rise of the Irish republican prisoner. The BPP was unable to overcome the divisions within their party which the FBI exploited in the years before 1973. This left them unable to uphold the moral polity they had created around chapters across the nation. Although some members of the Party struggled to keep the Party and its envisioned society afloat, the BPP did not last beyond 1982. Conversely, when British authorities revoked special category status in Northern Irish prisons, and therefore, destroyed the IRA’s reordering of prison society, the IRA embarked on five years of sustained protest which resulted in a recreation of their moral polity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... i

Abstract ...... iv

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1 “We hadn’t a Policeman to Protect Us:” Building a Moral Polity and Encountering the Prison System, 1966-1969 ...... 48

Chapter 2 “Jails of Babylon:” Repression and Expanding Moral Polities, 1969 -1971 ...... 95

Chapter 3 “The Lowest Circle of Hell is Reserved for Those Who Betray Their Comrades:” Division and Change in the Moral Polity, 1971-1973 ...... 143

Chapter 4 “When a People’s Soldier is Captured:” the Divergent Fortunes of the BPP, IRA, and their moral polities and prisoners, 1973-1975 ...... 210

Chapter 5 “The Real Revolution Has Just Begun:” IRA Prison Wars and the Last Years of the Black Panther Party, 1976-1982 ...... 279

Conclusion ...... 411

Glossary of Terms ...... 426

Bibliography ...... 427

v 1

Introduction

If you read the newspapers at the end of the 1960s it appeared that a volatile specter had emerged in the United States in the autumn of 1966. In the face of cozy ideas of racial progress, this specter argued that there was unfinished business surrounding the civil rights movement, problems that integration, voting rights, and non-violent agitation could not solve. In the midst of staunchly anti-Communist cold war America it openly quoted Mao and gave loud voice to the anti-war movement. This specter was exposed to the national consciousness in 1967 when armed black men entered the California statehouse to protest a proposed law to prevent openly carrying a loaded weapon. “That the Black Panthers should lay stress on the constitutional right to bear arms under the circumstances . . . at Sacramento makes their position completely farcical,” cried a Los

Angeles Times editorial. “Certainly the authors of the Bill of Rights never had in mind such groups as the Black Panthers, the American Nazis, the Minute Men or the K.K.K. when they wrote, in the 2nd Amendment . . . ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’”1

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense came into official existence on October

15, 1966 in Oakland, California. Its founders were Merritt College students Huey P.

Newton and Bobby Seale who took the party’s name from the image of a panther which was used as a symbol by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Mississippi. The two had joined other organizations while in school, but felt that none of them met the needs of the working class black community. These groups tended, in Newton’s

1 Los Angeles Times, “Guest Editorial: Stronger Gun Laws,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1967, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1967/05/11/page/16/article/guest-editorial.

2 estimation, toward thinking and talk, rather than action. After trying and failing to get the

Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) to embrace protests with armed marchers, Newton and Seale decided to create their own organization.2

The goals of the Party were clearly articulated in what became known as the ten point program. The ten points that first appeared in the Party’s newspaper in 1967 displayed a vision for a society that was distinctly different from the world in which the

Party formed. It said,

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black

community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black community.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter [of] human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent

American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our

role in the present day society.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county, and city

prisons and jails.

2 Huey P. Newton, The Huey P. Newton Reader, ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 46-47.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of

their peer group or people from their black communities as defined by the

constitution of the United States.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.3

At the end of the 1960s, there were specters emerging in Northern Ireland too.

The Northern Irish state was founded in violence, and from the moment a separate parliament was created for the northern counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh,

Londonderry, and Tyrone with the Government of Ireland Act (1920), Northern Ireland was a polity designed to favor Protestant unionists. The six counties identified in the act, which would later be formally partitioned into the state of Northern Ireland were separated from the other 26 counties of Northern Ireland because their majority Protestant populations did not favor the separation from Great Britain advocated by the Catholics and nationalists of the South. The unionist politicians who composed the Northern Irish parliament felt their position to be insecure, formed as it was, during the war for Irish independence. If they did not consolidate power into unionist hands, they reasoned,

Protestants were in danger of being swallowed up by the drive for independence in the

South. There was, after all, a substantial minority population of Catholics left in those six northern counties who favored dissolving the union with Britain and who, were from the very inception of the state of Northern Ireland, seen as disloyal and even traitorous.

3 “What We Want Now! What We Believe,” The Black Panther 1 no. 2, May 15, 1967, http://solomon.bltc.alexanderstreet.com.proxy.library.cmu.edu/pdf/1002161768.pdf, 3. Hereafter, The Black Panther indicates issues of The Black Panther obtained from the Black Thought and Culture database referenced here, unless otherwise noted.

Yet, when the Northern Irish parliament abolished proportional representation for local election is 1922 and then for Stormont elections in 1929, it was not an exclusively an attack on nationalists. They sought, rather, to prevent the splinter groups which had formed within unionism from winning parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, this consolidation of power within a single branch of unionism was devastating to nationalists, who initially refused to take their seats in the Northern Parliament, and once they took their places, following the fixing of the border, refused to act as the official opposition. With nationalist politicians silenced by their own hand, and power held almost exclusively with the Ulster Unionist Party, the Catholic nationalist population— nearly one third of the population of the province—lost their voice in the government of

Northern Ireland. The result was that from its formation, the Northern Irish government was, for Catholics, dangerously stable. Many seats went uncontested to unionist candidates, and the men holding those positions seldom changed.4 For Catholics hoping for a reunification of Ireland, their best hope, therefore, lay with the one force who had not yet accepted partition: the Irish Republican Army. Following the war of

Independence and the Civil War, however, the government of the South ruthlessly cracked down on the IRA, leaving Catholics, nationalists, and republicans in the North to fend for themselves.

For some time, the IRA, under the Dublin based leadership of Cathal Goulding had been moving away from armed struggle. Embracing Marxism, Goulding led the IRA instead into the trade union movement, believing that if the workers of Ireland could be

4 J.L. McCracken, “Northern Ireland: 1921-1966,” in The Course of Irish History, ed. T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin, Dermot Keogh, and Patrick Kiely, 5th ed. (Lanham, Maryland: Roberts Reinhart Publishing, 2012), 276, 278.

5 united, the work of uniting the territory of the island would be easier. As such, by the time the civil rights movement emerged in the North in 1968, the IRA, as previous generations had known it, was defunct. Concentrating on the politics of the working class, this IRA did not maintain and seek the large stockpiles of weapons which were common to previous and future generations of the movement. Thus, when violence erupted across Northern Ireland, the IRA was no longer prepared to respond immediately to the threats to their communities. They were too Marxist, too Southern, and too ill equipped to deal with a violent struggle. There was, however, a core of traditionalist members of the IRA who felt the violence of August 1969 vindicated them in their belief that Goulding had taken the IRA in the wrong direction by moving away from armed struggle. In December 1969 these members split from Goulding’s IRA and formed their own organization. They became known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army and eventually surpassed Goulding’s IRA, known from that time on as the Official IRA, in membership. Seán Macstíofáin served as the PIRA’s chief of staff from its inception in

1969 to 1972.5

The Irish Republican Army and Black Panther Party were both made up of men and women who had historically, and in their lived experience, been denied access to full membership in, protection from, and the rights associated with citizens of their respective nations. From this position of inequality, working class Catholics in Northern Ireland and working class black Americans created, in their communities, networks of support to supplement the services the State failed to provide. This meant that that these communities developed ideas about how authorities should function in relation to the

5 Martin J. McCleery, Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath: A New History of the use of Internment without Trial in Northern Ireland 1971-1975 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 3.

6 structures they developed on their own and knowledge of what the State denied to them.

These ideas were often held in opposition to the established laws, practices, and structures of the larger nation.

In this study, I will refer to the socio-political structures and relations created by people who were animated by a series of collectively held ideas about how authorities and populations should interact, as the “moral polity.” The collectively held ideas that provide the foundation for a moral polity emphasize reciprocities between authorities and a population living under those authorities, fairness and justice between these two parties, and trust between the authorities and that population. Moral Polities promote human dignity and the welfare of the community, and the beliefs that undergird them are formed in opposition to established socio-political structures. The ideas that create the foundation of the moral polity typically came from traditionally held ideas about how authorities and populations should interact.

In the following pages I will argue that the IRA and BPP were guided by beliefs that led them toward the creation of moral polities, which brought them into conflict with the governments of Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States. This led these governments to view the IRA and BPP as significant threats, and use their prison systems to subdue these threats, wherein IRA volunteers and Panthers continued to agitate for the creation of these alternative socio-political relations.

Looking backward from the late 1960s we can see earlier moves toward moral polities among Black Americans and Irish Catholics. Take for example, the long history of what some have termed “community self-help” or “community building” within

African American communities. In January 1817 nearly 3,000 black Philadelphians

7 assembled at Mother Bethel Church to discuss what they saw as the threat of repatriation to Africa, then being touted by some in the area as a solution to the problem of slavery and incorporating free blacks into society. In response to this crisis, black Philadelphians organized mutual aid societies and schools in order to ease the transition from slavery to freedom and attempted to rid their community of public inebriation, physical disputes, and the use of profanity, all vices, which many saw as detrimental to their cause.6

Here, we can see black Philadelphians of the early 19th century define the relationship between authorities and their community and the reciprocities they saw as contained therein. In this case, black community members were not necessarily opposed to the state or federal government, but to those who would use repatriation to Africa for freedmen as a solution to society’s ills. They were willing to put a stop to public drunkenness, profanity, and physical fighting in order to get proponents of the policy of repatriation to abandon it. At the same time, because no one was helping freedmen integrate into society, black community members organized mutual aid societies and schools to fill that void. The mutual aid societies of early 19th-century black Philadelphia were hampered by lack of resources, and could not reach all the people who were in need of their aid, but they revealed the workings of a small moral polity whose members struggled to reach as many people as they could in order to create a society where black men and women were treated more equitably.7

Black churches often provided an important component to these early attempts at moral polities. Remaining with the example of Philadelphia, shows us that between 1822

6 Erica Armstrong Dunbar, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nq0q9, 49. 7 Ibid., 49-50.

8 and 1851 the leaders of Mother Bethel Church formed a disciplinary tribunal which tried cases which ranged from accusations of the use of profane language to murder.8 At the same time organizations for women such as the Female Benevolent Society of St.

Thomas, the Daughters of Africa, and the African American Female Band monitored their communities and ensured that anyone who violated the socially agreed upon ethical norms was ostracized and not supported by these organizations social uplift programs.9 In this case, the moral norms demanded by the church affiliated women as well as the male tribunal coincided with white society’s ideas of respectability, but these early examples of respectability politics were policed by separate structures created within black communities in an effort to create uplift there. Generations later, the Black Panthers would abandon the idea that moral norms of black Americans had to mirror those of whites, but they were no less strict in policing the rules they put in place and viewed as essential to the survival of the Party and the betterment of black America.

Early hints at moral polities can, similarly, be seen in cases of Irish agrarian violence of the 18th and 19th centuries. Activities of secret societies such as the

Whiteboys, active in Munster and surrounding areas in the 1760s aimed to keep Irish tenant farmers in possession of his holding and to ensure that that a holding was passed to family upon a tenant’s death.10 In order to see that these objectives were met, secret societies like the Whiteboys employed numerous tactics, ranging from threatening notes of warning to new tenants to abandon a holding they considered rightfully someone else’s to cutting off ears and noses of new tenants, or “carding,” a punishment wherein a

8 Ibid., 51-52. 9 Ibid., 52. 10 Gale E. Christianson, “Secret Societies and Agrarian Violence in Ireland, 1790-1840,” Agricultural History 46, no. 3 (1972): 370, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3742161/.

9 wooden board dotted with spikes or nails would be raked across a victim’s back.11 Gale

E. Christianson has argued that Irish secret societies such as the Whiteboys evinced explicitly economic rather than political motivations. Theirs was a moral economy rather than a moral polity.12 Nevertheless, Whiteboy tactics and sense of justice would be comparable to that of the IRA and other paramilitary units during the Northern Irish

Conflict after 1969, when punishment shootings of drug dealers or petty criminals would become common as the paramilitaries worked to keep their communities under control, protect residents who supported their efforts, and guard their own authority against society’s criminal elements, the crucial difference being that by 1969 the goals of the

IRA had expanded well beyond the economic.13

My use of “moral polity,” as an organizational concept owes much to the work of

E.P. Thompson, particularly, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the

Eighteenth Century.” (1971). Thompson argued that “riots” over food in eighteenth century England could not be explained by economic need or scarcity alone, what he called, “crass economic reductionism.” Instead, he argued that in most 18th-century crowd actions one can detect people acting based on the defense of traditional rights or customs endorsed by popular consensus, and that this endorsement was strong enough to override the fear or deference that the crowd might otherwise possess for the authorities.

“It is of course true that riots were triggered off by soaring prices, by malpractices among dealers, or by hunger. But these grievances operated within a popular consensus as to

11 Ibid., 372, 373. 12 Ibid., 382. 13 Charles Tilly notes that between 1969 and 1982 there were 1,006 kneecappings and 153 instances of a person being tarred and feathered in Northern Ireland. See Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 116.

10 what were legitimate and what were illegitimate practices in marketing, milling, baking, etc,” Thompson argued.14

Thompson’s article has spawned countless similar studies in the years since it was published, which examine the moral economy in other contexts and times, from James C.

Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia

(1976) to James Kelly’s forthcoming Food Rioting in Ireland in the Eighteenth and

Nineteenth Century: The Moral Economy and the Irish Crowd (2017). Of particular interest to this study is the idea that one group of people could hold different standards of fairness than a second group of people who controlled the economy, and that these different standards led to demonstrations, riots, and protests where they were most pronounced. IRA and BPP members came from minority groups within their respective nations who were excluded from various aspects of the economies of those nations.

There are, however, key differences between the moral economy as described by

Thompson and subsequent scholars and the actions of the Panthers and IRA. The Irish

Republican Army and Black Panther Party emerged in modern industrial democracies and dealt with issues that were most visible in an urban context, though the IRA had a sizable rural contingent. Although each group had much to say about the economic organization of the United States and Ireland, the BPP and IRA expressed concerns and goals that reached well beyond the economy. Both complained that the entire social structure was oppressive and discriminatory and acted based on those conceptions of society. Describing the actions of Irish republicans and Black Panthers requires a broader

14 E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present no. 50 (1971): 78-79, http://www.jstor.org/stable/650244.

11 term than “moral economy.” This study will, thus, use the idea of a “moral polity” to examine the wider societal changes sought by each group.

The term “moral” as applied to the moral polity can be something of a misnomer, and it should be remembered that what is “moral” is subjective, so that the behaviors allowed in a moral polity are not necessarily “moral” to everyone. The moral polity is moral in the sense that it attempts to correct the abuses seen in the established society and, therefore, reflects the morals and values of a particular group of people. What are espoused in moral polities are moral norms and conventions, not necessarily undeniable moral truths. I have used the term “polity” as opposed to nation or state because this organization of society need not be created at the State or national level. As we will see, it was sometimes sought in very small localities without the power associated with a national government and its security forces.

The idea of a moral polity, as opposed to a moral economy, is beginning to make its way into the literature of the social sciences, and I have drawn understanding from these sources as well as from “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd.” Thompson, himself, mentions the term once without defining it, saying, “The old pamphleteers were moralists first and economists second. In the new economic theory questions as to the moral polity of marketing do not enter, unless as preamble and peroration,”15 and studies of moral polities often cite Thompson as their starting point. Of particular influence to this study and my own conceptualization of a moral polity is the work of political scientist Jaime Lluch. In Visions of Sovereignty: Nationalism and Accommodation in

Multinational Democracies (2014) Lluch is concerned with the “tripartite nationalism” of

15 E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present 50 (1971): 90.

“stateless nationalists,” that is internal variations which occur within “nationalist” populations that form from minority groups within a state run by a separate majority group. He sees within the nationalism of Quebec and Catalonia men and women who want a complete break with the larger state of which they are currently a part, people who want an autonomist but not secessionist relationship with the larger state of which they are a part, and those who look for a federalist relationship with their state.16 He argues that “Substate nationalists . . . see the state in which they live as a ‘moral polity’ in which reciprocities are expected and notions of collective dignity, the commonweal, and mutual accommodation are part of the implicit social compact of living together within the same state.”17

Unlike Lluch, I will not keep my study of the moral polity confined to the level of the nation-state. Indeed, in the coming chapters I will demonstrate that Irish republicans succeeded in creating a moral polity, but at the level of the Northern Irish prison system rather than the level of the nation. I will similarly show the Panthers’ work toward a moral polity at the level of a local community. Between 1966 and 1982 the Black

Panthers attempted to create a moral polity in black neighborhoods across the United

States, but were so undermined by the FBI that their moral polity was largely destroyed, leaving prisoners divided and fighting for individual aspects of the moral polity they had lost. Conversely, the IRA spent less time creating the moral polity outside the prisons, but was able to achieve a moral polity within the prisons of Northern Ireland in 1972. When

16 Jaime Lluch, Visions of Sovereignty: Nationalism and Accommodation in Multinational Democracies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zw796, 9. 17 Ibid., 30-31.

13 this moral polity was dismantled in 1976, the IRA fought to get it back, changing the shape of the Northern Irish conflict from that moment onward.

My moral polity thesis rejects the idea that the Northern Irish conflict and struggle of the Black Panther Party can be reduced to the notion of tribal warfare between

Catholics and Protestants in the first instance and black and white in the second. This study will highlight moments of cooperation between otherwise hostile communities to prove that a key driver of each of these situations was conflict between the IRA, BPP, and an established authority, typically, the Northern Irish, British, and US governments, security forces, and prison staff.

Historiography:

This study intervenes in a series of, often overlapping, historiographies: histories of the Black Panther Party, histories of republican paramilitaries and nationalism in

Northern Ireland, and histories of imprisonment and the carceral state in each country.

As a whole, Irish history is dominated by the revisionist debate. This debate emerged as the Southern Irish state began to build its myths of identity and foundation in the wake of the war of independence (1919-1921) and subsequent civil war (1922-1923).

The myths that emerged were explicitly nationalist, and consequently, the historians reacting to them were anti-nationalist in their orientation. That is, they tried to portray

Irish history not as a triumphant nationalist march through the centuries, rather, they attempted to look at Irish history through a more scientifically objective lens. This debate’s early scholars were led by T.W. Moody and Robert Dudley Edwards, a professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin and a lecturer in modern Irish history at

University College Dublin after 1942, respectively. In 1938 they founded the journal

Irish Historical Studies, which was to become the revisionist flagship.18

The revisionists gained renewed energy with the outbreak of conflict in 1969.

Republicans drew heavily on origin stories that deployed a nationalist vision of Irish history which referred to the United Irishmen’s 1798 rebellion as the genesis of modern republicanism, and the United Irish leader, Theobald Wolfe Tone, as the father of republicanism in Ireland. Revisionists of the conflict period sought to divorce the history from foundational myths like this, in order to undermine legitimizing notions for violence. They often saw these myths being reiterated in the first studies of the IRA by journalists such as J. Bowyer Bell and Tim Pat Coogan whose The Secret Army and The

IRA were published in 1970.19 A prolific example of revisionists from this period was the historian turned politician, Conor Cruise O’Brien. Typical of O’Brien’s work was his

1972 States of Ireland which examined the Irish nationalism of the day and was openly critical of those attempting to use violence to achieve their political ends.20

Standing staunchly against the revisionists were participants in the conflict who wrote some of the first histories of the period, themselves. Maria McGuire’s 1973 To

Take Arms: My Year With the IRA Provisionals and Seán MacStíofáin’s Memoirs of a

Revolutionary (1975) exemplify this trend in militant literature. These works were written at a time when the Provisional Irish Republican Army was emerging, establishing its place as the IRA, and engaging in ever more violent actions. As such, these early

18 Kevin Whelan, “The Revisionist Debate in Ireland,” Boundary 2 31, no. 1 (2004): 184, https://muse.jhu.edu. 19 J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA, 3rd edition (Swords: Poolbeg, 1998); Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA, fully revised and updated edition (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Both works were originally published in 1970. 20 Conor Cruise O’Brien, States of Ireland (London: Faber and Faber, 2015).

15 examinations of the PIRA are geared toward explicating the aims of this organization. In the case of McGuire and MacStíofáin, this explication took two different directions.

MacStíofáin, who was a key figure in the split of the Provisional IRA from the

Official IRA, wrote his memoirs in order to justify his position and elucidate the aims of the PIRA to a wider public. The title of his book, however, is indicative of the role

MacStíofáin saw himself playing. He wasn’t just a paramilitary, MacStíofáin was a revolutionary. By defining himself as a revolutionary, MacStíofáin was able to justify the acts of the PIRA and fashion a narrative of heroic acts designed to bring about a United

Ireland.21

Where MacStíofáin’s account was written to take the reader to a point of solid support for the PIRA, McGuire’s To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA is the story of a person falling out of love with the organization. Initially drawn to the PIRA because of their insistence on a United Ireland, McGuire joined the Provisionals.

Eventually, however, she defected when she became disenchanted with the violence and with MacStíofáin, who was then the PIRA’s chief of staff. McGuire argues that

MacSiofain was puritanically rigid and coldheartedly unfeeling toward the casualties of the PIRA’s bombings.22 As such, the portrait that emerges from McGuire’s To Take Arms is much more ambiguous that MacStíofáin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary, but McGuire’s work does not attempt to dismantle the overarching nationalist dominant narrative in the manner of the revisionists.

Scholarship on paramilitarism and the conflict in Northern Ireland began to expand exponentially in the 1980s. Many scholarly works concerned themselves with

21 Sean MacStíofáin, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (London: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975). 22 Maria McGuire, To Take Arms: A Year in the Provisional IRA (New York: Macmillan, 1973).

16 precursors to the IRA volunteers of the post 1969 conflict. Sean Cronin’s Irish

Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology (1980) kicked off the decade’s studies of large topics.23 Tom Garvin’s Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858-1928 (1987) looked at the forebears to contemporary militants, and Patrick Bishop and Eamonn

Mallie’s The Provisional IRA (1987) examined the overall history of the title subject.24

All took a broadly revisionist approach to their subjects.

It was in the mid-1980s to 1990s, too, that the first serious studies of Irish republican women emerged. An early work in this vein was Only the Rivers Run Free:

Northern Ireland—the Women’s War (1984). Eileen Fairweather, Roisin McDonough, and Melanie McFadyean’s study examines women’s lives in the North, particularly the conditions in which they live, and how they encounter the conflict.25 In 1997,

Anthropologist Begoña Aretxaga published a study of women nationalists in Belfast, which included female members of the IRA, and would become the central work on the subject.26 To this point these paramilitaries were almost entirely absent from studies of the IRA. They may have appeared in a footnote or as an aside, but full length studies did not exist.

These studies of women have always been the exception, rather than the norm, but scholarship on republican and nationalist women has, again, begun to emerge to fill

23 Sean Cronin, Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology (Dublin: Academy Press, 1980). 24 Tom Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858-1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). and Patrick Bishop and Eamonn Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987). Strictly speaking, Garvin is not concerned with the paramilitaries who will populate the proposed study. He was however, interested in their forbearers and is an example of the formal academic works of this time. While popular literature seized on the Troubles as a topic almost immediately, it took much longer for it to seep into academic literature. 25 Eileen Fairweather, Roisin McDonough, and Melanie McFadyean, Only the Rivers Run Free: Northern Ireland—the Women’s War (London: Pluto Press, 1984). 26 Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

17 gaps in the literature in the last decade. Works like Ann Matthews Renegades (2010) and

Dissidents (2012) give scholars a window into women’s roles in earlier phases of the republican movement.27 In 2010, the collected essays of Irish Women at War: The

Twentieth Century examined everything from the Women’s Legion of 1915-1918 to the dirty protest at Armagh’s women’s prison and the women involved in the peace movement.28

Overall, however, the turn of the twenty-first century has been characterized by an explosion of scholarship on republican paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, made possible because of the successes of the peace process. This scholarship has been led by Richard

English. In 2003 English published Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA and followed this in 2006 with Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland.29 The former book has quickly become the standard work on the history of the IRA. English portrays the IRA, not as an unruly band of irrational people, but as an organization with clearly thought out aims and motivations. He allows that there is a distinction between the leadership of the IRA and the rank and file members, but he nevertheless, argues that there is a logic that guides the IRA in its actions.30 Armed Struggle is revisionist in the sense that English dismantles the dominant narratives of republicanism, but it is far less hostile than earlier scholarly revisionism, acknowledging the political motivations of the

IRA.

27 Ann Matthews, Renegades: Irish Republican Women 1900-1922 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2010); Ann Matthews, Dissidents: Irish Republican Women 1923-1944 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2012). 28 Gillian McIntosh and Diane Urquhart, ed., Irish Women at War: The Twentieth Century (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010). 29 Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London: Pan Macmillan, 2007). This latter work spends a considerable amount of time on republican paramilitaries. 30 Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

The relative relaxation of tensions in Ireland and the sheer number of sources dealing with paramilitarism and the Northern Irish conflict has allowed scholars to broaden their field of vision regarding the conflict in recent years. Memory studies have made their way to the Irish conflict, enriching the literature in the past two decades.

Graham Dawson’s 2007 Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma, and the Irish

Troubles is probably the best work in this vein, examining the conflicting memories of the conflict that Protestants and Catholics possess.31 Memory studies are a refreshing addition to studies of paramilitarism and the Irish conflict because they use and explain the dominant narratives of the subject, rather than simply reacting to them.

This study accepts that the revisionist debate was necessary, but like the memory studies of the past two decades looks to move past this debate by acknowledging the ways in which conceptions of the past, whether or not they are based in absolute fact, animate historical actors. Moreover, I argue that early revisionist works, especially, are critical of the nationalist narrative while allowing the State narrative to pass relatively unscathed. Recent works have begun to correct this imbalance, and this study will join them in taking a critical eye to the narratives presented by all actors in this story.

Something like the Irish revisionist debate has characterized studies of the Black

Panthers which have emerged since the early 1970s. Early accounts, often written by journalists struggling to understand vast changes in the social landscape were generally aimed at discrediting or justifying the existence of black militants like the Panthers. Such

31 Graham Dawson, Making Peace with the Past? Memory, Trauma, and the Irish Troubles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). Other recent studies in this vein include Tom Dunne, Rebellions: Memoir, Memory and 1798 (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2004); and William F. Kelleher Jr., The Troubles in Ballybogoin: Memory and Identity in Northern Ireland (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003).

19 was journalist Don A. Schanche’s 1970 The Panther Paradox: A Liberal’s Dilemma.

Schanche’s work represents a corpus of work done by journalists on the subject of the

Black Panthers which was geared toward an audience outside of academia (though it would later be cited by academics in their works). Schanche was highly critical of the

Panthers. He maintained,

I am probably typical of many middle class white liberals— . . . On the one side

we see . . . ‘black rage, apocalyptic and final’ and on the other we see what clearly

appears to be an unuttered, unwritten police conspiracy to deprive the Panthers of

their civil liberties. It has left most of us with the uncomfortable feeling that we

no longer have a liberal place to stand because to defend the Panthers’ rights is to

hasten their apocalypse and to deny them is to hasten another, the destruction of

everyone’s liberties.32

Yet at the same time, Schanche could not help describing the BPP as “angry . . . Jew- bait[ers],” who adhere to an “ineptly constructed party doctrine.”33 In the end it is these judgments with which the reader is left, not the liberal paradox that Schanche sets out to present. My study will explicitly deny the idea that the Party’s doctrine was “ineptly constructed,” instead positing the idea that Party members remained committed to an alternate vision of society based around a reciprocal relationship that they did not see the

State upholding.

Not all works that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s were so critical of black militants. While popular works condemned the Panthers, many scholarly works attempted

32 Don A. Schanche, The Panther Paradox: A Liberal’s Dilemma (New York: David McKay Company, Inc, 1970), xx. 33 Ibid., ix, xi.

20 to create a more complex picture of the BPP. In 1971 education specialist Frederick D.

Harper examined “The Influence of Malcolm X on Black Militancy” for the Journal of

Black Studies. Examining Malcolm X’s influence on Panther, Eldridge Cleaver (also the main subject of Schanche’s work) via secondary sources coupled with the writings of

Malcolm X and Cleaver, Harper asserts that despite anti-white rhetoric, there was more of a place for whites within black militancy than had been acknowledged to that point.

Importantly, Harper also maintains that violent activism was part of the Civil Rights movement, not separate from it.34 Thus, Harper judges black militants less harshly than does Schanche. He attempts, in his article to show where militant black tactics and rhetoric came from, and justifies those tactics and that rhetoric by presenting it as something that was more welcoming to whites than was typically supposed.35

A break in the literature followed the first attempts to understand the Panthers.

Following this first flash of scholarship and popular writings published in the late 1960s and 1970s, where authors attempted to make sense of the events going on around them, historians and journalists fell silent on the subject of black militancy and 1960s radicalism more generally. Historian Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar author of Black Power: Radical

Politics and African American Identity (2004) maintains that in general “For a movement of its magnitude and significance, the literature on the Black Power era is conspicuously thin.”36 The history written in the 1980s is notable only for its lack of scholarship on

34 Frederick D. Harper, “The Influence of Malcolm X on Black Militancy,” Journal of Black Studies 1, no.4 (1971): 387-402. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2783817. 35 Joyce Ladner’s “What Black Power Means to the Negroes in Mississippi,” in Transformation of Activism, ed. August Meier (USA: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970) represents another early work that attempts to give the reader some context for the emergence of Black Power. This work tends to be favorable to militant black activists. 36 Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 241.

21 groups like the Panthers across the United States. In the “Essay on Sources” that follows

Ogbar’s work, out of hundreds of sources examined, only fourteen were published in the

1980s. Of these sources three were written by participants, two are biographies, four deal with the mainstream Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights organizations, two are black women’s history, and the remaining three are examinations of the Federal

Government and Black Power. Moreover, five of these works were published before

1983 indicating that the research for them would have been done in the late 1970s or very early 1980s.37 These categories, though helpful in informing the study of black power and radical black activism do not deal directly with the Panthers.

What these works do represent are subjects that would have been more palatable to an increasingly conservative America. As she argues for a narrative of the Civil Rights movement that expands the story beyond the oft cited Brown v. Board of Education to the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 decade to include later militants, historian Jacquelyn Dowd

Hall claims that the story of Civil Rights has been co-opted by a new group of

“storytellers.” These new storytellers, she explains are “the architects of the New Right, an alliance of corporate power brokers, old style conservative intellectuals, and

“neoconservatives” (disillusioned liberals and socialists turned Cold War hawks).”38 This

New Right, fashioned in the 1970s, portrayed itself as the “true inheritor of the civil rights legacy.”39 According to Hall, the new storytellers quickly reduced the Civil Rights movement to a drive for formal equality before the law and the elimination of racial

37 Ibid. 241-249, especially 244-249. 38 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/91.4/hall.html, 2. 39 Ibid.

22 classification with Martin Luther King as this movement’s figurehead. The goals of this movement then, had been achieved with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the removal of other discriminatory laws.40 Thus, blacks who agitated for rights post 1965 could be criticized for not being satisfied with what they had achieved. Proponents of Black

Power and members of groups like the BPP became trouble makers—people who were working to undermine the prizes won by the recently sanitized Civil Rights movement.

Conservatives could in this manner afford to ignore the still unstable plight of many black

Americans and the ills of American society addressed by groups like the Panthers.

Though not all scholars would have seen this new narrative as correct, by and large, during the 1980s, with regards to Black militancy, the academy moved in directions suggested by this emerging civil rights narrative. Thus, during the 1980s books emerged that explored the role of the Federal government in the civil rights campaign and explored the legacies of Martin Luther King and SNCC— violent black militancy did not enter the picture.41 Historian Curtis J. Austin, author of Up Against The

Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (2006) believes that the conservative era ushered in by the administration of Ronald Reagan was instrumental in rolling back many of the gains made by activists in the 1960s and as such

“This reversal coincided with a lack of good scholarship being published on the more radical aspects of the 1960s.” He further asserts that the scholarship that was written was

40 Ibid., 3. 41 Ogbar, Black Power,246-249. For example, Ogbar specifically mentions Clayborne Carson’s In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981), James Duram’s Moderate Among Extremists: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the School Desegregation Crisis (1981), John Copper’s You Can Hear Them Knocking, and David J. Garrow’s The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.

23 read mainly in the academy, softening its influence.42 Austin asserts that scholars did not begin to write about radical African American activists again until the Republicans were replaced in the white house by the President Clinton and “his once student-activist wife

Hillary.”43

Huey Newton’s untimely death on the streets of Oakland, California in 1989 also renewed interest in the Black Panther Party. In the wake of Newton’s murder both Elaine

Brown and David Hilliard published accounts of their time with the BPP. Brown’s A

Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, published in 1992, brought gender issues within the party under scrutiny and provided her insights into Newton’s behavior during the

Party’s final years.44 A year later David Hilliard published his account of Newton and the

Party, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the

Black Panther Party.45 These works helped lead scholars back to the Party.

One of the first works on the Black Panthers to reemerge in the 1990s quickly became one of the most controversial. In 1994, journalist Hugh Pearson published The

Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America.

Pearson’s stated aim in writing this book was to satiate his curiosity about black militants therein giving readers a picture of the Black Panther Party.46 He paints this picture by examining the party through the lens of Huey Newton, cofounder of the organization, and

42 Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 401. 43Ibid. 44 Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Anchor Books, 1994). 45 David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party (New York: Little Brown, 1993). 46 Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994), 341.

24 three “survivors” of the BPP.47 Ultimately, however, the story is less about the BPP and more about the failings of Newton. Pearson uses Newton to argue that the Black Panther

Party was an organization that was weakened by its internal divisions and more importantly, that African American militancy, particularly the reliance on violence, ruined the lives its adherents. In the tradition of earlier works on the subject, Pearson provides his take on what should have been done. He concludes that the non-violent militancy espoused by SNCC leaders such as Bob Moses was ultimately more beneficial to black activists. It was easier for this latter type of activist to integrate back into mainstream society once the era of militancy was over.

Pearson has been attacked by subsequent scholars who accuse him of reducing the

Black Panther Party to the person of Huey Newton who he then vilifies. Errol Henderson, author of “The Lumpenproletariat as Vanguard? The Black Panther Party, Social

Transformation and Pearson’s Analysis of Huey Newton” (1997) criticizes Pearson by asserting that one cannot reduce the Panthers to Huey Newton and similarly, one cannot reduce the Black Liberation Struggle to the BPP.48 Henderson represents an early link in a chain of scholars who would be driven by their discontent with Pearson’s thesis to write new studies of the Black Panthers which refute Pearson’s analysis and paint a more nuanced picture of the Party.

Ultimately, Henderson complicates Pearson’s argument, stating that the Panthers failed, but they failed, not on moral grounds, but on the grounds that all of their goals were not achieved. Moreover, that all goals were not achieved did not have to do with

47 Ibid., 343. 48 Errol A. Henderson, “The Lumpenproletariat as Vanguard?: The Black Panther Party, Social Transformation, and Pearson’s Analysis of Huey Newton,” Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 2 (Nov. 1997): 171-199, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2784850, 190-194.

25 personality flaws of the movement’s leaders. Rather, Henderson argues that the Black

Panther Party mistook a period of reform for a time when a revolution led by a multi- racial proletariat was possible. He maintained that, not only was time not ripe for revolution, but the multi-racial proletariat that the BPP looked to, to lead that revolution, never existed in the first place.49

In 1998 Charles E. Jones edited a collection of essays designed to “reconsider” the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party Reconsidered emerged as a response to the creation of number of radical groups claiming to be the inheritors of the Black

Panther Party’s mandate, as well as what Jones considered “the vilification of the BPP” by law enforcement officials, former white radicals, and black social critics.50 As such, the collected essays include reflections from former Panthers, studies of the BPP’s evolving political orientation, gender dynamics, the Party’s decline, and legacy. When the collection was published in 1998 it was the most complete study of the Party that existed.

As the 1990s ended, scholarship emerged which placed the Panthers in an international context. In 1999 Jennifer B. Smith published An International History of the

Black Panther Party. Smith’s work examines the Black Panther Party’s contacts and activities in Nova Scotia, Canada. She notes that by examining international perspectives of the BPP, one can cut through the extreme characterizations of the party prevalent in the United States. Smith further contends that these international connections were “a

49 Ibid., 195. 50 Charles Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998).

26 vital part of the Party’s national history.”51 Thus, for Smith, what is important about the

Panthers is not where they came from, but the people to whom they reached out and drew inspiration from.

In the last two decades historians have begun producing meaningful work on the

Panthers in greater quantities. In 2006 Curtis J. Austin, writing directly against Hugh

Pearson whose Shadow of the Panther Austin calls a “near scandalous critique of the party,” examined the role violence actually played for the Panthers.52 In Up Against the

Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party Austin concludes that, although, violence, internal, external, rhetorical, real, psychological, and physical, drove the Panthers’ decision making processes, their shifting ideology meant that the party’s commitment to violent revolution was relatively short lived.53 Curtis, significantly, argues that,

When using violence as a lens through which to see the flowering and withering

of the most popular and most effective of all the myriad Black Power

organizations, it becomes clear that it was not Panther violence but the violence of

the state that ultimately determined the tactics of the party in particular and of an

era of black protest in general.54

A year later Jane Rhodes examined the Black Panthers as a media phenomenon.

In Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon Rhodes flips the idea that the Black Panthers were made by the media by showing that there was a

51 Jennifer B. Smith, An International History of the Black Panther Party, Studies in African American History and Culture, ed., Graham Russell Hodges (New York: Garland Publishers, Inc., 1999), 10, 12. 52 Austin, Up Against the Wall, 398. 53 Ibid., xxi. 54 Ibid. xxi-xxii.

27 dynamic relationship between what the media presented and what the Panthers manipulated the media to present. Weighing in on the violence question she asserts that the image of the dangerous, armed African American was part of this dynamic creation process. For Rhodes the real impact of the Panthers was not their violence, but their community involvement and uplift.55

Donna Murch’s 2010 Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California challenges the conception of the Panthers and Black Power, more generally, as an entirely urban, northern, and violent phenomenon. She convincingly argues that this understanding of the radical activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s obscures the importance of migrants and their ideas to the black radicalism of California’s Bay area. Instead, Murch maintains that a core of the

Bay Area’s black power activists were born in Southern cities and then migrated with their families to California. These people came of age between Emmett Till’s 1955 lynching and Malcolm X’s assassination a decade later. “Their emerging political consciousness reflected both their collective experience as migrants and their age.”56

According to Murch, these young radicals’ activism incubated in California’s higher education system, and from this mixture the Black Panthers were born.57

In 2013 Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr. published Black Against Empire:

The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Bloom and Martin acknowledge the

55 Jane Rhodes, Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon (New York: The New Press, 2007), 307, 310. The first decade of the twenty-first century also saw numerous compilations of essays on the Panthers and other black militants. The most pertinent to the proposed dissertation is Judson L. Jeffries, ed., Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 56 Donna Jean Murch, Living For the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010),4-5. 57 Ibid.,7.

28 ideological drive that lies behind many accounts of the Panthers and attempt to move the discussion to a more objective scholarly plane. Their account does more than most to delve into the myriad of factors which contributed to the downfall of the Party, rather than focusing on a single cause. The authors do much to understand both the Panthers and the context in which they emerged, operated, and finally collapsed.58 In so doing they have created the most complete account of the Black Panthers and their world to date.

Taken together, the existing work on the Irish Republican Army and Black

Panther Party presents a rich portrait of two organizations engaged in evolving political projects. Scholars have drawn their studies away from the early polemics directed at the

IRA and BPP. Recent works present more nuanced accounts which examine important precursors to each group, acknowledge the societal conditions which led to their creation and drove their subsequent actions, and look to the legacies and changes created by the people involved. They are welcome contributions to historiographies long dominated by men and women who sought to legitimize or delegitimize these groups.

My study is novel in seeing the Panthers and Irish Republican Army as being engaged in the processes of creating moral polities. Generally, since the late 1990s works on the Black Panther Party acknowledge Panthers’ work creating programs for social uplift. Donna Murch goes as far as to suggest, “after 1968 the BPP revitalized its membership through setting up alternatives to state services.” [emphasis added]59

Typically, however, these works focus on the stated political ideologies of the Black

Panthers, that is, the Party’s early nationalism and later commitments various strains of

58 Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013). 59 Murch, Living For the City, 10.

29 socialism and communism. Published studies of the Irish Republican Army typically ignore the IRA’s role within their communities, altogether. As in their studies of the BPP, historians have concentrated on the IRA’s politics, often describing an evolution from crude nationalism to an embrace of socialism in the latter half of the 1970s.

While it is important to understand the political evolution of the BPP and IRA, this study finds what each group actually achieved as they argued for nationalist and socialist goals to be of equal import. Neither succeeded in their nationalist or socialist goals during the period under consideration. They did not completely reshape or overthrow the governments they opposed, nor did they foment the nationalization of industry or create other large-scale leftist change. The Black Panther Party ceased to exist before these goals could be met. The IRA, too, decommissioned, putting the political party, Sinn Fein, in the drivers’ seat of the road to a united Ireland. Crucially, however, while the men and women of the BPP and IRA argued for political change, they created socio-political change within their own communities. Their adherence to ideologies which gave primary importance to the people of their communities, coupled with their division from the State, allowed the Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army to create moral polities, at least for brief periods. Using the moral polity as the lens through which we understand these men and women allows us to explain the social relationships sought by the BPP and IRA as well as the political and economic relationships represented in their adherence to nationalism and then socialism.

This study also fits within an emerging vein of historiography of the carceral state. With regard to the United States, scholars have begun to examine how imprisonment has been used against social movements and the intersections of race,

30 class, and gender, with the prisons and justice system of the country. In Northern Ireland, too, there is a considerable literature on criminology, but my project is concerned with a specific subset of political actors who do not always fit neatly into studies of prison policy. Their experiences within the prison system are often chronicled outside the literature on criminology, in the broader works on the Northern Irish conflict or the IRA, and it will be these works discussed below. Both the US and Northern Irish literature builds on the accounts of current and former prisoners who draw on many of the themes that concern scholars.

One such account is Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 Soul On Ice, a compilation of essays written while Cleaver was in prison. Unsurprisingly, Cleaver’s attitude toward prisons, and their staffs was unfavorable, but he did introduce a theme that recurs throughout militant’s writing on their own prison experience—that of the prison as university. In

“On Becoming” written from Folsom Prison on June 25, 1965, Cleaver wrote, “I was concentrating my reading in the field of economics. . . .In economics, because everyone seemed to find it necessary to attack and condemn Karl Marx in their writings, I sought out his books, and although he kept me with a headache, I took him for my authority. . . .

It was like taking medicine for me to find that, indeed, American capitalism deserved all the hatred and contempt that I felt for it in my heart.”60 For Cleaver, prison provided the time to read radical literature that informed his struggle from that point forward. Prison became both, the vehicle for punishing his behavior and for educating him to radical thought. He had not had such access to education before his time in prison. This is a

60 Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 3rd ed. (New York: Delta, 1999), 30-31.

31 theme that is echoed in many accounts of political imprisonment on both sides of the

Atlantic.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of

Colorblindness is a seminal study in this emerging field of study. As her title suggests

Alexander argues that American racism has led to a criminal justice system which functions as a modern day Jim Crow system, that is, a system of social control and violence. Just as the violence and social control of slavery morphed into the Jim Crow system, so too did Americans transfer the essence of Jim Crow into mass incarceration.

This was done, Alexander argues, via the war on drugs.61 Through The New Jim Crow

Alexander racializes the US prison system, ably demonstrating the ways in which the US carceral state criminalizes and targets black Americans at a much more aggressive rate than it does white Americans.

Alexander is emblematic of scholars in this area who are also activists for change.

Another such scholar is Dan Berger, author of Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (2015). Berger and Alexander agree that the disproportionate number of blacks in America’s jails is no aberration. It is, instead, the system working as it was designed to work. Berger brings to the fore the fact that the US prison system was deployed to undercut black liberation activists. Nevertheless, moving through the civil rights and black power movements Berger argues that prisons are “central to America’s racial landscape” and that activists turned prisons into sites of “community and commitment” where they transformed the taboo of incarceration into a resource.62 My

61 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York; London: The New Press, 2010). 62 Dan Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, Justice Power and Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 12.

32 study will, similarly, demonstrate that at key moments, the IRA and BPP extended their struggles into the prisons, using penal institutions to open new fronts of battle. Both

Berger and Alexander use their works to suggest ways in which the modern US prison system might be opposed. As Berger states, “Contemporary opponents of the carceral state might take three major and interrelated actions from black prison organizing in the civil rights era: to care, to chronicle, and to coalesce.”63

In the last decade scholars have used studies of prisons and prisoners to complicate older historical narratives. Elizabeth Hinton’s “‘A War Within our Own

Boundaries:’ Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and the Rise of the Carceral State,” for example, points to an earlier push for more forceful policing of urban areas from liberals before Richard Nixon became president, in response to Northern civil rights agitation.64

She expands upon this argument in From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The

Making of Mass Incarceration in America (2016) where she argues that Johnson’s call for a war on crime alongside his war on poverty had roots in racist assumptions about urban strife. Following the 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act, funds directed at stopping crime drew social service providers towards working with various branches of the justice system, including police and prisons.65 Hinton’s work, read with that of Julilly

Kohler-Hausmann’s “Guns and Butter: The Welfare State, the Carceral State, and the

Politics of Exclusion in the Postwar United States,” demonstrates that the welfare state, including the War on Poverty and the rise of the carceral state are inexorably connected.

63 Ibid., 276. 64 Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and Heather Ann Thompson, “Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State,” The Journal of American History 102, no. 1 (Summer 2015): 22. 65 Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Historians have also begun to examine the disproportionate effect the US prison system has on African American women. In 2015, the Journal of African American

History published a special issue on “Gendering the Carceral State.” The collected essays challenge long held prejudices about black female criminality while examining ways in which African American women’s circumstances influenced their actions, creating the

“lived consequences of oppression.”66 The issue also called for more research to be done into black women’s interactions with US penal institutions during the great depression, after World War II, and during the eras of civil rights and black power.67 In this respect historians of the US carceral state have moved beyond historians of the prison system in

Northern Ireland, who have done very little work regarding imprisoned women and the situations from which they come.68

Finally, the work of Heather Ann Thompson has given historians new insight into pivotal events in the history of prison activism. Her 2016 Blood in the Water: The Attica

Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy is notable for Thompson’s work with hitherto unseen including sealed grand jury transcripts, files from criminal trials related to the

Attica rebellion, as well as documents from the investigation into Attica and minutes from the Governor’s secret meetings.69 Here, we see the carceral state and all its might being deployed against activism from members of working class communities imprisoned in Attica, and their support networks outside. Thompson’s work points to the fact that

66 Kali N. Gross and Cheryl D. Hicks, “Gendering the Carceral State: African American Women, History, and the Criminal Justice System,” The Journal of African American History 100, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 360. 67 Ibid., 362. 68 Nell McCafferty’s The Armagh Women remains the largest study of imprisoned women that was not written by a former prisoner, to date. See Nell McCafferty, The Armagh Women (Dublin: Co-op Books, 1981). 69 Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (New York: Pantheon, 2016); “Blood in the Water,” http://www.atticabook.com/.

34 although scholars have done considerable work in recent years, much archival material exists to be explored that can enrich and enlarge our knowledge of prisons and prison protest in the United States.

Where work on US prisons is becoming much more expansive, touching on the intersections of race, gender, and class on imprisonment, the literature on Northern Irish prisons remains narrower in its focus. An abundance of the work on prisons in Northern

Ireland focuses on the Maze/Long Kesh prison and the republican campaign against criminalization after 1976. This began with the work of journalists such as Tim Pat

Coogan, whose On the Blanket: The Inside Story if the IRA Prisoners’ “Dirty” Protest appeared in 1980. Coogan’s work is highly critical of the British government and the people behind what he refers to as “the H Block issue.” In the preface to the first edition of the book Coogan noted,

Solving the H Block issue would not itself solve the Northern agony. . . .But it

would remove one poisonous barb from the bleeding body politic of Northern

Ireland . . . an absolutely insuperable obstacle to peace in this island, which had to

be removed before the ever-growing tendency towards the destabilization of our

entire society presented by the troubles in Northern Ireland could be halted and

cured. This book is intended to show how and why this should have happened.70

Thus, for Coogan, the prison issue was not only one of British mistreatment of Irish prisoners, but an issue of national consequence. Solving the prison issue, according to

Coogan, was one step toward stabilizing Northern Ireland.

70 Tim Pat Coogan, On the Blanket: The Inside Story of the IRA Prisoners’ “Dirty” Protest, 3rd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 12.

The Guardian’s David Beresford, published the first comprehensive account of the 1981 hunger strike, an event which became seminal to the understanding of Northern prisons. He was posted to Northern Ireland in 1978 and, therefore, covered the height of republicans’ prison protest, meeting with Bobby Sands before the hunger striker’s death in 1981.71 Beresford went on to publish Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Hunger

Strike (1987) based on his own reporting and unprecedented access to the communications which prisoners and outside republican leadership sent to one another during the fast. His source base creates an intensely personal account of the hunger strike, one that is, therefore, sympathetic to the plight of the prisoners. He shows their working class roots, their concern for one another, and their firm convictions that the British state was wrong to try to criminalize them.

By contrast, Padraig O’Malley’s Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (1990) is far less sympathetic, arguing that the hunger strikers were inescapably beholden to a republican ethos of sacrifice and death, reified through republican mythology which made them incapable of acting independently or on their own behalf.72 O’Malley’s work is quintessentially revisionist in its unambiguous stance against the republican ideology he blames for the hunger strikers’ deaths.

Beresford, Clarke, and O’Malley’s works represent the beginning of a plethora of monographs written about one or more aspects of the hunger strike of 1981. Scholars have examined the 1981 hunger strike in its entirety and concentrated on individual

71 Michael Holman and Peter Preston, “David Beresford Obituary,” The Guardian, April 27, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/27/david-beresford-obituary. 72 Padraig O’Malley, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strike and the Politics of Despair, reprint edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).

36 strikers and their families.73 Liam Clarke’s 1987 Broadening the Battlefield: H-Blocks and the Rise of Sinn Fein looked at the political dimension to the emergent studies of this event.74 Barry Flynn’s Pawns in the Game (2011) examined the 1981 hunger strike and compared it to other major hunger strikes in Ireland in the 20th century, and new archival releases have allowed Thomas Hennessey to examine Britain’s role in the strikes in

Hunger Strike: Margaret Thatcher’s Battle with the IRA, 1980-1981 (2014).75 In total, this work has deepened our knowledge of the situation in 1981, but at the same time it has advanced a narrative which attributes very little importance to the blanket and dirty protests, which preceded republicans’ 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes. My study will argue that the blanket and dirty protests have a greater importance than these previous works typically ascribed to them.

By the 1990s, two decades of protracted prison struggle by republican prisoners had passed, and the Troubles, themselves, looked like they were coming to a close following the IRA cease-fire in 1994 and the Good Friday Accords in 1998. This meant that scholars working in the late 1990s and early 2000s, began to draw the prisons into their larger narratives of Irish nationalism, republicans, and the conflict, assessing the broader historical significance of the volatile years of the 1970s and 1980s within

Northern prisons.

73Tom Collins, The Irish Hunger Strike (Dublin and Belfast: White Island Book Company, 1986); John Feehan, Bobby Sands and the Tragedy of Northern Ireland (New York: Permanent Press, 1987); Aidan Hegarty, Kevin Lynch and the Irish Hunger Strike (Belfast: Camlane Press, 2006); Seamus Metress, The Hunger Strike and the Final Struggle (Dublin: Connolly Books, 1983); Denis O’Hearn, Nothing But An Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited A Generation (New York: Nation Books, 2006). 74 Liam Clarke, Broadening the Battlefield: The H-Blocks and the Rise of Sinn Fein (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987). 75Barry Flynn, Pawns in the Game: Irish Hunger Strikes, 1912-1981 (Cork: The Collins Press, 2011); Thomas Hennessey, Hunger Strike: Margaret Thatcher’s Battle with the IRA, 1980-1981 (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2014).

Begoña Aretxaga’s Shattering Silence and Richard English’s Armed Struggle exemplify this trend. Although her study covers the larger nationalist community,

Aretxaga spends some time examining republican women in prison. The dirty protest in

Armagh jail was of especial interest to her. Aretxaga notes that

The Armagh protest . . . originated a set of meanings that challenged well-rooted

gender models in the nationalist culture and sparked a movement of personal and

social transformation . . . . For the women prisoners themselves, the menstrual

blood provided the matter for reflecting on gender identity as nationalists, and as

working-class women.76

Thus, Aretxaga saw the prison as a gendered space—a space where gender was literally displayed on the walls. Aretxaga’s work is emblematic of the work that has been done on women prisoners. It focuses almost exclusively on their dirty protest within Armagh Jail.

In Armed Struggle English spends a considerable amount of time on the protests in the

Maze prison from 1976 to 1981.77 He argues that these protests had their biggest impact in terms of popular opinion. The hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981, especially galvanized popular support around the strikers (leading to parliamentary election victories for two participants in the 1981 strike) and increased nationalist feeling outside of its traditional republican base.78 It is through works like these that one gets the clearest picture of the world around the prisons, that is, the working class communities from which prisoners came.

76Aretxaga, Shattering Silence, 136. 77 This includes the Blanket protest, dirty protest, and 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes. 78 English, Armed Struggle, 199, 201, 204.

The most thorough examination of paramilitaries’ prison experiences, written near the turn of the 21st century, is Kieran McEvoy’s Paramilitary Imprisonment in

Northern Ireland: Resistance, Management, and Release (2001). It is one of only a handful of works which examines loyalists within the prison system. McEvoy structures his book, first, around types of prisoner resistance, and then around styles of prison management from the 1960s to the 1990s. Despite an organization that might appear to foreground republican prisoners (because of their more visible protests), McEvoy makes sure to include a section on loyalists in every chapter, even if only to say that loyalists did not engage in a specific type of protest.79 In this manner, McEvoy gets closer to a total overview of the prison system than any previous work on the subject. Here we see dissent as it operated within the prisons and the ways in which the carceral system was used to put a stop to such resistance.

In the last decade scholars have begun to expand their study of Irish republican prisoners. Ruán O’Donnell’s Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons is an exhaustive two volume (2012 and 2015) exploration of republican prisoners who took the armed struggle to England and spent time in English penal institutions after arrest.80 To this point these prisoners have been largely overlooked by historians despite the fact that, as O’Donnell demonstrates, they were the subject of widespread concern and agitation between 1968 and 1985. O’Donnell’s work brings the issue of Irish prisoners in English

79 Kieran McEvoy, Paramilitary Imprisonment in Northern Ireland: Resistance, Management, and Release, Clarendon Studies in Criminology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). For example, the section on “Loyalist Prisoners’ Attitude Towards Escape” begins, “Loyalist prisoners, have, by and large, not engaged in escapes or escape attempts with anything like the same commitment or regularity as their Republican counterparts.” See McEvoy, Paramilitary Imprisonment, 64. 80 Ruán O’Donnell, Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 1: 1968-1978 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012); Ruán O’Donnell, Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 2: 1978-1985 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2015).

39 jails back to light. Through his work, the reader comes to understand that Irish republicans connected with working class communities and political radicals outside

Ireland as well as within it.

Just as it took time for the story of IRA volunteers imprisoned in England to come to light, so too have scholars largely ignored the subject of internment without trial by the

Northern Irish government. To date, the study of internment relies on works such as The

Guineapigs by John McGuffin. McGuffin was an “ex-detainee” writing to shed light on an unexplored, and covered up aspect of the prison system 81 As McGuffin relates, “The purpose of [his] book . . . deals with the treatment meted out to fourteen Irishmen by the

British ‘security forces’ in the period from August to October 1971.”82 During this time, the British security forces allegedly used the fourteen people they picked up (randomly, from the Catholic community, according to the author) to test sensory deprivation techniques.83 It was not until 2015, that Martin J. McCleery, published the first full length study of internment by an academic, with Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath: A New

History of the use of Internment without Trial in Northern Ireland 1971-1975. In it he makes the important claim that the PIRA did not mount significant operations across all of Northern Ireland until after the introduction of internment in 1971.84

Finally, Republican paramilitaries have, since the start of the Troubles, been concerned with telling their own story through the written word, adding rich oral histories

81 John McGuffin, The Guineapigs (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd.,1974). See information about the author on the back cover. 82 Ibid, 9. 83 Ibid. 84 McCleery, Operation Demetrius and its Aftermath, 3.

40 to the historical record.85 Believing that the mainstream media, and the British press in particular, were hostile towards their message, republicans worked tirelessly to write and publish their own accounts of events throughout the conflict. The most rigorously researched of these is Laurence McKeown’s Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners in

Long Kesh 1972-2000, the published version of McKeown’s PhD thesis in sociology from Queen’s University Belfast.86 McKeown was also involved in the creation of Nor

Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle 1976-1981 (1994) a compilation of republican interviews from the height of the prison conflict.87 These were amassed while

McKeown and fellow editors Brian Campbell and Felim O’Hagan were still imprisoned in the H-Blocks, making it both a product of and a reflection on the prison experience of

Irish republicans.

Ultimately, most scholars who have written about republican paramilitaries in

Northern Ireland see the prison experience as a small part of a larger experience, while the writings of republican ex-paramilitaries, themselves, tend to give prison a more central place in the narrative. Unlike the literature on prisons in the United States, historians have done little work on the effect of imprisonment on Northern Irish communities. Whereas US literature on the subject of prisons has done much to take into account the “collateral consequences” of the carceral state, scholars of the Northern Irish

85 See Bobby Sands’ Writings From Prison (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998). This includes Sands’ One Day in My Life, Skylark Sing your Lonely Song, and hunger strike diary. See also Richard O’Rawe’s Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike (2005) and Brian Campbell, Laurence McKeown, Felim O’Hagan ed., Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H Block Struggle, 1976-1981 (1994) All are examples of later works written or compiled by republican paramilitaries. The numerous publications of Gerry Adams also fit into this vein. See especially, Gerry Adams, Cage Eleven (Kerry, Ireland: Brandon, 2002). This work was first published in 1990. 86 Laurence McKeown, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners in Long Kesh, 1972-2000 (Belfast: Beyond The Pale Publications LTD, 2001). 87 Brian Campbell, Laurence McKeown, Felim O’Hagan eds., Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle, 1976-1981, 25th Anniversary ed. (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 2006).

41 situation have not done the same, owing, probably, to Northern Ireland’s much smaller prison population.88 There is room too, for more work on women’s experiences in prison and internment.

The existing scholarship illuminates the ways in which the governments of the

United States, Northern Ireland, and after the implementation of direct rule, Britain, responded to the threats they saw in the Black Panther Party and the Irish Republican

Army. The writings on the American case, in particular, make a strong case for the argument that prisons have historically been deployed to oppress social dissent. Even in the case of the IRA, where violent offenses were more overt, evidence is appearing to suggest that the prisons were not simply deployed to stop the violence, but to silence political views. Understanding that the Panthers and IRA volunteers conceived of the socio-political system quite differently than the governments they opposed allows us to better understand their reactions to their respective carceral states. As we will see, perceived violations of the moral polities of the BPP and the IRA lay at the heart of much of the resistance to the prisons and their conditions. The moral polity is also helpful in explaining how each group garnered support for prisoners and their larger goals.

This dissertation is also unique in its comparative focus. Almost no literature compares the Black Panther Party and the Irish Republican Army. Brian Dooley’s Black and Green: The Fight For Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America comes the closest to this comparison.89 Dooley’s 1998 work examines the connections between the civil rights movement in the United States and that of Northern Ireland, proving that

88 Hernandez, Muhammad, and Thompson, “Introduction: Constructing the Carceral State,” 19. 89 Brian Dooley, Black and Green: The Fight For Civil Rights in Northern Ireland and Black America (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1998).

Northern Irish civil rights activists not only drew inspiration from US civil rights campaigners but initiated contact between themselves and the Black Panther Party. Most accounts of the Northern Irish civil rights movement make mention of Irish civil rights activists’ assertions that they were greatly influenced by American civil rights campaigners who they saw on television or read about in the newspaper earlier in the decade.90 I have chosen to look at the experiences of the Black Panther Party and the Irish

Republican Army, in part, to extend this comparison.

A Note on Terminology:

This study, though dealing with events that are behind us now by thirty to fifty years, can still evoke strong feelings in many communities across the globe. As such, the language used to tell these stories remains controversial. I have made choices, in the following pages, which reflect these linguistic controversies and will explain my choices here.

The first, and perhaps, most controversial of my choices is my use of “political prisoner” to describe incarcerated members of the IRA and BPP. The men and women who populate the pages of this narrative have been called many things: freedom fighters, soldiers, criminals, dissidents, thugs—the list could go on—and heinous acts of violence were committed in the name of each group. I do not intend to dismiss the sufferings of the victims of violence, but few of the terms mentioned above have the analytical value of “political prisoner.” Freedom fighters are characterized as single minded in the pursuit of their goals and their motivations are therefore not as important as their actions. If

90 See, for example Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets: the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1990) or Niall O Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

“freedom” is the goal and it will benefit some populace, does a freedom fighter’s motive matter? By couching the actor in these terms, we have already insisted that we agree with their cause. Similarly, the defining quality of a criminal is that he has committed a crime.

The action supplants the motive in terms of importance to our understanding.

In this work, however, I am more concerned with the motivations that lead to the action for which a member of the IRA or BPP received a prison sentence as it is those motivations which underscored conflict within the prison systems under scrutiny. These motivations and even the actions they engendered were political. In this contention I rely on Charles Tilly’s work on collective violence. Tilly has long argued for a more political view of collective violence and notes, “When governments are involved, collective violence becomes a special case of contentious politics.” Concerning collective violence he, further, maintains, “It counts as contentious because participants are making claims that affect each other’s interests. It counts as politics because relations of participants to governments are always at stake.”91 In terms of both the Panthers and the IRA, the relationship between a government and its use of force, and the legitimacy of that use of force, was the contention which resulted in the prison struggles described in this study.

Moreover, these men and women were imprisoned because of their actions during political conflicts. At stake in both the United States and Northern Ireland was the shaping of the political order.

This study will, similarly, avoid calling these prisoners “terrorists” because that term is notoriously slippery. Peter Shirlow and Kieran McEvoy, in their exploration of the role of former prisoners in conflict transformation eschew the term. They note that

91 Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence, 10, 26.

44 the concept of “terrorism” lacks “conceptual precision.”92 Additionally, this is a term always applied against an opposing force. Although they certainly committed acts that caused terror, the IRA does not conceive of themselves as “terrorists.” To simply label any paramilitary in this study as such automatically puts one on the side of the labeler, in this case the Northern Irish/British and US governments and prison regimes. Because the actions of the governments and prison regimes are as much a part of the story as are the actions of the prisoners, it is important to refrain from solely using the language of one side.

Moreover, the term “terrorist” often carries a certain hysteria with it. Consider the 1964 Chicago Tribune article which described “Another Subway Terrorist” and then went on to relate the story of how 25 year old Henry Brown, “a Negro . . . ran thru [sic] the train pushing men and women and clapping his hands in passengers’ faces.”93

Clapping hands in people’s faces might have startled subway passengers or even made them fearful of Brown’s motives, but calling Henry Brown a “terrorist” stretches that definition to its absolute limit. Historical inquiry demands a less hyperbolic analysis of the subject. Refraining from using the term “terrorist” is not to condone overtly violent actions, it simply allows the author to use other more precise terms to describe the subjects of this study.

In the case of the Irish Republican Army and its history, many names remain controversial. First, I will often refer to “Northern Ireland” as opposed to the republican- preferred “the six counties.” This linguistic choice is intended to reflect the might of the

92 Peter Shirlow and Kieran McEvoy, Beyond the Wire: Former Prisoners and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 23. 93 Chicago Tribune Press Service, “King Asks for and Gets his 14th Arrest,” Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1964, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1964/06/12/page/5/article/king-asks-for-and-gets-his-14th-arrest.

45 enemy that the IRA fought, that is a centralized government convinced of its own legitimacy rather than six loose counties. My use of the term is not intended as a judgement on the historical validity of the state. For the sake of variety I will sometimes refer simply to “the North” just as I will refer to both black Americans and African

Americans throughout the course of the study. When I have occasion to discuss the city of Londonderry/Derry I will use “Derry” because the republicans who populate this work saw it in such terms, and adding the “London” to the name adds little analytical value. It will be clear that there was a British presence there as the chapters unfold without the longer name.

This Study:

This dissertation is based on original research into the Black Panther Party and

Irish Republican Army and their experiences with imprisonment. To complete this study

I examined government files, participant accounts, and in the case of the Irish Republican

Army, I conducted six interviews with former prisoners which now inform this study.

These interviews were granted by West Belfast ex-prisoner groups Tar Anall and Coiste na n-Iarchimí. My questions focused not only on the interviewee’s time in prison but on their knowledge of the Black Panther Party and political imprisonment in the United

States.

Proceeding from these sources the following chapters will trace the IRA and BPP as they attempted to build moral polities and were met with imprisonment. Each chapter will be introduced by short vignettes from the lives of IRA volunteer Joe Doherty and

Panther Safiya Bukhari whose stories provide a personal view of the events of the years under consideration. The first chapter will examine the genesis of the moral polities of

46 the Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army. It will demonstrate that when these two groups began to build alternate socio-political structures the Northern Irish and US governments stood poised to undermine these efforts, having gained experience doing so during the earlier civil rights agitation in each country.

In the second chapter I will demonstrate the reactions of the Northern Irish and

US governments to the attempted moral polity building of the IRA and BPP. The chapter will show that the IRA’s moral polity was in its infancy, but the Black Panthers were able to create a strong moral polity before both governments turned to imprisonment in an attempt to undermine the threats posed by the Irish Republican Army and Black Panther

Party between 1969 and 1971.

Chapter 3 details the beginning of a sharp divergence in the fortunes of the Black

Panther Party and IRA. Between 1971 and 1973 both groups felt their moral polities to be under threat, but the IRA was able to protest their way to a stronger moral polity in the prisons of Northern Ireland while the Panthers experienced division and an erosion of their moral polity at the hands of the FBI, and made decisions which ensured that they would not be able to heal the divisions in the organizations.

The fourth chapter will show that the having achieved a moral polity within the prisons of Northern Ireland, IRA prisoners protested whenever they felt that polity was under threat. Conversely, the BPP entered a period of decline in which rank and file members continued to struggle for tenets of their moral polity while Party leadership began to turn toward establishment politics.

Finally, in chapter five I will demonstrate that from within the prisons of Northern

Ireland the IRA was able to overcome the destruction of their moral polity, and after five

47 years of sustained protest recreate the most meaningful parts of it. This chapter will also show the reader the tension between rank and file Panthers in prisons across the country who still looked to the Party to uphold the moral polity while Huey Newton became increasingly erratic, and violated the Panthers’ moral polity with his behavior, finally leaving those prisoners alone when the Party collapsed in 1982.

Taken together these chapters reveal a story in which two populations, Irish republicans and black Americans began in similar situations, adopted similar strategies to deal with their alienation from the established socio-political order, but met with conflicting fates from that point onward. It is a story of how established governments use prisons to quell dissent and how marginalized groups fight that incarceration. It is an account of the ways in structures which are designed to silence can paradoxically create louder voices of dissent while internal organizational strife can stifle those same voices.

Chapter 1

“We Hadn’t a Policeman to Protect Us:” Building a Moral Polity and Encountering the Prison System, 1966-1969

Joe Doherty was born in Belfast in 1955 to a Catholic family who lived in the New

Lodge Road area in the Northern part of the city. He was only 13 when the first civil rights marches took place in the North, and, therefore, too young to really participate, but he would later recall having heard Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a Dream

Speech” as a child.1 He could also remember a time when communities were not as segregated as they would become. In fact, he credited unionist neighbors for saving his family from being burnt out of their home as the violence began in 1969. Unfortunately, as the conflict ignited across the North, the Doherty family would not remain protected from the abuses of the day. When Joe was 15 the British Army raided his house, pushing his mother down the stairs as they called her an “Irish bitch,” threatening her and her daughters.2 The incident occurred as relations between the British Army and Catholic communities across the North grew ever more inimical, and caused Mrs. Doherty’s young son to wonder, “Now why are they doing this?”3

Safiya Bukhari was born in the Bronx in 1950 as Bernice Jones. She had nine siblings, and her family was devoutly Christian and middle-class.4 She remembered her mother, who she credited as one of the strongest influences of her childhood, telling the

1 Joe Doherty, Interview with the Author, November 2011. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Laura Whitehorn, “Introduction,” in Safiya Bukhari, The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind, ed. Laura Whitehorn (New York: The Feminist Press, 2010), xxiii.

49 children “to hold our heads up and be proud because we were just as good or better than anyone else, and to stand up and fight for what we believe to be right.”5 Bukhari and her siblings were also raised to believe that education was the path to the American dream.

With the goal of becoming a doctor, she enrolled in New York City Community College, and in her second year she pledged their only integrated sorority, Eta Alpha Mu.6 She later reflected, “it was here that the rose-colored glasses were cracked and rays of reality were allowed to filter in.”7 When her sorority sisters decided to help disadvantaged children as one of their projects for the year, she went to Harlem, where, they talked to people on the street, and she discovered “a story of humiliation, degradation, deprivation, and waste that started in infancy and lasted until death—in too many cases, at an early age.”8

Doherty and Bukhari were each members of minority communities viewed as second class citizens by the majority population and government of Northern Ireland and the

United States, respectively. Each grew up in an era when members of their communities pushed back against the status quo, demanding equal rights, and a larger place in society.

Each would watch that movement for equal rights evolve into something that frightened that majority population and government of their home countries, and each would wind up being viewed by the State as one of the people most dangerous members of society based on their membership in, and activities with, the Irish Republican Army and the

Black Panther Party. Compared to many of their countrymen and women they were

5 Safiya Bukhari, “Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary,” in Bukhari, The War Before, 1-2. 6 Ibid, 2; Whitehorn in Bukhari, The War Before, xxiii. 7 Bukhari, “Coming of Age,” 2. 8 Ibid.

50 politically radical and more willing to take extreme measures to reshape society in a way that would better benefit their people.

When the Black Panther Party emerged in 1966, and when the IRA split into provisional and official factions in 1969, their members already held strong beliefs about the government’s responsibilities to its citizens, the role the government and security forces were actually playing in people’s lives, and the ways in which strong communal organizing could alleviate some of the problems caused by the government’s discriminatory stance. The BPP and IRA would subsequently reflect these ideas. This chapter will argue that between 1966 and 1969, Doherty, Bukhari, and their comrades in the Irish Republican Army and Black Panther Party are best understood as being engaged in the creation of a moral polity, but they were attempting that creation at a time when the governments of Northern Ireland and the United States stood ready to use their prison systems to undermine that effort.

I. The Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army: Two Moral Polities

Origins of the Black Panther Party’s Moral Polity

The moral polity sought by the Black Panther Party emerged, in part, as a reaction to perceived failures of the previous decade of civil rights agitation to create meaningful change on the ground, particularly in the urban North. The years from the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 saw sweeping changes in America’s social structure and are generally commemorated in American collective memory as the triumph of non-violent agitation, but within the civil rights movement, there existed proponents of armed self-defense. These men and women were skeptical of an entirely non-violent approach to change and did not necessarily see

51 integration as their primary goal. It is amongst these men and women, whose ideologies greatly influenced the BPP, that the seeds of the Panthers’ moral polity were planted.

Throughout the civil rights era, nonviolence was only one of a number of strategies employed to advance the cause of black liberation, and the idea of armed self- defense held widespread popularity. This was especially true in areas of the South beset by Klan violence. One such area was Monroe, North Carolina, home of Robert Williams.

Williams was president of the local NAACP, and as early as 1957 he encouraged his neighbors to arm themselves and organized units to patrol the neighborhood. In 1959, following the acquittal of two white men who assaulted a black woman Williams publically declared that blacks should meet “violence with violence” and “lynching with lynching,” statements which got him suspended from his position as NAACP chapter president.9 Nevertheless, his was the position of many blacks who did not believe that the non-violent civil rights movement could ultimately achieve everything they hoped for or protect them from racist vigilantes in their own backyards. His views were close enough to those later expressed by the Black Panthers that Newsweek magazine called him “‘the ideological leader of the Black Panther Party.’”10

Williams also pointed his supporters toward the idea of a moral polity. His arguments about armed self-defense stemmed from a breakdown of trust between black populations and local authorities. Police could not be trusted to protect black communities, nor could the justice system be trusted to bring justice to the victims of

9 Daniel Zwerdling, “Return From Exile: Robert Williams, Vanguard of the Black Revolution is Back from Red China,” April 12, 1970, The Michigan Daily, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=cQ1KAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iB4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=2993,4297136&d q=robert+williams+monroe&hl=en. 10 Ibid.

52 white supremacist violence. The solution, which Williams advocated, was armed neighborhood patrols, that is, the establishment of neighborhood protection which did not require the help of the local, state, or national government which had proven themselves untrustworthy and not committed to protecting the human dignity of the members of black communities. According to Williams’ ideology, faced with a government that shirked its responsibilities toward black citizens, those same citizens should take over the role of protector eschewed by that government.

Williams achieved nationwide notoriety for an event in the summer of 1961 which caused him to flee the country but also pointed to the way in which black citizens of Monroe, North Carolina operated without the protection of local government and law enforcement. In August, Monroe’s white mayor, Fred Wilson, reported to Attorney

General, Robert Kennedy, that “Carpet Baggers” and Freedom Riders had invaded the city from the North and asked his office to investigate. On August 27 a picket ended in violence when a police officer was shot attempting to “disarm” a black protester who then turned and shot him. When a number of protesters were subsequently arrested,

Williams allegedly took a white couple hostage telling the police that they would not be let go until the arrested protesters were released.11 In this telling of events, Williams engaged in extralegal activities in order to combat local authorities using prisons to subvert black civil rights activists.

Unsurprisingly, Williams recalled things happening differently. He emphasized that the protest focused on a number of Monroe’s ills, among them discriminatory

11 “47 Seized as Violence Marks Picketing in North Carolina: Policeman Shot; Couple Held Hostage; Bullets Fly at Integration Leader’s Home,” The Toledo Blade, August 28, 1961, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=JqBOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FQEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5389,3332816&d q=robert+williams+monroe&hl=en.

53 welfare practices and separate and unequal recreational facilities. In other words, the government of Monroe was failing in its reciprocal responsibilities to its black citizens.

On the day in question, the civil rights campaigners met approximately 1,000 counter protesters who became violent. According to Williams, “Black people were digging in

(their neighborhoods) and passing out arms, because the country was bringing in

Minutemen, Klansmen, and rightwingers [sic] from all over the state. They had amassed thousands in the town, and they were going to come shooting in.”12 In this tense environment, a white couple drove through a black neighborhood in Monroe and was approached by what Williams described as “a mob of angry blacks.” They took the couple to Williams, a leader in the black community, who assured the couple that they could leave safely in return for their agreement not to come back. Here, community members looked to Williams to solve a problem which they could not bring to the established government of Monroe. In the end, Williams was charged with kidnapping the white couple, and fearing he would not be given a fair trial, he fled the US rather than face charges, living first in Cuba, then in China before returning to the US at the end of the decade.13

In Williams’ account the seeds of a moral polity are visible. Not only was the power structure of Monroe discriminatory toward its African American residents, they were so inimical to the advancement of blacks that they imported violent groups to intimidate the protesters. This was a major violation of their responsibilities to their citizens. Blacks in Monroe, therefore, felt compelled to make up for the lack of services from the government. In this case, they armed themselves because they were certain

12 Zwerdling, “Return from Exile,” The Michigan Daily, April 12, 1970. 13 Ibid.

54 counter protesters “were going to come shooting in,” and the local authorities would do nothing to protect the civil rights demonstrators. Williams acknowledged that blacks in the area were angry, but they were not the aggressors. Rather, having been denied the full protections of the law, black citizens of Monroe looked for, and found, ways to compensate for the services and rights that the local government did not provide. This dearth and compensation lies at the heart of any moral polity.

Williams and the citizens of Monroe were, certainly, not alone in their exclusion from the protections of the established political and legal structures of their city, and the

Panthers would draw on many of Williams’ fellow believers to create their moral polity.

The most well-known proponent of armed self-defense, and chief inspiration to the founders of the Black Panther Party was Malcolm X. Malcolm burst into the consciousness of white America in 1959 via the documentary The Hate that Hate

Produced, produced by journalists Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax. The program postulated that the hate that had always been directed at blacks in the United States had produced, among adherents to groups such as the Nation of Islam (NOI), a sort of reverse racism and hatred of white America.14 To drive home their point, Wallace and Lomax presented what Malcolm later referred to as “a kaleidoscope of ‘shocker’ images.”15

These showed Malcolm and other members of the Nation of Islam decrying the abuse of

“white devils” and suggesting that white America was guilty of unnecessary violence toward blacks. For late 1950s white audiences the portrayal was scandalous. “As the producers intended, I think people sat just about limp when the program went off,”

14 Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax, The Hate that Hate Produced, uploaded December 23, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71ZjYzBJG8o. 15 Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965), 238.

Malcolm recalled in his autobiography.16 In his estimation, Wallace and Lomax were attempting to frighten their audiences with their portrayal of the NOI. The Panthers, however, saw much to admire in the teachings of the NOI’s most famous minister.

Moreover, Malcolm X’s attitude toward violence was more complex than the documentary suggested, changing over time, but at all times, within his ideology were further seeds for the Panther’s moral polity. Born in Omaha, Nebraska and raised in

Lansing Michigan, Malcolm saw his childhood home burned by the Ku Klux Klan and his father murdered by white supremacists two years later. He joined the NOI while in prison, becoming one of the Nation’s most prominent Ministers and spokesmen after his release. Malcolm X, like Robert F. Williams, highlighted the US government and white power structure’s failures to protect black citizens and to fully grant the rights and protections granted to white citizens, while at the same time promoting the human dignity of black Americans and highlighting the ways in which white America denied that human dignity.

In a 1963 speech to a black primarily non-Muslim audience at the Northern Negro

Grass Roots Leadership Conference Malcolm, spelled out America’s denial of black human dignity. “America’s problem is us,” he began.

The only reason she has a problem is she doesn’t want us here. And every time

you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so-called Negro, you

represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you’re

not wanted . . . you sure don’t catch hell because you’re an American; if you

16 Ibid.

were an American you wouldn’t catch hell. You catch hell because you’re a black

man.17

Malcolm argued that it was crucial for black Americans to unite in the face of the common enemy, the white man. To this end, he called for black Americans to “stop airing our differences in front of the white man, put the white man out of our meetings and then sit down and talk shop with each other.”18 After explaining the need for Black

Nationalism based on America’s denial of black men’s rights, Malcolm went on to argue for a revolution that did not turn the other cheek.

After referring to John F. Kennedy’s assassination as a case of the “chickens coming home to roost” Elijah Muhammad, leader of the NOI suspended Malcolm X.

Ninety days later he made his first public statement since the infamous “chickens” comment, claiming that he had only meant that Kennedy’s assassination was symptomatic of the “climate of hate” in the US.19 This was the beginning of Malcolm

X’s eventual break with the Nation of Islam. By 1964 he had severed ties completely, founded his own organization, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and embraced a more orthodox form of Islam, going on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Just before his pilgrimage, on March 12,

1964, Malcolm held a press conference explaining his intentions for the future. He indicated that he intended “to be very active in every phase of the American Negro struggle for human rights,” and that the new Muslim Mosque Inc. would be organized so that all black Americans could participate in their political, economic, and social

17 Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” in George Breitman, ed. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, reprint edition (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 4. 18 Ibid., 6. 19“Malcolm X ‘Chickens Coming Home to Roost,’ uploaded April 17, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzuOOshpddM.

57 programs.20 Although Malcolm was moving away from a philosophy that called exclusively for armed self-defense, he retained to his commitment to black humanity and ensuring that black Americans had the services denied to them by white America. This commitment to black humanity was subsequently adopted by the Panthers as they formed their party and built their moral polity.

The same year that Malcolm held the press conference explaining his new intentions, an organization, designed to defend black communities constantly under threat from the Ku Klux Klan, emerged. Their ideology and action would also contribute to the

BPP’s moral polity. In 1964 in Jonesboro, Louisiana, black residents formed a clandestine self-defense group which they called the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

They represented still more of the many activists who did not subscribe exclusively to the nonviolent civil rights philosophy being celebrated in the media. The Deacons patrolled the streets of Jonesboro with rifles, pistols, and walkie-talkies to coordinate their actions.

They were composed primarily of working class black army veterans and their success in keeping civil rights activists safe caused the movement to spread quickly.21 At a march in

1966, Deacon Ernest Thompson described the role of his organization, “We came with the idea of providing protection if necessary. . . . We’re not going down the road intimidating anybody, but at no time does a Deacon intend to get his head whipped.”22

20 Malcolm X, “A Declaration of Independence,” in Breitman, ed. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements, 20, 21. 21 Simon Wendt, “The Roots of Black Power?: Armed Resistance and the Radicalization of the Civil Rights Movement,” in The Black Power Movement: Re-thinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, ed. Peniel Joseph (New York: Routledge, 2006), 147. 22 The Associated Press, “Dixie March Covers More Miles, Views,” The Milwaukee Journal, June 19, 1966, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ax4aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yicEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7409,4427757&dq= the+deacons+for+defense&hl=en.

With the Deacons there was a viable movement alternative for those who disagreed or were frustrated with the movement’s proponents of non-violence.

The spread of chapters of the Deacons for Defense and Justice testified not only to the popularity of the tactic of armed self-defense among black liberationists, but to the failure of the police, state and federal governments to protect African Americans. By

June 1965, Thompson estimated that there were between 50 and 55 chapters of the organization across Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. He believed that given six or seven months of hard work the Deacons would be spread across all the Southern states.23

These were working class men who felt they had little in common with the middle class leaders of groups like the SCLC. They saw different realities and after a decade of legislative gains had not seen a vast improvement in their lives. The Deacons represented a growing frustration within the civil rights movement, and the need for communal protection and services even at a time of major civil rights gains. The Black Panthers would express this reality two years later.

The Deacons did not simply patrol their own neighborhoods. They also provided protection for civil rights activists campaigning in their cities. In fact, they were initially formed in Jonesboro and later spread to Bogalusa, Louisiana to protect CORE activists who had traveled to these cities to press for civil rights. A CORE activist in Bogalusa recalled,

We never crossed the streets without a Deacon. We never drove our car without a

Deacon present. Most of our cars were escorted by two carloads of Deacons, one

23 The New York Times, “Armed Negro League Growing to Combat White Terrorism,” The Miami News, June 6, 1965, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_NQzAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-- oFAAAAIBAJ&pg=783,1511262&dq=deacons+for+defense+and+justice&hl=en.

in front and one in back. The homes where we stayed were guarded day and night

by Deacons, and our canvassing was protected by Deacons. Our lives were

literally in their hands.24

The Deacons filled the void left by white police officers who did not protect civil rights activists. They provided an alternative security force in places where violence or the threat of violence was constantly a presence.

Such was the need to protect civil rights activists that the model of non-violent protest supported by armed defenders was replicated in other areas and with other civil rights campaigns. During the summer of 1965 in Natchez, Mississippi, members and supporters of the NAACP formed an armed organization because as blacks in this Klan stronghold they knew they could not rely on the police for protection. Their numbers and support grew quickly after George Metcalf, a local NAACP leader, suffered severe injuries after the explosion of a bomb planted in the engine in his car. Having heard of the success of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in quelling white supremacist violence in Louisiana, Charles Evers, another Natchez NAACP leader and brother of the slain Medgar Evers, invited a number of Deacons to Natchez to help the fledgling

Deacons-like group there. The Natchez group ultimately decided not to officially link themselves to the Louisiana Deacons, but nevertheless used the name Natchez Deacons

For Defense and Justice. They then proceeded to assist other areas in Mississippi create and sustain similar groups.25 Thus, ideas about government failings, as well as how to make up for them, spread from region to region.

24 Wendt, “The Roots of Black Power,” 148-149. 25 Akinyele O. Umoja, “‘We Will Shoot Back:’ The Natchez Model and Paramilitary Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 32, No.3 (2002): 275, 277-278.

The Natchez Deacons revealed the subjective nature of morality within a moral polity or situations which approached a moral polity. The day after Metcalf’s wounding,

Charles Evers and other local black leaders presented the mayor with a list of 12 demands which they titled, “A Declaration of the Negro Citizens of Natchez.” Their demands included desegregation of local schools, increased employment opportunities for blacks, and police escorts for black funerals. They also asked that white community leaders denounce the Klan and other white supremacists publically and that all government officials and civil servants cease addressing black adults as boy, girl, and auntie, and begin referring to them as Mr., Mrs., or Miss.26 When the Natchez Board of Aldermen rejected the demands of the “Declaration” and instead instituted a curfew, banned alcohol sales during the curfew hours, and the Governor called 650 national guardsmen into the city, the black community decided to implement a boycott of white businesses and began to stage marches and demonstrations. The Natchez Deacons held the primary responsibility of protecting the demonstrators and guarded marches with visible arms.

There was still the problem, however, of black community members who broke the boycott. To remedy this situation, they recruited a separate paramilitary style group.27

This organized team of enforcers operated solely within the black community to ensure the boycott was successful. The Enforcement Squad was headed by a Korean War veteran named Rudy Shields, who was called into the city specifically for this duty by

Charles Evers. Shield’s group ensured that those who broke the boycott were ostracized and intimidated into rejoining the boycott. They provided the names of boycott breakers for community leaders to read aloud at public meetings and used violence against those

26 Ibid., 282-283. 27 Ibid., 284.

61 same individuals. As movement supporter Ed Cole recalled, “Folks go shop, break the boycott, they didn’t get home with the damn groceries . . . cause somebody was waiting for them when they got there.”28 Shields recruited women enforcers to keep potential female boycott breakers in line. With this strategy of dual strands of threatened coercive violence—the Deacons guarding marchers and the Enforcement Squad maintaining the boycott—the boycott successfully put six white owned businesses out of business within two months. This prompted the white power structure of Natchez to finally come to an agreement with the NAACP in November 1965, even as they were arresting hundreds of demonstrators (see below). Thus, the good of the whole community was prioritized over individual convenience or choice. Some may have balked at the strategy of the NAACP and the Deacons, as the existence of strike breakers testifies, but the Black leadership of

Natchez determined that the collective good which would come from the achievement of the 12 demands, was more important, and they allowed coercion to take place to ensure the success of their boycott. This was to become hallmark of the moral polities of both the BPP and IRA. The collective was typically prioritized over the individual, and coercion could be allowed if it ultimately served the communal good while hurting adversaries.

Building the Black Panthers’ Moral Polity

From its creation in 1966 the Black Panther Party was clear about creating a different society than currently existed in the United States, particularly black communities. Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, and the Deacons for Defense each played an important role for Bobby Seale and Huey Newton as they created the ideology and

28 Ibid.

62 first activities of the Party. Taken together with the pair’s analysis of other radical theorists of revolution and their own analysis of the plight of black Americans, these three influences would help Newton and Seale conceive a moral polity for black communities. Newton remembered that he and Seale “had no choice but to form an organization that would involve the lower-class brothers.” In addition to the failure of other organizations to adequately address working class black needs, Newton cited the fresh memory of the Watts riot and the Oakland police intimidating citizens as further catalysts to the creation of the Black Panther Party. He explained, “We had seen how the police attacked the Watts community after causing the trouble in the first place. We had seen Martin Luther King come to Watts in an effort to calm the people, and we had seen his philosophy of nonviolence rejected.”29 In Bobby Seale’s living room they analyzed liberation struggles from around the world, comparing the situation in Mao’s China and

Fanon’s Algeria to their own.30 Ultimately they decided they would need their own solutions, but these conflicts, and the way they were presented in literature, formed part of a theoretical framework for the party.

Because they sensed a growing discontent with nonviolent methods of protest

Newton and Seale looked to people and organizations who explicitly rejected nonviolence as the only path to black liberation. Newton credited Robert Williams’

Negroes with Guns as having a substantial influence on the organization he and Seale developed. He also noted the influence of the Deacons for Defense and Justice who he and Seale encountered when a leader of the group passed through the San Francisco Bay area while raising funds on a speaking tour. Both Williams and the Deacons, however,

29 Newton, The Huey P. Newton Reader, ed. David Hilliard and Donald Weise, 49. 30 Ibid., 50.

63 had occasionally looked to the federal government for help and Newton and Seale saw this as a major flaw.31 For their emerging party, they sought to divorce themselves as much as possible from any assistance from the federal, state, and local governments.

Black communities, they reasoned, could best take care of themselves. The opposition to the government, stemming, as it did, from the belief that every level of government was by and for the white man, allowed Newton and Seale the intellectual space to conceptualize different forms of leadership for black communities and drove them to create programs to make up for the deficiency of services and rights granted by the government. This was the beginning of the Panthers’ moral polity.

The Panthers’ embrace of Black Nationalism in the first years of their existence echoed the thinking of their greatest influence, Malcolm X. Although Newton admitted that the BPP did not necessarily do what Malcolm would have done, one could “not convey the effect that Malcolm has had on the Black Panther Party . . . as far as I am concerned, the Party is a living testament to his life work.”32 Having studied the writings of Malcolm X by means of Bobby Seale’s extensive collection of speeches and texts, the founders of the BPP felt they had a path to follow and ideas from which they could grow.

As they solidified the aims of the party, Malcolm’s emphasis on Black Nationalism and armed self-defense took center stage. Even their original name—the Black Panther Party for Self Defense—reflected the influence of Malcolm X.

While they may have differed from Malcolm in key policies as the Party evolved, in their early years they maintained his call for black unity, demonstrating the collective nature of their moral polity. In 1967 armed Panthers traveled to Sacramento to protest a

31 Ibid., 51. 32 Ibid., 51-52.

64 bill which would remove the right to openly carry arms, a bill that had been drafted specifically to disarm the Panthers. In the aftermath of the incident, Warren Tucker, a captain in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, wrote to The Black Panther newspaper to say that after Sacramento he finally understood what black unity meant.

“As we walked up the steps of the Capitol Building, I glanced at each Brother. They were all prepared for the worse, [sic] but they stuck together. They had such beautiful unity.”33

He continued to say that the unity he felt as he and Bobby Hutton escorted Chairman

Bobby Seale to his car felt good, and that he felt that unity again when they were stopped by police at a gas station. He concluded by describing their arrest, and being called out one by one to make statements, “but all the brothers told the racist dog to go to HELL.

This is what I call BLACK UNITY.” 34 That sense of unity was characteristic of the early

Black Panther Party and pointed to the communal nature of their moral polity. Society worked best, they argued, when the people were unified in support of one another.

Other aspects of the moral polity envisioned by the Black Panther Party were clearly visible in the Party’s foundational texts. The ten point platform was, effectively, a blue print for a moral polity. It stood in direct opposition to the US government which it criticized repeatedly. When the Panthers articulated what they believed they revealed the relationship that they envisioned between authorities and the people, and affirmed the human dignity of black men and women. In some instances, the Panthers explicitly stated what they expected of the government. For example, in their ten point program, when they called for full employment they explained, “We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment and a guaranteed income.” If

33 Warren Tucker, “Statement on Black Unity,” The Black Panther 1, no. 2, May 15, 1967, 4. 34 Ibid.

65 this was impossible, because the white business man refused full employment then they advocated seizing the means of production for the people.35 They also argued that “black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us.” They affirmed that they would not fight and kill other people of color in service of the American government.36 These were two of the ways the BPP perceived the federal government to be failing in their responsibilities toward black

Americans, as well as how their moral polity would rectify these situations.

The federal government was not the only authority that the Panthers saw as failing in their obligations toward black communities. They also saw the police and US justice system as deeply deficient structures for which they would have to provide alternatives.

The Black Panther, provided frequent stories justifying the idea that racist police officers brutalized black communities. The front page of the very first edition of the paper carried a story on Denzil Dowell’s killing at the hands of racist police.37 His killing was the first of fourteen years of similar headlines. The BPP’s founding documents pledged to combat police violence “by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality.”38 They also called for all black prisoners to be released from jails and prisons across the country because the courts had not adhered to defendants’ constitutional right to a trial by a jury of their peers. “We have been, and are being tried by all white juries that have no understanding of the ‘average reasoning man’ of the black community.”39 Thus, the foundation of the

35 “What We Want Now! What We Believe,” The Black Panther, May 15, 1967. 36 Ibid. 37 “Why Was Denzil Dowell Killed?,” The Black Panther 1 no. 1, April 25, 1967, 1. 38 “What We Want Now! What We Believe,” The Black Panther, May 15, 1967. 39 Ibid.

Panthers’ moral polity rested on the idea that the government, police, and courts were authorities who had failed to uphold their part in society’s reciprocal relationships, and had lost the trust of many black Americans.

In the early years of the Party Newton emerged as the Panthers’ theoretician, his writing often appearing in the Party newspaper explaining the Party’s positions and reasons for them. In May 1967 he argued that it was futile to elect black representatives to office because they held no political power. An official elected by and for black communities did not have “land power because we do not own any land,” Newton argued. Without owning the means of production black Americans could not command economic or industrial power to bolster an elected official’s political power either. “The only way he can become political is to represent what is commonly called a military power—which the BLACK PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF-DEFENSE calls self- defense power.”40 Black Americans could only be equal, and their representatives effective if they made it “economically non-profitable for the power structure to go on with its oppressive ways. We will then negotiate as equals.” Until such a time, the Party would present an alternate arrangement for black communities to retain their dignity and survive in the face of the oppression levied on them by the US power structure.

As Newton suggested in his article on political power, members of the newly formed party made it one of their first priorities to follow the police with armed patrols, to make sure the police treated black men and women fairly. In the same issue of The

Black Panther in which Newton explained political power and the futility of electing black officials because of their lack of such power, the Panthers ran an article which

40 Huey Newton, “Functional Definition of Politics,” The Black Panther 1 no. 2, May 15, 1967, 4.

67 spoke directly to the police. They explained that the police drew their power from their relationship with the people, and that the police were failing in their duties to those same people. “We don’t like the way you cops have been misusing the law and mistreating the people,” the Panthers began. “You are civil servants, which means that the people—all the people—have delegated to you the task of securing the people in the daily exercise of their rights.”41 This was the failure of an authority in its reciprocal duties to black citizens, in this case, protecting the people, and in response, the Panthers created their own programs to make sure that black community members did not feel threatened by an authority that failed in its duties to keep the peace. As the Panthers put it, “The BLACK

PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF-DEFENSE is here to shield the people from your insanity and thirst for blood.”42

As the party grew and evolved they created further programs to support working class black communities and compensate for systemic discrimination. These would coalesce by 1971 into the Party’s survival programs, further expanding the BPP’s moral polity. From their early actions of trailing the police to protect black citizens, the BPP began to create full-fledged social programs to make up for what US society failed to provide. As we have seen, in 1967 they began publishing their own newspaper. This was a vehicle, by which the Party could ensure the populace was educated on the issues of the day, both in terms of stories that had direct relevance to readers’ daily lives, and others that educated them on events across the globe. In 1968, the BPP created the Breakfast for

School Children program. This served the dual purpose of feeding hungry children and preparing them for the school day. The leaders of the Party noted, “The Government and

41 “To Cops,” The Black Panther 1 no. 2, May 15, 1967, 1. 42 Ibid, 2.

Board of Education won’t [feed the children]. We people will do this revolutionary program because of the revolutionary necessity.”43 That same year, The Black Panther carried the “Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid,” a page with information designed “as a means of keeping black people up to date on their rights.”44

The Party also ran candidates for Office via the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968.

Eldridge Cleaver ran for president on the Peace and Freedom Ticket. Bobby Seale ran for

State Assemblyman, Kathleen Cleaver ran to represent the 18th assembly district, and

Huey Newton was put forth as a write-in candidate for congress. In doing so they emphasized the importance of running on a third party ticket. They argued that part of their purpose was “to pull out of the Democratic and Republican parties because they do not (DO NOT!) represent BLACK PEOPLE and other oppressed people in this colonized country.” In addition to implementing the BPP’s ten point program Panther/Peace and

Freedom candidates promised to alleviate the problems caused by “bootlickers,” that is black politicians who took part in the oppressive government uncritically, push for the black plebiscite called for in their ten point program.45 Running for office was acceptable to the alternative socio-political structure that the Panthers were creating so long as

Panther candidates did not run for office from within the established Democratic or

Republican parties. From the Peace and Freedom Party they could continue to build alternatives to established social and political institutions.

Here then, was an organization perfectly poised to inherit the mantle of black radicalism and create a moral polity. Newton and Seale had studied the radicals who

43 “Breakfast for Black Children,” The Black Panther 2, no. 5, September 7, 1968, 7. 44 “Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid,” The Black Panther 2, no. 2, May 4, 1968, 27. 45 “Huey P. Newton for the 17th Congressional District Alameda County,” The Black Panther 2, no. 7, September 28, 1986, 17-20. They also promised to push for Newton’s release from prison. See below.

69 came before them and situated themselves within global struggles they saw as analogous to their own. They conceived of their party as an alternative to the nonviolent civil rights movement who appealed to the federal and local government for support, but had failed to make a meaningful difference in the lives of urban Northern blacks by 1966. Newton and Seale saw the need for an organization which did not rely exclusively on nonviolence and promoted the needs of the working class. In response they formed a Party designed to fill the needs of black communities that were not being served by any level of government, began to foster a feeling of black unity and pride, and asserted that society could be fundamentally different than it was in the years leading to the formation of the

Party. This made them a threat to anyone who supported the status quo.

Origins of the IRA’s Moral Polity

The origins of the IRA’s moral polity began most visibly in Derry. There, in the

Catholic neighborhood of the Bogside, in January 1969, residents erected barricades and painted “You are now entering Free Derry” on a gable wall. They were responding to the

Royal Ulster Constabulary’s (RUC) brutality toward civil rights marchers and residents of the area. Residents quickly set up Radio Free Derry and did their best to keep the RUC out.46 The police took the barricades down shortly thereafter, but residents re-erected them at various points and remained determined to create a society outside of the jurisdiction of the RUC and Stormont government. In July, local republicans were instrumental in forming the Derry Citizens Defence Association (DCDA) to protect the

46 Museum of Free Derry, “Free Derry,” http://www.museumoffreederry.org/content/free-derry.

Bogsiders.47 The resistance to the RUC and their experience in the DCDA would greatly influence the way the IRA saw their ideal society after 1969.

It was amidst a change in government leadership and the Protestant summer marching season that violence in Northern Ireland lead to the beginnings of the IRA’s moral polity. In March and April bombs exploded at public water and electricity installations in the North. Blame initially fell on the IRA, but the bombings were actually the work of the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) who were attempting to discredit

Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, who loyalists viewed as too conciliatory to minority

Catholic opinion and the civil rights movement.48 Their opposition to O’Neill was symptomatic of a divide within unionism between moderates who supported O’Neill’s tentative reforms and hard liners who saw any concession to Catholics as the beginning of a slippery slope to “Rome rule.” The conflict among unionists proved to be too much for the government, and O’Neill resigned at the end of April. As James Chichester-Clark took over the role of Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister, the Protestant summer marching season began. The marches were historically flashpoints of conflict and coupled with the civil rights demonstrations of the year, the atmosphere of the summer of 1969 was especially tense.

In August the Apprentice Boys traditionally marched through Derry celebrating the lifting of the 1688-1689 siege and the subsequent retreat of the Jacobite army.49 The march consistently created tension given that it passed alongside the Catholic

47 Museum of Free Derry, “1969-Descent into Conflict,” http://www.museumoffreederry.org/content/1969- descent-conflict. 48 Martin Melaugh, “A Chronology of the Conflict—1969,” last updated October 31, 2012, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch69.htm. 49 The Associated Clubs of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, “Parades & Celebrations,” http://apprenticeboysofderry.org/parades/4590615158.

71 neighborhood of the Bogside. In 1969 the march came less than a month after the death of 42 year old Derry man, Samuel Devenny who succumbed to injuries he received following a severe beating at the hands of the RUC. This did nothing to increase trust between the RUC and the Bogsiders. Given the dangerously electric atmosphere in the city, there was talk of disallowing the march, but Chichester-Clark met with British

Home Secretary James Callaghan on August 8, and they agreed that the march should be allowed, albeit amidst an increased security presence.50 On August 12, with tensions in

Derry running high, as 15,000 Apprentice Boys escorted by the RUC passed the Bogside, many Bogsiders, amassed behind police barriers, began to throw stones and hurl abuse at the marchers. In response, the RUC attempted to push the Bogsiders back, supported in their efforts by the loyalist marchers, but the Bogsiders moved to positions behind barricades they had erected during rioting in the previous months and constructed new barricades to keep the police and loyalists out.51 It was the beginning of what would be known as the Battle of the Bogside, where for two days the Bogside residents fought to hold back the RUC and loyalists. While some continued to man the barricades, young members of the community rained bricks and petrol bombs down from the roof of the

Rossville flats. On August 13 the Derry Citizens Defence Association, called for all able bodied Irish men to come to Derry to defend the Bogside. “We need you, we’ll feed you.” They added.52 The statement was indicative of the responsibilities the Bogsiders

50 Martin Melaugh, “The Civil Rights Campaign—A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/chron.htm; Melaugh, “A Chronology of the Conflict—1969.” 51 The Museum of Free Derry, “The Battle of the Bogside,” http://www.museumoffreederry.org/content/battle-bogside; Niall O Dochartaigh, From Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 98. 52 The Museum of Free Derry, “Battle of the Bogside—12-14 August,” http://www.museumoffreederry.org/content/12-14-august.

72 felt toward people who defended them as well as the fact that the government was failing to provide those defenders in the first place.

On August 14 the Bogsiders succeeded in forcing the police back toward the center of the city. Later that afternoon, members of the British Army’s Prince of Wales

Regiment arrived to calm the situation. This they did, as they provided a buffer between the Bogside and the loyalists, RUC, and the hated B Specials who had begun to amass the same day.53 The Bogsiders welcomed the British troops, but their welcome was tempered by a fear that the army would become just another armed tool of the hated Stormont government. As one woman told RTÉ reporter, Seán Duignan, “I think we will wait and see how the British troops treat us,” but she feared that there was a “grave risk” of the army joining forces with the RUC. 54 There was, within the Bogside, a complete breakdown in the trust between residents and any authority who was connected with the

Stormont government and this was the situation into which the British Army came in

August 1969.

As the Bogsiders waited to see whether or not the British Army would fulfill their duty to protect residents, violence spread across the North. Demonstrations in support of the Bogside turned to rioting, and violence broke out between Protestants and Catholics.

In Belfast, loyalists from the Protestant Shankill Road area forced their way to the

Catholic Falls Road, shooting as they came. Falls residents maintained that the Loyalists were led by the B Specials. Six people died in violent confrontations across the North the

53 Museum of Free Derry, “Battle of the Bogside.” 54 Seán Duignan, “British Troops in Derry: ‘The British Forces Have Occupied the Place,’” RTÉ News, RTÉ Archives, http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1042-northern-ireland-1969/1048-august- 1969/320422-british-troops-in-derry/.

73 night of August 14 - 15 alone.55 On August 15 Loyalists set fire to Bombay street in

Catholic West Belfast, gutting the houses and forcing the residents to flee. Leading RTÉ reporter Barry Linnane through the ruins, one displaced man hollowly recalled, “We hadn’t a policeman to protect us.”56 His complaint was echoed across Catholic Northern

Ireland. It was into this vacuum of trusted authority that the IRA stepped in 1969, promising to protect a community who felt vulnerable to police officers who were supposed to protect them and a separate community that was openly hostile to them.

Building an Irish Republican Moral Polity

In planning their operations in 1969 the IRA, both Provisional and Official, followed the “Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army: Notes on Guerilla

Warfare,” which contained within it, the basis for the moral polity that the IRA would eventually create. The “Handbook” was issued by the IRA’s general headquarters (GHQ) in 1956. The “Handbook” insisted that guerilla forces such as the IRA required the support of the larger population. The “Handbook” asserted that “it has to be stressed that support for the aims of the guerillas must come from the population. Cut loose from the people, a guerilla formation can neither develop nor survive.” In return, the guerilla formation served as an “educator of the people, it exposes the lies of the enemy, shows the reasons for his occupation.”57 Furthermore, because the people would bear the brunt

55 Barry Linnane and Kevin Healy, “Belfast Riots Aftermath: Death on Night of Bloody Violence,” RTÉ News, RTÉ Archives, http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1042-northern-ireland-1969/1048-august- 1969/320448-belfast-riots-aftermath/?page=3. 56 Barry Linnane, “Ruins on Bombay Street: Bombay Street Destroyed in Belfast Attacks,” RTÉ Archives, http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1042-northern-ireland-1969/1048-august-1969/320452-vast-areas- in-ruins/?page=3. 57 Irish Republican Army General Headquarters, “Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army: Notes on Guerilla Warfare,” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/stream/IRA_Volunteers_Handbook_Notes_on_Guerrilla_Warfare/IRA_Volunteers_Han dbook_Notes_on_Guerrilla_Warfare_djvu.txt.

74 of the enemy’s retaliation, the “Handbook” required that the guerilla “help and protect the people.”58 Finally, the guerilla was responsible for suggesting “remedies and how they might be brought about” and had to “be in touch all the times with thinking of the people.”59 IRA volunteers, were, therefore trained to believe that they had to build up the trust of the local population and that they had responsibilities to that population.

The “Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army” also demonstrated how the IRA saw themselves as well as the government of Northern Ireland, which further indicated how their moral polity would take shape. GHQ maintained that Ireland was “a small nation fighting for freedom” and as such, Ireland could “only hope to defeat an oppressor or occupying power by means of guerilla warfare.”60 The IRA’s tactics were, therefore, legitimate, and its volunteers were soldiers engaged in a war for the freedom of Ireland. This freedom would be achieved when the 32 Irish counties were reunited. IRA volunteers, therefore, demanded respect and to be treated as soldiers in all of their dealings with the State.

In 1969, the IRA’s moral polity was much less developed than that of the Black

Panthers. The IRA had a long military tradition, but the split between the Provisionals and Officials in December 1969 divorced the theory from the action. Thus, what was most pronounced in the IRA’s developing moral polity was that it was emerging in opposition to the government of Northern Ireland as well as the RUC and other security forces, such as the B Specials. The Official IRA saw an alternative society structured around Marxist political thought. The Provisionals saw a society where the people were

58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60Ibid.

75 protected from the abuses of the State. Each would develop their thoughts and the idea of the moral polity over time, but in 1969, the republican moral polity was in its infancy while the Panthers had a much more developed sense of their alternative society at their formation in 1966. Where the Panthers and IRA inhabited the same space, was in how their respective governments viewed them. The Panthers were, from their creation, seen as a major threat by both the government and police. So too, were the IRA, both

Provisional and Official viewed as the biggest threats to stability in Northern Ireland.

As soon as the IRA was re-established as a viable threat, unionists looked for ways to contain the violence and reinforce their control of the state. Here too, Northern Ireland and the United States shared a commonality. Both had histories of using prisons to silence dissent.

II. The United States and Northern Ireland: Using Prisons to silence Dissent

The Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army both emerged in the 1960s at a time when the governments of their respective countries had recently made use of the their prison systems to quell dissent. Indeed, by 1966 and 1969 respectively, each nation had persons in key positions of power who favored the use of prisons to keep dissent off the streets. So too did each nation have a history of prisoners protesting conditions in their spaces of confinement or the fact that they had been jailed at all. Neither country was unfamiliar with the idea that incarceration could produce resistance, but neither saw this as sufficient reason not to imprison the people who spoke out most loudly and acted against the State.

The use of Prisons in the United States

In the US, using prisons and jails to quiet dissent was a favorite tactic of FBI director

J. Edgar Hoover. In 1919 Hoover was appointed special assistant to the attorney general,

A. Mitchell Palmer, and chief of the Anti-Radical Division, later the General Intelligence

Division, of the Justice Department, where he would assist in the infamous Palmer raids.

During these raids, which were the hallmark of the red scare of 1919-1920, men and women suspected of communist and anarchist subversion were arrested without warrant, jailed without access to lawyers, and some were beaten into signing confessions. If suspects were of foreign birth they were often deported without due process of law.61

Hoover was enthusiastic and dogged in his sabotage of the political left, and at the age of

26, in August 1921 Hoover was named assistant chief of the Bureau of Investigation, and the General Intelligence Division transferred from the Department of Justice to the

Bureau where Hoover would continue to oversee it. There he continued to believe in the effectiveness of imprisoning those he deemed subversive.

Indeed, despite the infamous abuses of justice during the Palmer raids, the strategy of using prisons to quiet dissent was ultimately reinforced by the accomplishments of those tactics. The approach of the General Intelligence Division was largely successful in eradicating Communism in the United States. In 1919 Communist Party membership totaled 27,341. As of April 1920, the Party numbered only 8,223.62 With these victories in mind, Harlan Fiske Stone, who succeeded Palmer as Attorney General after the election of Calvin Coolidge, appointed Hoover head of the Bureau of Investigation on

61 Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 79, 83. 62 Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2002), 35.

May 10, 1924.63 Hoover would hold the post until his death in 1972. To his new appointment, Hoover brought the powerful anti-Communism he had made so evident in his time with the General Intelligence Division and the willingness to use prisons and extra-legal measures to silence dissent. Thus, when Seale and Newton founded the

Panthers in 1966, the FBI had at its head a man who saw great worth in the jailing of those he saw as enemies of the state.

Hoover was no stranger to the idea that prisons could also be sites of resistance because, by the mid twentieth century, American prisons were beset with dissent. In places like Texas, where hard labor was common, especially at the beginning of the twentieth century, prisoners resorted to bodily mutilation as a protest against working conditions. This generally took the form of convicts cutting their own Achilles tendons, rendering themselves unfit for labor for several weeks. Where this “heel-stringing” was not favored, inmates tried “bugging,” the act of slicing the skin with a razor blade and then creating a festering sore by feeding lye into the wound. When all else failed, amputation of limbs or digits was also an option. Prisoners had different reasons for self- mutilation: fear of being worked to death, anger at the prison regime, and exhaustion, but whatever an individual’s reason, the tactic was used more and more until the middle of the century. Between 1936 and 1940 Texas prison administrators recorded 174 self- mutilations by convicts. In the next four years between 1940 and 1944 that number had jumped nearly 57% to 273, and between 1944 and 1948 it rose again to 341.64 An

63The Federal Bureau of Investigation, “A Brief History of the FBI,” n.d. http://www.fbi.gov/about- us/history/brief-history. The Bureau of investigation was not typically called the Federal Bureau of Investigation until 1935. See Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 112. 64 Robert Perkinson, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 215-216.

78 epidemic of sorts was spreading—that of prisoners reacting violently to punishment based regimes.

The 1950s saw this dissent take the shape of full scale prison riots. During the early part of the decade riots erupted at the prison at Jackson, Michigan, the Ohio State

Penitentiary, Illinois’ Menard State Prison, and Trenton Prison and Rahway Prison Farm in New Jersey. Incidents were also reported in prisons in Massachusetts, Minnesota,

California, Oregon, Washington, and New Mexico.65 In 1953 the American Prison

Association attributed the cause of the riots to lack of financial support, substandard personnel, official indifference, excessive size and overcrowding in prisons, a lack of leadership and professional programs, idleness, unwise sentencing and parole practices, and the political domination and motivation of the prison management.66 As the US entered the decade that would see the arrests of thousands of civil rights protesters and the incarceration of the first Black Panther prisoners, the prison system was already the site of major protests and controversy.

Yet, as all this was occurring an emphasis on the rehabilitative (rather than punitive) potential of the prison was taking center stage on an international level. Article 58 of the

“Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,” adopted by the United

Nations in August 1955 purported to “set out what is generally accepted as being good principle and practice in the treatment of prisoners and the management of institutions.”67

It stated that the general consensus on imprisonment was that “There shall be no

65 Edgardo Rotman, “The Failure of Reform: The United States, 1865-1965,” in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3228-3232, 3246, Kindle Edition. 66 Ibid., 3240-3242. 67 The First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, “Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners,” http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/g1smr.htm.

79 discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”68 It further asserted that one of the guiding principles for a prisoner under sentence was that the purpose of imprisonment was to protect society against crime and affirmed, “This end can only be achieved if the period of imprisonment is used to ensure, so far as possible, that upon his return to society, the offender is not only willing but able to lead a law-abiding and self- supporting life.”69 According to the UN, then, imprisonment was meant to reform rather than punish. What occurred in both the United States and Northern Ireland, however, especially when it concerned political prisoners, seldom resembled the high ideals of the

UN.

The police and federal agents who would use prisons to undermine the Black Panther

Party cut their teeth with the earlier phase of the civil rights movement. In places like

Selma and Birmingham where marchers were beaten by police and sprayed with power hoses, activists tended to win major concessions after bad press brought activists from across the country to the area and provoked federal intervention. As Laurie Pritchett, the police chief of Albany Georgia observed, Bull Connor and Jim Clark, the sheriff of

Selma were “The people that were most responsible” for the successes of the civil rights movement. A SNCC member concurred, advising, “Jim Clark is another Bull Connor.

We should put them on the staff.” 70 As Pritchett suggested, in places where the police and power structure did not respond to protests with violence, the result was quite different.

68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70Steven E. Barkan, “Legal Control Of the Southern Civil Rights Movement,” American Sociological Review, 49 No. 4 (1984):562.

One alternate response which met with the most success, from the point of view of those opposed to the black liberation struggle, was imprisonment. This was often done without reason or provocation specifically to sap movement resources. When the civil rights movement came to Albany, Georgia in November 1961 Laurie Pritchett was ready.

Sensing the movement was coming to his city, Pritchett’s force trained to arrest demonstrators nonviolently.71 When civil rights protesters appeared in Albany, the police put their training to use and arrested demonstrators at each and every march. By

December 737 people had been taken to jail and attorney general Robert Kennedy sent

Pritchett a congratulatory telegram lauding the peaceful arrests.72 1,200 people had been arrested by August 1962 and public facilities and accommodations remained segregated.

Meanwhile, the civil rights coalition in the city made up of SNCC, NAACP, local black ministers, as well as high profile activists like Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, were being forced to pay high legal costs to defend their people at trials termed “farce[s]” where “The judge had his opinion and judgment written out when he came into the court.”73 Of the strategy, Pritchett said, ““Dr. King, when he left Albany . . . was a defeated man. In my opinion, right or wrong if Birmingham had reacted as Albany,

Georgia did . . . they’d never got to Selma.”74 Indeed, desegregation did not come to

Albany until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Pritchett’s example was followed by other cities in the South. In Danville,

Virginia, the police chief asked Pritchett for advice dealing with protesters in 1963.

Danville’s chief of police was assisted in his efforts to thwart civil rights protesters by the

71 Ibid., 556. 72 Ibid., 557. 73 Ibid. 74Ibid., 562.

81 local judicial system. Upon the commencement of marches and protests, city judge

Thomas Aiken issued an injunction, thereby legally halting any further civil rights demonstrations. When activists violated the injunction they were arrested. This resulted in the arrests and trials of 105 marchers in June. On the first day of trials Judge Aiken refused to tell civil rights lawyers which of their clients were to be tried first, and when he finally did announce the first to be tried he rebuffed the councilor who inquired what section of the injunction his client had violated. Aiken then ended the trial by reading a pre-written verdict, fining the activist, and sentencing him to 90 days in jail. He further determined that the defendant should stay in prison even while his case was being appealed. This dramatically extended the prison time served. This charade was repeated with slight variations with other defendants as the campaign in Danville continued. For some bail was set at $5000 and for others, their trials were transferred to counties between 80 and 250 miles away. The movement in Danville was quickly overcome with many activists in jail, and other local protesters convinced not to demonstrate because they could not afford bail or to travel such distances for trials.75

A similar tactic was used in Natchez, Mississippi. There, on October 3, 1965, police arrested 103 marchers for parading without a permit who attempted to march into the city’s downtown area. Those arrests brought the total number of marchers arrested since October 1 up to 409. With the city jail already overflowing on October 3, the police announced that all arrestees of 12 years of age would be sent to Parchman Penitentiary,

200 miles to the North where they had already sent 125 of their overflow prisoners to

75 Ibid., 561.

82 await trial.76 By this time, the prison was already famous for the imprisonment of countless Freedom Riders. Natchez officials had evidently learned from their encounter with the NAACP and Deacons for Defense that summer, and by the autumn adopted the policy of mass arrests.

The arrest of civil rights activists was used often enough to become rather banal for the media. On July 20, 1963, the Chicago Tribune used one article to report on seven civil rights demonstrations and one counter demonstration which had taken place across the country. The paper noted that 27 adults and 17 children were arrested at a protest in

New York over the hiring practices at Brooklyn’s Downstate Medical Center, then in construction. Additionally, 22 demonstrators were arrested in Charleston, South Carolina where they were bailed out for $130,000 in bonds, and a police pick up order had been issued for Charles Evers.77 In describing the backlash against a desegregation march in

Jackson, Mississippi, where approximately 75 white people gathered near the 150 young marchers, the paper reported that the police dispersed the group of whites and no arrests were made.78 For the Chicago Tribune, the arrests were not nearly as important as the fact that children participated in two of the protests. They ran with the headline “17

Children Lie in Road as Civil Rights Barrier,” only coming to the arrests in a sub- heading.

Arrests of civil rights campaigners became so commonplace that reporters often lumped more than one protest where civil rights campaigners were arrested into a single

76 Associated Press, “103 Arrested as 3 Natchez Marches Fail,” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1965, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1965/10/04/page/21/article/103-arrested-as-3-natchez-marches-fail. 77 Chicago Tribune Press Service, “17 Children Lie in Road as Civil Rights Barrier,” Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1963, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1963/07/20/page/3/article/17-children-lie-in-road-as-civil- rights-barrier. 78 Ibid.

83 article. In April 1964, the Associated Press reported that it took more than three hours to arrest 250 civil rights protesters in San Francisco. The AP told readers that among the protesters was Tracy Sims, an 18 year old who led a sit-in at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in the city the previous month which ended in “mass arrests.” They also noted that seven more civil rights campaigners had been arrested in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, bringing the total number of activists jailed for violating a new state law against picketing up to 37.79

In June 1964 the Chicago Tribune paired news of Martin Luther King’s 14th arrest in St.

Augustine, Florida with news of the mass arrests of protesters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.80

Mass arrests, setting high bail, and transferring prisoners to far-off prisons set a dangerous precedent that the justice system would use against the Panthers in the coming years.

The Use of Prisons in Northern Ireland

As in the United States, in Northern Ireland, the government showed a willingness to use prisons to quell dissent, they were aware that prisons could breed protest, but had, nevertheless, recently used the prison system to silence dissent. In Northern Ireland, by the time the conflict escalated in 1969 groups like the IRA were well aware of the role prison could play in undermining their actions, because penal institutions had been used in this capacity since the partition of the island. After the six counties of Northern Ireland officially opted out of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, and the Irish Free State was created, the resultant sectarian violence left the fledgling northern state deeply unstable.81 To

79 Associated Press, “Police Jail 250 in Coast Race Protest,” Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1964, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1964/04/12/page/3/article/police-jail-250-in-coast-race-protest. 80 Chicago Tribune Press Service, “King Asks for and Gets his 14th Arrest,” June 12, 1964, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1964/06/12/page/5/article/king-asks-for-and-gets-his-14th-arrest. 81 J.L. McCracken, “Northern Ireland: 1921-1966,” in The Course of Irish History, ed. T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin, Dermot Keogh, and Patrick Kiely, 5th ed. (Lanham, Maryland: Roberts Reinhart Publishing, 2012), 275.

84 regain order and cement their control, the unionist controlled government passed the draconian Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act in 1922. This act allowed for whippings, the death penalty for certain crimes, search of homes and citizens who were suspected of holding firearms, military arms, ammunition or explosive substances, and arrest without warrant. Moreover, rather than the authorities proving the guilt of a person on trial, the act put the onus on the accused to prove his or her innocence. It also gave the

Minister of Home Affairs the power to detain persons arrested without warrant “in any of

His Majesty’s prisons as a person committed to prison on remand, until he has been discharged by direction of the Attorney General or is brought before a court of summary jurisdiction.”82 That is, at the discretion of the Minister of Home Affairs, men and women of Northern Ireland could be imprisoned without trial, and left there until released by the Attorney General. Designed to be temporary, the act was subsequently renewed yearly until the North’s Parliament made it permanent in 1933.83

To ensure stability and control of the province the unionist government made copious use of the Special Powers Act, particularly the powers it granted to intern men and women without trial. At times they worked in conjunction with the Southern government whose Public Safety Acts of 1923 and 1924, Emergency Powers Act of

1939, and Offences Against the State Act (1940) gave the South similar powers to detain people without trial. Rather ironically, for republicans who sought a united Ireland, during periods of heightened republican activity, sympathy, or suspected treachery, the

Northern government often cooperated with the Southern government to undermine

82 Parliament of Northern Ireland, “Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, 1922,” 1922, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/spa1922.htm. 83 McCracken, “Northern Ireland,” 280.

85 republican aspirations. Moreover, it was not necessarily the Stormont government which was more unyielding to these men and women. Segments of the republican community in

Ireland found themselves interned south of the border during the Irish Civil War, the entirety of World War II, and finally during the IRA’s border campaign, “Operation

Harvest” of 1956-1962.84 In the North Stormont similarly resorted to internment between

1922-1924, 1938-1945, and 1956-1961.85 The IRA and other paramilitary groups who emerged to fight in the 1960s faced the fact that successive governments North and South of the border had proved willing to use special legislation and imprisonment in order to undermine any threat these organizations posed and republicans had been interned for some portion of every decade between the creation of the Northern State and the 1970s.

Northern and Southern Irish governments were also well aware of the resistance that imprisoning Irish republicans could produce. By the time the IRA split in 1969 Irish republicanism was already replete with martyrs, many of whom came from earlier periods in which the prison system was deployed against the IRA. Time and again, in the years leading up to the renewal of conflict in 1969, Irish republicans fought to be considered political prisoners. They refused to work, refused the prison uniform, encouraged comrades on the outside to assassinate prison guards, and famously turned to the tactic of hunger strike numerous times.86 Between 1916 and 1972 eleven Irish republicans died on hunger strike, most in the Southern counties.87 The last was Seán

84 John Maguire, “Internment, The IRA and the Lawless Case in Ireland: 1957-1961,” Journal of the Oxford University History Society, 2 (Michaelmas 2004): 1. 85 McCleery, Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath, 15. 86For one example of a “strip strike” staged to gain political status, see Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA, 187-190. 87 These were: Thomas Ashe (died 1917, Mountjoy Jail), Michael Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy (died 1920, Cork Jail), Terence McSwiney (died 1920, began strike in Cork Jail, died in Brixton Prison), Dan Downey and Joseph Witty (died 1923, Curragh Camp), Denis “Dinny” Barry (died 1923, Newbridge Camp), Andrew Sullivan (died 1923, Mountjoy Jail), Tony D’Arcy (died 1940, began strike in Mountjoy

McCaughey, who died a grisly death in Portlaoise Prison after refusing both food and water, in an effort to make the Irish penal system see IRA men as political prisoners.88

The IRA, and the governments of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Britain would all learn from these previous instances of prison protest, and they would subsequently influence protest to come.

When the conflict began in the late 1960s, the Northern Irish government understood that imprisonment could lead to protest, but they also believed in the efficacy of imprisonment particularly internment without trial, having last used the tactic less than a decade previously. The internment of 1956-1961 effectively led to the failure of the

IRA’s border campaign and left the organization to pick up the pieces at the start of the

1960s. The border campaign, or “Operation Harvest” was waged by the IRA in the countryside nearer the border by an IRA that did not feel that it could protect the citizens of Belfast if sectarian bloodshed were to break out.89 The entire campaign had problems from the beginning. The IRA had trouble rallying the people in the late 1950s. They also suffered from a split between themselves and Liam Kelly who formed Saor Uladh and waged a campaign of his own and condemnation from the Catholic Church.90 In the end, the Southern based leadership of the IRA called the operation off arguing that “foremost among the factors motivating this course of action has been the attitude of the general public whose minds have been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the

Jail, died in St. Bricins military hospital, Dublin), Jack McNeela (died 1940, began strike in Mountjoy, died in Arbour Hill Military Detention barracks, Dublin), and Sean McCaughey (death described above). 88 For More on the death of Seán McCaughey see Barry Flynn, “Seán McCaughey: If you had a dog…,” in Pawns in the Game: Irish Hunger Strikes, 1912-1981 (Cork: The Collins Press, 2011), 102-125; or Tim Pat Coogan, On the Blanket: The Inside Story of the IRA Prisoners’ “Dirty” Protest (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2002), 40. 89 Gerry O’Hare, “Operation Harvest,” The Bobby Sands Trust, November 25, 2009, http://www.bobbysandstrust.com/archives/1553. 90 Ibid.

Irish people—the unity and freedom of Ireland.”91 To the eyes of the leaders of the unionist government, however, it was imprisonment via internment without trial that had effectively silenced the violent threat to the state.

Internment during Operation Harvest had not gone on without objection, however.

When introduced, internment was always controversial and the government who introduced it had to contend with those who saw it as a reprehensible use of political imprisonment as well as those who believed it should have been resorted to sooner and gone on for a longer time. In 1960 alone, the government of Northern Ireland received criticism from the Northern Ireland Council for Civil Liberties, the James Connolly

Association, and 27 English MPs who sent a telegram to the Northern Irish prime minister to call on him to release the remaining internees.92 At the same time, the

Northern Ireland Council for Civil Liberties received an anonymous letter suggesting that the “murderers inside should be fed on 303 bullets civil rights be d----d.” and concluded with the assertion that “Ulster nationalists” were working to ensure that everyone lived under “Popery and slavry [sic].”93 In this instance, the Northern Irish government contended that “It is an undoubted fact that internment has contributed to the present quiet state of affairs,” and Alexander Blevins, an MP for the Ulster Unionist Party, suggested that some of the English MPs were the sort of people who would have been thrown into jail in Northern Ireland, themselves.94 This sort of imperviousness to

91 Ibid. 92 Northern Ireland Council for Civil Liberties, “Human Rights,” December 1960, CAB/9G/19/4A, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. Hereafter, The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland will appear as “PRONI.” 93 Ibid., 2. 94 “Parliamentary Question No. 3,” November 22, 1960, CAB/9G/19/4A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Northern Ireland Council for Civil Liberties, “Human Rights,” 2.

88 criticism and willingness to use prisons as a tool to undermine dissent would be the backdrop to the reemergence of the IRA in 1969.

Thus, the governments of Northern Ireland and the United States were poised to use their prison systems to silence the IRA and Black Panthers and had every reason to believe that this would be an effective strategy to deal with dissent. In the United States, white supremacists had evidence that prison slowed the march of desegregation and undermined civil rights activists. Moreover, within the federal government in a position of power was J. Edgar Hoover, a man who hated the politics of the Left and saw no reason to abide by the laws when attempting to silence critics of the United States. In

Northern Ireland, the Unionist majority’s very existence depended on stopping the IRA.

They had turned time and again to internment without trial to quell the threat posed by militant republicanism. In each location, then, it was not long before members of the Irish

Republican Army and Black Panther Party would experience the prison system for themselves.

III. Conclusions: Early Arrests

As the Panthers began to build a moral polity, they came into direct conflict with local, state, and federal governments, and police forces. By May 1968 Huey Newton, and

BPP minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver, were in prison, precursors to a long line of Panther prisoners to come. Bobby Seale too, was in and out of jail in 1967 and 1968.

One of the first altercations between the law and the Panthers occurred with the arrest of

Huey Newton. Prior to October 28, 1967, few Americans outside of California knew of

Newton, but events that October night set him on the path to becoming a household name. In the early hours of that morning, police officer John Frey, on routine patrol in

West Oakland died after writing a traffic ticket and trying to arrest Huey Newton. He was shot four times. His fellow officer, Herbert Heanes was seriously wounded and

Newton himself fled to a nearby hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach. Police arrested Newton for the shootings at the hospital.95

Newton denied that things were so cut and dry, and his subsequent imprisonment and trial thrust him into the national spotlight and asked the nation to consider the relationship between the forces of law and order and America’s black communities.

According to Newton, after a night out celebrating the end of his parole on October 27, he and a friend were in search of food when their car, borrowed from Newton’s girlfriend, was pulled over by Oakland police. Newton was not immediately suspicious, knowing that the Oakland police had a list of license plates on cars used by the Panthers and he and other BPP members were often pulled over on the pretense of some minor motor vehicle infraction.96 Because this was the norm, Newton carried law books in the vehicles he used, in order to call the police on the illegality of their searches. During this stop he remembered being ordered out of his vehicle and taking a law book with him.

When he went to open it and inform the officer that he had no reasonable cause to arrest him, the officer replied with a racial epithet, hit Newton, and shot him as he stumbled and tried to get up.97 From here, Newton remembered nothing until he awoke at the nearby

Kaiser hospital, where he alleged the police continued to abuse him and told him he

95 Associated Press, “Black Panthers Parade at Leader’s Murder Trial,” Toledo Blade, July 18, 1968, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19680718&id=kSZPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nAEEAAAAI BAJ&pg=7110,7144746. And Associated Press, “Huey Newton is Martyr of Panthers,” The Palm Beach Post, August 7, 1970, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19700807&id=yX8yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MrYFAAAAI BAJ&pg=1131,2885620. 96 Huey Newton with J. Herman Blake, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), Kindle Edition, 184. 97 Ibid., 186.

90 would either get the death penalty or rot in jail. Indeed, Newton remembered that he expected to die as a result of the altercation, whether by the gas chamber in a California prison or by a retaliatory act by a police officer on the street remained to be seen.98

The Panther’s newspaper saw more than the average arrest in the altercation as well. Reflecting on Newton’s shooting and arrest, The Black Panther reminded its readers that “On the night that the shooting occurred there were 400 years of oppression of black people by white people focused and manifested in the incident.”99 The paper also surmised that Oakland’s police force would have been “tickled pink” if they had killed

Huey rather than leaving the scene with one dead and one wounded officer.100 Thus, for

Newton and the Panthers Newton was shot and arrested because 400 years of American history had reified a white racist power structure that held a monopoly on the use of force, and they used that force to keep blacks subservient. One way to do this was to destroy the leadership of organizations pushing for a more equitable social order. By

October 1967, both founders of the BPP were in jail.101

Relations between the Panthers and the police were further strained, and the leadership of the party further damaged when, on April 6, 1968 Ray Brown’s anti-BPP force within the Oakland police department, stormed the office of Ramparts where

Eldridge Cleaver and others were working, and in the ensuing gun battle killed 17-year- old Panther Bobby Hutton and wounded Cleaver. The Panthers called this an

“assassination attempt” and accused the Oakland police of attempting to wipe out the

98 Ibid., 196. 99 Minister of Information, “Editorial: Huey Must be Set Free!,” The Black Panther 1, no. 6, November 23, 1967, 1. 100 Ibid., 3. 101 Seale was serving a six month sentence for charges relating to the Panther’s action in Sacramento. He accepted a deal for six months in jail in exchange for dropping the charges leveled against other Panthers in the matter. See Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, Kindle Edition, 170.

91 leadership of the BPP. They further reported that Hutton was surrendering when police shot him, and that the Panthers had five weapons to the policemen’s four dozen. This, they said, was murder.102 Yet, the violence of the day also led to jail time. Police arrested

David Hilliard, Charles Bursey, Wendell Wade, Terry Cotton, Donnell Lankford, Warren

Wells, and John L. Scott the same day, in the area of the shooting. They were held on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder and their bail was set at $40,000 each.103

Cleaver, in turn, was taken to the California Medical Facility—Vacaville, and immediately sent to the “hole,” that is, isolation.104 His bail was set at $63,000, but this became a non-issue when the California Adult Authority revoked his parole from his previous stint in prison.105

Arrests of key figures in the Irish republican movement did not occur as quickly as the BPP leadership was removed from the streets. Instead rank and file members of the

IRA and the larger republican movement bore the brunt of the earliest conflict-related arrests. Phillip McCullough was one such early arrestee. He came from a Catholic family in Belfast of nine children, five brothers and four sisters. At 15 he lied about his age and joined the British Army, becoming a paratrooper, and serving for approximately four years. In the early hours of one morning he was awoken in his bed in the Army camp and picked up by and questioned by the Special Investigation Branch of the British Army about the picture of the Aer Lingus plane he kept above his bed. During his interrogation he discovered that they objected to the poster because the plane had an Irish tricolor on its tail fin. When he told the investigators that that was the flag of his country they retorted

102 “Panthers Ambushed, One Murdered,” The Black Panther 2, no. 2, May 4, 1968, 4. 103 Ibid. 104 Churchill and Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers, 129. 105 Ibid; “Panthers Ambushed, One Murdered,” The Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 4.

92 that the union jack was the flag of his country. Upon his release from questioning,

McCullough started to question why the Special Investigation Branch had been so upset with the Aer Lingus poster and the tricolor, which prompted McCullough to begin reading about the conflict.106

It was, by this time, 1966, and the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was approaching. McCullough remembered feeling that “I have to do something to make a mark . . . in Belfast.” One night while he was on guard duty for an ammunition dump in his Army camp he stole plastic explosives and ammunition, brought them back to Belfast, and on Easter Sunday set a bomb off around the side of a local post office. He was arrested, he recalled, “within seconds” having been followed from the Army base.

Charged with the bombing and court martialed for his absence from the British Army,

McCullough would serve a year and a half in Crumlin Road Prison. There he met approximately 15 republicans who had been picked up on suspicion that the IRA was going to attempt some type of “display” for the anniversary of the Easter Rising, and began his republican career from within prison. His experience in prison was a quiet one.

McCullough was not yet affiliated with the IRA, but he remembered that the IRA men in the Crumlin Road adhered to the rules, and did not fight for political status.107

When conflict fully emerged in 1969 many of the initial arrests of IRA members occurred in England where volunteers went to procure arms for the renewed conflict, having given most of theirs up when Cathal Goulding took the IRA toward Marxist trade unionism.108 It was this IRA that McCullough joined following his release from prison.

106 Phil McCullough, Interview with the Author, November 2011. 107 Ibid. 108 O’Donnell, Special Category, Vol. 1, 14.

He first went to recruiting classes for the IRA and was sworn in to the organization after a few months. This despite the fact that, at the time, the IRA was “almost non-existent” in the city. He estimated 15-20 members. McCullough recalled that “they were very good in rhetoric and very good in theory, but when it came to actual action or something physical they were very absent in that.”109 When the conflict emerged, then, and the IRA was faced with a return to physical force nationalism, they required more weaponry. Two of the first IRA men to be arrested were Pat O’Sullivan and Conor Lynch, both from Cork.

When their trial began in London in September 1969 O’Sullivan refused to recognize the court, and Lynch said that he “had been instructed to say nothing.” 110 It was some of the first prison protest of the conflict.

The arrests of Newton, Cleaver, Seale, McCullough, O’Sullivan, and Lynch, were harbingers of an extended period of confrontation surrounding the prison systems of the

United States and Northern Ireland that was only beginning. The Panthers and IRA emerged in the latter half of the 1960s to challenge systems that were stacked against the communities from which they came. That challenge took the form of nascent moral polities which were designed to protect the community, oppose State oppression, and foster feelings of ethnic and racial pride. As each organization began to create its moral polity, however, the State martialed its security forces and prison system to resist. Each side of the conflict between State and dissenting group had at its heart a vision for how society should operate and these conflicting visions would come into stark conflict in and around the prisons in the years to come.

109 Phil McCullough, Interview with the Author, November 2011. 110 O’Donnell, Special Category, Vol. 1, 14, 15.

Chapter 2

“Jails of Babylon:” Repression and Expanding Moral Polities, 1969 -1971

Brian Faulkner’s Northern Irish government bowed to unionist pressure and their own feelings on the efficacy of imprisoning anti-State dissenters and reintroduced internment without trial on August 9, 1971. A little over five months later, 17-year-old

Joe Doherty was arrested without charge or trial and imprisoned on the HMS Maidstone, anchored in Belfast Lough. It was his first time on a boat.1 At the time, Doherty was a member of Na Fianna Éireann, a republican youth movement which had been proscribed by the unionist government when Ireland was partitioned, but Doherty was never charged with membership in a proscribed organization or any other crime. The security forces were concerned about Doherty’s activities with the Fianna, but only as far as they saw the

Fianna, generally, as a threat. As was true of all internees, he was never charged with anything. It was his background and beliefs that threatened the state and led to his imprisonment, not his actions.

By the summer of 1970 Safiya Bukhari was a full-time member of the Black

Panther Party. Before joining the Party she worked with the New York Chapter’s free breakfast for school children program which gave her a new appreciation for how the police treated the Party. “Everything was going along smoothly” Bukhari recalled, until the number of children coming to breakfast began to drop. She discovered that the attendance for the free breakfast program declined because police told neighborhood

1 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011.

96 parents that the Panthers were serving poisoned food. That incident convinced Bukhari to begin attending the BPP’s political education classes. Shortly, thereafter, she was arrested when she defended a Party member to two police officers who had stopped him for selling copies of The Black Panther on Forty-Second Street. On the way to the

Fourteenth Precinct one of the officers ranted about black people, and at the precinct, a male officer told the policewoman who searched Bukhari to be sure to wash her hands so that she would not catch anything. Released later that day, Bukhari went home, told her parents about the events of that day, and then returned to Harlem to join the Black

Panther Party.2

Doherty and Bukhari’s interactions with the State and police were indicative of the strategies employed by the Northern Irish and US governments to deal with the threats they saw in the IRA and BPP. Between 1969 and 1971 the governments of both the United States and Northern Ireland moved to undermine the Black Panther Party and the Irish Republican Army. This was accomplished in the United States via counterintelligence programs which made wide use of imprisonment and in Northern

Ireland via the reintroduction of internment. The arrests of large numbers of Panthers and

IRA volunteers came at a time when each was in a different stage of creating their moral polity. Between foundational documents which explained their alternative vision for society and their implementation of programs like free breakfast for school children, which made up for perceived deficiencies in the US government fulfilling its responsibilities to its citizens, the BPP’s moral polity was in an advanced stage. They

2 Bukhari, The War Before, 3-4.

97 were positioned against the established political structure, had developed clear arguments about the failings of the US government that led them to their position, and had positioned the BPP as the authority the people should trust and look to for social programs that the US government did not provide.

The moral polity of the IRA, by contrast, was still in its infancy. It remained limited both ideologically and in practice. This owed much to the fact that the IRA was newly re-emergent in 1969 and the PIRA was still establishing itself in the wake of the split. Both the OIRA and PIRA were opposed to the Northern Irish government and wanted to reunify Ireland, but they did not elucidate as clear an alternative vision for society as the Panthers did. The OIRA offered Marxism as an alternative, but they did not elucidate how this alternative might be achieved. Moreover, as the conflict began, the

OIRA moved back toward an older style of physical force republicanism. The PIRA espoused nationalist views, also turning to physical force to see these views implemented.

OIRA and PIRA volunteers and their communities believed that authorities and citizens had reciprocal responsibilities towards one another, but the IRA focused on the responsibility of protecting the citizenry and left the larger Catholic community to make up for other perceived deficiencies in the functioning of authorities.

The development of their moral polities affected the ways in which BPP members and IRA volunteers reacted to increasing imprisonment between 1969 and 1971.

Imprisoned Panthers worked to implement principles of the moral polity within prisons, and they used tenets of the moral polity to lobby for the release of Panther prisoners.

Moreover, the moral polity was in full view outside the prisons as Panther supporters lobbied for the release of BPP prisoners. Conversely, in Northern Ireland, it was not until

1971 and the introduction of internment that the IRA’s moral polity was strong enough to guide protest inside and outside the prisons.

I. Government Reactions to the IRA and BPP’s Moral Polities

The Northern Irish Government and the US government’s responses to the IRA and BPP were predicated on the belief that these groups each posed a grave danger to the stability of their nations. In 1968 J. Edgar Hoover told A New York Times reporter that he believed that the Black Panther Party was “the greatest [single] threat to the internal security of the country.”3 Similarly, on August 17, 1969, Northern Irish Prime Minister

James Chichester-Clark explained the recent disturbances in the province by first denying that government could have prevented the violence and riots by rerouting or cancelling the Apprentice Boys Parade. He then argued that the IRA’s chief of staff admitted that the IRA was providing leadership, helping with stones, petrol bombs, and “‘other traditional methods of defence.’”4 To this, the Prime Minster replied, “attempting to set people and property on fire hardly strikes me as a defensive technique, and I would remind you again that the trouble in Belfast began with firing upon the police at widely- scattered locations within a short period of time.” 5 For the Northern Irish government, the IRA were to blame for the violence in the six counties.

As the Panthers and IRA began to construct their moral polities, the governments of the United States and Northern Ireland moved to undermine these groups. In the

United States, the FBI targeted the Panthers via a targeted counterintelligence program.

3 Quoted in Churchill and Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO PAPERS,123. 4 James Chichester-Clark and the Northern Ireland Information Service, “Press Release: Speech by the Prime Minister, Major The Rt. Hon. J.D. Chichester-Clark, D.L., M.P., At a Press Conference in Stormont Castle To-Day, Sunday, 17th August, 1969,” August 17, 1969, CAB/9/B/312/1, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1969/proni_CAB-9-B-312-1_1969-08-17.pdf, 3. 5 Ibid.

Between 1968 and 1970 the FBI succeeded in driving a wedge into the central committee. In Northern Ireland, in 1971 the government returned to the oft-used tactic of internment. Representatives from each government alleged that their actions kept the public safe and that they were acting for the good of the nation. For the BPP and IRA, the result was an increased number of prisoners and difficulties in building their moral polities.

The FBI’s reaction to the Black Panther Party

The FBI’s reaction to the founding of the Black Panther Party was swift, and demonstrated that J. Edgar Hoover’s bureau had lost none of its animosity toward anyone who challenged the status quo during the earlier civil rights movement. Shortly after the party’s founding, FBI agents began circulating memos which asked for the “acceleration” of counterintelligence operations against the BPP. In late September 1968 Hoover agreed, writing to his divisions that “In view of the continued increase of violent activities on the part of the Black Panther Party (BPP), it is mandatory that the counterintelligence program against this party be accelerated.”6 It was not long before the FBI decided that jailing members of the BPP was one of the best ways to effectively silence them.

When applied to the Panthers, using incarceration to silence dissent was neither new for the police nor the FBI. Late in the summer of 1967 the Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia FBI field office wrote to Hoover to suggest that the tactics used by the

Intelligence Unit and Civil Disobedience Unit of the Philadelphia police department against the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) that summer might be useful in

6 Director, FBI to San Francisco, “Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Groups, Racial Intelligence, Black Panther Party,” September 30, 1968, 1, http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro- black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-06-of/view.

100 other counterintelligence operations. The Special Agent in Charge noted that when members of RAM were identified by police “They then became the target of harassment.” At this point, the police found “Any excuse for arrest” and took RAM members into custody. If the prisoner was released on bail the police simply rearrested targets “several times until they could no longer make bail.”7 The process whereby members of organizations deemed dangerous by the FBI were arrested on any and all charges in order to tie these men and women up in pre-trial incarceration and the courts, all while straining their funds by forcing them to pay exorbitant bail money or retain lawyers, has been described by chroniclers of COINTELPRO as “so pervasive a tactic that it is impossible to give a comprehensive summary of its use during the 1960s.”8

Moving into the 1970s prisons became both the end result of the FBI’s activities and a tool the FBI used to further their programs of counterintelligence. Following

Newton’s release from prison in July 1970 the New York Black Panther office received an anonymous letter from San Francisco. The author, who claimed to have been close to

Newton in prison, suggested that the BPP founder “may very well be working for pig

Reagon.[sic]” because Newton seemed to have more privileges and privacy than other prisoners. The letter ended with the warning, “Don’t tell Newton too much if he starts asking you questions—it might go right back to the pigs.”9 The letter, which did not originate with any of Newton’s fellow prisoners, but rather with the FBI, was sent at the

7 Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, South End Classics Edition (Cambridge: South End Press, 2002), 45-46. 8 Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, 45. 9 Anonymous to the New York Office, n.d. in David Hilliard: An Outstanding Target, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Reference Materials, Series 2, Box 49, Folder 2 “COINTELPRO [3 of 3],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 12.

101 same time that agents proposed sending another letter to David Hilliard in California.

This letter capitalized on the changes to the party proposed by Newton, asking what role prison had played in them, and attempting to draw out prejudice in Hilliard. In three short lines the FBI generated letter said, “I seen [sic] by last weeks [sic] paper that now

Panthers are supposed to relate to c…..s. Huey is wrong. Something must have happened to him in prison. Panthers got enough things to do in 10 point program and fighting for niggers without taking up with m….f….queers.”10 With these two letters the FBI, in the guise of a concerned Panther, insisted that prison had dangerously compromised the leader of the BPP. By suggesting that in prison Newton may have been turned into an informer, or by hoping to find and exploit homophobia in other Panther leaders, the FBI worked to sow suspicion and dissent among members of the Party. In the case of the second letter they hoped that that divisiveness would also sever ties between Panthers and the gay liberation movement. The letters posed a danger to the BPP’s moral polity by threatening to undermine its collective nature. If individuals, in this case, Newton, could be singled out as dangerous to the community, then that community was likely to reject that individual in order to preserve the well-being of the collective.

In 1970, the FBI began to exploit a growing divide within the BPP’s central committee between Eldridge Cleaver, who believed armed revolution and guerrilla warfare were the most effective means to change American society, and Chief of Staff,

David Hilliard and Huey Newton who, following the latter’s release from prison in 1970, moved the Party toward community survival programs and away from their earlier

10 Ibid.

102 rhetoric of armed self-defense.11 By 1970, Cleaver was in Algiers. After his parole was revoked in 1968, his lawyer petitioned for a writ of Habeas Corpus, and Superior Court

Judge Raymond J. Sherwin granted it, concluding, “‘Not only was there absence of cause for the cancellation of [Cleaver’s] parole, it was the product of a type of pressure unbecoming, to say the least, to the law enforcement paraphernailia [sic] of the state.’”

Nevertheless, the Adult Authority appealed the decision, and the state appellate court affirmed “‘the arbitrary power of the adult authority to revoke parole.’” When Cleaver was ordered to report to San Quentin Prison in November 1968, he chose exile instead.12

He went on to set up the international office of the Black Panther Party in Algiers. The

FBI was, therefore, able to take advantage of the physical distance and lack of face to face communication between the international section of the Party under Cleaver and

Hilliard and Newton who remained in California.

In May 1970 G.C. Moore issued an FBI memorandum that recommended “that the Counterintelligence Program against black extremists be continued.”13 The memo listed “some of the excellent results of counterintelligence action” used during the previous year. At the top of this list was the “friction” created “between Black Panther

Party (BPP) leader Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers and BPP Headquarters.” Agents created this rift via “a spurious letter concerning an internal dispute . . . sent to Cleaver, who accepted it as genuine. As a result, the International Staff of the BPP was neutralized when Cleaver fired most of its members.” Moore concluded his assessment with the news

11 The BPP created more than 60 “Community Survival Programs.” These included free breakfast for school children, liberation schools, Sickle Cell Anemia Research, free health clinics, Seniors against a Fearful Environment, the Angela Davis free food program, and the free busing to prisons program and free prison commissary programs, discussed in greater detail below. 12 Churchill and Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers, 129. 13 G.C. Moore to Mr. W.C. Sullivan, May 14, 1970, in Churchill and Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers, 149.

103 that “Bureau personnel received incentive awards from the Director for this operation.”14

Similar letters were passed from the Bureau to both sides of the divided Panthers into

1971, in order to ensure that the schism widened. The result was a splintering of the BPP from within and without, all at once. This manufactured feud undermined Panthers’ trust in one another and in the Party’s leadership which was disastrous for the Panthers’ moral polity. Moral polities are founded on the idea that trust should exist between authorities and ordinary people, and the rift between Cleaver and the Oakland-based Party leadership ensured that that trust evaporated.

As the FBI began to drive the Party apart, each faction accused the other of violating their moral polity. According to Kathleen Cleaver, a firm supporter of her then- husband Eldridge’s faction, David Hilliard purged rebellious Party members who disagreed with the Oakland based leadership, and “faced with mushrooming trials and arrests, Hilliard . . . attempted to keep order in the party at the expense of continuing revolutionary activity.”15 In effect, she argued that Hilliard was no longer looking to the good of the community, instead, protecting his own interests. Regional chapters, notably

New York, also moved away from the central leadership in Oakland by embracing the very cultural nationalism that the California Panthers discouraged.16 They too cited a lack of trust in the West Coast leadership. Conversely, Newton and Hilliard’s supporters argued that no revolution could be achieved if the people’s basic survival needs went unmet and that Cleaver’s faction was not looking to the survival of the people. Although

14 Ibid. 15Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969-1972),” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 236. 16 Ollie A. Johnson III, “Explaining the Demise of the Black Panther Party: The Role of the Internal Factors,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998) 400,401.

104 the evidence was different, the conclusion that their rival faction was ignoring the needs of the wider community was the same. Both factions alleged that their rivals were damaging the community at the heart of their moral polity. As we will see, the FBI’s subterfuge came at a time when the BPP was strengthening the moral polity they began to build in 1966.

Northern Irish Reactions to the IRA and the Outbreak of Violence

Unlike the FBI’s reaction to the Black Panther Party, which was immediate and wholly repressive, with little concern about whether larger black communities were hurt in the process, the Northern Irish government’s initial reaction to the violence of 1969 and the reemergence of the IRA was a mixture of conciliatory moves directed at Catholic communities coupled with repressive legislation directed against the IRA. Neither the conciliatory measures nor the new legislation stemmed the violence, and calls to reintroduce internment increased. When the Northern Irish government bowed to this pressure and began a new period of internment, they directed it entirely against the IRA and republicans, ignoring the reality of the violence, much as the FBI ignored the reality of the threat posed by the Panthers. Catholic populations understood the discriminatory nature of internment and deemed it a major violation of the moral polity. As a result, violence increased.

Altercations between police and civil rights marchers brought the longstanding question of the legitimacy of the security forces to the Catholic community to the fore once again in the late 1960s. The events of August 1969 (see chapter 1) convinced the

Northern Irish and British governments that something needed to change with regards to

105 policing and security in Northern Ireland, even while Chichester-Clark blamed the violence on the IRA. After all, Catholic and nationalist communities had made it clear that the RUC and Ulster Special Constabulary (B-Specials) were not their police forces, and the police seemed inclined to agree. Faced with a crisis of legitimacy on the streets— allegations of “fascism” amongst the government and security forces abounded in

Northern Ireland—the Minister of Home Affairs, Robert Porter, appointed a committee to examine the composition, recruitment, organization and structure of the RUC and Ulster

Special Constabulary and to recommend any changes that might be required “to provide for the efficient enforcement of law and order in Northern Ireland.”17 In short order, the committee, chaired by John Hunt, determined that the hated B-Specials should be discontinued and a new force, with a different name, created in its place. They further suggested that the RUC be made more representative of the population, that is, they argued, “vigorous efforts should be made to increase the number of Roman Catholic entrants into the force” and advised that the RUC be trained in crowd control.18 At the same time the Hunt committee recommended keeping the name of the RUC and stated in no uncertain terms that the RUC was, at that moment, below strength and its numbers should be increased in order make the force more effective.19 To Catholics and nationalists, then, the B-Specials were taken out of the combustible atmosphere of the six counties, but in their place was the recommendation for a new police force, which came with no guarantee that it would be qualitatively different from the B-Specials, and the

RUC was actually expanded. The disbanding of the B-Specials was a nod to the

17John Hunt, Robert Mark, and James Robertson “Report of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland” (Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1969), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/hunt.htm#1. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

106 legitimacy of the tenets of the moral polity. The Hunt Committee acknowledged that trust had to exist between the police and the populace, that is, that a reciprocal relationship existed whereby the police provided protection and ordinary citizens then gave them their trust and respect. Disbanding the B-Specials indicated that this relationship had completely broken down, and the government recognized that fact.

Yet, governments under Terence O’Neill and then James Chichester-Clarke, from

1969 to 1970 passed all manner of legislation designed to curtail the violence, without acknowledging government failures, particularly in relation to protecting Catholic populations. 1969 saw The Protection of the Person and Property Act (Northern Ireland).

In 1970 came the Criminal Justice (Temporary Provisions) Act (Northern Ireland), the

Explosives Act (Northern Ireland), and the Prevention of Incitement to Hatred Act

(Northern Ireland). These acts penalized acts of intimidation, set minimum sentences for certain offences related to the conflict, regulated the making, possessing and selling of explosives, and set penalties for inciting hatred, respectively.20 None acknowledged the complaints that led to the offenses in the first place.

Additionally, none of this legislation acknowledged complexity of the violence, especially the fact that security forces played a large role in perpetuating the conflict.

Compared to the violence that was to come, 1969 and 1970 saw relatively little violence.

Sixteen people were killed during the conflict in 1969, and 26 more were killed in 1970.21

The RUC was responsible for the most deaths in 1969 (7), and if the RUC, B-Specials, and British Army killings are taken together they account for 10 or 62.5% of the 16

20 For more information on these acts see “Government Reports, and Acts of Parliament, related to Northern Ireland” at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/index.html; and “Acts of the Northern Ireland Parliament,” at www.legislation.gov.uk/apni. 21 Malcolm Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/.

107 deaths that year. Republicans, by contrast, killed 3. In 1970, the IRA (both Official and

Provisional) was responsible for 16 of the 26 deaths (61.5%) while the British Army killed 5 (19.23%). Yet, these numbers are slightly misleading because 6 of the 16 people killed by the IRA were in or connected to the IRA and died when a bomb exploded prematurely.22 The legislation passed by successive Northern Irish governments took no account of the fact that security forces dominated the first year of the conflict, and did not view the second year of the conflict through that lens.

It was not until 1971 that the violence escalated considerably, but this escalation was far greater after the introduction of internment. Between January 1 and August 8,

1971, 30 people were killed. The OIRA and PIRA were responsible for 20 deaths which included 1 man killed in a feud between the two wings of the IRA and one man killed in a premature bomb explosion. The British Army killed 7 in that time.23 During these months, the Unionist call for the reintroduction of internment grew louder. For these men and women, the way to return the North to normalcy was to use the Special Powers Act.

In March 1971, following the IRA’s killing of three soldiers in Belfast, 4,000 shipyard workers staged a march, demanding internment for members of the IRA.24 In the early hours of August 9, 1971, the Northern Irish government, now under Prime Minister Brian

Faulkner, gave in to unionist pressure. Using the authority granted under the Special

Powers Act, Faulkner launched Operation Demetrius wherein the British Army entered republican and nationalist areas pulling men from their beds to be interned without trial.

The more than 300 men arrested that night were republicans, socialists, and civil rights

22 Ibid. Two of those who died in the premature explosions were not IRA members themselves, but related to the IRA man in whose house one of the bombs that exploded prematurely was being made. 23 Ibid. Loyalists killed 1 during these months, and a further 2 people died by unknown sources/accident. 24 Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789-2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 502.

108 activists.25 Between August 9 and December 31, 1971 141 more people were killed. The

OIRA and PIRA were responsible for 74 of those deaths and the British Army for 37 more. The UVF killed 17 during these months, and the RUC killed 1.26

The escalation in violence reflected the anger caused by the one sided nature of internment. Defending its implementation, Brian Faulkner insisted that every person arrested was “a terrorist or member of the IRA.” He maintained, “We are, quite simply, at war with the terrorist, and in a state of war many sacrifices have to be made . . . We are acting not to suppress freedom but to allow the overwhelming majority of our people to enjoy freedom.”27 These “terrorists,” did not include a single Loyalist until 1973.28 The violence of 1971, then, must be viewed as a reaction to a government who ignored the culpability of security forces and blamed a community that it historically treated as second class citizens for the violence and disturbances across the province. This only helped the IRA whose argument that the government could not be reformed, and a new society had to be created, resonated in more quarters than it had prior to August 1971.

The OIRA and PIRA both offered themselves as the solution to this ill treatment by the government. They would create the moral polity that Catholic citizens called for.

Recruitment for the IRA soared.

25 Irish Anti-Internment League, London, “Irish Anti-Internment League,” n.d., Internment Box, Northern Ireland Political Collection, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Hereafter The Northern Ireland Political Collection will be indicated with the acronym “NIPC.” 26 Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths.” Non-specific Republican groups killed 3 after August 9, 1971, Soar Eire killed 1, non-specific Loyalists killed 3, and 5 people were killed by unknown sources/accident. 27 Suzanne Breen, “Dawn of New Horror—the Experience of Internment: The Men Behind the Wire,” The Irish News, August 8, 1991. Internment Box. NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 28 Fionnuala O’Connor, “History of Fourth Period of Internment, Prison Ship,” The Irish Times, December 12, 1975, Internment Box, NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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In this manner, both the US and Northern Irish governments violated the moral polities of the IRA and BPP in their early interactions with these groups. The FBI drove a wedge between leaders of the BPP, dividing the Party between allegiances, and sowing distrust between the factions that emerged. The trust between leaders and the rank and file of the organization, crucial to the Panthers’ moral polity, began to erode, making it more difficult to build the moral polity that the Panthers envisioned. In Northern Ireland, the government made a small effort to restore the trust the Catholic community lacked in the security forces, but ultimately destroyed that trust further by failing in their reciprocal responsibilities to their Catholic citizens. The initial violation of the BPP’s moral polity would lead to further violations and the weakening of the organization, but since the

Northern Irish government violated the moral polity of the Catholic community beyond the IRA, the IRA would be able to translate this violation into gains for themselves and the moral polity they were building.

Arrests

As internment suggests, central to the FBI and Northern Irish government’s violation of the BPP and IRA’s moral polities was an increase in arrests of members of these two groups. Strictly speaking, arrests might be countenanced in a moral polity if the authorities and people typically fulfilled their obligations to one another, and the arrested person somehow violated the moral polity. In the case of Panthers sabotaged by

COINTELPRO and republicans arrested with neither charge nor trial, these conditions could not be met. The governments of the US and Northern Ireland had not fulfilled their obligations to Black Americans and Catholics, nor could it be proved that arrested

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Panthers and internees had violated the moral polity. Additionally, arrests not only disrupted the process of creating the moral polity by removing people from the streets, in the US and Northern Ireland they created a second class citizen out of the arrestee, a status which the moral polity abhorred.

The reintroduction of internment was particularly problematic because it was not a surprise to the republican leadership. Reading the writing on the wall, and possibly tipped off to the coming arrests, most high ranking republicans went on the run to avoid the sweeps they suspected were coming. To make matters worse, the British Army conducted their round-up based on lists compiled by the RUC, which were outdated and in many instances, simply incorrect.29 Far from incapacitating the IRA, the introduction of internment enraged the Catholic and nationalist communities who saw their sons, brothers, and uncles dragged away to unknown locations by the army.

Although the Prime Minister declared that everyone arrested was a member of the

IRA, only in some cases was this true. Of the roughly 340 men arrested on August 9,

1971 approximately 80 were members of the OIRA or PIRA. The rest were members of the People’s Democracy and other civil rights activists, trade unionists, republican sympathizers, and men who had been involved in previous IRA campaigns. In short, as

Faulkner admitted to Edward Heath, the internees were not necessarily “gunmen or IRA men but would have called meetings to protest against internment.”30 This was a clear violation of the moral polity because the one sided nature of the arrests gave one community a superior position to the other. By initially avoiding loyalist arrests

29 Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace (Boulder, Colorado: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1997), 126. 30 Breen, “Dawn of New Horror.”

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Faulkner’s internment showed clear preference for that community, further dividing the

Catholic community from the government.

Operation Demetrius and later internment raids did net some IRA men, but the result was not what Faulkner and his government sought. One of the men picked up by the army on August 9, was Phil McCullough who would remain imprisoned under internment until 1975.31 Joe Doherty’s experience on the Maidstone similarly points to the fact that over time, more IRA men, and, eventually, women would experience internment.32 Because of the overtly political nature of internment, however, Faulkner’s government effectively made the plight of IRA prisoners more sympathetic to men and women who supported civil rights, but were initially hesitant to support the IRA in any sphere. With internment, the IRA became the organization more likely than the government to protect the interests of Catholic communities.

As soon as reports began to emerge from the internees, themselves, it became apparent that the prisoners encountered violence within various stages of the Northern

Irish justice system and were being denied many of their rights. The men interned in

Long Kesh, where all internees would eventually be sent, lived with 80 or 90 of their fellows in what Father Denis Faul described as “leaking tin huts in cages 70 x 30.”33 Faul also maintained that the prisoners were being beaten and harassed “in an organized way,” while in the cages of Long Kesh.34 Internees alleged this type of treatment from the very first days of internment. Aside from beatings, arrested men waiting to be taken to

31 Phil McCullough, Interview with Author, November 2011. 32 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011. 33 Father Denis Faul, “Repression of the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland: 20 Points Against Internment,” c. 1972, Internment Box, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 34 Ibid.

112 internment camps told of soldiers forcing them to sing “God Save the Queen,” crawl on all fours, sit in silence, and even clean toilets with their bare hands. The soon-to-be- internees complained that the soldiers seemed intent on humiliating them.35 Internees’ complaints pointed to reciprocal obligations that the security forces were not fulfilling, thereby violating the moral polity. Internees and their supporters maintained that the prisoners were entitled to accommodation that did not put their health in jeopardy, treatment that was not degrading, and respect for their political views. Prisoners maintained that none of this was afforded to them.

For a few internees their experiences after arrest were far worse. Some were blindfolded and forced into helicopters. Without the knowledge that the helicopter only ascended a few feet off the ground, the terrified men were then pushed out the door.36 For

14 men the terror was more enduring. Representatives of the British Army chose P.J.

McClean, Frank McGuigan, Kevin Hannaway, Joeseph Clarke, James Auld, Michael

Donnelly, Michael Montgomery, Gerry McKerr, Brian Turley, Patrick McNally, Sean

McKenna, Patrick Shivers, and later Liam Rodgers, and Liam Shannon from among the internees, put hoods over their heads and took them away to use as test subjects for sensory deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques. McClean described being hooded, and subjected to the aforementioned helicopter trick. Still hooded, he was then driven to a nearby building and subjected to a medical examination and dressed in a too-large boiler suit. Following his examination, he was taken to another room and forced to stand in a stress position with his feet spread wide and his arms extended with his fingers pressed against a wall. When he attempted to flex his arms he was beaten. As far

35 Breen, “Dawn of New Horror.” 36 Breen, “Dawn of New Horror.”

113 as McClean could remember later he collapsed several times only to be beaten into standing up again. All the while he heard a constant droning noise which sounded to him like an electric saw. This seemed to go on “indefinitely” but when he consulted with the other men subjected to the treatment they estimated it went on for two days and nights.

From here, McClean endured periods of standing, hooded against the wall alternated with the hood being ripped off to bright lights and demands that he answer series of questions.

When he could not or would not answer the questions he was sent to the room with the droning noise. Many times he felt he was going insane. Finally, the men conducting this terrifying scenario told him his ordeal was over, but he didn’t believe them, thinking it was “another trick,” and feeling “Still uneasy—still worried—still alone.”37

The experience had lasting effects on the 14 who came to be called “the hooded men.” A Psychiatrist who examined Séan McKenna and James Auld, expressed concern to Northern Ireland Secretary of State William Whitelaw, in 1972, that “both suffered the stresses of ‘interrogation in depth’” and now “have been shaken to the core and it is with increasing difficulty that they stave off a fear of total disintegration.”38 McKenna and

Patrick Shivers died in 1975. The others all reported various resultant disabilities ranging from high blood pressure to Carcinoma of the skin. Thirteen of the men were awarded damages from the British courts between $24,000 to $36,000 in 1974 and 1975.39 For the hooded men, the money did not erase the terror they experienced. PJ McClean

37 PJ McClean, “Internment, Northern Ireland: Report on the Arrest, Interrogation, and Treatment of Frank McGuigan, Belfast; Kevin Hannaway, Belfast; Michael Donnelly, Derry; Joe Clarke, Belfast; Jim Auld, Belfast; Michael Montgomery, Derry; Gerry McKerr, Lurgan; Brian Turley, Armagh; Patrick McNally, Armagh; John McKenna, Newry,” n.d. The Association for Legal Justice, Internment Box, NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 38 G.B. Plunkett to William Whitelaw, Received May 1, 1972, NIO/5/1204A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 39 John McGuffin, “afterward” in The Guinepigs,1981 http://www.irishresistancebooks.com/guineapigs/afterword.htm.

114 maintained, “if someone offered me $240,000 to go through it again, I wouldn’t take it.”40 Despite the costs, the British Army had achieved two things via the hooded men.

As they had sought, they had new information on sensory deprivation and possible means to deal with people they considered terrorists. They had also successfully created a climate of fear in the Catholic nationalist community; step out of line and not only were you subject to internment without trial for your political orientation, you were in danger of being the subject of cruel experiments.

The case of the hooded men was a flagrant violation of the moral polity. Violence might be employed in a moral polity, but to be justified the moral polity has to be violated. The hooded men were not charged with any crime, and most were not members of the IRA, although some came from republican backgrounds. Séan McKenna was arrested with his 17 year old son of the same name, because the British Army had a paper that said “Séan McKenna,” and they didn’t know which man was supposed to be arrested.41 After being subjected to this cruel experiment, they were incarcerated, still without trial. Not only did the governments of Britain and Northern Ireland fail to live up to their responsibility to protect citizens, the British actively hurt fourteen men by performing sensory deprivation experiments on them.

Across the Atlantic, the Panthers had their own issues with the American justice system. In the United States, rather than using the prison system for overtly political purposes, as the Northern Irish government had done with internment, the US government made prisons one possible last step in the counterintelligence program levied

40 Ibid. 41 Susan McKay, “The Torture Centre: Northern Ireland’s ‘Hooded Men,’” The Irish Times, July 25, 2015, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/the-torture-centre-northern-ireland-s-hooded-men- 1.2296152.

115 against the BPP. This was using the prisons politically to get people the FBI deemed to be dangers to US society because of their political beliefs off the streets, but it was a quieter method of silencing dissent than internment without trial. The FBI and cooperative police forces across the country engineered situations to make it appear that criminal behavior had taken place, thereby justifying arrest and imprisonment. This further undermined the BPP’s attempts to build a moral polity because key activists were removed from the people and criminalized at the same time.

One of the most visible cases of prisons being used to undermine the moral polity of the Panthers began in the pre-dawn hours of April 2-3, 1969 when police raided the apartments of members of the New York BPP, arresting 21 men and women, who held leadership positions with the New York Panthers. They were quickly indicted and charged with conspiracy to murder New York City policemen, blow up five department stores, a police precinct, six railroad rights-of-way, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens.42

The Panthers concerned denied the charges, with Zayd-Malik Shakur incredulously asking, “I mean, what would the Party gain by blowing up flowers? Flower Power!” He further questioned why they would detonate an explosive in a place like a department store which might be filled with other black people.43 Nevertheless, they were taken into custody and the Judge set bail prohibitively high at $100,000 each.44 Exorbitant bail was a central component of the FBI’s strategy for undermining groups like the Panthers, and because this strategy was used for political reasons, it undermined the Panthers’ moral

42 Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 284. 43 Zayd-Malik Shakur, “Pig Conspiracy Against N.Y. Panther Twenty-One,” The Black Panther 2, no. 30, April 20, 1969, 10. 44 Section Leader for Harlem, “New York Pigs Move to Destroy Panthers,” The Black Panther 2, no.30, April 20, 1969, 11.

116 polity which called for the freeing of all black prisoners based on the racism that put them in prison in the first place.

Where the open political nature of internment in Northern Ireland garnered sympathy for the IRA’s moral polity, the covert criminalization of Panthers by the FBI allowed BPP chapters to be destroyed with little protest from outside the Party. Police and the Bureau applied the “any excuse” for arrest principal so successfully in San Diego that they annihilated the party there with a stunning rapidity. When the San Diego FBI field office discovered that local Panthers were following one another in cars in an attempt to discover informers within their ranks in February 1969, they notified the San

Diego police and encouraged them to follow the Panthers in order to arrest them for violations of local motor vehicle code laws.45 A month later, field office agents were busy providing the San Diego police with information which enabled them to justify raids on the Panthers “in the hope of establishing possession of marijuana and dangerous drug charge [against two BPP members]”46 The nail in the coffin of the San Diego BPP was finally sealed when the San Diego field officers passed word to the police that five members of the party lived in the local Party headquarters and were “‘having sex orgies on almost a nightly basis.’”47 This was enough to allow the police to look deeper into the activities of the Panthers whereby they subsequently discovered two outstanding traffic warrants for one of the San Diego party members, which was, in turn, enough to justify a raid on Panther headquarters. On November 20, 1969 police raided the San Diego BPP

45 United States Senate, “Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities,” Washington US Government Print Office, 1976, https://archive.org/details/finalreportofsel03unit, 220-221. 46 Ibid., 221-222. 47 Ibid., 221.

117 headquarters, arrested six Panther leaders and seized three shotguns, one rifle, one tear gas canister and four gas masks. Eight days later, the six remaining members of the San

Diego chapter were summoned to Los Angeles and told by Panthers there that because of the recent problems the San Diego chapter was being dissolved.48 In less than a year the

San Diego police, working in conjunction with the FBI, eliminated the Black Panther

Party in that city. These actions went beyond simply damaging the Panthers’ moral polity. In San Diego the FBI and Police eliminated the organization entirely.

Across the nation, between 1969 and 1971 the situation with regard to the prisons and justice system became more severe for the BPP. Terry Collins wrote an article that appeared in The Black Panther in March 1969 that argued that there was a new type of political prisoner in the United States, one who was jailed for developing and putting a political theory into practice. Huey Newton was one such political prisoner, he said. So too was Panther, George Murray, who was arrested for speaking at an illegal rally and inciting a riot after he spoke at San Francisco State College in 1968. When attorney

Charles Garry helped free Murray, police began to follow him constantly, finally arresting him for having a gun in his car in violation of his earlier parole. Collins argued that while “George Murray was jailed as a probation violator without a trial of any kind,” in reality, “George’s crime was that he had a political theory that he put into practice and was influencing too many people.”49 In September 1970, the trial of the Panther 21 began in New York. One month later the trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins began in New

Haven, Connecticut. They were accused of involvement in the 1969 murder of fellow

48 Ibid., 221. 49 Terry Collins, “Minister of Education George Murray A Political Prisoner,” The Black Panther 2, no. 25, March 9, 1969, 2.

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Panther, Alex Rackley for his alleged role as a police informant. These Panthers were all imprisoned in the lead up to, and during, their trials, and together with other imprisoned

Panthers would encounter the prison system via the lens of their moral polity.

II. Moral Polities and Prisons

Panthers and Prisons

Between 1969 and 1971 the Panthers remained vocally opposed to the US government and police forces across the country. On January 15, 1969, the front page of the paper denounced the “pig power structure” which it declared was “intensifying” their

“efforts to suppress the will of the black community.”50 The summer of 1970 saw the paper report on the “fascist pigs” of the San Diego Police department and their attacks on black women and children, and as 1971 wound to a close the paper insisted that the US government employed “many efforts and . . . millions of dollars” in their efforts to destroy the party.51 Examples such as these could be found in nearly every issue of the party’s newspaper and populated most of the articles contained therein. From outside the prisons, authors of the Panther paper had no reservations about labeling the US government and justice system as racist and openly hostile to black Americans. This formed the basis of the Panthers’ moral polity as it related to prisons. The justice system failed in its responsibilities to black Americans and was underserving of the trust of those same Americans.

The Black Panther newspaper reflected the increasing number of prisoners during these years. In January 1969, the paper ran a variety of stories, commenting on US

50 Huey Newton, “Huey’s Statement on Stop the Draft Week,” and the Black Panther Party, “Nationwide Harassment of Panthers by the Pig Power Structure,” The Black Panther 2, no. 20, January 15, 1969, 1. 51 “Pigs Attack Women and Children Too,” The Black Panther 4, no. 28, June 13, 1970, 4 and “State of Repression,” The Black Panther 7, no. 18, December 25, 1971, 17.

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Imperialism, protests by Native Americans and Mexican Americans, the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict, and even declared 1969, “the year of the Panther.”52 By January

1970, an increasing number of stories and advertisements in the paper were written by or about the party’s political prisoners. The January 3 edition alone carried three ads in support of prisoners, poetry written by prisoners, and twelve articles either by or about them.53 The next week, the front page of the January 10 edition carried a picture of

Bobby Seale, captioned with a quotation which stated, “To be a Revolutionary is to be an

Enemy of the state. To be arrested for this struggle is to be a political prisoner,” and was attributed to “Bobby Seale Chairman Black Panther Party, Political Prisoner.” That issue of the paper had another ten articles by or about prisoners and one more advertisement for Huey Newton’s defense fund.54

As numbers of Panther prisoners increased, the Party began to form branches of the Party within prison walls. One such chapter formed at the Louisiana State

Penitentiary (Angola). Angola’s BPP chapter was formed by Herman Wallace, Albert

Woodfox, and a member of the New Orleans Panthers, Ronald Ailsworth. In 1970, while imprisoned in the New Orleans Parish Prison Woodfox and Wallace each separately met several members of the New Orleans BPP chapter, including Ailsworth. Within the next year all were transferred to Angola where Ailsworth brought Woodfox and Wallace into contact with one another. The trio began to make contact with other politically conscious

52 The Black Panther, 2, No. 19, January 4, 1969; The Black Panther, 2, No. 20, January 15, 1969; The Black Panther, 2, No.21, January 25, 1969. 53 The Black Panther, 4, no. 5, January 3, 1970. 54 The Black Panther, 4, no. 6: 1-20, January 10, 1970.

120 inmates and finally wrote to the Central Committee in Oakland, California, and were granted permission to establish a BPP chapter within Angola in 1971.55

In California, a chapter of the Party opened in San Quentin in early 1971. That chapter formed around prison organizer, George Jackson and grew to 39 members during the course of the year.56 They conceived of themselves as political prisoners due to the fact that they had been arrested as “revolutionaries shooting it out with the pigs, revolutionaries being harassed for selling papers, revolutionaries liberating the goods that have been extorted from the community,” and these arrests meant that “many brothers are being locked up in the numerous prisons and jails of Babylon.”57 The fact that the

Panthers were political prisoners meant that they were entitled to certain treatment, namely, they argued that they ought to be treated according to the Geneva Convention’s mandate for the treatment of political prisoners and prisoners of war.58 This was a reciprocal relationship of the moral polity. If Panthers were going to serve time for the liberation struggle of their people, then they believed that they should be treated as political prisoners or prisoners of war.

Moreover, the conception of the United States as the Biblical city of Babylon, which fell under the weight of its own corruption and imperialism, is significant.

Historian Robert O. Self has noted that the BPP began using the term in 1969, warning

55 Herman Wallace, “The Rise and Fall of the Angola Prison Chapter of the Black Panther Party,” available http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Political_Prisoners/pdf/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Angola_Prison_Chap ter_of_the_Black_Panther_Party.pdf; Robert Hillary King, From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King (Oakland, California: PM Press, 2012), 158-159. 56 Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 374; Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 136. 57 Black Panther Party San Quentin Branch, “The San Quentin Branch of the Black Panther Party Opens,” The Black Panther 6, no. 5, February 27, 1971, 11. 58 Ibid.

121 that change must come to the US or Americans would suffer the same fate as the

Babylonians. In this conception the BPP borrowed not only from black religious traditions but also from Jamaican Rastafarians who saw Babylon as representative of

Western Capitalism and imperialism.59 According to Self

In the hands of the Panthers, Babylon acquired a new rhetorical provocativeness;

‘in the concrete inner city jungles of Babylon’ men and women would join

together ‘to cast aside their personal goals and aspirations, and begin to work

unselfishly together.’ So Babylon stood for both, the inevitability of imperialism’s

demise and for the possibility that something better might be erected in its place,

something more democratic. . . . In Babylon black power advocates found an

urban referent through which to conceive the plight of the black nation and evoke

the essential realities of the postwar American city: poverty amidst wealth,

national economic growth with urban decline, and the hardening of apartheid

within the liberal state.60

Babylon also stood for the antithesis to the Panthers’ moral polity. Babylon was undemocratic, repressive, and individual. The Panthers positioned themselves against this and crafted their moral polity to hold the contradictory values of radical democracy, liberation, and cooperation for the good of the collective. The San Quentin branch of the

Party shared these values, drawing the moral polity into San Quentin prison.

Despite their rhetoric casting the United States as Babylon and emphasizing the fascist nature of the US state, Black Panther prisoners often attempted to use the US

59 Robert O Self, “American Babylon : Black Panthers and Proposition 13,” Race, Poverty, and the Environment 15, no. 2 (2008): 50–53, 50. 60 Ibid.

122 justice system to secure release and better treatment for their inmates, especially in instances where no BPP chapter existed in the prison. It may seem surprising that they would put so much stock in the US legal system, which they asserted was designed to oppress them, and had the potential to undermine their own moral polity, but in

Revolutionary Suicide, Huey Newton explained that the Panthers’ use of the justice system was primarily a means to attain a political forum. Using his own trial, which began in 1967, as an example, Newton argued, “The ideological and political significance of the trial was of primary importance,” saving his own life was secondary, and, in any case, not likely.61 Newton hoped, instead, that his trial would draw attention to police brutality and demonstrate “that the other kinds of violence poor people suffer— unemployment, poor housing, inferior education, lack of public facilities, the inequity of the draft—were part of the same fabric.”62 Looking back at his trial, he was then able to declare, “for the Black Panther Party, the goal of the trial was not primarily to save my life, but to organize the people and advance their struggle.”63

Newton’s trial had the desired effect. The Party organized around their imprisoned founder, publicizing the Party’s ideals, though they peppered their theory with a healthy dose of the simple message, “Free Huey.” David Hilliard, recalled that after Newton’s arrest he and Newton’s brother Melvin borrowed “a psychedelically painted double-deck bus from one of the local white political communes [and cruised] the streets blaring, ‘Free Huey! Free Huey! Can a black man get a fair trial in America—even

61 Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, Kindle Edition, 200. 62 Ibid., 201. 63 Ibid.

123 if he was defending his life against a white policeman?’”64 From this beginning grew a loose coalition who agitated for Newton’s release via mass demonstrations. The “Free

Huey” campaign united Panthers, their sympathizers, family, friends, and white leftists and became a statement recognizable around the country and among interested circles around the world.

The campaign to free Huey drew thousands to rallies. Between five and seven thousand supporters came to a rally on February 17, 1968, and a rally the next day boasted similar numbers. During the beginning of his trial, on July 15, 1968 five thousand people demonstrated in support of Newton, and that number doubled at a protest for Newton’s release when his case was appealed in May of the next year.65 The

Black Panther advertised the 1969 rally stating, “Federal Judge Alfonso J. Zirpoli has set

May 1st for a hearing to make the Reagan-Alito power structure show why it will not release the Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton on bail which Huey has a right to, while pending his appeal.”66 Here was the call of the moral polity. The Panthers recognized that the authorities denied Newton a right, and since they could not create a program of their own to grant bail, they organized protests in an attempt to force the authorities to live up to their responsibilities to Newton.

When Huey Newton was sentenced to prison time, he attempted to better conditions for all inmates, bringing the communal aspect of the moral polity into the

64David Hilliard and Lewis Cole,: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2001), 3. 65 Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “Set our Warriors Free: The Legacy of the Black Panther Party and Political Prisoners,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 418-419. And David Hilliard, ed. The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1967-1980 (New York: Atria Books, 2007), 10. 66 Black Panther Party, “Demonstration to Free Huey,” The Black Panther, Vol. 3, no. 2, May 4, 1969 in The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 1967-1980, ed. David Hilliard (New York: Atria Books, 2007), 23.

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California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo. There, Newton refused to perform the work assigned to prisoners on the grounds that inmates were not paid minimum wage. Without prison assigned work, he spent up to 23 hours a day in his cell, instead.67 Newton’s goal of a minimum wage, was not revolutionary, but it pointed to the reciprocities the Panthers saw as essential to the relationship between the people and authorities. If people labored, the Panthers argued that they should be remunerated fairly for that work. Newton brought this idea into prison where such reciprocities did not exist. On its own this protest did little to change the larger prison regime of which Newton was a part, but he continued, throughout his incarceration to refuse to work, upholding this principle of the Panthers’ moral polity.

During his incarceration Newton also attempted a technique similar to Cleaver’s request for a writ of Habeas Corpus, although he did not go through the official channels of applying for the writ. Rather, in early 1970 Newton wrote to his lawyers requesting they be present during his next meeting with the California Adult Authority to consider his parole. He told his legal team that he wanted “a written statement of all reasons why I am on Lock-Up, including a separate specification of each reason and a statement of whether the said reason is that I refuse, on grounds of constitutional principle, to work for less than the minimum wage, and until all inmates receive minimum wage.”68 He instructed that his letter asking for these reasons be put in his “permanent personal parole file,” along with the written statement of reasons, his reactions to the reasons given for being in solitary confinement, and his attorneys’ reactions to that document. Finally, he

67 Associated Press, “Huey Newton is Martyr of Panthers, The Palm Beach Post, August 7, 1970. 68 Huey Newton to Garry, Drefus, McTernan, and Brotsky, February 24, 1970, The Black Panther, 4 no. 14, March 7, 1970, 7.

125 requested that all of those documents be considered by the Adult Authority when deciding on his parole.69 Although this was not a formal writ of Habeas Corpus, Newton sought the same end—a justification for his imprisonment and the use of solitary confinement against him, which he hoped would prove that he was being discriminated against for political reasons and should, therefore, be granted parole. The need for such an explanation indicated that Newton viewed his imprisonment through the lens of a moral polity in which there must be a fair reason for imprisoning a person, and that reason must not be influenced by racism or prejudice.

Newton’s prison organizing became common amongst Panther prisoners and was often cited as a reason that warders felt threatened by BPP prisoners. In his time in prison, George Jackson incurred 47 write-ups in his prison file. Looking back over the infractions, Huey Newton noted that they showed an increasing political awareness from the incarcerated Jackson. In 1962 he was involved in an altercation with prison guards who sought to stop Jackson and two other inmates from “punishing” a man who stabbed a black prisoner during a racially motivated fight. In 1967 Jackson’s file noted involvement in a prison work strike and fighting with white strikebreakers. It also criticized Jackson for refusing an order and assaulting a guard. This, Newton attributed to the fact that Jackson was protecting a white inmate who had testified on behalf of black prisoners in a court case, from other white prisoners who sought to harm him. For these and other actions, deemed disruptive by the guards, Jackson was sent to isolation.

69 Ibid.

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From 1964 to 1971 he spent over six years in isolation in Soledad Prison’s O or X wings and San Quentin’s euphemistically named adjustment center.70

That prisoners, often in trouble for organizing in prison, or possessing or creating political materials, were frequently put into isolation indicated that these were behaviors that prison guards wanted to eradicate. Punishing prison organizing and education violated the BPP’s moral polity which called for both “education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society,” and “justice.”71 Explaining their demand for justice, the Panthers’ 10 point program drew from the American Declaration of

Independence and the thought of John Locke and indicated that where a government became corrupt it was the duty of the citizens to overthrow it if it could not be reformed.

This was, effectively, the goal of prison organizing. With the violation of the moral polity, Jackson was free to protest. In this case, because he was left in isolation, Jackson concluded that guards were trying to break him, which, in turn, led him to believe that parole was not going to be granted to him. In 1970 he simply stopped attending his Adult

Authority Hearings.72 Any faith he might once have possessed in the system was gone.

He knew he had been singled out as dangerous and would, therefore, continue to be subjected to solitary confinement and the excesses of the prison regime because he would not stop his prison agitation.

The events of August 21, 1971 silenced Jackson’s prison activism, but shed light on how the BPP saw the moral polity operating within prisons. When all was said and

70 Huey Newton, “War Without Terms: The Death of George Jackson,” 1978, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Huey P. Newton Papers, Manuscripts, Series 1, Box 51, Folder 6, “War Without Terms 1978,” Stanford University Special Collections and Archives, Stanford, California,10, 14-16. 71 “What We Want Now! What We Believe,” The Black Panther, May 15, 1967, 3. 72 Newton, “War Without Terms,” 15.

127 done that afternoon six men lay dead at San Quentin Prison. In the approximately 20 minute altercation between guards and prisoners, including George Jackson, precipitated by an alleged escape attempt, inmates killed warders Frank DeLeon, Jere P. Graham, and

Paul E. Krasenes and fellow prisoners John Lynn and Ronald L. Kane. Prison guards then shot George Jackson as he and fellow Panther, Johnny Spain ran across the yard towards the wall.73 The Coroner’s Report noted that at about 3:00 PM on August 21, Jackson was killed by a gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a homicide.74 The Marin

County Pathologist determined that Jackson was shot in the back with the bullet exiting through the top of his skull.75

Yet, questions abounded as to exactly what transpired within San Quentin prison that day, and reports by prisoners and guards varied greatly. Jackson, himself, wrote out a

“last will and testament” which he maintained, “cancels all other previous wills.” In it he left his belongings and any funds he possessed to the Black Panther Party and requested that a trust fund be set up for his sister, Penny and her son, Theotis McKenzie.76 In a statement to the press after Jackson’s death, Huey Newton suggested that Jackson’s death was part of an escape attempt, and that an ideologically driven prisoner had a duty to try to escape. He asserted, “The first rule when a peoples [sic] soldier is captured is to

73 “The High Cost of Quentin Trial,” Oakland Tribune, Friday August 13, 1976, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Newspaper Clippings, Series 8, Box 4, Folder 21, “San Quentin Six [Aug. 1976],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 74 Donovan O. Cooke, “Coroner’s Report in the Matter of the Death of: George Lester Jackson,” September 15, 1971, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal, Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9, “Legal Information, Party Cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 75 “Pathology Protocol, Case Number 71309,” August 22, 1971, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal, Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9, “Legal Information, Party Cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 4. 76 George Lester Jackson, “This is my last Will and Testament,” August 21, 1971, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, George Jackson, Series 2, Box 44, Folder 13, “Newton Prior Conviction,” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

128 immediately start planning his escape,” and further that Jackson “took the only available avenue of redress against state murder.”77 When the IRA began to bring ideas about the moral polity into prison they would concur with Newton’s assertion that soldiers of the people had a duty to try to escape and rejoin the struggle. If your first allegiance was to the people, as was the case in the Panthers’ moral polity, then it was imperative that you return to service of the people as soon as possible. If you could not get back to the people using legal means, it was perfectly acceptable to use illegal means because the moral polity as explained in the Party’s Ten Point Program indicated that black people were incarcerated in violation of the moral polity to begin with.

In this manner, between 1969 and 1971 the Panthers began to recreate aspects of their moral polity in prison. Having created a relatively advanced moral polity outside, with clear ideas about how authorities and the populace should interact and programs in place that helped ensure the welfare of the community, Panthers brought the ideology that helped them build that moral polity into prisons. They, therefore, organized chapters of the Party where they could, and campaigned for prisoners’ rights. Panther prisoners demanded that they be treated like prisoners of war and that their dignity be respected. By contrast, the IRA espoused a clear anti-state position in 1969, but outside of protecting the Catholic community, had not yet begun to fill roles abandoned by the State in order to ensure the welfare of the that community. When IRA members began to be arrested in greater numbers, then, they initially engaged in less protest than imprisoned members of the BPP. This would change, however, with the introduction of internment, which

77 Huey Newton, “Press Statement,” August 22, 1971, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, H. P. Newton Papers, Speeches/Lectures/Interviews, Series 1, Box 58, Folder 5, “Press Statement from H.P.N. on Geo. Jackson,” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

129 simultaneously created more protest in the prisons, and helped to expand the IRA’s moral polity outside.

Irish Republican Imprisonment

IRA volunteers who were arrested in 1969 and 1970 were relatively quiet prisoners in comparison to volunteers arrested when the conflict reached a more advanced stage. As Phil McCullough remembered of his first stint in prison, the prisoners wore the prison uniform, and did not attempt to fight their incarceration.78 Similarly,

Eamonn Smullen, arrested in England in October 1969 on suspicion of attempting to purchase a major consignment of arms for the IRA, believed wearing the prison uniform and cooperating with the prison regime would mean he would be released sooner and could work from there to improve prison conditions: “it’s more important for me to get out first and then do all I can to make prison conditions known.”79 Acts of protest did occur when volunteers who appeared in court refused to recognize the court and played no further part in the proceedings which sent them to prison. Although they felt their incarceration to be the result of a war resulting from the foreign occupation of their country, and political in nature, the IRA did not yet have a fully elucidated ideology to guide their time in prison. As a result, after refusing to recognize the court, volunteers served their sentences and relied on early release to return to the struggle.

When Brian Faulkner’s government introduced internment in 1971, the situation in Northern Ireland altered beyond repair. The nationalist Social Democratic and Labour

Party (SDLP) walked out of Stormont in protest. Edward Heath would later remark that

78 Phil McCullough, Interview with Author, November 2011. 79 O’Donnell, Special Category Vol. 1, 19, 26.

130 this “deprived Stormont of any remaining legitimacy.”80 In targeting the Catholic community to combat the threat of the IRA, Faulkner’s government cemented the idea that Stormont could not be reformed in the Catholic populace’s consciousness. Reflecting

Catholic and nationalist anger, the SDLP literally left the Stormont government behind.

While the SDLP protested and fear gripped families attempting to find loved ones hauled away by the army, frustration and rage characterized the reaction to internment on the street. Where violence in connection to Black Panther Prisoners occurred in isolated incidents, such as Jonathan Jackson’s attempt to free his brother George, following the introduction of internment, violence spread across Northern Ireland. It began as soon as

Catholic, nationalist communities understood what was happening. In Belfast, as soldiers pulled the first internees from their beds, women took to the streets, banging their metal bin lids on the pavement to warn others that the army was nearby. Youths, schooled as they had become in the art of antagonizing the security forces, also took to the streets, deploying stones, bottles, and petrol bombs. As the situation grew worse, loyalists entered mixed areas burning Catholics from their homes.81

In fact, the introduction of internment increased violence across the North rather than containing it. Of the 171 people killed in 1971, only 30 died in the months before internment returned to the North.82 In the days immediately following the first arrests,

80 McKittrick and McVea, “The end of Stormont,” in Making Sense of the Troubles, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/directrule/mckittrick00.htm#end. 81 Suzanne Breen, “Dawn of New Horror—The Experience of Internment,” The Irish News, August 8, 1991, Internment Box, NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 82 Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/. These figures sometimes vary slightly For instance, in a 1975 Irish Times article Fionnuala O’Connor says that there were 172 deaths in 1971 and 28 of them occurred before the introduction of internment. See Fionnuala O’Connor, “History of Fourth Period of Internment,” The Irish Times, December 6, 1975, Internment Box, NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. I have used the Sutton numbers because the Sutton index of deaths includes names, identities, and circumstances of death, not simply the statistics.

131 violence increased precipitously. Fourteen people died on August 9, 1971. Three people died in violence on August 10, and four more died on August 11.83 Eleven of the people killed between August 9 and August 11 came from the West Belfast community of

Ballymurphy and included a mother of eight, a father of seven, a nineteen year old, and a local parish priest. Their deaths became memorialized in their community as the

“Ballymurphy massacre” owing to the fact that they were killed by members of the

British parachute regiment in circumstances that remain contentious to this day.84 This violence, skewed as it was toward the Catholic civilian population, completely alienated many Catholics and nationalists from the government. It proved that the government’s recent reforms were cosmetic and would do nothing to meaningfully protect Northern

Ireland’s minority community. Thus, for many, an alternate organization of society that privileged the welfare of the community became a necessity. For many young men and women across the province, the IRA was the organization best poised to oversee this change.

While the IRA’s ranks flooded, the first protests against internment began with the families of internees. Unbeknownst to their families, internees were taken to army barracks and then transferred to either Crumlin road prison, Long Kesh, or the Maidstone, making them difficult for their families to track. Hooded Man, Séan McKenna’s original internment order, stamped by Faulkner on August 10, 1971, ordered him arrested from his residence in Newry and detained in Crumlin road jail. Three days later his wife,

Brigid McKenna, wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs after calls to local officials to

83 Sutton, “Sutton Index of Deaths.” 84 Families of the victims are currently campaigning for an inquiry into the Ballymurphy massacre. See www.ballymurphymassacre.com

132 locate her husband had produced conflicting reports that he was in the Crumlin Road Jail and on the Maidstone. Mrs. McKenna asserted that she “would be pleased if [the ministry] could at least tell me where he is.”85[Emphasis Added] Much of the early reaction against internment came from women like McKenna, indirectly criticizing the

Ministry of Home Affairs via the angry language of their letters and phone calls. Their demands indicated that they expected some transparency from the authorities and those authorities were not living up to their responsibilities to the families of internees. If the army was going to arrest men without warrant and trial, then, women like McKenna expected to be told where their loved ones were taken.

Although the draconian provisions of the Special Powers Act allowed for such scenes to take place, Catholic communities soon began to complain of a number of irregularities in the manner in which the first arrests were carried out. The first, and most obvious contention of the dissenting populace, including Catholics, nationalists, and republicans, was that no loyalists were arrested on August 9. If internment had been implemented in good faith in order to “preserve the peace and maintain order in Northern

Ireland,” as specified in the act, why had only one side of the combatants been arrested?

Secondly, some republicans expressed confusion about why British Army soldiers carried out the arrests. According to the act, the minister of Home Affairs could delegate any powers granted under the act to “any officer of the police,” but said nothing about the

British Army. Where the use of crown forces in making arrests was specifically allowed by the act, it restricted army arrests to cases where a felony was committed, which was

85 Brigid McKenna to The Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, August 13, 1971, NIO/5/1204A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

133 simply not true of many of the internees.86 Despite the legality of internment under the

Special Powers Act, its implementation violated the Council of Europe’s European

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights agreements on the treatment of prisoners.

Article 5(c) of the Convention allowed for arrest or detention of a person on a

“reasonable suspicion of having committed an offense” or when it was considered necessary to prevent an offense from occurring, but it stipulated that where article 5(c) was invoked the detained should be “brought promptly before a judge” and was “entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial.”87 These safeguards, however, were never applied to the internees, despite the government of Great Britain and Northern

Ireland being a signatory to the document.

The Northern Irish government skirted the issue over the use of the army and the seeming violation of the European Convention regulations with these documents themselves. Aside from delineating the specific powers of the Minister of Home Affairs in preserving the peace, the Special Powers Act also provided “the power to make regulations for making further provision for the preservation of peace and maintenance of order, and for varying or revoking any provision of the regulations.”88 The Minister of

Home Affairs, therefore, had sweeping powers to administer the introduction of internment as he saw fit. Furthermore, he did not need to be troubled by the rules of the

European Convention because in 1957 the United Kingdom sent a notice to the Council

86 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/spa1922.htm. 87 Council of Europe, “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms and Protocol,” 1950, http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Collection_Convention_1950_ENG.pdf. 88 Special Powers Act, 1922.

134 of Europe and derogated from the application of Article (5) citing a public emergency and never withdrew the notice afterward.89

None of this changed the attitude of those connected to the internees. For these people, the legality of internment mattered less than how the community was treated. For

Monsignor Raymond Murray, then Father Murray, the Chaplain of Armagh Prison, internment changed his entire view of the state. Murray remembered, after interviewing a number of internees, who included some of the infamous, hooded men, “that is where my whole mentality changed. My whole social . . . teaching, upbringing had been the state as a perfect society, and it works for the benefit of all . . . I was an innocent abroad . . . . here was the state acting illegally, and immorally.”90 The situation was the same for many who saw their loved ones and neighbors carted away by the British Army and taken to internment camps. For these people, the government proved that the state was actively working against their interests and would do anything to preserve the unionist dominated hierarchy. This added to the desire to create a society that did not act based on solely on whether or not something was legal. Many affected by internment began to look for a society led, instead, by policies that protected the welfare of all citizens.

Father Murray was one of a number of clergy who reacted rapidly to the introduction of internment, doing their best to find interned men and document their injuries so they had proof to use in any subsequent legal allegations against the prisons, guards, or government. For instance, Father Murray received a phone call from

89 Brice Dickson, “The Detention of Suspected Terrorists in Northern Ireland and Great Britiain,” University of Richmond Law Review, 43, Issue 3, March 2009, http://lawreview.richmond.edu/the- detention-of-suspected-terrorists-in-northern-ireland-and-great-britain/. 90 Monsignor Raymond Murray, Interview, 2012, Prisons Memory Archive, http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/.

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Monsignor Denis Faul, then Father Faul, when a contingent of internees were moved from Crumlin Road Jail to Armagh. Faul encouraged Murray to “‘Go and get their stories’” so Murray said, “I got lists of them and then for a full week I came in here,

[Armagh Jail] almost daily, long hours, and I interviewed . . . maybe about 40 of these men.” He recalled that taking these statements was “very difficult” because the internees

had very heavy bruising all over their bodies—purple, yellow, red, black bruising.

I had seen fellas hurt on the football field—bruising, that sort of thing—but I saw

men there whose backsides might be completely black, who had been kicked in

the testicles, genitals swollen up.91

Faul and Murray took this and other information told to them by prisoners and launched a tireless campaign against internment. With Faul and Murray the internees had two very visible and vocal members of the Catholic Church behind them, championing their plight.

This gave Catholics an authority on their side to confirm that another form of governance, based on a sense of morality, was possible.

Internees were also backed by working-class Catholic communities across the

North. Many people in these areas began campaigns of civil disobedience aimed at bringing the internees home. This civil disobedience was most visible in Derry, where residents of the Bogside and Creggan estates built barricades and patrolled the streets to keep the security forces at bay, resurrecting “Free Derry.” On the 16 August, 8,000 local workers went on a one day strike to protest internment. In each of the six counties families living in council estates refused to pay their rent and various rates until the

91 Monsignor Raymond Murray, Interview, 2012, Prisons Memory Archive, http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/.

136 government rescinded internment.92 With internment, Catholic communities thus began to create their own version of society that rejected the Stormont government.

Although the Stormont Government responded with more emergency legislation,

Catholic communities remained resolute in their determination to see the strike through.

The Payment for Debt (Emergency Provisions) Act (Northern Ireland), passed in October

1971, enabled the government to deduct unpaid rent from anyone who was receiving government funding, particularly in the form of social security and pension benefits.93 In

Derry, The Young Revolutionary Socialist Party, which the Northern Ireland Prison

Service associated with Bernadette Devlin, urged neighborhoods to develop “street committees” to take over essential services such as refuse collection, which they feared would be withdrawn by the government in punishment for the rent and rates strike.

Additionally, these committees would serve as local governments behind the barricades of the Bogside and Creggan Estates and would coordinate the civil disobedience campaign and communicate with other areas.94 Despite the very real threats from the government, by December 1971, an estimated quarter of Catholic households in the

North were withholding rent and other fees. Four Households in Ballycastle withheld rent from the start of the protest into 1973.95

At the same time, prisoners protested internment from within, drawing on events and attitudes forming outside. The first challenges to internment from inside the prisons

92 Breen, “Dawn of a New Horror.” 93 Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, Those are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972 (New York: Grove Press, 2000), 36. 94 “Street Committees: What they Are: What they Mean to You,” October 1971, HA/32/2/59, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 95 Breen, “Dawn of a New Horror.”; Ciaran Crossey, “History—The Rents and Rates Strike, Mass Campaign of Civil Disobedience” Spring 2005, Socialist View, http://archive.socialistparty.ie/pub/pages/viewspring2005/8.htm.

137 depended on help from friends and family on the outside. Mere days after Faulkner introduced internment, two men, imprisoned on the Maidstone tried to obtain Writs of

Habeas Corpus from the courts in London using a solicitor contacted by their relatives and friends, much as Eldridge Cleaver had done in 1968. The prisoners from the

Maidstone petitioned the Court of Appeals in London for this intervention hoping to undermine the entire internment system.96 Unlike Cleaver’s case, the whole affair of the internees ended quickly when the Court of Appeals dismissed the prisoners’ application on September 15.97 In each case, the legal petition to the government ultimately ended with little benefit to the prisoners. Cleaver fled the United States, and in Northern Ireland, with the denial of the writ of Habeas Corpus, the threat to the Special Powers Act ceased, and internment continued uninterrupted. Nevertheless, like the Cleaver and Newton after him the prisoners on the Maidstone sought a justification for their imprisonment, believing that to be an essential responsibility that the government had not fulfilled.

Other internees sought redress at lower levels of the prison administration. As

Newton attempted to negotiate with his jailors, so too did internees use channels already established within the prison to achieve their goals, in this case, release. Charles Norman

Fleming of Belfast was nearly 66 years old when he was arrested under the Special

Powers Act on August 9, 1971. The Assistant Chief Constable of the RUC alleged that

Norman was an intelligence officer in the Goulding, or Official, IRA.98 Fleming saw no reason for his internment, denying any involvement with the IRA and on September 15

96 Association for Legal Justice?, “The Story of the Habeas Corpus Application in London Court,” n.d., Internment Box, NIPC, The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 97 Ibid. 98 Assistant Chief Constable, Royal Ulster Constabulary, “Top Secret Recommendation for Internment,” August 24, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast Northern Ireland.

138 wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs asking to make an appeal to an advisory committee set up for that purpose. He, further, asked for legal representation and aid to cover any costs incurred.99

In October he wrote directly to Brian Faulkner after being “amazed” when

Faulkner declared on television that every internee was in the IRA. He stated that he had never been a member of any such organization and, moreover, had never taken part in any subversive activities. He reminded Faulkner that upon arrest he told Special Branch interrogators that he worked most of his life at Harland and Wolff, and the men employed there could vouch for him. Insisting that he was prepared to swear to everything he wrote in the letter, he signed the letter “I remain sir yours faithfully Charles N. Fleming.”100 In a few short lines, Fleming did all he could to distance himself from the IRA. Aside from being “faithfully” Faulkner’s he reminded the Prime Minister that he spent his life employed by Harland and Wolff, a company famous for its almost exclusive employment of Protestants. Fleming turned this discrimination against the Prime Minister, using it to support the idea that he could not have possibly been a member of the IRA.

The day after he wrote to the Prime Minister, Fleming again appealed to appear before the advisory committee. This time, Fleming attached his request to one from his solicitor and these were sent to the Governor of the Crumlin Road Prison, which held

Fleming. He also attached another description of his life, which denied any involvement with the IRA, and this time even eschewed any interest in politics at all.101 This time, his

99 Charles N. Fleming to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, September 15, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 100 Charles N. Fleming to Brian Faulkner, October 1, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 101 P.J. McGrory to Governor, H.M. Prison Crumlin Road, Charles N. Fleming to Governor, H.M. Prison Crumlin Road, October 1, 1971, October 2, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

139 pleas worked and on October 7, the Advisory Committee recommended his release provided he sign an oath stating that for the rest of his life he would neither join nor assist any illegal organization and would not partake of violence or encourage anyone else to engage in it.102 Fleming took the oath and was released on October 15, 1971.103 Whether or not Fleming was or had ever been a member of the OIRA, his ordeal demonstrated that he believed he ought to have assistance and protections from the government and security forces, that he was not receiving.

Those internees who held more staunchly republican principles found the idea of signing such an oath repugnant. For them, the state was illegitimate and violence in support of freedom from that state’s forces justified, and so release via this method was not an option. On December 1, 1971 the advisory committee reported that seven internees, ranging in age from 28 to 75 refused to appear and plead their case. The committee, nevertheless, maintained that they had considered each case and recommended keeping all seven interned.104 For those unwilling to appear before a governmentally convened body and sign an oath effectively proclaiming their allegiance to the state, the advisory committee did not hold much hope. If release was to be had they needed to make a decision: put their faith in the courts of Northern Ireland or Britain or begin working outside legal means.

102 James A. Brown, P.N. Dalton, R. W. Berkeley, “Charles Norman FLEMING,” October 7, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 103 Charles N. Fleming, “Oath to Be Taken by a Person on Release from Internment,” October 15, 1971, NIO/5/237A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 104 James A. Brown, P.N. Dalton, R.W. Berkeley, “All the above refused to appear before us,” December 1, 1971, NIO/5/1107A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Undoubtedly, these seven men do not represent the only people to refuse to meet with the advisory committee. Currently, internment records available are limited to those internees who are now deceased and so the researcher must wait for the confluence of a deceased internee who refused to meet with the committee to see such documents.

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IRA members, already part of a proscribed organization, found this leap easiest to take. Following a previous escape attempt by IRA prisoners, in November 1971 nine remand prisoners escaped from Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast. There, during a recreation period, the group, dressed in football uniforms, used improvised rope ladders to scale the wall and escape into waiting cars. While two were recaptured the next day, the rest made their way across the border and gave a press conference in Dublin shortly thereafter.105

As with any escape, the incident was deeply embarrassing to the prison service and a massive propaganda victory for the IRA and prisoners. Escape, unlike legal redress showed the prison system as inept as well as unjust. It garnered far more attention than any legal challenge to IRA imprisonment and helped cement the idea that more traditional republican forms of prison resistance, including escape and hunger striking, led to more favorable results for republican prisoners. Although the escapees would have to remain on the run following their escape, they would be free amidst the growing moral polity outside the prisons.

The escapes only continued, much to the embarrassment of the security forces.

Two weeks after the nine “Crumlin Kangaroos” scaled the wall, three more IRA prisoners used the prison’s recreation periods to aid their escape. On December 3, Martin

Meehan, Anthony Doherty, and Hugh McCann hid in a manhole for five hours until the other prisoners had gone back into the prison. Then, as their fellow inmates caused a disturbance inside in order to disrupt the headcount, Meehan, Doherty, and McCann emerged into darkness and fog, and scaled the walls using their bed sheets as a makeshift

105 “Crumlin Kangaroos,” April 23, 2013, Belfast Telegraph, April 23, 2013, www.proquest.com; and Chris Kilpatrick, “Unrepentant Bomb-making, Jailbreaking, Career Terrorist back Behind Bars at Age of 70,” Belfast Telegraph, June 29, 2013, www.proquest.com.

141 rope ladder.106 If the fact that two groups of prisoners had escaped in such a short time frame was not bad enough, the media knew of the escape before Crumlin Road Jail’s governor did. Seeing bonfires burning in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, reporters learned from the residents that they were celebrating the escape of Meehan and Doherty, who had been arrested in the area the month before. It was only when representatives of the media phoned the jail to confirm the story, that the warders found out that it was, indeed, true.107

The escapes improved morale in the growing moral polity, and helped IRA members to believe that they had community support.

Conclusions

By the end of 1971 then, it appeared that the chances of shuttling political

dissenters into prison without problem was a memory of bygone days. IRA prisoners seemed intent on humiliating the prison regime, and Black Panthers seemed intent on exposing every dark corner of the US prison system. At the very least, prison warders were facing new challenges in both the US and Northern Ireland. Before turning to this new era of prison protest in which inmates seemed poised to be more militant than ever, it is important to stop and reflect upon the gains and losses of the period from 1969-1971.

In the years presented here the Black Panthers and Irish Republicans affirmed and expanded their moral polities. The BPP reacted to imprisonment by organizing and drawing the moral polity into the prisons. In Northern Ireland, internment led to an expansion of the moral polity amongst Catholic communities and encouraged IRA

106 Associated Press, “The I.R.A. Frees 3 of its Top Agents from Belfast Jail,” New York Times, December 4, 1971, www.proquest.com; Sean MacAodh, “Crumlin Road Jail Escape,” An Phoblacht/Republican News, December 6, 2001, republican-news.org/archive. 107 Sean MacAodh, “Crumlin Road Jail Escape.”

142 prisoners to protest their incarceration and humiliate the Stormont government. In their respective prison struggles the Panthers and IRA succeeded in drawing much needed publicity to their ideologies and, thereby, used their arrests to increase membership in their organizations and sympathy from outsiders. Thus, although they had been labeled as dangerous and subversive by their respective governments and may have turned off some potential supporters with their anti-government rhetoric and actions, both the IRA and

BPP were able to build a support base during this era. After 1971 it then remained to be seen how the government in Northern Ireland and the United States would react to these successes, and how the IRA and BPP would react to continued imprisonment.

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Chapter 3

“The Lowest Circle of Hell is Reserved for Those Who Betray Their Comrades:” Division and Change in the Moral Polity, 1971-1973

Upon Joe Doherty’s arrival at the prison ship Maidstone in 1971, other internees approached him to ask whether he was part of the Provisional or Official IRA. After affirming that he was part of the former organization’s youth wing, Na Fianna Éireann, he was introduced to the Provisionals’ prison command structure. It included an officer commanding (OC), quartermaster, education officer, and an intelligence officer who, among other duties, coordinated escapes.1 The Official IRA had a similar, separate command structure that governed their internees. This prison command was the result of the republican argument that their prisoners were captured soldiers, that is, prisoners of war. In February Doherty, met the command structure in Long Kesh Prison Camp when he was escorted onto a helicopter to be transferred to join the bulk of the internees there.2

This prison was even more conducive to the idea that imprisoned republicans were prisoners of war, as it was a former Royal Air Force Base, and the prisoners lived in communal Nissen Huts. Some, like Phil McCullough, had been in the cages of Long

Kesh since the initial internment raids of August 1971. Those remaining on the

Maidstone began a hunger strike at the end of March in protest over the conditions and food on the ship and were joined a few days later by internees at Magilligan Prison.3

Shortly thereafter the remaining prisoners on The Maidstone were transferred to the cages

1 Joe Doherty, Interview with the Author, November 2011. 2 Ibid. 3 “Magilligan Joins In Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, April 7, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0407/Pg010.html#Ar01018.

144 of Long Kesh, as Doherty had been.4 At this point, the Maidstone ceased to function as a prison.5

Safiya Bukhari remembered that “When I first joined the Party, the morale was spirited. Later, that gave way to apprehension and guardedness.”6 From her early days serving breakfast with the BPP’s Breakfast for School Children Program Bukhari watched the Party expand their survival programs to include things like free health clinics, help with housing, welfare, and the safety of seniors.7 At the same time, the early trouble she had with the police would also increase during this period, becoming a national emergency for the Panthers. The police cooperated with the FBI and created special groups designed specifically to undermine the Party. “We expected that they would follow us and watch us,” Bukhari asserted. “We did not envision that they would send undercover agents to come up with ideas that were badder than bad. We did not envision that they would be able to kill people and create huge divisions between people.”8 Whether or not Bukhari and her comrades saw the devastation possible via

COINTELPRO, they would be forced to live through it.

Doherty and Bukhari’s lives in the early 1970s mirrored the progress of the IRA and Black Panther Party with regard to their prison experiences and moral polities. After

4 “Hunger Strike on Maidstone Intensified,” The Irish Times, April 6, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0406/Pg004.html#Ar00413; “Maidstone Is No Longer Prison Ship,” The Irish Times, April 10, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0410/Pg001.html#Ar00109. 5 Ibid. 6 Bukhari, The War Before, 25. 7 Ibid., 27. 8 Ibid.

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1972 the fates of the Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army diverged sharply.

The IRA was able to create a more sophisticated moral polity while the BPP struggled forward from a sophisticated moral polity deeply undermined by counterintelligence. In

1971 the FBI effectively split the BPP into two, an East and West Coast faction. Many of the East Coast Panthers became members of the clandestine Black Liberation Army, even as they tried to keep survival programs running. Under Huey Newton, the West Coast

Panthers turned toward expanding their community survival programs and attempted to rebuild the Party and its moral polity by establishing Oakland as a base of operations. The damage resulting from FBI subterfuge, however, was difficult to overcome, and left BPP prisoners isolated and without allies at crucial times. Although the IRA also discovered the effect that counterintelligence could have on their own organization in 1972, they were not divided in the same manner as the BPP. They witnessed the end of the Stormont government as Great Britain intervened further into the conflict by instituting direct rule.

When the British government proved to be as objectionable to nationalists and Catholics as the old Stormont government, the IRA expanded their moral polity via prison protest and succeeded in creating a moral polity within the province’s penal system.

I. Divergent Paths: Towards a Moral Polity In Northern Ireland and Away

from one in the United States

Counterintelligence and the BPP

Having discovered the tension between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the

FBI was unceasing in its counterintelligence against the Black Panther Party. In 1971 the

Bureau succeeded in severing the organization. Increasing arrests led a growing number of Panthers to go underground where the division in the Party became even starker. In

146

1970 some of these underground Panthers formed armed guerilla units dedicated to beginning a revolutionary struggle against US capitalism and imperialism. Kathleen

Cleaver recalled that one such unit was formed by the leader of the Los Angeles Panthers,

Geronimo Pratt, after he was released from jail in 1970 where he was being held in connection with a 1969 SWAT attack on the Panthers’ Los Angeles office.9 By 1971 guerillas, like those trained by Pratt, coalesced into the Black Liberation Army (BLA).

The FBI’s meddling with the Panthers had created the very thing the Bureau and many white Americans had long feared, an armed black paramilitary style organization dedicated to dismantling the United States’ political and social structures by force.

The BLA was clear about its own aims. In “A Message to the Black Movement” they stated unequivocally that the BLA was “anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-sexist,” and that they were attempting to use “the science of class struggle” to dismantle the sexist, racist, imperialist, and capitalist systems of the United States in order to replace them with “Socialistic relationships in which Black People have total and absolute control over their own destiny as a people.”10 They asserted that their aims would be achieved through revolutionary violence, a strategy which would “drive the capitalist system further into crisis, while at the same time forcing all those responsible for oppression to realize that they too can bleed . . . Only when this is realized, will any just and equal decisions be made, will we be conceded our right to self determination.”11

They came to be associated with Panthers on the East Coast, particularly the New York

9 Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969- 1972),” 237. 10Coordinating Committee of the Black Liberation Army, “Message to the Black Movement: A Political Statement from the Black Underground,” N.D. 1970?, US MSS117AN, Emile de Antonio Papers, Box 64, Folder 5, “De Antonio, Emile, Black Underground, Message to the Black Movement,” Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin, ii. 11 Ibid., 1.

147 chapter who favored Cleaver’s stance on armed revolution over Newton’s non-violent community survival programs, and who continued to emphasize armed self-defense even as Newton’s wing of the Party moved away from the idea. As Safiya Bukhari explained,

all across the country the Party offices were under attack. . . . So in order to

protect ourselves and the community it was necessary for us to defend ourselves. .

. . So it was decided to secure the offices, the Party, and the community workers

by going on the offense, with the objective to defend and liberate the Black

community and to make it possible for the political apparatus to continue.12

The FBI fostered division of the Black Panther Party was exposed to the

American public in the spring of 1971, becoming in these months, a permanent rupture. It was the public climax of months of disintegration which extended into the Party’s moral polity. In a move shocking to many, Newton expelled Geronimo Pratt, who was in Texas attempting to avoid arrest, from the party in January 1971. The announcement, made in

The Black Panther and signed by Newton, explained the expulsion by alleging that Pratt demanded money from the central committee and threatened the lives of David Hilliard,

June Hilliard, and Huey Newton. Pratt was, moreover, accused of abandoning his Panther duties to avoid arrest, “violat[ing] many young Black sisters he met while moving from town to town,” exposing the party to police by leaving a trail for law enforcement to follow, intimidating those with whom he came into contact on his run from the law, and engaging in counter-revolutionary activity by purchasing Christmas presents, thereby

12 Bukhari, The War Before, 121. Safiya Bukhari explained that “all across the country the Party offices were under attack. . . . So in order to protect ourselves and the community it was necessary for us to defend ourselves. . . . So it was decided to secure the offices, the Party, and the community workers by going on the offense, with the objective to defend and liberate the Black community and to make it possible for the political apparatus to continue.”

148 participating in “the high holiday of the pig capitalists.”13 Newton ended the accusations stating that “Finally, Geronimo . . . attempted to organize other renegades from our Party

. . . into a counter-revolutionary, little rebel roving band, certainly not adhering to the

Party’s principles or orders, but also violating the masses of people themselves.”14 Purged with Pratt were his wife Sandra, Will Stafford, Wilfred “Crutch” Holiday, and George

Lloyd, all accused of aiding Pratt’s transgressions.15 The expulsion of Party members revealed a disintegrating moral polity. While expulsions and purges could be tolerated within a moral polity, they typically require consensus. The expulsion of Pratt and his fellows were not decided on by a majority of Panthers or by pressure from the black community. They resulted from suspicion sown by the FBI.

This type of unilateral action was not new when Newton expelled Pratt in 1971.

Don Cox, field marshal for the Black Panther Party, remembered Party members being quite fearful of Chief of Staff, David Hilliard, who was tasked with overseeing the Party while Newton was in prison, by 1970. According to Cox, when Panthers attempted to dig an escape tunnel under the Party’s headquarters, “they hit water and had to abandon the project . . . . But they turned that hole that was left into a jail (the People’s Jail as it later came to be called) where all were put that displeased David.”16 Furthermore, Hilliard and

Eldridge Cleaver had a notoriously acrimonious relationship, and Cleaver blamed many expulsions and problems within the Party on Hilliard and his brother June who served as

Assistant Chief of Staff.17 When Newton was released from prison in August 1970 he,

13 Huey P. Newton, “On the Purge of Geronimo from the Black Panther Party,” The Black Panther 5 no. 30, January 23, 1971, 7. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Don Cox, in Curtis J. Austin, Up Against The Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006), 295. 17 Austin, Up Against The Wall, 298.

149 therefore, came back to an organization whose leadership was already moving away from the moral polity.

Further high profile purges followed that of Geronimo Pratt. The February 13 edition of The Black Panther carried the expulsion of Connie Matthews Tabor, her husband Michael Cetewayo Tabor, and Richard Dhoruba Moore. These were Newton’s former personal secretary, and two members of the Panther 21, who were out on bail.18

Moore and Tabor fell afoul of the party leadership in Oakland when they did not appear for a scheduled hearing in connection with the Panther 21 case, going underground instead. “By deserting their comrades they gave the pigs an excuse to throw Joan Byrd and Afeni Shakur, four months pregnant back into maximum security. They jeopardized the chances of the other brothers getting bail and they propped up the dying case . . . against the New York 21.”19 West Coast Panthers viewed Moore and Tabor’s failure to stand with their comrades as a violation of the moral polity. The two men took the route best for themselves, rather than the route that Newton determined was best for the collective. Connie Matthews Tabor was also purged for going underground, in this instance, a crime against Newton’s wing of the party because she took the details of Huey

Newton’s speaking tour and European contacts necessary for the upcoming

Revolutionary Intercommunal Solidarity Day, scheduled for March 5, with her. All three were branded “Enemies of the People.”20

18 The Black Panther uses the alternate spelling of Richard Dharuba Moore. Moore would shortly thereafter adopt the name Dhoruba Bin Wahad, so the author has adopted a more consistent spelling here. Additional references in this chapter will refer to Richard Dhoruba Moore, as this coincides with the person referred to in documents of the Panthers and the US legal system. The next chapter will refer to Dhoruba Bin Wahad as Bin Wahad fully changed his name between 1971 and 1973. 19 Central Committee Black Panther Party, “Enemies of the People,” The Black Panther 6, no. 3, February 13, 1971, 12. 20 Ibid.

150

The article expelling the Tabors and Moore had one additional bombshell to drop on readers: the previously unannounced expulsion of the jailed members of the New

York 21. The article explained that the incarcerated members of the 21 were expelled

“for their attacks on the Party in their letter to the Weatherman.”21 Four days before

Newton expelled Pratt from the BPP the New York 21 wrote an “Open Letter to the

Weatherman Underground,” which urged the Weather Underground not to abandon armed revolutionary violence, the way the Black Panther Party had.22 Since Moore and

Michael Tabor were free on bail at the time the letter was sent, they had not been included in the original purge. Their failure to appear for their scheduled hearing, was, according to the BPP’s Central Committee, a greater treachery. The Central Committee determined that “This vicious, backstabbing act of Moore and Tabor dwarfs the differences between the New York 21 and the Black Panther Party. The lowest circle of

Hell is reserved for those who betray their comrades.”23 The Central Committee had not originally publicized the expulsion of the bulk of the New York 21, but it came to light when it was used to justify the argument that Moore and the Tabors’ behavior was worse.

In terms of the effect on the moral polity, however, the purge of the New York 21, was more detrimental than the expulsion of Moore and the Tabors. By not even discussing the

New York 21’s contentions and expelling these members, instead, Newton and West coast Party leadership ensured that the voice of the collective was not heard.

21 Ibid., 12. 22 Panther 21, “Open Letter to Weatherman Underground from Panther 21,” 1971, in Breakthrough: Political Journal of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee 1 no. 3-4, October –December 1977, The Freedom Archives, San Francisco, California, available http://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC501_scans/Break/501.break.3.oct.1977.pdf, 59- 65. 23 Ibid.

151

Assata Shakur, a Panther associated with the New York branch of the Party at the time of the split recalled her frustrations with the BPP around the time the Central

Committee in Oakland expelled the New York 21. “The easy friendly openness had been replaced by fear and paranoia. The beautiful revolutionary creativity i had loved so much was gone. And replaced by dogmatic stagnation.”24 This, she said, was the work of the

FBI’s counterintelligence program. COINTELPRO agents used the Panther 21 to create the environment that led to the expulsion of the 21 and the divisions which ultimately led to a permanent rupture in the party. The FBI sent a letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers ostensibly signed by the New York 21, which criticized Huey Newton’s leadership. At the same time, the FBI sent a letter to Huey Newton’s brother which indicated that New

York Panthers planned to kill Newton.25 The FBI continued to send messages to Cleaver and Newton some with the forged signatures of well-known Panthers, some from anonymous senders. All were designed to sew mistrust between the two Panther leaders.

The CIA aided by intercepting mail going to and from Cleaver in Algeria. The FBI’s elite

“Panther Squad,” based out of their San Francisco Office, then planted a story with Ed

Montgomery of the San Francisco Examiner which alleged that Newton was living in a

Penthouse apartment in Oakland where he used an assumed name and paid $650 a month for rent. The story was enough to cause the recently expelled New York Panthers to call a press conference where their denunciation of Newton included a call for a trial against

Newton for misuse of Party funds.26 Incidents like this helped to erode the trust between

24 Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987), 231. 25 Ibid., 231-232. 26 Lowell Bergman and David Weir, “Revolution on Ice: How the Black Panthers Lost the FBI’s war of Dirty Tricks,” Rolling Stone 221, September 9, 1976, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/revolution-on-ice-19760909?page=7.

152 the BPP leadership in Oakland and rank and file Panthers, further damaging their moral polity.

The suspicions and tensions engendered and exacerbated by the FBI resulted, finally, in a public fight between Cleaver and Newton, broadcast on local San Francisco television. On February 26, 1971 Newton appeared on Jim Dunbar’s KGO-TV talk show to discuss his differences with Cleaver, who called in from Algiers. The appearance was supposed to show the Panthers as a unified party, quieting fears of imminent collapse.

During the broadcast, Cleaver blamed the schism on David Hilliard and demanded that

Newton dismiss the chief of staff. He also demanded the reinstatement of the Panther 21.

Newton maintained that Hilliard was not the problem and that the purges were necessary because Moore and the Tabors had deserted their comrades and run out on Bobby Seale, who Newton contended was on trial for his life in Connecticut.27 After the disastrous on- air encounter, Newton privately called Cleaver again, chastised him for airing Party business on television, and expelled Cleaver and the entire international section from the

BPP.28 On March 1, the international section, the New York chapter, and the New Jersey chapter held a press conference calling for the resignation or dismissal of David Hilliard and his brother, June.29 The Panther’s moral polity was now in real jeopardy as the rank and file were forced to choose sides, and paranoia fostered by the FBI meant that

Panthers were intensely suspicious of one another. Trust for the leadership was quickly

27 Donald B. Thackrey, “Panther Leaders ‘Disagree’ on TV,” The Afro American, March 6, 1971, 1,2, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2211&dat=19710306&id=FSImAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Lf4FAAAAI BAJ&pg=5322,1307308&hl=en. 28 Bloom and Martin Jr., Black Against Empire, 362. 29“On the Assassination of Deputy Field Marshall Robert Webb,” Right On! Black Community News Service POSHU 1, No. 1, April 3, 1971, The Freedom Archives, San Francisco, California, available http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/BPP_Intercommunal/513.Black%20Panther %20%28New%29%20Intercommunal%20News%20Service.The_Black_Panther_1971.pdf , 3.

153 evaporating, the community was not always the first thought in the minds of Panthers, and each half of the Party felt the other half to be in violation of the moral polity.

Counterintelligence and the IRA

To be sure, the IRA experienced its share of infiltration by the security forces, and this affected their moral polity, albeit in ways that differed from the results of

COINTELPRO on the BPP. Substantial information on these operations against the IRA is only beginning to come to light, but their main purpose seems to have been similar to that of the FBI under COINTELPRO. According to a recent investigation by John Ware for the BBC’s Panorama program, the British Army ran a secret undercover unit in

Northern Ireland, known as the Military Reaction Force (MRF). It was composed of approximately 40 men drawn from across the British Army who were, in their own words, supposed “to draw out the IRA and to minimise their activities.”30 The success of the MRF in this mission is still debated, but the possibility of subterfuge undoubtedly influenced IRA operations during the few years the MRF existed.

Like the FBI and its encounters with the BPP, the MRF remains shadowy and controversial. The members of the MRF who came forward for the Panorama

30 Panorama, “Britain’s Secret Terror Force,” season 61, episode 41, directed by Leo Telling, reported by John Ware, BBC, November 21, 2013. In 1994 Jeremy Hanley, then Minister of State for Defence described the MRF as “a small military unit which, during the period 1971 to 1973, was responsible for carrying out essential surveillance tasks in Northern Ireland in those circumstances where soldiers in uniform and with Army vehicles would be too easily recognized.” See Written Answers, Commons, “Defence, Military Reaction Force,” March 15, 1994, HC Deb 15 March 1994 vol 239 c656W, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1994/mar/15/military-reaction-force. Hanley’s dating of the MRF is unique. While he states that the MRF was active between 1971 and 1973, the Panorama program indicates that the MRF operated for 14 months in 1972 and 1973.The BBC article, “Undercover Soldiers ‘killed Unarmed Civilians in Belfast,” (cited below) indicates the MRF carried out operations for 18 months before being disbanded in 1973.

154 documentary under condition of anonymity, indicated that their unit carried out surveillance by posing as street sweepers and drug addicts and could, and at times did, open fire on suspected IRA members because they did not have to adhere to the Yellow

Card Rules which otherwise governed incidents when soldiers could open fire.31 “We were hunting down hardcore baby-killers, terrorists, people that would kill you without even thinking about it,” one anonymous MRF member contended, while another added,

“If you had a player who was a well-known shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations . . . then he had to be taken out.”32 Panorama and victims’ families, however, question how reliably the MRF identified actual IRA volunteers. They believe the MRF to be responsible for the murder of at least 10 civilians unaffiliated with the

IRA.33 Given that records of the MRF were destroyed and knowledge of their existence and operation depends of the word of MRF members reluctant to incriminate themselves as well as eyewitness accounts now forty years removed from events, it is unlikely that the extent of MRF involvement in the violence of 1972 and 1973 will ever be fully known.34 Nevertheless, the MRF’s involvement in civilian deaths lent further credence to the idea that the State could not be trusted to protect Catholic communities, and in 1972,

31 Panorama, “Britain’s Secret Terror Force,” 2013. 32 Ibid; and “Undercover Soldiers ‘killed Unarmed Civilians in Belfast,’” BBC News (London, England), November 21, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24987465. 33 Ibid. As of December 2015 the PSNI was investigating nine incidents thought to be related to the MRF. Only two involved fatalities. See “Military Reaction Force Probe: ‘Breakthrough’ in PSNI Investigation into 1972 killings of Unarmed Civilians,” Belfast Telegraph, December 2, 2015, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/military-reaction-force-probe-breakthrough-in- psni-investigation-into-1972-killings-of-unarmed-civilians-34251029.html. 34 Ibid. According to the BBC there were 10,600 shootings in 1972 alone. In July 2014 evidence of, at least one, MRF member’s identity was compromised when a Panorama researcher working on another episode of the program gave a flash drive containing information on sources for her episode as well as information on sources for “Britain’s Secret Terror Force,” to a third party. See Ian Burrell, “Exclusive: BBC’s Panorama Team loses Confidential Information Relating to a Secret British Army Unit,” Independent, July 2, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-bbcs-panorama-team-loses- confidential-information-relating-to-a-secret-british-army-unit-9580340.html.

155 the IRA was the organization most visibly positioned to oppose what Catholic communities increasingly saw as a hostile oppressive force.

For their part, the IRA and Sinn Fein contended such a unit existed, long before

Panorama brought the allegations of civilian casualties to the forefront of the debate about how to handle the unresolved deaths of the conflict. In his 1996 autobiography

Gerry Adams asserted that the MRF set up a series of fake businesses in the Belfast area, including an ice cream parlor, a massage parlor on the Antrim Road known as the Gemini

Health Studios, and the Four Square Laundry in Twinbrook. According to Adams, the latter business served two purposes. First, MRF agents used the business for surveillance, which they accomplished via a laundry van with a hidden compartment in the ceiling where they could observe and photograph the area. Secondly, the laundry provided a convenient cover through which MRF operatives could analyze clothing for traces of gun oil, gunpowder, or explosives.35 On October 2, 1972 the IRA launched an operation against the Four Square Laundry, and two other MRF fronts, having learned of the

MRF’s existence from Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee, two IRA members allegedly discovered to be working with the MRF.36 Republicans claimed that the IRA killed 5

MRF agents that day, three in the Four Square laundry attack and two in the attack that

35 Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1996), 211. 36 Martin Dillon, The Dirty War (London, Arrow Books, 1991) 33-40, 42-46.

156 the IRA simultaneously staged at the Gemini Health Studios.37 For their part, the British only acknowledged the death of Edward Stuart, driver of the Four Square Laundry Van.38

Gerry Adams referred to the IRA’s action against the Four Square Laundry/MRF as “a devastating blow, on a par with Michael Collins’s actions against British intelligence in 1920,” but the IRA’s perceived victory masked a darker truth: there were informers within their ranks.39 By 1972, the IRA was well aware of the potential for informers and sabotage by the security forces, but the undermining of their organization had typically come from without, and the punishment for anyone caught informing was well known. Alleged informers faced an IRA court martial whose verdict and sentence had to be ratified by the Army Council and General Headquarters.40 Typically, “touts” got shot, and their bodies were left on the side of the road, public warnings to any who might be tempted to follow a similar path.41 When the IRA attacked the Four Square

Laundry they had already killed two alleged informers during the course of the conflict.

They killed a third the day of the Four Square Laundry operation, and a fourth man was abducted on October 3, one day after the Four Square Laundry operation, and killed

37 “Remembering the Past: The Four Square Laundry,” An Phoblacht, September 30, 2004, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/12383. In 1991, journalist Martin Dillon noted that the IRA had backed off their claim of 5 killings, admitting that Stuart had been killed, but that the rest of their operations had not gone according to plan, not resulting in the deaths they originally publicized. See Dillon, The Dirty War, 32. The Sutton Index of Deaths on the CAIN website supports the assertion that Edward Stuart was the only soldier killed that day. See http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1972.html. In, 2004, however, the republican newspaper, An Phoblacht reiterated the 5 killings statistic. 38 Ibid; and “The Human Face of Conflict: Photographs of those Killed,” CAIN, 2012, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/humanface/chron/1972.html; and Dillon, The Dirty War, 31. 39 Adams, Before the Dawn, 212. 40 Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), 113. 41 Ian Cobain, “Disappeared but not Forgotten: the Grim Secrets the IRA Could Not Bury,” The Guardian, May 10, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/10/disappeared-ira-troubles-northern- ireland; Dillon, The Dirty War, 26; Commons Sitting, “Northern Ireland,” November 25, 1971, HC Deb 25 November 1971 vol 826 cc1571-678, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1971/nov/25/northern-ireland- 1#S5CV0826P0_19711125_HOC_428. Occasionally, a victim was tarred and feathered rather than being shot.

157 sometime between October 3 and October 4 after he was found taking photographs of an explosion site. All four men were civilians, shot, and their bodies dumped in public places, hallmarks of an IRA execution.42 Uncovering Wright and McKee, two of their own, as informers had much broader repercussions for the IRA. Both men came from well-known republican families, and they could not be dealt with so publicly, for fear of alienating sections of an otherwise supportive community and bringing shame onto noted republican families.43 It was in this atmosphere, polluted by suspicion and paranoia that the IRA began to disappear suspected informers. 16 men and women were disappeared over the course of the conflict. Wright and McKee were two of the first.44

It is in moments like this that the “moral” in “moral polity” becomes particularly problematic. At least one of the people disappeared by the IRA was developmentally disabled. In the emotionally charged atmosphere of wartime it was possible for IRA courts to make mistakes. Nevertheless, Internal IRA courts which carried out capital sentences, although horrifying to many, and undoubtedly not objective, were indicative of

42 CAIN, “Sutton Index of Deaths, Search Page: Informer,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/cgi-bin/dyndeaths.pl. When searching the CAIN database based on Sutton’s index of deaths for people killed as alleged informers the four records referred to above are as follows: John Kavanagh, a civilian shot by the IRA and found off Roden Street in Belfast (January 27, 1971), Samuel Boyde, a civilian shot by the IRA and found off La Salle Drive, Belfast (September 6, 1972), Edward Bonner, a civilian shot by the IRA inside Grosvenor Homing Pigeon’s Club Iveagh Street, Belfast (October 2, 1972), and Geoffrey Hamilton, a civilian abducted while taking photographs following an explosion of Distillery Street, Belfast and found shout on Murdoch Street the next day (October 3-4, 1972). 43 Dillon, The Dirty War, 38; and Brendan Hughes interviewed in Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland (New York: Public Affairs, 2010), 122, 132. Hughes posited that Wright and McKee were disappeared to protect their families from the stigma of informing. Moloney notes that disappearing Wright and McKee also served the purpose of concealing how deeply army intelligence had penetrated the Belfast IRA and made their attack on the Four Square laundry more notable. 44 Henry McDonald, “Remains Confirmed as IRA ‘disappeared’ Séamus Wright and Kevin McKee,” The Guardian, September 8, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/08/remains-confirmed-as- ira-disappeared-seamus-wright-and-kevin-mckee. The first disappeared was former Cistercian monk turned IRA man, Joe Linskey (sometimes spelled Lynskey), killed and buried by the IRA in August or September of 1972. Linskey was having an affair with the wife of a fellow IRA volunteer and had tried to have that IRA volunteer killed. Wright and McKee were disappeared on October 2, 1972. Their bodies were accidentally found in June 2015 during a search for Linskey’s body in a Coghalstown bog. Linskey’s remains have yet to be recovered. For more on Linskey, see Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 113-116.

158 a moral polity operating outside the bounds of the State and its laws. The murder of informants was designed to protect the larger group. In its disappearance of suspected informants, the IRA courts and punishments were reminiscent of much older Irish agrarian societies, who, operating within the confines of a moral economy, often carried out rather brutal punishments on those who violated that moral economy.45 In this case, it was not the economy that was violated, but the political actions of the IRA, which could be undermined by the presence of State informants. By working for the State informers undermined trust within the IRA and violated the IRA’s policies about how volunteers could act. The informant was viewed as having chosen the side of the oppressive security forces in violation of his or her own community. The IRA, therefore, justified the disappearing of suspected informers as a distasteful necessity of war.

The Panthers also violently turned on themselves as a result of FBI infiltration and sabotage, and initially it looked as if they might adopt a policy similar to the IRA’s.

In 1969 Party members tortured and murdered nineteen-year-old Panther, Alex Rackley, after a brief internal trial, because they suspected him of being a spy. Warren Kimbro and

George Sams confessed to the killing and were sent to prison, as was Lonnie McLucas, who was convicted of a reduced charge. Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins were subsequently jailed and tried for ordering the killing.46 Protests against what many saw as the railroading of the pair abounded throughout the year of their trail and there was much celebration when the jury could not reach a verdict, the judge declared a mistrial, and

Seale and Huggins were released. The tragedy of the case was that after his death, even

45 For more on Irish Agrarian moral economies, see the Introduction. 46 Paul Bass, “Black Panther Torture ‘Trial’ Tape Surfaces,” New Haven Independent, February 21, 2013, http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/rackley_trial_tape_surfaces/.

159 his killers determined that Rackley was not a spy.47 The Party weathered this trial, but there were spies and agent provocateurs within the Party and FBI counterintelligence would produce further violence that only deepened Party divisions.

Interparty violence continued after the schism, but in this case, the violence was evidence of a badly damaged moral polity. Concentrated on the East Coast and in

Algiers, Cleaver’s supporters maintained that they were the true Black Panther Party. As the Party split they began referring to Newton, Hilliard, and the Oakland leadership of the

Party as “the Peralta Street Gang,” after the street which housed the BPP headquarters. In

April 1971, the East Coast Panthers issued the first edition of Right On! Black

Community News Service a weekly paper designed to supplant The Black Panther which they alleged, “has become a filthy slander sheet, used by David Hilliard and Huey P.

Newton to vent vicious unprincipled attacks against Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver,

Connie and Cet Tabor and countless other revolutionary brothers and sisters throughout the world.”48 Its first headline story portrayed the very real world consequences of the ideological split, announcing, “Deputy Field Marshall Robert Webb Slain by Huey’s

Assassins.”49 Webb was murdered March 8, 1971, and the East coast Panthers put the blame squarely at the feet of “the puppet Huey Newton and his puppeteer, David

Hilliard,” who they claimed had ordered the killing of Webb.50 Then, on April 17, Sam

Napier, the national distribution manager for The Black Panther, was tortured and killed in New York. Richard Dhoruba Moore, Irving Mason, Edward Josephs, and Michael Hill,

47 Ibid. 48 “Editorial” Right On! Black Community News Service POSHU 1, No. 1, April 3, 1971,2. 49 “On the Assassination of Deputy Field Marshall Robert Webb,” Right On! Black Community News Service POSHU 1, No. 1, April 3, 1971, 1. 50 Ibid., 3.

160 all East Coast Panthers, were put on trial in June 1972 for arson and murder. Their trial ended six weeks later with a hung jury, after which they pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of attempted manslaughter in the second degree. This carried the lesser maximum sentence of 4 years, although Moore had already been sentenced to life in prison the previous month for machine gunning two policemen in New York in 1971.51 Mark

Holder, a fifth defendant, was convicted separately on April 14, 1972 and sentenced to fifteen years to life.52 With the murders of Webb and Napier, there was no repairing the schism within the BPP. The FBI had used internal differences to drive the Panthers to a point from which there was to be no return.

Despite a similar end result, the killings of McKee and Wright and Webb and

Napier were the results of different situations for the IRA and BPP. The IRA killed

McKee and Wright in an attempt to avoid a situation such as that which the BPP endured.

The BPP killings took place when the organization was already deeply divided. Where the IRA fell back on their own courts to condemn McKee and Wright, the BPP had no such structures in place. While it is far from clear whether or not Newton and Hilliard actually ordered the killing of Robert Webb or if Cleaver called for Napier to be killed in retaliation, even if this proved to be true, they would have done so without the verdict of an internal Panther court. Also, while the IRA would eventually argue that

51 Robert D. McFadden, “Four Panthers Admit Guilt in Slaying,” The New York Times, May 22, 1973, http://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/22/archives/4-panthers-admit-guilt-in-slaying-plead-to-a-reduced- charge-of.html?_r=0. At the time of the sentencing, another defendant, Andrew Jackson was still being sought, and a second defendant, Frank Fields had been killed in Florida in December 1971 during a shootout with Federal Agents. Moore was later exonerated for the machine gunning of the New York Officers. See chapter 4. 52 Mike Hechtman, Associated Press, “Four Panthers Plead Guilty in Coast Killing,” Schenectady Gazette, May 22, 1973, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1917&dat=19730522&id=02EtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eYgFAAAAI BAJ&pg=2874,1883753&hl=en, 6.

161 disappearances were necessary for the health of the organization, Newton, Hilliard, and

Cleaver made no such contentions about the killings of Webb and Napier. Rather than a protective measure, these killings were the result of animosity fostered by the FBI, a chilling reminder that both the moral polity and its destruction could result in similar violence.

Rebuilding the Panthers’ Moral Polity

The schism in the Party and the evolving direction of the Oakland-based Panthers was visible by 1972 when the Black Panther Party adopted a revised 10 point program based on their embrace of intercommunalism, which was a new iteration of the moral polity that the Panthers struggled to maintain. In a speech at Boston College two years previously, Newton noted that the Party decided that internationalism was inappropriate because the American Empire had robbed most other nations of their economic independence, cultural determination, control of political institutions, territorial integrity, and safety, and without these qualities, global territories could not call themselves nations.53 The American government had, rather ironically, destroyed the state, forcing the Panthers to interact with similarly oppressed communities, rather than similarly oppressed nations. This “non-state,” that is, the state the US destroyed, was reactionary, and the Panthers’ intercommunalism aimed to make this stateless society a revolutionary one by redistributing wealth on an intercommunal level.54 To this end the February 13,

1971 edition of the Party’s paper included a new subtitle: “Intercommunal News

53“Let us hold high the banner of Intercommunalism and the invincible thoughts of Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense and Supreme Commander of the Black Panther Party,” The Black Panther 5, no. 30, January 23, 1971, E. 54 Ibid., F.

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Service”55 The next week, a new “intercommunal news” section debuted which printed stories from communities with which the Party had sympathy around the world.56

The shift to intercommunalism was reflected in the new 10 point program which grew out of a “community survival conference” that the Panthers held in Oakland, beginning March 29, 1972. The changes made to the BPP’s program reflected a broader understanding of oppression in America, which, they now argued, extended beyond race.

Their point about freedom from prisons reflected this new understanding. The Party’s first 10 point program read, “We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. . . . because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.”57 On March 29, 1972, that goal was amended to read, “We want freedom for all black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city, and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.” The party’s justification for this desire was similarly expanded. Now they believed,

that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. prisons and jails

have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system

and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of

all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women

imprisoned in the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of

oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe

that when persons are brought to trial that they must be guaranteed, but the United

55 The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service 6, no. 3, February 13, 1971. 56 The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service 6, no 4, February 20, 1971. 57 “What We Want, What We Believe,” The Black Panther 1, no. 2, May 15, 1967, 3.

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States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice, and freedom from

imprisonment while awaiting trials.58

By 1972 the BPP believed that the US prison system unfairly hurt a population larger than black America. In their new analysis class ranked with race among the key factors that prejudiced the US judicial system against certain citizens. These new goals were in keeping with the thought process Newton had developed while he was in prison and reflected his first post-prison press conference after posting bail on August 5, 1970. At that press conference, the FBI noted that Newton announced that the BPP would become more broadly based, incorporating “‘people who have the same interest [the BPP] do.’”

The Bureau similarly reported that Newton said “‘that the BPP considers all prisoners political prisoners and that they will all be freed.’”59 The Party was working to bring these goals to fruition by 1972, and because the cohort of oppressed people unfairly held in US prisons and jails, was, in this understanding, much larger, the Panthers could espouse the more radical demand that all prisons be eliminated. In this way, the Party redefined the community that they envisioned making up their moral polity.

In practice, the Party showcased their new intercommunal philosophy through a series of endeavors they called “survival programs.” In keeping with Newton’s theory of intercommunalism, these often redistributed wealth by providing necessities like shoes, breakfast for school children, and medical care to those in need, free of charge. They focused on ensuring the survival of black communities so that they could join other

58 “Black Panther Party Program March 29, 1972 Platform, The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service 8, no. 8, May 13, 1972, B. 59 FBI, “HUEY NEWTON,” August 14, 1970, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Reference Materials, Series 2, Box 48, Folder 17, “[COINTELPRO],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

164 oppressed communities in their fight for change. They continued to believe that

Revolution would come, but now they argued that communities had to be strengthened and organized first. The Black Panther, itself described as part of the new

Intercommunalist program for survival, noted that “The Black Panther Party has attempted to satisfy these existing [basic survival] needs and desires of the people, still maintaining the concept of complete liberation for the oppressed masses.”60 In this vein the BPP operated the Intercommunal Youth Institute to provide “Black and other oppressed children with a scientific method of thinking and analyzing things, basic skills for living in the society and a concrete alternative to established learning institutions.”61

The paper further promised eight more survival programs which were in the process of being implemented. These included the People’s Free Ambulance Service, People’s Free

Dental Program, and the Community Cooperative Housing Program.62 These were added to earlier programs like the Free Breakfast for School Children program and the Free

Busing to Prisons program, created in the previous years. The Community survival programs demonstrated that the BPP continued to try to expand their moral polity even in the face of FBI subterfuge. Programs like these filled community needs that existed because local, state, and federal governments either did not provide such programs or actively blocked segments of the population from receiving such services.

In addition to the split in the Party and the revised Platform, one additional 1972 event altered the Panther’s moral polity, the centralization of the Party in Oakland. On

May 20, 1972 The Black Panther carried an announcement of Bobby Seale’s candidacy

60 “A Program for Survival: Theory and Practice,” The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service 8, no. 8, May 13, 1972, A. 61 “A Program for Survival,” The Black Panther, May 13, 1972, D. 62 Ibid.

165 for mayor of Oakland, California as well as Minister of Information, Elaine Brown’s candidacy for Oakland city council.63 In July, the Central Committee called on Panthers across the country to centralize in Oakland, bringing their resources and manpower to the city to support the push for local offices.64 The Black Panther began, that month, to publish a series of articles collectively titled “Oakland—A Base of Operation!” which described systemic problems in Oakland and ways a liberated city could alleviate those issues.65 Following the split in the Party and the havoc wrought by the FBI, Panther leadership reasoned that they could better achieve their aims with a smaller more concentrated base of support and with that base make Oakland into “liberated territory,” controlled by the people. The people’s control would begin with Seale’s election as

Mayor, and Elaine Brown and others joining the local government in other capacities.

Discussing the election with students at Grove Street College in October, Elaine Brown explained, “We’re talking about a large move to implement people’s power, have liberated territory in the City of Oakland, then maybe the State of California, and on and on.”66

The directive to centralize in Oakland helped convince many that Newton was leading the party to ruin. Mumia Abu Jamal recalled, “The order meant that Panthers from across the country had to close their local offices, close their community survival programs, and, essentially leave for Oakland. For some Panthers, this was simply

63 “Chairman Bobby Seale for Mayor!” The Black Panther 8 no. 9, May 20, 1972, front page, and supplement. 64 Bloom and Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire, 380. 65 See, for example, “Oakland—A Base of Operation! Part XIV, No Shelter in Public Housing,” The Black Panther 9 no. 2, October 28, 1972, A. 66Elaine Brown, “‘We’re Talking About Winning in Oakland:’ Sister Elaine Brown Speaks at Grove Street College,” The Black Panther 9 no. 4, November 9, 1972, 4; Elaine Brown, “We’re Talking About Winning in Oakland, Conclusion,” The Black Panther 9 no. 5, November 16, 1972, 11.

166 unacceptable. Many people left the Party.”67 In Chicago, Bobby Rush, who took over leadership of the branch after the murder of Fred Hampton, sent the chapter’s bus and printing press to Oakland, but found that many Party members did not want to go to

Oakland and began to resent what was being asked of them. “People just wanted to move on, wanted to do something. So they said, ‘Rather than go out to Oakland, we’re just gonna disband. We’re just gonna leave.’ One by one they began to peter out.”68 Although some chapters remained open, the centralization of the Party in Oakland essentially made the Black Panthers into a local organization. They had gone from proposing to expand the services provided in their moral polity with an increased number of survival programs to closing those same programs down across the country, all in the space of one year.

Enlarging the IRA’s Moral Polity

In Northern Ireland too, events in 1972 altered the IRA’s moral polity, and allowed it to expand. Here the anger of 1971 spilled over, with tragic consequences, into

1972. This year saw non-violent protest destroyed after civil rights campaigners took on new goals. Chief among these was NICRA, or the Northern Ireland Civil Rights

Association, who, following the achievement of many of their aims from the late 1960s, threw their weight behind anti-internment protests in 1971. NICRA was instrumental in organizing anti-internment protest marches, but Northern Ireland was a different place in the early 1970s than it had been at NICRA’s height in 1968/1969. The emergence of the

Provisional IRA and the deployment of the British Army onto the streets meant that

67 Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press, 2004), 224. 68 Hilliard and Cole, This Side of Glory, 327; Bloom and Martin Jr., Black Against Empire, 381.

167 violence, rather than peaceful protest, was the order of the day. Thus, when NICRA leaders, began, once again, to encourage marches, they were met with a more ferocious violence than they had previously encountered.

This violence claimed the life of the non-violent civil rights movement in January

1972. Despite the fact that a march at Magilligan Strand the previous week met with violence at the hands of the British Army’s Green Jackets and Parachute regiment, and prominent civil rights campaigners like John Hume argued against it, NICRA organizers went ahead with a march, in Derry on January 30, 1972. Approximately two hours later,

13 men were dead, and another 13 men and 2 women were severely wounded at the hands of the Parachute Regiment, in events that would come to be known as Bloody

Sunday.69 The deaths—a fourteenth man would later die of his wounds—and subsequent accusations from the Paratroopers that they had come under attack and killed only gunmen and bombers, shocked the Catholic and nationalist residents of Derry and the wider world. Catholics were further angered by the Widgery Report, published three months later, which declared that the Parachute regiment had done nothing wrong on

Bloody Sunday.70 It would take 38 years of further protest to clear the names of the dead and wounded. 38 years until Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, reported the findings of the Saville Inquiry, and declared to the house of commons, “There is no doubt. There is nothing equivocal. There are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody

Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.”71 The immediate effect of

69 The Museum of Free Derry, “Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972,” n.d. Museum of Free Derry, Derry, Northern Ireland; Melaugh, “Internment: A Chronology of Main Events,” CAIN. 70 The Museum of Free Derry, “Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972.” 71 The Bloody Sunday Family Support Programme, Innocent: Remembering 15 June 2010, reactions to the Saville Report on Bloody Sunday, available http://www.museumoffreederry.org/bsundaybooklet- lowres.pdf. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville, was commissioned by Tony Blair’s

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Bloody Sunday, aside from plunging Derry’s Bogside and Creggan communities into anger and grief, was to violently halt the remnants of the civil rights movement in their tracks. Reflecting on the situation in Northern Ireland on their tenth anniversary, NICRA asserted that “For NICRA [Bloody Sunday] meant the end of the period of mass marches and street rallies. Bloody Sunday was a British Government success in that it immobilized NICRA from returning to the streets.”72 Although NICRA staged a march protesting the Bloody Sunday killings in addition to their previously established civil rights demands in Newry a week later, they acknowledged that the Newry march was

NICRA’s “last significant one.”73 The IRA was now the most visible option to oppose the

British, and volunteers flooded their ranks.

Approximately two months later, on March 28, 1972 the Stormont government, under Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, met for the last time. In its place Edward Heath’s government imposed direct rule from Britain. The rents and rates strike, the violent reaction to internment, and the moderate SDLP’s walkout of Stormont demonstrated that the larger Catholic community, and not just the IRA, was irrevocably divorced from the

Stormont regime. This convinced Heath that the way forward and away from the ever increasing conflict was the dissolution of the Stormont regime, despite unionist and loyalist objections.74 Governance was transferred to the newly created Northern Ireland

Labour Government in 1998. Blair believed sufficient new evidence had come to light since the public inquiry under Lord Widgery to open a new inquiry. The Saville Inquiry concluded and reported its findings in June 2010. This inquiry concluded that none of the soldiers “fired in response to attacks or threatened attacks by nail or petrol bombers” and moreover, that many soldiers had “knowingly put forward false accounts in order to seek to justify their firing.” 72 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, We Shall Overcome: The History of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland, 1968-1978 (Belfast: Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), 1978) available http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/crights/nicra/nicra78.htm#contents. 73 Ibid. 74 “The End of Stormont, 1972-1973,” in David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2000), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/directrule/mckittrick00.htm.

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Office (NIO) and William Whitelaw became the new head of the six counties, assuming the office of Northern Ireland Secretary, known in Northern Ireland as the Secretary of

State. He was accountable to the Parliament at Westminster. The hated Stormont government was dissolved, but it remained to be seen if the direct rule government would have a better relationship with Catholic communities in the North.

One of the first tasks of the direct rule government was to examine the Special

Powers Act, particularly the powers it gave to intern men without trial. The deeply unpopular nature of internment and its fomentation of new violence had not gone unnoticed by the British government. While the Stormont parliament enjoyed its final weeks in existence, Heath and his ministers in London proposed ways to bring the escalating conflict in Northern Ireland to an end. They contemplated everything from having the Northern six counties governed jointly by the Republic of Ireland and Britain to repartitioning the North along sectarian lines and allowing the Catholic districts to rejoin the Republic. In meetings with Brian Faulkner during these last few weeks, Heath indicated that at the very least he wished to do away with internment.75 Faulkner urged him to leave internment as it was, but the introduction of direct rule left the door open for just such an action. To this end, Britain’s parliament commissioned a group, chaired by

Lord Diplock “to consider legal procedures to deal with terrorist activities in Northern

Ireland,” that is, without internment, and this body met for the first time in October 1972.

While the Diplock Commission collected and weighed the evidence, the

Parliament at Westminster devised their own plan to end violence without internment. As an interim measure, they passed the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order

75 Ibid.

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1972. This order allowed anyone suspected of involvement with terrorism—in this case, conflict-related political violence—to be held for 28 days. When this period had expired the arrested party was then either released or sent to a Commissioner appointed by the

Secretary of State who would hear the case as to why the prisoner should be kept in detention. In the House of Commons William Van Straubenzee, the Minister of State for

Northern Ireland, called the Detention of Terrorists Order “a more acceptable process of dealing with those terrorists who cannot be brought before the courts,” because of the threat of paramilitary intimidation.76

For those arrested under the Detention of Terrorists Order, as well as their supporters, ending internment in favor of detention was simply the renaming of the policy of holding men and women without trial, nothing new. In December, Van Straubenzee’s confident assertion to the House of Commons that since the introduction of direct rule

“my right hon. friend [the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland] has not signed any new internment order,” was met with skepticism by Bernadette Devlin. She interrupted his speech to confirm that although no new “internment orders” had been signed, there had been 45 “interim custody orders” issued since November alone.77 Van Straubenzee reassured the Commons that all detention and internment orders made under articles 11 and 12 of the Special Powers Act prior to the implementation of the Detention of

Terrorists Order were converted to interim custody orders, so that internees had to be released or their case referred to a commissioner within 28 days. Moreover, he noted, “as soon as [the cases] have been determined by the commissioner there will be no one in

76 Commons Sitting, Northern Ireland Detention of Terrorists, December 11, 1972, HC Deb 11 December 1972 vol 848 cc45-103, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/dec/11/northern-ireland-detention-of-terrorists. 77 Ibid.

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Northern Ireland who has been deprived of his liberty and who has not had an independent hearing.”78

Even if the changes in internment policy meant that members of Parliament could laud the new safeguards for people detained by the state, this was little consolation to anyone arrested and held for 28 days without trial or for those already in internment camps. For the people arrested and sent to prison under the Detention of Terrorists Order, they might now be called “detainees” by the government, but they held little faith in the commissioners who would oversee their cases, particularly because it was not until 1973 that the first loyalists were detained even as loyalist violence increased through 1972.79

“Detainees” saw no great difference in circumstance from the men imprisoned under internment before them. Men continued to be sent to the cages of Long Kesh and

Magilligan, and after 1973 the system expanded to include the first women detainees, who were sent to Armagh and who were, almost entirely republican. For men like Phil

McCullough, interned since August 1971, daily life did not change.80 The shift from internment to detention was, for these prisoners, simply a matter of semantics, much like the fact that with the introduction of direct rule in 1972, the British renamed Long Kesh,

HMP Maze. The name might have changed, but for republican prisoners inside that meant very little. For those held in prisons across the north, detention was simply the new name for internment, designed to allow the British government to avoid the shame and

78 Ibid. 79 The Ulster Volunteer Force, for example, was responsible for at least 17 deaths in 1971, 28 deaths in 1972, and 34 deaths in 1973. In those years “non-specific loyalists groups” which may have included the UVF killed 4, 58, amd 33 people respectively. For more conflict death statistics see The Sutton Index of Deaths available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html. 80 Phil McCullough, Interview with Author, November 2011.

172 bad publicity brought on by the reintroduction of internment in 1971, and the renaming of the prison was a similar matter.

Bloody Sunday, the new direct rule government’s handling of Internment, and an increasing number of sentenced prisoners as a result of the escalating conflict, came together as a catalyst to an expansion of the IRA’s moral polity. With increasing conflict surrounding the prisons, not the least of which was the overtly political nature of internment, the IRA had yet another field upon which to fight the authorities. Now, they were not only the defenders of the Catholic nationalist North, they were the victims of an unjust prison system. Internees, sometimes guilty of the same offenses as sentenced prisoners had far more privileges. If, as the Stormont government alleged, internees were terrorists, the same as sentenced republican prisoners, then the IRA wanted an explanation as to why some “terrorists” had privileges that others did not. If the internees were political prisoners, and the IRA firmly believed they were, and they were interned for their suspected involvement in paramilitarism and violence, then sentenced prisoners were also political and deserved the same rights and privileges. On this battlefield, the

IRA would, in 1972 create a moral polity.

II. Moral Polities in the Prisons of the United States and Northern Ireland

The changes occurring outside the prisons of the United States and Northern

Ireland had considerable repercussions for imprisoned members of the BPP and IRA. As the schism within the Black Panther Party hardened into a permanent division, BPP prisoners were forced to choose sides just as their counterparts outside did. For imprisoned members of the Party this sometimes led to confusion, especially in cases where individual Panthers were jailed in prisons without large Panther populations.

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Nevertheless, Panthers prisoners continued to struggle for a moral polity within their places of incarceration. For the IRA, the implementation of direct rule for Northern

Ireland, the new legislation created under the direct rule government, and the excesses of

British Forces in events like Bloody Sunday provided space for the creation of a much broader moral polity than they previously sought, but unlike the Panthers, this moral polity would exist most strongly within the prisons of Northern Ireland.

Division, the Prisons, and the Panthers’ Moral Polity

Despite the fact that choosing sides meant reducing their support base, prison branches of the Black Panther Party and individual prisoners quickly asserted their loyalty and drew lines between their members and rival Panthers. The March 20, 1971 issue of The Black Panther carried a message from the BPP’s San Quentin branch which stated unequivocally where their allegiances lay. In a center fold spread, the prisoners explained, “We stand with the Supreme Servant, Minister Huey P. Newton, who is the

Soul Servant of the People, both in actions and deeds.”81 They labeled Cleaver a

“reactionary,” accused him of drug use, and warned him that the San Quentin cadre would be waiting for him and the other members of the international section of the party when they were inevitably sent to prison. This, their letter maintained, was not a threat, but as Party members and “convict to convict” they would, one day, judge him and deal with him “justly.”82 The San Quentin cadre asserted that they were the people to best understand Cleaver because they were experiencing incarceration just as Cleaver had.

This special knowledge made them certain that their information about Cleaver’s betrayal

81 “To Eldridge Cleaver and his Conspirators from the San Quentin Branch of the Black Panther Party,” The Black Panther 6 no. 8, March 20, 1971, 10. 82 Ibid., 10, 11.

174 of the party was correct, and, as such, they sided with Newton when the party split. In this way, the breakdown of trust within the BPP filtered into the prisons where it threatened to cause further strife and violence.

The San Quentin branch reasserted their hostility to Cleaver’s wing of the Party after Sam Napier’s murder. In a letter to Napier’s widow, Pauline, the cadre’s assistant lieutenant of education threatened the “barbaric, inhumane, evil, filthy, merciless . . . coward warlocks” who were responsible for Napier’s death, and who sought to impede the work of the BPP, instead pursuing money and power.83 He prophesized that Napier’s killers would find no compromise, negotiation, or “peace loving sympathy” from the people. Praising the historical role that black women played, and continued to play, in the liberation struggle, the assistant lieutenant of education confessed that the San Quentin prisoners felt helpless and “almost useless” because they could not be with Pauline

Napier in her grief. From within their maximum security prison they could only offer moral support for Napier and other Panthers, and this, he asserted, was “just not enough.”

The best he could hope for was that Napier’s murderers would somehow be caught, removed from their life in “minimum security,” that is, American life outside the maximum security prisons, and sent to California and San Quentin where the Party branch knew “how to deal with the people’s enemies effectively.” He held out special hope that this would be true of “their leader,” Cleaver.84 In this manner, through a series of insults and threats, the assistant lieutenant of education reaffirmed that the San Quentin cadre were loyal to Newton and would hurt Cleaver if they ever had the chance.

83 Assistant Lieutenant of Education, San Quentin branch of the Black Panther Party, “Letter of Condolence,” The Black Panther 6, no 15, May 8, 1971, 9. 84 Ibid.

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At the same time, this letter of condolence included a plea that Pauline Napier extend her support to the San Quentin BPP prisoners, and continue to advance the revolutionary principles of Newton’s wing of the party. “To turn around now would mean that Comrade Sam died in vain,” the lieutenant argued. The San Quentin cadre was prepared to ensure that that did not happen because they were committed to continuing the Party’s work. They just needed Pauline Napier’s support.85 That a letter of condolence would include a warning that a change in loyalty would remove all meaning from a loved one’s death, might, in previous years, have seemed odd or harsh, but in the era of COINTELPRO subversion it was crucial for Panthers to make sure they were among friends. The moral polity’s community had to be redefined. Knowing your allies was, after all, a question of life or death, a question made all the more urgent because of the murder of Sam Napier.

The same issue of The Black Panther which included the letter of condolence to

Pauline Napier carried an argument against the prospect of revolutionary intercommunal warfare in the United States, written by Romaine Fitzgerald from within San Quentin prison. Fitzgerald began by quoting Regis Debray’s assertion that any self-proclaimed revolutionary had to grapple with how to overthrow the power of the capitalist state, in particular “how to break its backbone, the army.”86 After a brief examination of the

Russian revolution, and the revolutions in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Algeria,

Fitzgerald determined that these examples could not serve as literal models for revolutionaries in the United States.87 This argument struck at the heart of the Black

85 Ibid. 86 Romaine Fitzgerald, “Prospects for Revolutionary Intercommunal Warfare,” The Black Panther 6, no. 15, May 8, 1971, 16. 87 Ibid., 17.

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Liberation Army’s ideology. The BLA contended that those who did not support revolutionary violence were “fools” who were “weakening themselves,” and who should understand that “unless the movement cultivates its capacity to fight the enemy on all fronts, no front will secure any real victories.”88 They too, acknowledged that the situation for blacks in the United States was unique, but held that the examples of China,

Guinea Bissau, Vietnam, and North Korea proved the efficacy of the use of armed struggle.89 Fitzgerald’s rejection of the BLA’s reasoning simultaneously placed him squarely in the Newton camp and gave that faction of the party a spokesman outside the central committee.

One month later the Folsom cadre of the Party sent Fathers’ Day greetings through the paper, in which they encouraged all black people to see Huey Newton “as the proper father image of all black children.”90 They praised the example Newton set, serving the people by organizing around concrete social and political issues.91 Catering to the people’s immediate needs, not armed struggle, was the example that should be set for black children. In other words, Newton’s example, not Cleaver’s. Thus, within prisons,

Panthers asserted their allegiances and attempted to redefine points of the moral polity, namely the rejection of immediate armed revolution and promotion of social programs, in the wake of the FBI-encouraged split.

For Panthers without the benefit of a large group of colleagues within their prison or high rank within the party, this was a time of confusion. A letter sent from Ira Harrison

88 Coordinating Committee, the Black Liberation Army, “Message to the Black Movement,” 2. 89 Ibid., i. 90 Folsom Cadre, Black Panther Party, “Message from Folsom Cadre—Black Panther Party,” The Black Panther 6, no. 22, June 26, 1971, 4. 91 Ibid.

177 to Huey Newton in 1972 exemplified the confusion and mistrust which plagued the BPP.

Imprisoned in Michigan, Harrison wrote to Newton, hoping that he would investigate the leadership of the Detroit Black Panthers, particularly its chief spokesman, Lonnie

Darden. Harrison informed Newton that Darden was a “pig” and that Newton would see that if he only sent a field agent to Detroit to investigate.92 Here, again was the moral polity twisted by the FBI’s interference. The mistrust sown by the FBI led to individuals calling for other individuals to investigate Party members. The collective nature of the

Panther’s moral polity was breaking down.

While Harrison pointed to a schism in the Detroit branch of the Panthers, revealing some of the paranoia infecting the party regarding informers and agent provocateurs within their ranks, he remained oddly insensitive to the larger national rupture in the party. Harrison completed his letter by asking that Eldridge Cleaver help him to get a job at Ramparts Magazine upon his release from prison. This he asked, despite his avowal that “through the defection, I supported Newton as I am a strong

Newtonist loyalty.”93 Harrison knew that a rift existed between Cleaver and Newton, but nevertheless asked that both read his letter, and that Cleaver give him a job, despite his professed loyalty to Newton. Harrison’s letter revealed a party rife with dissent, suspicion, and paranoia which left the rank and file confused regarding their relationship to the national leadership. As the Panthers moved forward into two distinct paths, both factions had prisoners who looked to them for support and who were caught in the middle of a feud outside their control.

92 Ira Harrison to Huey Newton, December 22, 1972, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9 “Legal information party cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 3-4. 93 Ibid., 5.

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Amidst this turmoil, Panthers connected to Cleaver’s wing of the Party and the

BLA expressed feelings of being forgotten within the justice system. The first edition of

Right On! carried an article on Geronimo Pratt’s expulsion from the BPP and subsequent imprisonment written by “The Committee to Defend Abandoned Panthers.”94 The existence of such a group and its connection to Cleaver’s faction of the Panthers suggested that within US prisons there were Panthers who, by virtue of the side they chose during the split, felt themselves deserted by a large segment of the Party. In this instance, the forsaken Panther was Geronimo Pratt, purged from the BPP in January

1971, and on trial for the 1968 murder of California teacher, Caroline Olsen. The

Committee to Defend Abandoned Panthers indicated that Pratt attempted to contact

Newton, Hilliard, and the rest of the central committee, but had been met with silence.95

Johnnie Cochran Jr., appointed by the court to represent Pratt, recalled that no Panther affiliated with Huey Newton would agree to serve as a witness and help establish Pratt’s alibi for the night of the murder. Instead, Kathleen Cleaver came back from Algeria to serve as a witness. In the end, Pratt was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.96 Within the BPP trust had broken down so much that former comrades were unwilling to testify for one another if they fell on different sides of the Panther divide. Moreover, the Committee to Defend Abandoned Panthers indicated that the East

94 The Committee to Defend Abandoned Panthers, “Free Geronimo—The Urban Guerilla, Part I,” Right On! Black Community News Service, POSHU 1 No. 1, April 3, 1971, 6, 18. 95 Ibid., 18. 96 “Former Black Panther Leader, Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, Wrongfully Imprisoned for 27 Years, Dies in Tanzania,” Democracy Now!, June 6, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/6/former_black_panther_leader_and_political; and Douglas Martin, “Elmer G. Pratt, Jailed Panther Leader, Dies at 63,” The New York Times, June 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/04pratt.html?_r=0.

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Coast faction of the Party was also attempting to rebuild the parts of the moral polity they believed had been violated by the West Coast Panthers.

Michael Cetewayo Tabor placed the blame for Panthers suffering in prisons across the country squarely at the feet of the BPP’s Oakland leadership. “We began to take note of the fact that political prisoners . . . were left languishing in penitentiaries throughout Babylon. These brothers and sisters had to, damn near, get on their knees to get $5 for commissary, while Huey P. Newton and David Hilliard just wallowed in luxury.”97 Tabor noted that Panthers voiced these concerns as early as November 1970, but that Newton, Hilliard, and their high ranking supporters suppressed them.98 In the view of the East Coast faction of the Panthers, Newton’s prison sentence allowed Hilliard to rise to power in the first place and changed Newton’s ideological outlook enough to lead the BPP to into dangerous and destructive territory. Tabor’s complaints were those of a man frustrated that the Oakland leadership was not living up to the standards of the moral polity. Namely, Newton and Hilliard were helping themselves at the expense of the larger Panther community.

The West Coast Panthers did, indeed, focus their attentions on the top ranking imprisoned BPP officers, although this was not necessarily a new phenomenon. In late

1971, after Hilliard was sentenced to a one to ten year term in connection to the 1968 shootout with Oakland police, The Black Panther began printing blank petitions demanding Hilliard’s release or retrial by a more representative jury.99 They reprinted the

97 Eldridge Cleaver, Don Cox, Kathleen Cleaver, Michael Cetewayo Tabor, “On the Contradictions within the Black Panther Party,” Right On! Black Community News Service, POSHU 1 No. 1, April 3, 1971, 13. 98 Ibid. 99 “People’s Petition for Immediate Parole of Brother David Hilliard from the California Prison System or an Appeal Bail Bond with a Retrial Jury of his Peer Group,” The Black Panther 7, no. 13, November 20, 1971, 17.

180 petition in every issue through the end of May 1972. The focus on Hilliard was characteristic of Panther prisoner support. Although the party attempted to positively impact the lives of all their imprisoned members through programs like free busing to prisons, a hierarchy of prisoners had emerged by 1972. Kathleen Cleaver, recalled, “The party was devoting its resources to finance the trials of key leaders at the expense of many ordinary Panthers facing trials on serious charges. These members felt slighted and accused the Oakland-based leadership of favoritism.”100 In short, the higher a party member’s position within the party, the more consistent publicity they received in The

Black Panther and the more they benefitted from the party’s prisoner assistance programs. For Panthers like Kathleen Cleaver, already divorced from the Newton and the

Oakland Panthers, by 1972, this perceived favoritism confirmed for them the necessity of divorcing themselves from a faction of the Party who did not have their interests at heart.

The prisons and Panthers actions concerning them, thereby, helped to solidify the division of the collective that made up the Panthers’ moral polity.

In May 1971, the Party estimated approximately 130 prisoners in jails across the country.101 Nonetheless, Hilliard continued to command the BPP’s attention. When the

Panthers’ legal defense cadre assigned eighteen party members to write to members of the San Quentin branch of the party, they were assigned “specific members” of that branch. The legal Defense Cadre’s report noted that all party members would be assigned to write to a political prisoner “to keep them abreast of the changing political events.

They are to write at least once a week. They are also responsible for writing Comrade

100 Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969-1972),” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 237. 101 “Political Prisoner Appeal,” The Black Panther 6, no. 16, May 15, 1971, 7.

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David.”102 In this scheme, most party members were supposed to receive one letter a week. Chief of Staff, David Hilliard, imprisoned at Vacaville was the exception. All party members were responsible for writing to Hilliard, and it was his name that appeared in the parting words of Legal Defense Cadre reports, which all called for the justice system to “Free Comrade David!”103

Hilliard was also the primary beneficiary of the Panthers’ collection of money for prisoners to spend at prison commissaries. In late January 1973 the legal defense cadre’s weekly report lamented that “The only prisoners who have received Commissary money on a fairly consistent basis is [sic] Comrade Johnny Spain and the Chief.” They then listed their budget, complete with funds allocated to the prisoners. Hilliard was slated to receive $100, compared to Spain’s $25. Even Spain’s $25 was nearly equal to that of the rest of the San Quentin chapter of the party who were to collectively receive $30.104

Short on funds, the legal defense cadre had to make choices about which prisoners would receive money from the Party. Their decisions regarding that distribution of funds mirrored the BPP’s hierarchy, but in a situation where that hierarchy was viewed by some as failing to look out for the rank and file of the Party, or to live up to the Party’s ideals, this was yet another violation of the moral polity.

The events of 1971 convinced the Panthers of the increasing importance of the prisons to their movement. In January 1972 The Black Panther presented the “State of the

102Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, “General Report,” September 20, 1972, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10, “Legal Information—Party Cases [2 of 4],”Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 103 Ibid. 104Legal Defense Cadre to the Servant, “Weekly Report,” January 23, 1973, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10, “Legal Information—Party Cases [2 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

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Struggle” in which the author acknowledged “The over-riding events of our struggle took place last year in the prisons.”105 They cited the killing of George Jackson, the uprising at

Attica, Panther Chief of Staff, David Hilliard’s imprisonment, charges levied against unnamed Panthers in jails across the country, and the Free Huey campaign as “the impetus for the active heightened struggle for the freeing of all political prisoners.” They acknowledged “In 1971, more than any other year, the organized move to free all political prisoners was strengthened and heightened.”106 Hence, by 1972 Panthers on the outside understood that Panther prisoners were both a crucial focus of their movement and an emerging stimulus for change. They also knew that the Party was deeply divided.

With this understanding, the BPP worked to recruit prisoners to the Party and, in so doing, politicize them and strengthen their moral polity.

If recruitment of new Panthers was a danger, prison authorities had reason to worry. Their institutions were fertile fields in which to grow the BPP’s membership. The

BPP’s Legal Defense Cadre noted in their weekly report of January 23, 1973 that wardens placed four members of the San Quentin branch of the party in the adjustment center to prevent a strike planned by inmates. Included in this round-up was “new comrade Stan Bryant.”107 The Panthers had continued to recruit within San Quentin and this threatened the prison leadership. An increase in membership meant more potential organizers and more politically oriented prisoners who would participate in protests like the planned strike that resulted in Bryant’s removal to the adjustment center.

105 “State of the Struggle,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service 7, no. 20, January 8, 1972, A. 106 Ibid, B, C. 107 Legal Defense Cadre to Servant, January 23, 1973, “Weekly Report,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10, “Legal Information Party Cases [2 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

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Additionally, the planned strike indicated a difference in the ways the prisoners and authorities believed the prison should operate, and a feeling that the prison authorities had somehow failed to fulfil a responsibility that the prisoners believed they ought to fulfill.

At times, the authorities cared less about the activities of organized prisoners and more about who the Panthers were recruiting. Having been denied parole in 1973, David

Hilliard appealed, seeking to explain away some of the reasons why he was denied parole. These reasons included an accusation made in September 1971, by a prison doctor, that Hilliard was “in the process of rapidly creating chaos, increasing my hospital admissions, aggravating psychoses, stirring up unstable people” by attempting to bring inmates into the Black Panther Party.108 William E. Gordon the Chief Psychiatrist at the

California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, demanded that the Program Administrator of D-Quad, reserved for mentally ill inmates, transfer David Hilliard immediately.

Gordon noted that “Insofar as I can ascertain [Hilliard] is not psychotic himself and has no place in D-Quad.”109 Misplacement of a prisoner was not Gordon’s chief concern. He was, instead, worried that Hilliard was recruiting among “psychotic” inmates, and the solution to this was to remove Hilliard from the situation via transfer to another wing.

Appealing his parole denial in 1973, Hilliard alleged that Dr. Gordon was mistaken. To this end he noted that “Dr. Gordon has confirmed personally to one of my attorneys that he personally never knew of any such organizing or observed it, and the only source for this rumo[r] was a few psychotic prisoners.” Hilliard further informed the Adult

108 William E. Gordon to E.L. Snyder, September 16, 1971, “Recommendation for Quad Transfer,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, David Hilliard Manuscripts, Series 3, Box 16, Folder 1, “David Hilliard Prison File (includes S. Turner files and corresp.) 12-9-94 [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 109 Ibid.

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Authority that “Dr. Gordon has promised to clear this up in writing, and his letter will be sent as soon as it is received.”110 It was probably the case that Hilliard was attempting to look less threatening to the Adult Authority rather than repudiate any work for the BPP, because later in his appeal he justified his role in the Black Panthers as being for the betterment of his community, not for armed aggression toward the police. Regardless of

Hilliard’s actual motivations, the case reveals that prison authorities had documented concerns that the Panthers were attempting to strengthen their movement inside the prisons.

Panthers who attempted to organize and create aspects of the moral polity within the prisons often found themselves removed from the general population and placed in solitary confinement, or, in extreme cases, dead. In June 1972 The Black Panther carried the report of the death of Joseph Waddell, known as “Joe Dell,” section leader of the

North Carolina chapter of the BPP, who was imprisoned in Central Prison in Raleigh.

Prison authorities reported that the twenty-one-year-old died of a heart attack, but the

Panthers alleged that “Waddell was the probable victim of poison or drugs, to induce a heart failure.”111 The paper further recounted that guards and other prison officials previously threatened to kill Waddell “because he was the drive and motivating force in the organizing of the Brothers of Central Prison against repression.” The article continued,

110 “Adult Authority Vote Sheet, Miscellaneous Determinations” May 2, 1973, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, David Hilliard Legal, Series 3, Box 16, Folder 2, Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 4. 111 “Comrade Joseph Waddell’s Heart was too Young to Fail: North Carolina Prison Covers up Murder of Panther Inmate,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service 8, no. 14, June 24, 1972, 4.

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I & J Cellblock is where all Brothers who show any measure of resisting prison

oppression are sent . . . . Comrade Joe Dell spent nearly a year on I and J Cell block

before his life was snuffed out by the fascists at Central Prison. Most of that time was

spent in solitary confinement in violation of his state and U.S. Constitutional rights.112

Before telling readers that the party would “carry his spirit to victory,” the article’s author informed them that when his family arrived to claim his body they found that the prison authorities had removed all vital organs, preventing an autopsy. At the same time, hundreds of inmates were transferred out of Central Prison “to prevent any type of

‘action’ by other inmates Comrade Joe Dell’s death might have triggered.”113 Joseph

Waddell’s death and time spent in solitary confinement was meant to be a call to action for the Panthers. At the same time, it highlighted the use of solitary confinement and isolation by prison authorities to stop organizing within their institutions.

For the leaders of Angola’s Black Panther Party, prison authorities used solitary confinement in extreme ways. The April 18, 1972 death of an Angola prison guard, Brent

Miller, precipitated years of solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert

Woodfox. The Panthers reported that Miller’s death occurred during a period of

“extreme tension between prisoners and the Angola administration,” after guards

“violently and brutally halted a peaceful petition drive.”114 Woodfox, Wallace, Gilbert

Montegat, and Chester Jackson were all indicted for Miller’s murder. Hezekiah Brown emerged as a witness who claimed the four had stabbed Miller as the guard waited for

112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 114 “Angola Prison: 3 Activists Re-Indicted for Guard,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service 10, no. 22, October 13, 1973, 7.

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Brown to make him coffee.115 The accused believed that the prison administration singled them out because of “‘involvement in educating other inmates about racism and economic exploitation at the prison.’”116 Woodfox and Wallace were convicted of the murder and placed in solitary confinement, where they stayed, for decades, despite their self-avowed innocence and the revelations of numerous problems with their trials including all white juries and favors given to Brown in exchange for his testimony.117

Jackson testified for the State and took a deal for a lesser charge. A prison officer produced an alibi for Montegut who was then found guilty of only a minor charge connected to the killing.118 A third Panther prisoner, Robert King was also put into solitary confinement at Angola in 1972 after being accused of killing another inmate.

Like Wallace and Woodfox, Wilkerson adopted the teachings of the Black Panther Party in New Orleans Parish Prison when Ronald Ailsworth was moved to the tier where

Wilkerson was imprisoned.119 Wilkerson, Wallace, and Woodfox became known as the

“Angola 3” for the extraordinary amount of time each spent in solitary confinement.120

King would go on to spend twenty nine years in solitary and Wallace forty one years.

Woodfox spent 43 years and 10 months in solitary confinement before being released in

2016.121 As the Angola 3 maintained their innocence over the decades, they continued to

115 Laura Sullivan, “Favors, Inconsistencies Taint Angola Murder Case,” All Things Considered, NPR, October 28, 2008, available http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96199165. 116 “Angola Prison: 3 Activists Re-Indicted for Guard,” The Black Panther, October 13, 1973, 7. 117 Ed Pilkington, “Angola Three Inmate in Longest Solitary Confinement Seeking Damages in Court,” The Guardian, September 4, 2014, available http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/angola-three- albert-woodfox-lawsuit-louisiana-prison; Sullivan, “Favors, Inconsistencies Taint Angola Murder Case,” NPR, October 28, 2008. 118Sullivan, “Favors, Inconsistencies Taint Angola Murder Case,” NPR, October 28, 2008. 119 King, From the Bottom of the Heap, 158. 120 King was cleared of killing the inmate and released in 2001. Wallace was released on October 1, 2013, and died of terminal liver cancer three days later. 121 Ed Pilkington, “Albert Woodfox Speaks After 43 Years in Solitary Confinement: ‘I Would not Let Them Drive Me Insane,’” The Guardian, February 20, 2016.

187 assert that their political beliefs and organizing within the prisons was the real reason behind their confinement. Prison authorities wanted to make certain that the Panthers could not create a moral polity or even organize within Angola.

The experiences of the Angola 3, Joseph Waddell and David Hilliard show just how dangerous authorities believed the Panthers could be, even while imprisoned.

Panthers were viewed as destabilizing influences by prison administrations because they brought political education to inmates, which helped an otherwise divided group organize and protest together. The prisons in which BPP members were jailed were designed to favor the interests of the guards and administration over that of the prisoners, and any shift toward increased power of the prisoners threated that hierarchy. Moreover, the work of these prisoners helped strengthen the BPP by increasing its membership base, and the

FBI and local law enforcement across the country had already made it clear that they saw the Panthers as a menace to US society if they were free. Incarceration, as a solution to the FBI and law enforcement’s fear of the Panthers, turned out to be a double edged sword. Prison branches could spread the Party’s message without activists on the streets.

Imprisoned Panthers also carried the potential of being able to join and strengthen the

BPP’s initiatives on the outside if they were released. All of these scenarios were threatening to the power structure of the prisons and the government outside.

The IRA in 1972: Creation of a Moral Polity

While the Black Panthers came out of 1972 divided and struggling to rebuild their moral polity from the singular base of Oakland, California, the IRA emerged in a relatively strong position. The Panthers’ misfortunes, resulting from counterintelligence

188 and subterfuge and the resultant schism within the Party helped to destroy the Panther’s moral polity by fueling suspicion which broke the communal nature of the Panthers apart.

The IRA, on the other hand, were dealing with a new direct rule government who took over an escalating conflict and the deeply unpopular internment without trial. The IRA stepped into the new situation, and drew on a traditional form of redress to create a moral polity within the prisons.

In the late spring of 1972 republican prisoners began a drive for political status for their sentenced prisoners. Both the OIRA and PIRA regarded their members as soldiers and their prisoners as captured combatants who should be treated as prisoners of war.

They, therefore, viewed prison uniforms, prison work, and restricted movement, as inappropriate and slanderous and knew of instances of historical precedent in which IRA prisoners protested for recognition of their political motives and had many of these demands granted, often after a hunger strike. This was, therefore, the tactic IRA prisoners would use in order to demand political status in 1972. Although some scholars date the

IRA’s use of hunger strikes to James Connolly’s knowledge of British Suffragettes’ hunger strikes in the early 20th century, Irish republicans of later generations found more resonance in the collective memory which said that the hunger strike as a means to redress dated back to ancient Irish Brehon law.122 Republicans asserted a sense of continuity and identity by using this tactic which they associated with their ancient ancestors and a system of laws which predated British involvement in Ireland. They

122 Barry Flynn advances the British Suffragette argument in Chapter 1 of Pawns in the Game. For an explanation of the connection between Hunger Strikes and Brehon Code, see David Beresford, Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Hunger Strike (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), 7-9.

189 looked back to a time where they saw a moral polity existing in Ireland and used it to create another.

In the North, after 1971, the issue of political status was complicated by the fact that internees had rights denied to sentenced prisoners. Internees could wear their own clothing while sentenced prisoners had to wear the prison uniform. Internees were also segregated by paramilitary unit, while sentenced prisoners were not. As sentenced IRA prisoners saw their cohorts interned and given rights which they saw as tantamount to those accorded to prisoners of war, they began demanding these for themselves. The struggle for political status, which emerged in 1972, involved prisons across the island of

Ireland and made strange bedfellows among rival paramilitaries. The political status campaign revealed the prisons as places where loyalists and republicans might cooperate even as deadly feuds raged outside, and highlighted the divisions that still existed between Official and Provisional republicans. In the end, it created a moral polity within the prisons for paramilitary prisoners.

During the first week of May 1972 Michael Mallon, OIRA, sent a letter out of

Crumlin Road Prison detailing the fight for political status. His letter was optimistic about the campaign given that loyalist prisoners “support us all the way.” This was important because loyalists held key jobs within the prison and could “stop the jail dead with a work strike.” Nevertheless, Mallon tempered his positivity, confiding that “The only fly in the ointment is, as usual, the effin provos. They want to go it alone and let every body [sic] else follow like sheep.”123 He noted that the PIRA had given the authorities 48 hours to grant political status before they put five men on hunger strike, but

123 Michael Mallon to Kevin, May 1972?, Prisons Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

190 that the loyalists and OIRA prisoners had their own protests planned. The OIRA wanted to use one of their prisoners, Peter Monaghan, as a test case for Northern Ireland

Secretary of State, William Whitelaw to judge. Further, the OIRA and loyalist prisoners planned to reject the prison uniform and begin wearing “civvy clothes” in protest. The ultimate end of the protest beginning with civilian clothes was to be a hunger strike, but according to Mallon, the participation of PIRA prisoners was not necessary. Of the clothing strike he professed, “It will spring a surprise on the provos . . . and may even bring in the soldiers and as soon as the battle with them is over we all go on hunger strike and continue till the bitter end and the provos can join or stay in splendid isolation.”124

Mallon’s letter revealed that the fight for political status in 1972 encompassed an odd assortment of allies and rivals, all of whom felt that they were political prisoners.

Annoyed as he might have been with the “effin provos,” and as remarkable and unexpected as it was for any republican to work with loyalists, within the confines of

Crumlin Road Jail, Mallon and the OIRA shared an enemy with all of them.

On May 6 thirty five members of the UVF issued a statement which affirmed that they sought “full status as political prisoners” and further promised that they would “use every legitimate means in pursuance of these honourable aspirations.”125 The Irish Times noted that the UVF members were joined in their push for political status by Official IRA prisoners, but although PIRA prisoners were agitating for the same status, they had not joined the OIRA and UVF in their combined campaign.126 Nonetheless, by seeking the same status, loyalists, and official and provisional republicans created a community of

124 Ibid. 125 “Loyalists and I.R.A. Men in Jail Campaign,” The Irish Times, May 8, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0508/Pg007.html#Ar00708. 126 Ibid.

191 prisoners positioned in opposition to the prison administration and government, which was the first step in creating a moral polity.

The struggle for political status in Crumlin Road Jail did end in hunger strike, although the path to that strike did not unfold exactly the way Mallon anticipated. Just as he said, on May 8, 1972 both groups of combatants refused to wear the prison uniform. In an apparent effort to deflect criticism for working with their avowed enemies, Loyalist

News denied that the UVF men were cooperating with “rebel scum.” Nevertheless, loyalists and republicans once again worked together to bring the situation to a head by beginning a riot in the recreation room on May 12. Troops in full riot gear stood ready in a prison yard, but Mallon’s predicted battle never occurred because the rioters eventually agreed to go back to their cells.127 On May 15, it was PIRA prisoners, led by Billy

McKee who refused food, beginning a hunger strike to pressure William Whitelaw to grant them political status and its attendant privileges.128 The strike took the next step toward creating a moral polity as it established reciprocities that the prisoners felt the government and prison administration owed them, but were not providing. These reciprocities amounted to the trappings of a political prisoner. If loyalists and republicans were to be imprisoned, then they argued that they should have their own clothing, be segregated into military units, and have greater autonomy and control over their own time.

Outside the prisons, too, there was increasing evidence of a moral polity, but as events proceeded the OIRA and PIRA grew further apart, threatening the precarious

127 John McGuffin, “Irish Political Prisoners 1900-1973,” in Internment (Tralee: Anvil Books, 1973), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/intern/docs/jmcg73b.htm#chap14. 128Flynn, Pawns in the Game, 132. More republicans joined the strike in succeeding weeks.

192 union in the Crumlin Road Jail. On May 21, 1972 the OIRA kidnapped William Best, a nineteen year old member of the Royal Irish Rangers, who was home in Derry on leave.

A subsequent statement from the OIRA said that Best was tried in an IRA court, sentenced to death, and shot.129 Despite his membership in the Royal Irish Rangers, Best was a Catholic, and his death sparked outrage in Derry. More than 400 women stormed the offices of Official Sinn Fein in protest on the 22nd.130 The intensely negative reaction from their own community caused the OIRA to reexamine their strategy and turn away from the armed conflict. Their bowing to the pressure put on them by the people, pointed to a moral polity-like way of thinking, as the OIRA put the will of the collective before the goals of their own organization.

Yet, the OIRA’s decision to terminate their part in the fighting divided these volunteers from their counterparts in the PIRA still further. On May 29, the executive of the Northern Republican Clubs issued a statement which asserted that, having met with leaders of the OIRA, the latter organization agreed to “immediately suspend all armed military action.”131 Crucially, the OIRA reserved “the right of self defence and the defence of areas if attacked by the British military or by sectarian forces.”132 The

Northern Republican Clubs’ executive maintained that the OIRA’s ceasefire would keep the North from descending into a sectarian civil war, “which the Provisional campaign is

129 Royal Irish Rangers, “Regimental Roll of Honor,” available http://royalirishrangers.co.uk/role.html. 130 Martin Melaugh, “A Chronology of the Conflict—1972,” available, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch72.htm. 131 Executive of the Northern Republican Clubs, “Text of Statement Issued by the Executive of the Northern Republic Clubs Announcing that the Official I.R.A. was Suspending all Armed Military Actions (as reported in the United Irishman of June 1972), May 29, 1972, NAI Public Records DFA 2003/17/300, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, available http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/nai/1972/nai_DFA-2003-17- 300_1972-05-29.pdf. 132 Ibid.

193 threatening to provoke.”133 The “sectarian forces” which the OIRA reserved the right to defend their areas against could, therefore, include the Provisional IRA since they believed this organization to be acting out of sectarianism.

After asserting that the OIRA would no longer engage in offensive violence, the

Republican Clubs presented a list of five demands in order for peace to be maintained.

Two dealt directly with prisoners. They warned that they would continue with a campaign of civil disobedience and political pressure until Internment ended and amnesty was granted to political prisoners in British and Irish jails, men who were on the run, and people against whom charges related to resisting British troops were pending.

Additionally, they demanded the abolition of the Special Powers Act, the legislation which gave the government the power to institute internment without trial.134 Even while declaring an end to their armed struggle, the OIRA understood that the prisons would continue to be an issue their organization had to confront. This, crucially, kept the OIRA in line with the PIRA in terms of how they saw the prisons and how they believed the authorities should treat their prisoners.

Like the schism that rent the Black Panthers in two, in practice, the difference between the OIRA and PIRA was, at times, quite small, and inter-factional fighting characterized the two IRAs’ dealings with one another. Despite their avowed ceasefire, the OIRA’s rivals and enemies seemed intent on perpetuating the OIRA’s place in the conflict, and the OIRA, itself, continued to engage enemies with lethal force on an infrequent basis. In June and July 1972 two civilians were killed by the PIRA amidst their

133 Ibid. 134 Ibid.

194 feud with the OIRA.135 In October British Army men shot Patrick Mullan and Hugh

Herron, both members of the OIRA, at a vehicle checkpoint in Coagh, County Tyrone.136

On December 5, the OIRA killed British Army Sergeant Roy Hills outside Kitchen Hill

Army base in Lurgan, County Armagh.137 Ten days later members of the OIRA killed

George Chambers and Frederick Greeves of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster

Defence Regiment, respectively, in County Armagh.138 As with the Panthers, then, the split within the IRA resulted in two arms of the organization who would continue to face the possibility of imprisonment for similar offenses, committed for similar ends, who, nevertheless, killed one another on the streets.

As the OIRA adopted this less violent role in the conflict, the hunger strike in the

Crumlin Road Jail expanded and grew more urgent. The week of May 22, two OIRA men, Peter Monaghan and Pat O’Hare began a hunger strike. On May 29 Michael Mallon and three other OIRA men joined.139 That same day, women in Armagh Jail joined the protest for political status.140 By June 8 Provisional Sinn Fein reported that eight women were refusing food in Armagh. They were led by 23 year old Susan Loughran, and included Bridie McMahon, Brenda Murphy, and remand prisoner Marie Carson.141 Their

135 Martin Melaugh and Fionnuala McKenna, “Paramilitary Feuds in Northern Ireland: A Chronology of Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/feudchron.htm. 136 Malcolm Sutton, “An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, Excerpts,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1972.html. 137 Ibid.; and Ken Wharton, The Bloodiest Year 1972: British Soldiers in Northern Ireland in Their Own Words, ebook edition (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2014), 216. 138 Sutton, “An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, Excerpts.” 139 Michael Oliver Mallon to Ministry of Home Affairs, June 17, 1972, Prisons Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Michael Mallon, “copy of last letter (gist of),” June 1972, Prisons Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 140“Prison Strike Extends--Petition Asks Whitelaw to Intervene,” The Irish Times, May 29, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0529/Pg009.html#Ar00902. 141“8 Women on Hunger Strike in Armagh,” The Irish Times, June 9, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0609/Pg010.html#Ar01026; and Peadar Whelan, “Armagh Women’s Prison Struggle Told in Inspiring Film,” An Phoblacht, March 7, 2016, www.anphoblacht.com/contents/25797.

195 fast, designed to confer rights on all of their fellow republican and loyalist paramilitary prisoners was further evidence of a moral polity being constructed as the strikers engaged what they conceived of as an act of sacrifice for the benefit of the community created within the prisons.

Outside Crumlin Road and Armagh Jails there was growing support for the strikers. On June 2, more than 100 members of the Belfast branch of Provisional Sinn

Fein staged a token hunger strike on the Falls Road. In the US and Canada protesters picketed the British and Irish consulates and airlines.142 NICRA wrote to Whitelaw, calling for the introduction of political status.143 Paddy Devlin of the SDLP also wrote to the British administration to ask for “political recognition.”144 Not to be outdone, after their arrest in the South under the Offences Against the State Act, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, his brother Seán, and Joe Cahill began their own hunger strike in support of the Crumlin

Road hunger strikers, and simultaneously demanding their own release.145 Meanwhile, every week five more Provisionals and between three and five Officials joined the hunger strike at Crumlin Road so that on June 8 The Irish Times reported that there were 15

Provisionals refusing food.146 It is unclear whether or not this number included Robert

Campbell, one of the original five men to embark on the strike, who escaped from the

142 “Support Grows for N.I. Hunger Strikers,” The Irish Times, June 3, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0603/Pg008.html#Ar00805. 143 “8 Women on Hunger Strike in Armagh,” The Irish Times, June 9, 1972. 144 Marion Green, “The Prison Experience: A Loyalist Perspective,” EPIC Research Document 1, http://www.epic.org.uk/images/custom/uploads/129/files/Prison-History.pdf, 9. 145“Fast Threat by Three Prisoners,” The Irish Times, June 6, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0606/Pg008.html#Ar00806. 146“Prisoners on Hunger Strike Weakening,” The Irish Times, June 8, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0608/Pg011.html#Ar01103.

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Mater hospital in Belfast on June 7, where he had been transferred.147 By the time

Campbell succeeded in embarrassing the security forces with his escape, more than 40 internees at Long Kesh had joined the strike.148 The situation was rapidly coming to a head.

In the House of Commons, on June 12, Bernadette Devlin, independent MP for mid-Ulster, used the hunger strikers to call into question Whitelaw’s commitment to peace.

Does peace mean that because nobody can see Billy McKee die of hunger, that

because he does it slowly, quietly and painfully, believing in a principle and his

right to be treated as a political prisoner, it is a peaceful way to die? . . . If Billy

McKee dies, peace initiatives will be for nothing, because the understanding of

peace will be that it will be the pre-1968 peace. It will not be justice but the

concept that peace exists when nobody complains.149

In Devlin’s estimation, the hunger strikers, and prisoners were crucial to issues of justice, and hence crucial to any hope of achieving peace.

As Devlin harangued the House of Commons, events outside the prison helped ensure that the hunger strikers would be granted their demands. On June 13 Seán Mac

Stiofáin and Dáithi Ó Conaill of the IRA’s Dublin based leadership, joined Seamus

Twomey, and Martin McGuinness, of Derry in a press conference in which they invited

147“Hospital Escaper Still Free,” The Irish Times, June 8, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0608/Pg001.html#Ar00106. Four Stone is equal to 56 pounds. 148“Prisoners on Hunger Strike Weakening”; “Internees on Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, June 7, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/0607/Pg001.html#Ar00109. 149Commons Sitting, “Northern Ireland (Appropriation Order),” June 12, 1972, HC Deb 12 June 1972 vol 838 cc1148-222, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/jun/12/northern- ireland-appropriation-order.

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Secretary of State William Whitelaw to Free Derry to discuss possible ceasefire conditions.150 Whitelaw refused, asserting that “We don’t intend to let part of the United

Kingdom . . . default from the rule of law at the behest of ruthless conspiracy.”151 This worried the government ministers present at a June 14 meeting who knew that despite

Whitelaw’s harsh words for the IRA, he was meeting with the leadership of the loyalist

UDA.152 Notwithstanding Whitelaw’s initial recalcitrance, the IRA’s offer had opened a door to negotiation through which John Hume and Paddy Devlin of the SDLP stepped.

They met with IRA representatives in Derry on June 14, and on the following day they presented the IRA’s conditions for a meeting to William Whitelaw. The IRA was, specifically concerned that any subsequent meeting not take place at Stormont Castle, that there should be an independent witness to the meeting, and that political status be granted to republican prisoners. Whitelaw agreed to this meeting, and the IRA subsequently issued a statement proposing a ceasefire for later in the month.153

A preliminary meeting took place on June 20, 1972 in Ballyarnett, outside of

Derry city, near the Donegal border. PJ Woodfield and Frank Steele represented the

Secretary of State, and Dáithi Ó Conaill and Gerry Adams, who had been released from internment specifically to attend the talks, representing the IRA and republicans.

Woodfield recorded that in preparation for the meeting, and in order to facilitate the

150 CAIN, “1972 chronology,” available, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch72.htm; and Adams, Before the Dawn, 197. Free Derry was a “no-go” area for security forces, created amidst tension between police and residents of the Bogside and Creggan areas of Derry city in 1969. It existed until July 1972 when the British launched Operation Motorman to reclaim no-go areas across the North. 151 William Whitelaw, “Speech by William Whitelaw, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,” June 13, 1972, available http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/ww13672.htm. 152 Rodgers, F. R., “Conclusions of the Secretary of State’s Daily Meeting Held at 9:45 am on 14 June 1972 in Stormont Castle,” June 14, 1972, CAB/9/G/27/6/2, “Secretary of State’s, Rt Hon. William Whitelaw,” PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 153 CAIN, “1972 chronology,” available, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch72.htm.

198 proposed ceasefire, the IRA asked that Whitelaw “accept the demand for . . . ‘political status;’ . . . immediately order the cessation of all harassment of the IRA; and that he would be prepared after the cease fire had been shown to be effective to meet representatives of the Provisional IRA.”154 With regard to the demand for political status,

Woodfield and Steele relayed the news that Whitelaw could grant no such thing owing to the fact that “this was not a concept known to the law and the Secretary of State could therefore not give effect to it.”155 Woodfield’s note on the meeting recorded that

Whitelaw had, nevertheless, already granted concessions to the prisoners which allowed them to call off their hunger strike. Woodfield suggested to Adams and Ó Conaill “that the substance of what was being asked for under this head was virtually the position as it is now.”156 Adams evidently agreed, remembering in his autobiography, “The prisoners in Belfast prison [Crumlin Road], a major concern for republicans outside, were to be given political status, or as the British termed it, ‘special category status.’”157 In June of

1972, then, the British government and the IRA agreed that prisoners convicted of conflict related offenses were different than other prisoners. In effect, they were political.

At this point, both the British and republicans were optimistic about the future. At the June 20 meeting Ó Conaill and Adams asked the NIO to help facilitate a meeting between the IRA and UDA, “and implied that if a meeting could be effected they might get along better than some people would expect.”158 Moreover, in his assessment of the republican representatives, PJ Woodfield reported “There is no doubt whatever that these

154 PJ Woodfield, “Note of a Meeting with Representatives of the Provisional IRA,” June 21,1972, PREM 15/1009, Public Record Office, Kew, England, available http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/publicrecords/1972/index.html#210672, 1. 155 Ibid., 2. 156 Ibid. 157 Adams, Before the Dawn, 198. 158 Woodfield, “Note of a Meeting with Representatives of the Provisional IRA,” 4.

199 two at least genuinely want a ceasefire and a permanent end to violence. . . . Their behaviour and attitude appeared to bear no relation to the indiscriminate campaigns of bombing and shooting in which they have both been prominent leaders.”159 The British had agreed to special category status, with its tacit admission that IRA volunteers were political prisoners, to facilitate peace talks and a cease fire, and on June 21, Woodfield seemed optimistic that Adams and Ó Conaill represented a sincere commitment to that process.

A July 7 meeting between Seán MacStíofáin, Dáithi Ó Conaill, Seamus Twomey,

Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Ivor Bell, and the Secretary of State left less room for optimism. British government accounts indicate that MacStíofáin dominated the meeting where he demanded that British security forces withdraw from Northern Ireland and asserted the right of Irish Self Determination.160 Pending total British withdrawal,

MacStíofáin demanded that the army leave sensitive areas and called for a general amnesty for internees and detainees, political prisoners in Britain and Ireland, and for people on the wanted list. The republican delegation also called for an end to the Special

Powers Act, an end to oaths of allegiance to the crown, the release of all internees, proportional representation in Northern elections, and the removal of the ban on Sinn

Fein.161 Adams remembered being unconvinced that the British would grant any such demands, even as MacStíofáin exhibited surprising optimism about the Secretary of

State’s willingness to concede them.162

159 Ibid., 6. 160 Dominic Casciani, “Adams and IRA Secret Whitehall Talks,” BBC News World Edition, January 1, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2601875.stm. 161 Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn, 203. 162 Ibid., 204, 205.

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In the end, Adams’ assessment, not MacStíofáin’s proved correct when the truce broke down two days after the July 7 meeting. Conflict between loyalist paramilitaries and nationalists and republicans in West Belfast had shadowed the negotiations. On July

9, IRA members accompanied Catholic families, who had been driven from their homes in Rathcoole by Loyalist intimidation, to empty houses on Lenadoon Avenue in Belfast.

There, they met UDA members who sought to prevent these families from moving in.

Adams reported that the British Army assisted the UDA in preventing the families from moving into the houses, ramming a moving van with an army Saracen. When the gathered crowd began to riot in reaction to the Army’s actions, the Army retaliated with rubber bullets, and CS gas.163 Amidst the tensions Dáithí Ó Conaill placed a call to

Whitelaw. Adams recalled that Ó Conaill got through, but that Whitelaw told him he would have to call him back and failed to do so.164 Believing the British to have broken the ceasefire, the IRA called it off.

Shortly afterward the British Army shot and killed five civilians in the nearby

Springhill area, in an event which would become known as the Springhill Massacre.165

They were also responsible for the death of civilian Angelo Fionda who they shot at the junction of Panton Street and the Falls Road.166 At a meeting on the morning of July 10,

Whitelaw and other Northern Ireland Office officials agreed that “the Army were fired at many times before they replied,” and that Whitelaw should return to London and make a

163 Martin Melaugh, “A Chronology of the Conflict-1972,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch72.htm; and Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn, 206. 164 Adams, Before the Dawn, 206. 165 Laura Friel, “The Springhill Massacre, 1972” An Phoblacht, 1 October 2010, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/317; and Adams, Before the Dawn, 205-206. 166 Malcolm Sutton, “An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, 1972,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1972.html.

201 statement to the House of Commons in which he “put the blame for the ending of the

‘truce’ fairly and squarely on the Provisionals who must now take the consequences.”167

Some of those consequences were outlined in the minutes of the July 10 meeting, and dealt with the prisons and prisoners. The group assembled decided that in light of the new situation, “further detentions might be necessary,” the immunity granted to wanted men and women during the truce would be revoked, and “The Army should not be inhibited in its campaign by the threat of Court proceedings and should therefore be suitably indemnified.”168 In essence, their proposed course of action was to use the prisons of the North against the IRA while shielding their own soldiers from similar punishments. Ordinary judicial rules were to be ignored to the benefit of the Army who would have special indemnity to carry out their war against the IRA while other judicial protections, like a trial by jury, were denied to suspected IRA members.169

167 L. Duncan, “Conclusions of a Morning Meeting,” 10 July 1972, CAB/9/G/27/6/3, PRONI, 1, 2. The document also notes that security forces were fired on in Portadown on July 9. It does not say who fired on security forces, though it does record an Orange Order Parade in the area which proved the exception to the rule that the Orange parades of the day passed off peacefully. In any case, the Portadown attack did not result in any fatalities. The PIRA was conclusively responsible for one killing on July 9, that of Gerald Turkington, a member of the UDA, in the Markets area of Belfast. Unknown republicans killed civilian, David Andrews on July 9. Joseph Flemming of the British Army was the sole member of the security forces killed that day. He was found shot in a burned out car with two Protestant civilians on Little Distillery Street. These three deaths were not attributed to a specific republican group. See Sutton, “An Index of Deaths, 1972,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1972.html. 168 L. Duncan, “Conclusions of a Morning Meeting,” 10 July 1972, CAB/9/G/27/6/3, PRONI, 2. The Secretary of State’s July 10 meeting also predicted that “If the Army did not now attack the IRA the probability was that the UDA would,” and “The [General Officer Commanding of the British Army] would see UDA leaders that afternoon and impress upon them that while their efforts as vigilantes in their own areas were acceptable, their presence in any riot or shooting situation would not be tolerated.” This is a rather stunning allowance given their reaction to similar actions by the IRA, and has been seen by republicans as a hint at collusion between the British Army and the UDA. For more information on a republican reading of the above document see “1972: British Army licence to kill as GOC met UDA,” An Phoblacht, 2 July 2012, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/21990. 169 The Ministry of Defence denies that these decisions were ever put into action. After the previously secret document’s release in 2012, the Ministry of Defence told the BBC’s Vincent Kearney, “Whilst not in a position to comment in detail on a document we have not seen it would appear this is a note of discussions, not decisions on matters of judicial accountability. The meeting appears to have been chaired by another government department and the Defence forces in Northern Ireland have always worked within

202

In reality, it was the British government who felt substantial repercussions from the 1972 truce, having committed to special category status yet gaining little from the negotiations which took place that summer. The gains for the IRA, on the other hand, were considerable. Indeed, the implementation of special category status meant drastic changes for all paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. It created a moral polity within the prisons. In the first place, now all combatants who were convicted of conflict related offenses appearing on an official “schedule” could claim Special Category Status. Under special category all sentenced prisoners were moved from the Crumlin Road Jail to

Magilligan, Long Kesh, and in the case of women, Armagh Jail. Crumlin Road Jail came to house remand prisoners.170 Young prisoners were sent to the Borstal at Millisle. Most special category prisoners were transferred to Long Kesh where they lived in Nissen Huts much like the internees who also populated the camp. A prisoner claiming special category had to apply for that status and be accepted by his or her organization and was then assigned to a hut or wing based on that affiliation.171 The Crumlin Road protesters achieved the segregation they sought and established paramilitaries as a unique class of prisoner. Prisoners without status were subsequently referred to as ODCs or ordinary decent criminals.

the law and have always been fully accountable for their actions.” See Vincent Kearney, “Families Claim Soldiers Given Go Ahead to shoot-to-kill,” BBC News, June 18, 2012, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk- northern-ireland-18491093. 170 Mickey Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story (Derry: Tar Abhaile, 2011),70. 171 Brendan Hughes interviewed in Laurence McKeown, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners in Long Kesh, 1972-2000 (Belfast: Beyond The Pale Publications LTD, 2001), 32; John; Deering and Renagh Holohan, “Special Status for Sisters Expected,” The Irish Times, March 20, 1975, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1975/0320/Pg004.html#Ar00401.

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This new status created reciprocities between the prison administration and the prisoners. The prison government would view the special category prisoners differently from the ODC. Special category prisoners could wear their own clothes and associate with one another freely. They could receive weekly parcels and were largely responsible for scheduling their own time. Séanna Walsh, arrested in possession of weapons in

January 1973, remembered that in the cages of Long Kesh guards opened the door to the hut around 7:30 or 8:00 am and did a head count, then came back at 9:00 pm to do a second head count and lock the doors. Guards would escort special category prisoners to visits or to the doctor, but in general prisoners had relatively few interactions with prison staff or the soldiers who guarded the camp.172 Moreover, the command structure that Joe

Doherty experienced among the internees was replicated with sentenced special category prisoners, and prison staff who dealt with Special Category prisoners had to engage with this command structure.173 Special category status, therefore, legitimized the IRA, and other paramilitary groups’ hierarchies, granting them a degree of authority within the prisons. In return, the prisoners would clean their own areas, and structure their own time.

As far as the prison space allowed, the special category prisoners would provide themselves with “services” such as education, entertainment, and scheduling ordinarily provided by the prison administration. Although trust between the prison administration and special category prisoners would always be precarious, it existed in much larger measure under special category than at other times in Irish prison history. Where the

Black Panthers were split by forces outside of their organization, the IRA embraced the

172 Séanna Walsh, interview with the author, November 2011. 173 Joe Doherty, Interview with the Author, November 2011.

204 divisions that their actions created between special category prisoners and so-called

“ordinary decent criminals” and between paramilitary groups.

III. Conclusions: New Laws and New Moral Polities

The 1972 hunger strike, truce, and return to violence all occurred in the months before the British government convened the Diplock Commission. When the Diplock

Commission published their report, they advocated a further reduction in judicial rights for those charged with conflict-related offenses. After hearing from members of the armed services, who spoke in interviews in London, Lord Diplock spent four days in

Northern Ireland talking to security forces in the field.174 In December, his committee released their report in which they recommended steps which would have seemed all too familiar to the BPP. In particular the Diplock Commission recommended that “Bail in cases involving a scheduled offence should not be granted except by the High Court and then only if stringent requirements are met.”175 As the American justice system had done with the Panthers, the Diplock Commission wished to use bail as a means of containing a threat. The Panthers had to contend with exorbitant bail meant to bankrupt them, while members of the IRA could expect to be denied bail altogether.

The issue of bail was ultimately dwarfed by a more flagrant step away from normal democratic judicial practices recommended by Diplock. The commission concluded that the biggest obstacle to containing the violence was the intimidation of witnesses and potential witnesses by paramilitary units. They, therefore, recommended that trials for people accused of a scheduled offense, that is, any offense listed on the

174 Diplock Commission, “Report of the Commission to Consider legal Procedures to deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern Ireland,” (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/diplock.htm. 175 Ibid.

205 official schedule or list, all conflict related, “should be by a Judge of the High Court, or a

County Court Judge, sitting alone with no jury, with the usual right of appeal.”176 If juries might be intimidated, the committee reasoned that they should be done away with. The jury-less courts created in the wake of this report came to be known as “Diplock Courts.”

The recommendations of the Diplock commission ran counter to ideas of democratic justice which called for trials by jury, but this was not new to the politics of Northern

Ireland. Diplock’s proposals were but the more mature siblings of emergency legislation like the Special Powers Act, which had characterized the Northern state since its formation.

By the time the Diplock commission released their recommendations, the

Southern Irish government had already resorted to similar measures to stop the spread of violence to the southern counties. On May 26, 1972 the Irish government under

Taoiseach Jack Lynch announced that they were establishing a “Special Criminal Court” under part V of the Offenses Against the State Act (1939). This special court was staffed by three judges, but did not include a jury. A statement by the Government Information

Bureau noted that “The Government are satisfied that this step is necessary on the grounds that the ordinary Courts are inadequate at the present time to secure the effective administration of justice and the preservation of public peace and order.”177 Many British politicians lauded the decision. In June, James Kilfedder, the MP for North Down, happily exclaimed, “We can accept that these judges were not selected for their mild

176 Ibid. 177Department of Foreign Affairs, “Text of a Statement issued by the Government Information Bureau on behalf of the Taoiseach, John [Jack] Lynch TD, regarding the establishment of a Special Criminal Court under Part V of the Offences Against the State Act (1939),” May 26, 1972, 2003/17/271, National Archives, Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.

206 attitude towards IRA terrorists,” and then asked the House of Commons to consider such courts for the North.178 It was not without irony that a unionist MP such as Kilfedder, committed to the union with Britain and a British identity, sought the downfall of the IRA by adopting the policies of the Southern Irish state. Six months later the Diplock

Commission recommended that Northern Ireland grant Kilfedder’s wish. It was breaches of legal procedure like this, which ran counter to commonly held ideas about how the justice system and the accused should interact, that led to the creation of moral polities in the first place. With the IRA’s moral polity in place in the prisons, the stage was, thereby, set for continued conflict.

The BPP also encountered changes in penal law in 1972, but for Panthers facing charges which carried the death penalty, the changes of 1972 brought some welcome news. In February, the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the death penalty violated the California Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because it was “‘literally, an unusual punishment among civilized nations.’”179 Panthers such as

Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, who was sentenced to death following his conviction of assault on the police and murder of a security guard for a 1969 shootout, now confronted long years behind bars.180 While the Party suggested that California’s moratorium on the death penalty was little consolation to a people still in danger of being killed by State forces in the streets, they acknowledged that the end of the death penalty, “particularly alters plans for the state’s current frame-up trials of political prisoners that are now in

178 Commons Sitting, Northern Ireland, June 12, 1972, HC Deb 12 June 1972 vol 838 cc1071-134, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/jun/12/northern-ireland. 179 “American Notes: Life in California,” Time, February 28, 1972, vol. 99, no. 9, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Newspaper Clippings, Series 8, Box 3, Folder 20 “The Death Penalty,” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 180 Free Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, “About,” http://www.abcf.net/la/pdfs/chip.pdf.

207 progress. Most of the major cases of political prisoners now pending had carried the death penalty.” 181 The suspension of the death penalty was, then, a small victory for the

Panthers’ moral polity, which held that all imprisonment of black men and women was wrong based on the racism endemic in the system, and, therefore, did not acknowledge any justification for the death penalty.

Those who disagreed with the court’s removal of the death penalty quickly voiced their concerns. Governor Ronald Reagan lamented the decision as “‘an almost lethal blow to society’s right to protect law-abiding citizens,’” but despite his disapproval, the death penalty was off the table for Panthers in California, and nationally, the death penalty would be dealt another blow in the summer.182 In June, the United States

Supreme Court essentially suspended the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia when it voided the death penalty statutes of 40 states.183 The decision allowed states to rewrite their death penalty laws, and by early 1975 30 states had done so, but the first post

Furman v. Georgia execution did not occur until 1977.184 With regard to the prisons, the

Panthers’ task, therefore, became dealing with and supporting prisoners who were sentenced to lengthy terms in prison, but they would have to do this from within their struggling moral polity.

Unfortunately for the BPP the suspension of the death penalty was a lonely victory in a time characterized by division and strife. In a BPP riven by COINTELPRO’s

181 “‘An Army of Murderers’ California Drops the Death Penalty but not the Right to Kill,” The Black Panther 7, no. 27, February 26, 1972, 3. 182 “American Notes: Life in California,” Time, February 28, 1972. 183 Between 1957 and 1969 Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Iowa, New York, West Virginia, Vermont, and New Mexico all abolished capital punishment. Delaware did so in 1958, but restored the death penalty in 1961, and in 1963 Michigan abolished the death penalty in cases of treason. 184 Michael H. Reggio, “History of the Death Penalty,” in Society’s Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty, ed. Laura E. Randa (University Press of America, Inc., 1997), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html.

208 deceptions the moral polity faltered and prisoners were left vulnerable. In such situations, it was important to make allegiances known and to make sure associates could be trusted.

The IRA, conversely, was able to mitigate the disaster of infiltration because it was not yet as intense as the subterfuge of COINTELPRO. They were then able to divide their prisoners from other prisoners and create a moral polity within the prisons. The concentration of IRA prisoners within a few prisons across the North also helped the IRA retain cohesion and relative security. Having been split by forces outside of their own control, the BPP’s schism precluded them from working with rival factions of their own organization as IRA prisoners were able to do. The IRA had been responsible for their own organization schism and despite outside violence, when concentrated together inside a prison the OIRA and PIRA found ways to work together, however uneasy this made them. For Panther prisoners spread across a much larger network of prisons, organizing could be difficult and the opportunity to work with rivals almost non-existent. Cleaver- allegiant prisoners tended to be sentenced to prisons on the East coast while West coast prisons housed prisoners loyal to Newton’s faction. In between, isolated prisoners relied on outside support, and this was at a premium following the Panthers’ public split in

1971. As both the BPP and IRA moved forward the divisions in their organizations and the new penal policies of 1972 laid the foundation for future encounters with their respective prison systems.

209

210

Chapter 4

“When a People’s Soldier is Captured:” the Divergent Fortunes of the BPP, IRA, their moral polities, and prisoners, 1973-1975

Four months after arriving in Long Kesh, Joe Doherty was one beneficiary of the ceasefire negotiations of 1972, which led to the release of numerous internees, Doherty among them. He was free long enough to join the IRA and be trained as a volunteer before he was arrested again in March 1973. When he appeared in Belfast Magistrates’

Court and was charged with possession of a .44 rifle and an air pistol, Doherty and two of his three fellow defendants refused to recognize the court.1 He was sentenced to a year in prison but was out again by Christmas 1973, having received three months’ remission of his sentence for good behavior. 2 Upon his release, Doherty’s position within republicanism evolved yet again when he became quartermaster for C Company, Third

Battalion, Belfast Brigade of the IRA.3 He’d trained for an officer’s position during his last weeks in the cages of Long Kesh, and recalling the experience later, suggested that the IRA used the prisons to further volunteers’ training, in the manner of West Point or

Sandhurst military academies.4

His freedom was again short-lived. On January 31, 1974, he was arrested after an army patrol stopped his car and smelled explosives within. According to The Irish Times,

Doherty confirmed that the car carried an unprimed bomb and offered to remove the explosives himself. Doherty and Hugh Francis Hehir, who was also in the vehicle,

1 “Four Youths Accused Over Revolvers,” The Irish Times, March 20, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0320/Pg008.html#Ar00808. 2 Martin Dillon, Killer in Clowntown: Joe Doherty, The IRA and the Special Relationship (London: Hutchinson, 1992), 54. 3 Ibid., 55. 4 Ibid.; Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011.

211 subsequently received ten year sentences, the judge insisting, “Each of you was actively engaged in the current bombing campaign and must receive a severe sentence.”5 Doherty would serve five years of that sentence as a special category prisoner in Long Kesh before being released in 1979.6

The early 1970s was a difficult period for the Black Panther Party, no matter where a Panther fell with respect to the schism in the Party. When the Party split Safiya

Bukhari was the communications and information officer for the East Coast faction of the

BPP. While a considerable number of her comrades went underground to avoid the FBI’s subterfuge and build the forces of the Black Liberation Army, Bukhari remained above ground in order to coordinate support for them.7 “By 1973, I was receiving a great deal of flak from the police because of what they ‘suspected’ I might be doing,” she recalled. In spite of the nearly constant police harassment she remained actively supportive of the

BLA.

Her support of the BLA and Panthers eventually caused Bukhari too, to go underground. In December 1973 police arrested Bukhari and three others near an open manhole two blocks from the Manhattan House of Detention for Men, which police said they were planning to use in a plot to break BLA prisoners out of the Tombs, as the

Manhattan House of Detention was popularly called.8 She publically denied the charges

5 “Sentenced to 10 Years on Bomb Charges,” The Irish Times, September 5, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0905/Pg009.html#Ar00905. 6 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011. 7 Bukhari, The War Before, 6. 8 Joy James, Ed., Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 122.

212 and alleged that they were merely an attempt to stop her political activism. The charges were dropped shortly after her arrest, but she was then served with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury formed to pursue charges against other radical black activists. Instead of testifying, Bukhari went underground.9

On June 25, 1975, Bukhari was arrested with another member of the BLA after a shootout in a store in Virginia. The altercation left fellow BLA member Kombozi

Amistad dead. Amistad was laying on the floor with Bukhari, having been shot, when she said the store manager and his son stomped him to death. Masai Ehehosi survived being shot in the face only to be arrested with Bukhari. She later wrote, “Five minutes after the shoot-out, the FBI was on the scene. The next morning, they held a press conference in which they said I was notorious, dangerous, etc., and known to law enforcement agencies nationwide.”10 On April 16, 1975 she was sentenced to forty years in prison for armed robbery. Although Bukhari attempted to press countercharges of murder against the men responsible for killing Kombozi Amistad, his death was ruled a “justifiable homicide.”11

As Doherty and Bukhari’s stories testify, the period between 1973 and 1975 was vastly different for the Black Panther Party and Irish Republican Army. The IRA fought from a relatively powerful position. Their prisoners had achieved a moral polity within the prisons of the North via special category status and this gave them enough freedom that they could use the prisons to train volunteers. When a volunteer’s prison term was served he or she might then return to the fight in a new operational capacity. When republican prisoners protested, it was because they felt their moral polity had been

9 Whitehorn, “Introduction,” in Bukhari, The War Before, xxx. 10 Bukhari, The War Before, 8. 11 Ibid.

213 violated, and these instances resulted in considerable disruption within the prisons.

Additionally, the achievement of special category status in Northern Ireland led republican prisoners in England and Southern Ireland to protest for similar status. For the

Black Panthers, these were years of decline. The Party was fractured and conflicted about how it would move forward. Many areas across the country demonstrated a need and desire for the Party’s survival programs, but the move of the central committee toward establishment politics and increasingly erratic behavior from Huey Newton hurt the ability of rank and file Panthers to rebuild the moral polity that had been damaged in the previous years. Nevertheless, the Party was able to muster continuing support for prisoners, and prisoners could, in limited measure protest within their jails.

I. The Black Panther Party in a Period of Crisis: Toward and Away from

the Moral Polity

Return to the Moral Polity

The schism within the Black Panther Party had badly damaged their moral polity, but it had not completely eliminated it, and between 1973 and 1975 some Party members continued to try to rebuild, even as suspicions and tensions remained. Following

Newton’s centralization of the Party in Oakland, and despite it, chapters slowly began to reopen across the country. Those that had not closed, but had sent resources, worked to rebuild their survival programs. In early January 1974 The Black Panther announced the formation of a new BPP chapter in Dallas, Texas.12 The new chapter stated that it came into existence because it was an absolute necessity for the black residents of Dallas. “Our

12 “Dallas Chapter of the Black Panther Party Opens,” The Black Panther 11, no. 2, January 5, 1974, 4.

214 purpose in the community is based on it being NECESSARY that oppressed people begin to establish systematic plans and programs for our survival, as well as a strong political program for freedom from oppression.”13 In addition to Dallas, Party chapters struggled forward in Houston, Seattle, Chicago, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Milwaukee.

The Party would never reach the same strength it had in the late 1960s, but there was some effort to make organization a national one once again, and to expand and strengthen the Panthers’ moral polity, especially via the Party’s survival programs.

It was in the survival programs that the Black Panther Party of 1973-1975 retained its closest ties to the moral polity. These programs were strongest in Oakland where Newton had attempted to centralize the Party, and where, therefore, no resources or man-power had been lost after 1972. In 1973 Oakland boasted 15 survival programs, and an additional five being implemented. The existent programs included the free breakfast program and free busing to prisons. Also available were the David Hilliard

People’s Free Shoe Program, liberation schools, People’s Free Plumbing and

Maintenance Program, a pest control program, and People’s Free Medical Research

Health Clinics. The Party advertised that they were implementing a free optometry program, a free dental program, a free community employment program, a free ambulance service, and a community cooperative housing program.14 By November

1975, the free employment program, the free ambulance service and cooperative housing

13 Ibid. 14 “A Program for Survival,” The Black Panther 9, no. 12, January 6, 1973, D.

215 program had been created.15 These programs helped black communities survive, pending the pending the revolution that the Party’s leadership continued to insist was coming.16

When The Black Panther reported the opening of the new chapter, the Dallas BPP was at work adapting the Party’s survival programs to the realities of the Dallas area.

“The rent is too high, pay too low, rats and roaches too plentiful [,] food prices MUCH too high, police too brutal, the courts too unjust, the schools inadequate,” the Dallas BPP explained. They already had a free legal aid program set up in January 1974 and were in the process of creating a food cooperative. They were also working on a free food program, a system of rotating exterminating equipment to deal with roaches without the cost of a professional exterminator, tenants’ unions, tutoring programs, free community day care centers, an escort service for senior citizens, an assistance program for job hunters, and a complaint center for police brutality grievances.17 The plethora of survival programs envisioned by the Dallas Panthers testified to the many areas in which Dallas’ black residents still felt that underserved.

Across the country, chapters of the Party opened survival programs to make up for these deprivations. In Milwaukee, the BPP continued to operate a child care center, despite harassment from local police, and in Oakland, the Party expanded its Seniors

Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE) to include free legal aid in 1974.18 Each program required that the Party bring considerable resources and man-power to bear. On October

12, 1973 the Winston-Salem, North Carolina chapter of the BPP was granted a franchise

15 “A Program for Survival,” The Black Panther 14, no. 9, November 15, 1975, 27. 16 Ibid. 17 “Dallas Chapter of the Black Panther Party Opens,” The Black Panther, January 5, 1974. 18 “Milwaukee Police Harass B.P.P. Child Care Center,” The Black Panther 11, no. 13, March 23, 1974, 3; and “S.A.F.E. Expands Services for Senior Citizens,” The Black Panther 12, no. 18, November 23, 1974, 4.

216 for their Free Ambulance Program by the Forsyth County Commissioners, but this came only after twenty Party members completed emergency medical technician training at local colleges and technical schools. The Winston Salem chapter called their service, the

Joseph Waddell People’s Free Ambulance Service after their fellow Party member who died under suspicious circumstances in Central Prison in Raleigh in 1972. They noted that “The services provided by this survival program are absolutely free, a desperately needed aid to Winston-Salem residents who are charged $25 one way or $45 round trip by the slow county ambulance system.”19

The proliferation of the free busing to prisons program in BPP chapters across the country indicated that imprisonment was a continuing and widespread problem for black communities. The Chicago chapter of the Party operated a free busing to prisons program, which in 1973 bused 60 relatives and friends of prisoners imprisoned in

Stateville Penitentiary to the prison to protest the policy of “lock up” within the prison.20

In the spring of 1974, the Milwaukee chapter advertised the fact that they operated a free busing to prisons program since June 1972, and at least one bus departed from the Party’s headquarters every Sunday.21 This was a core component of the Party’s survival programs, and it required extensive organization. In Oakland, California, for each trip,

Panthers secured a bus and driver, food for visitors, “hostesses” to serve the food, and babysitters to watch children whose parents did not wish to bring them to the prisons.22

19 “Winston-Salem Free Ambulance Service Opens,” The Black Panther 11, no. 8, February 16, 1974, 3. 20 “B.P.P. Busing Program Visitors Protest ‘Lock Up,’” The Black Panther 10, no. 10, July 21, 1973, 4. 21 “Milwaukee B.P.P. Free Busing to Prison Program,” The Black Panther 11, no. 13, March 23, 1974, 3. 22 Aaron Dixon to The Servant, September 17, 1972, “Re: Bussing Trip to Vacaville,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9, “Legal Information Party Cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

217

This work was done by the Panthers’ legal cadre, who organized regular trips to prisons across California, including Soledad, Folsom, Vacaville, San Quentin, Santa Rita, and

Tracey.23

The legal cadre also kept Newton up to date on prisoners from Panther chapters across the country and their efforts to secure legal aid for prisoners. Their weekly reports detailed the arrests and sentences of party members from Georgia to Washington State, and they listed the lawyers they secured to represent Panther prisoners.24 In addition to

Charles Garry and his firm, lawyers from the Legal Aid Society associated with the experimental Utopian drug rehabilitation community, Synanon, also took on cases for the

Panthers.25 Thus, even as the effects of the FBI’s counterintelligence beset the Panthers, they worked to sustain support for imprisoned members of their organization, and through the early 1970s were successful.

Turning Away from the Moral Polity

Even as chapters across the country were rebuilding the moral polity, the BPP leadership began to move away from the concept by entering into the United States’ two

23 Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, February 4, 1973, “Weekly Report,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9, “Legal Information Party Cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California; Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, November 3, 1972, “Weekly Report,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10, “Legal Information Party Cases [2 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 24Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, February 4, 1973, “Weekly Report”; Legal Defense Cadre to Servant, January 23, 1973, “Weekly Report,” M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10, “Legal Information Party Cases [2 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 25 Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, November 3, 1972, “Weekly Report.” Synanon was an experimental utopian drug rehabilitation community which transformed into a religion in 1974 and from there became a cult by the late 1970s. The organization would eventually gain infamy for the attempted murder of a Los Angeles lawyer with a rattlesnake, but in 1972 was prosperous enough to help secure lawyers for the Panthers and donate buses to be used for their free busing to prisons program.

218 party political system. Panther candidates ran for office before 1972, but they did so as third party candidates, people clearly opposed to the status quo. When Bobby Seale and

Elaine Brown filed their paperwork to run for mayor and councilwoman of Oakland, in

January 1973, Seale asserted, “Elaine and I are registered Democrats. We’ll pull out every Democrat. We’re not jiving. . . . The masses are tired. They’re ready to vote for a candidate they know will represent their interests.”26 Thus, Newton’s 1972 centralization of the Party in Oakland to support Seale and Brown’s runs for office moved the Party away from their moral polity by supporting two high ranking Panthers’ participation in the same system that the moral polity opposed.

The Party also began to endorse candidates from within the two party political system. These were candidates who, though they might be sympathetic to the BPP and its aims, had not joined the Party and would, therefore, not promote every one of the

Panthers’ values and demands. One such candidate was Congressman Ronald V.

Dellums, to whom the Party often gave publicity and a platform from which to speak early in their move into the political mainstream. “Dellums Corner,” a feature which appeared for the first time in The Black Panther in March 1974 after Dellums announced that he would run for a third term in Congress, continued to be published into May 1975, with frequent subsequent articles concerning Dellums and his proposed policies.27

Endorsing Dellums and allowing him space within the Party’s newspaper was not

26 “Bobby and Elaine first to File for City Offices,” The Black Panther 9 no. 15, January 27, 1973, 9. 27 “Dellums to Run for Third Term,” The Black Panther 11, no. 11, March 9, 1974, 3; “Dellums Corner: On Energy Crisis,” The Black Panther 11, no. 13, March 23, 1974, 10; “Dellums Corner: Urges Gun Control in the Wake of Nephew’s Murder,” The Black Panther 13, no. 11, May 5, 1975, 9. For The Black Panther’s continuing coverage of Dellums see “Ron Dellums Says,” The Black Panther 15, no. 8, June 5, 1976, 14; “Dellums, Black U.C. Faculty Demand Tenure for Harry Edwards,” The Black Panther 16, no. 16, February 26, 1977, 11; “Dellums Charges Plan for Draft is Racist,” The Black Panther 19, no. 6, April 30- May 13, 1979, 6.

219 indicative of a complete shift into mainstream electoral politics for the BPP, but it was certainly symptomatic of a move in that direction.

By 1975, the Panthers’ moral polity appeared to be in its death throes, even as chapters across the country struggled to keep their survival programs aloft. The records are contradictory, but much damage seems to have been done by Newton, himself, who was, by the mid-1970s in declining mental health and addicted to cocaine.28 The directive to close all chapters and send manpower and resources to Oakland concentrated power in

Newton’s hands. Newton soon required that any money coming in to the Party go through him to be distributed through BPP programs. He was subsequently accused of using Party funds to maintain his own lifestyle.29

Newton also increasingly authorized behavior that some found questionable.

Elaine Brown recalled that Newton instructed men from a special Panther security cadre created around the 1972 election to collect a “tax” from local “after hours” clubs. She maintained, “the owners were rogue businessmen who paid off police to maintain themselves, drained the pockets of their poor patrons, and slapped around anybody who did not like it. . . . We offered them liberation from the former and damnation for the latter.”30 Although these business owners resisted, Brown confirmed, “In very little time we were regularly collecting a percentage of profits from some, then from all of them.”31

This in itself, did not, violate the moral polity, since the business-owners of those after- hours clubs were seen as exploiting the community, but no one but Newton was aware of the security cadre’s activities, and it soon appeared that they were being used to force

28 Bloom and Martin Jr., Black Against Empire, 382. 29 Johnson, “Explaining the Demise of the Black Panther Party,” 406. 30 Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power, 333. 31 Ibid.

220 criminal elements in Oakland to pay for the right to continue their activities.32 Both the fact that Newton was acting unilaterally and that the Party were allowing activities which might endanger their community ran counter to the teachings of the moral polity.

By 1975 the Party looked nothing like it had previously. As the Party declined, he began to turn on those closest to him, he expelled David Hilliard in 1974. By mid-March, the People’s Free Shoe Program no longer bore Hilliard’s name.33 On July 31, 1974

Newton turned on Seale and expelled him from the Party.34 Newton named Elaine Brown to Bobby Seale’s position and leadership of the Party, and jumped bail and fled to Cuba rather than standing trial for the attack of his tailor and murder of a 17-year-old prostitute.35 Thus, even as chapters tried to rebuild the moral polity, it was under threat from an increasingly troubled Huey Newton.

Prisoners in the Party’s Period of Crisis

As the Party declined, imprisonment remained a considerable problem for the

Party. Imprisonment remained a period of crisis for Panther prisoners due to the damage that had already been done by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The death penalty had been suspended in 1972, and COINTELPRO had officially been off the books for two years. J. Edgar Hoover and his agents were coming under increasing

32 Johnson, “Explaining the Demise of the Black Panther Party,” 407. 33 The Free shoe program is last listed as the “David Hilliard People’s Free Shoe Program” in “A Program for Survival,” The Black Panther 11, no. 10, March 2, 1974, 23. It is described simply as “People’s Free Shoe Program,” in “A Program for Survival,” The Black Panther 11, no. 11, March 9, 1974, 23. 34 Brown, A Taste of Power, 349-352. 35 Austin, Up Against The Wall, 330. It should be noted that Austin indicates that Seale left the Party, albeit “under strange circumstances.” At least one FBI agent maintained that Seale was purged from the Party. See Roz Payne, “WACing Off: Gossip, Sex, Race, and Politics in the World Of FBI Special Case Agent William A. Cohendet,” in Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 174.

221 scrutiny and criticism by the spring of 1971. To decrease attention on the FBI, Hoover officially ended the seven COINTELPROs still operating on April 28, 1971. The memo

Hoover circulated to the SACs included the caveat that “In exceptional instances where counterintelligence action is warranted, it will be considered on a highly selective individual basis,” thus leaving the door open for continuing COINTELPRO-like operations.36 The director, himself, died in May 1972. By the summer of 1972, then, the

COINTELPRO against the Panthers was finished, at least on paper, and the man most associated with it, dead. The Counterintelligence used against the BPP and other black liberation organizations did not begin or end with Hoover, however. Police departments across the country had spent the previous years engaged in the repression of the Panthers, and Hoover’s cancelation of the Counterintelligence programs did nothing to stop the hostility to the Panthers that had been fostered during COINTELPRO-Black Panther

Party’s official years of operation. Even if COINTELPRO was officially off the books, it was unlikely that Hoover’s memo would do much to end the culture of repression

COINTELPRO created.37

Indeed, while COINTELPRO was officially done, other programs emerged to take its place, and these resulted in a new spate of prisoners in 1973. One such program was launched against the Black Liberation Army, which in January 1971 wounded three police officers in two separate incidents. In March BLA members in San Francisco attempted to bomb a police station. On May 21 two police officers were killed in Harlem a mere two days after the wounding of two New York City patrolmen. The killings and

36 Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, 682. 37 Ibid.

222 woundings came on the heels of the acquittal of the Panther 21. In each case, authorities suspected the BLA.38 Following the New York killings, J. Edgar Hoover, President

Nixon, and Attorney General John Mitchell, Chief of Domestic security Robert Mardian, and representatives of the New York and Washington police departments launched a counterintelligence program called NEWKILL, short for New York Police Killings, designed, to indict those responsible for police deaths.39 Their targets, time and again were New York BPP members who supported or were part of the BLA.40

NEWKILL operations resulted in the arrest of many BLA members and Panthers who were subsequently given long term sentences, and the deaths of others. On June 5,

1971, Dhoruba Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Moore), a member of the Panther 21, was arrested robbing the Triple O Club in the South Bronx. The BLA termed this and other robberies “expropriations” and said that the club was targeted because it was known to be frequented by drug dealers.41 Following his arrest he was indicted for the May 19 New

York police shootings. In 1973 after two mistrials he was convicted of two counts of attempted murder and felonious possession of a firearm and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.42 In August 1971 Jalil Muntaqim and Albert Nuh Washington were arrested for

38 Jalil A. Muntaqim, We are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings, 2nd ed. (Portland: Arissa Media Group, 2010), 29. 39 Dhoruba Moore, “Strategies of Repression Against the Black Movment,” The Black Scholar (May/June 1981): 14, 15, http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Dhoruba_Bin- Wahad/513.Dhoruba.statement.3.15.1990.pdf; Winston A. Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 380. 40Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners,” 380. 41 “Name: Dhoruba Bin Wahad (R. Dhoruba Moore),” in “Dhoruba Statement,” http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Dhoruba_Bin- Wahad/513.Dhoruba.statement.3.15.1990.pdf. 42 Ibid.; and Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners,” 380; Stephanie Denzel “Dhoruba Bin Wahad,” The National Registry of Exonerations, The University of Michigan Law School, August 29, 2011, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3028.

223 the killing of a San Francisco police officer.43 They were subsequently put on trial for the

May 21 murder of the Harlem patrolmen. In 1975, Muntaqim, Washington, and Herman

Bell were convicted of first degree murder, weapons possession, and conspiracy in the

1971 killings and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.44 Robert Seth Hays received a

25 years to life sentence in 1973 for the death of a transit cop, Teddy Jah Heath received a life sentence in 1973 for the kidnapping of a drug dealer.45 Sundiata Acoli and Assata

Shakur were arrested after a 1973 shootout with State Troopers on the New Jersey

Turnpike which left one Trooper and Black Panther/BLA member Zayd Shakur dead. In

1974 Acoli was sentenced to life plus 24 to 30 years.46 Assata Shakur was sentenced to life in prison in 1977.47 They joined prisoners like Ed Poindexter, and Mondo We Langa who received life sentences in 1971 for a 1970 bombing in Omaha, Nebraska which killed a police officer. In each case NEWKILL and COINTELPRO played central roles in securing convictions even after these programs officially ended and ensured that these cases remained controversial.48 NEWKILL and COINTELPRO ensured that the number

43 A. Jalil Bottom, “A Political Prisoners’ Journey in the U.S. Prison System,” 2005, http://www.freejalil.com/life.html. 44 Bell was arrested in 1973. Gabriel and Francisco Torres were also charged with the New York murders. The first trial of the New York 5 (Muntaqim, Washington, Bell, and the two Torres brothers) ended in a mistrial. The Torres brothers were acquitted in the second trial while Muntaqim, Washington, and Bell were found guilty. See “History and Case Background,” http://www.freejalil.com/history.html. 45 “The Political Prisoners who work on Certain Days: About Robert Seth Hays, Herman Bell, and David Gilbert,” available http://www.certaindays.org/?q=bios ; “Teddy Jah Heath,” http://search.freedomarchives.org/search.php?view_collection=57; Grady-Willis, “The Black Panther Party: State Repression and Political Prisoners,” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, 381. 46 Associated Press, “Sundiata Acoli, Man Who Murdered State Trooper, To be Released on Parole,” The Huffington Post, September 29, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/sundiata-acoli- released_n_5901272.html. 47 Shakur, Assata, xix. 48 The role of NEWKILL and COINTELPRO in these cases meant that each remained or remains controversial. Dhoruba Bin Wahad’s conviction was overturned in 1990, and he was released. The Prosecution appealed the decision, but it was upheld in 1995. Geronimo Pratt’s conviction was overturned in 1997 and he was released and granted a new trial. In 1999 the prosecution dismissed the charges against Pratt. For more information see The National Registry of Exonerations, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx.

224 of long term prisoners from the BPP and BLA were on the rise even as the Black Panther

Party declined.

Even without COINTELPRO on the books, arrests of Party members continued as if little had changed. In August 1974, Fred Bell, the coordinator of the Dallas Chapter of the BPP was arrested and held on a $50,000 “peace bond” sworn against him by the manager of a West Dallas Housing Project. A “peace bond” meant that if the defendant threatened or caused harmed to the plaintiff, then the bond could be revoked. In this case, the Housing project manager, W.C. Knight, alleged that Bell threatened him when he refused to rent him an apartment within the West Dallas Housing Project. For their part, the Dallas BPP alleged that Knight’s actions were designed to undermine their Free Pest

Control Program.49 The same issue of The Black Panther that reported on Fred Bell’s arrest also carried the story of local, federal, and state law enforcement agencies raiding the offices of the Houston Black Panthers. Members of the Houston BPP reported that over 50 men from the Houston police and sheriff’s departments, Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Texas Central Investigation Department, Houston firemen, and a police reporter covered by a helicopter broke in, claiming to be searching for a stockpile of illegal weapons they were told were there. They confiscated three firearms, which the Houston BPP members said were legally registered, and arrested three Party members. These Panthers were released without charge, later.50 Incidents like these only added to the problems of the reeling BPP of 1973-1975.

49 “Dallas B.P.P. Coordinator Arrested: Bid to Halt Pest Control Program,” The Black Panther 12, no. 4, August 17, 1974, 5, 10. 50 “Houston Chapter of Black Panther Party Raided: 3 Arrested Later Released Without Charges,” The Black Panther 12, no. 4, August 17, 1974, 5.

225

Within prisons, imprisoned Panthers continued to struggle for prisoners’ rights and work toward expanding the Party’s base. By virtue of the fact that members of the

San Quentin Branch of the Party could not follow Newton’s 1972 directive to close down all Party chapters outside of Oakland, it continued to exist after 1972. On September 20,

1972, Newton wrote to Johnny Spain and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald to tell them that in light of George Jackson’s death, they were to take over as Field Marshal and second in command respectively. Newton was sure to point out that “Anyone short of” Spain and

Fitzgerald would “not be recognized as leadership of our San Quentin cadre.”51 Newton’s directive alluded to the divided state of the Party in 1972. Yet, despite the turmoil outside, inside San Quentin, the branch of the Party continued to recruit and to agitate for prisoners’ rights. The BPP’s Legal Defense Cadre noted in their weekly report of January

23, 1973 that wardens placed four members of the San Quentin branch of the party in the adjustment center to prevent a strike planned by inmates. Included in this round-up was

“new comrade Stan Bryant.”52 The Panthers had continued to recruit within San Quentin and this threatened the prison leadership. They were also in the midst of prison organizing. An increase in membership meant more potential organizers and more politically oriented prisoners who would participate in protests like the planned strike that resulted in Bryant’s removal to the adjustment center. Unfortunately for the Panthers, few prisons had a Black Panther Party as strong as San Quentin, and so the San Quentin branch’s recruitment ultimately meant little to the larger Party.

51 Huey Newton to Johnny Spain, September 20, 1972 and Huey Newton to Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, September 20, 1972, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, legal, Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9, “Legal Information Party Cases [1 of 4]”, Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California. 52 Legal Defense Cadre to Servant, January 23, 1973, “Weekly Report.”

226

For many Panther prisoners, their isolation from other Panthers or even sympathetic populations could be problematic. In February 1973, Panther Charles Bursey was stabbed by a white inmate in Vacaville Prison. The Black Panther encouraged readers to write to the warden at Vacaville and demand a public trial for the man who stabbed Bursey and to call for justice for Bursey and “all political prisoners.” The paper noted that the stabbing compounded the indignity of Bursey’s having been denied parole for a third time the previous week.53 In 1974 the paper reported that even Johnny Spain, who had the benefit of a chapter of the Party in his prison, was suffering in San Quentin’s isolation unit.54 A month later it reported that Spain was denied adequate medical attention.55 In October 1975 The Black Panther reported that Houston Party member,

Vernon “T.C.” Benton’s life had been threatened in Harris County Rehabilitation Center, where he was imprisoned.56 These Panthers lacked large support bases inside the prison and could only expect support from outside as the floundering Party was able to give it.

The BPP’s legal defense cadre tried its best to support those who were in prison, in keeping with the ideals of the moral polity. On February 2, 1973 Panthers Lauryn

Williams and Michael Rhymes traveled to the California Medical Facility state prison, otherwise known as Vacaville, to screen the film “The Murder of Fred Hampton” to the prisoners.57 This action, not only allowed Panthers to interact with prisoners who were not necessarily part of their movement, it demonstrated the organization’s use of the past to draw those prisoners toward their message. In early December 1974, the Free

53 “Charles Bursey Stabbed Vacaville Prison,” The Black Panther 9, no. 18, February 17, 1973, 8. 54 “Johnny Spain Suffers in San Quentin’s ‘Hole’” The Black Panther 12, no. 17, November 16, 1974, 5. 55 “Johnny Spain Denied Health Care in San Quentin Adjustment Center,” The Black Panther 12, no. 22, December 21, 1974, 3. 56 “B.P.P. Member’s Life Threatened in Houston Jail,” The Black Panther 14, no. 3, October 6, 1975, 3. 57 Legal Defense Cadre to Comrade Huey, February 4, 1973, “Weekly Report.”

227

Commissary Program, part of the Free Legal Aid and Education Program worked to raise funds to purchase supplies for 500 Christmas packages for inmates across California.

These were to include toiletries, stationary, stamps, and legal material.58 Thus, as much as they could, the Party continued to try to support prisoners.

Try as they might to support the Party’s prisoners and shed light on the conditions in prisons across the country, this was a difficult task for the Panthers between 1973 and

1975. As chapters across the country attempted to rebuild what the Party lost in the schism and Newton’s 1972 centralization directive they were being undermined by

Newton’s increasingly erratic behavior. The Party invested considerable time and resources in Chief of Staff, David Hilliard, for instance, only to see Newton expel him from the Party in 1974. At the same time, new chapters of the Party who showed promise of being able to revive the Panthers’ damaged moral polity, faced an all too familiar onslaught from national, state, and local law enforcement. Therefore, although men and women tried to bring the Party back to the vitality of previous years that was not to be.

II. IRA prisoners in the Moral Polity

While the Black Panther Party struggled toward the middle of the decade, their earlier strength informed IRA prisoners who occupied a much stronger position between

1973 and 1975. Like many IRA volunteers, Séanna Walsh, joined the IRA after Bloody

Sunday. He remembered, “Bloody Sunday really convinced me that there was nothing for

58 “Free Commissary Program to Provide 500 California Prisoners with Holiday Packages,” The Black Panther 12, no. 20, December 7, 1974, 4.

228 it but to fight the British and to end British involvement in Ireland.” By January 1973

Walsh was in prison.59

Imprisoned with special category status, he cited education as an essential part of IRA prisoners’ time. Most IRA prisoners were young and had become involved in the struggle because of the actions of the British army on the streets of the North, much as Walsh had when he joined the IRA after Bloody Sunday. The IRA leadership in the prison took the opportunity to educate their young volunteers. To this end they devised a required reading list for the men in the cages. This included Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, J.

Bowyer Bell’s The Secret Army, Tim Pat Coogan’s work on the IRA, and Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution by C. Desmond Greaves. Walsh noted that “probably the most relevant book in that sort of context” was Soledad Brother by Black Panther, George

Jackson. By charting the path of a man who went from ordinary prisoner to what Walsh called a “determined political activist with a project,” this compilation of Jackson’s prison writing became “crucial” reading for IRA prisoners.60 In 1974 Time Magazine noted that Soledad Brother was crucial to the revolutionary education of the IRA’s Price

Sisters, Dolours and Marian, who would rocket to international celebrity via their actions with the organization in the 1970s (see below).61 The Panthers themselves had created a book list in 1968, which placed a similar emphasis on the work of Fanon.62 Thus, even as the fortunes of the Black Panthers changed drastically, the IRA used the BPP’s earlier experiences to inform their own experiences in prison during these years.

59 Séanna Walsh, Interview with the Author, November 2011. 60 Ibid. 61 “The World: Ulster’s Price Sisters: Breaking the Long Fast,” Time Magazine, June 17, 1974, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,879325-1,00.html. 62“Black Panther Party Book List,” 1968, http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Books/bpp_books_index.html.

229

Special Category Prisoners:

Having achieved their moral polity within the prisons, the IRA had a great amount of control over the everyday operation of the prison as it related to their volunteers. They set up a system under special category status that was designed to strengthen the IRA both inside and outside the prisons, but which was not without controversy. Once an IRA volunteer applied for special category status and was accepted by the IRA, the IRA’s prison leadership classified that volunteer as either “cleared” or “suspended,” based on the information he divulged during arrest and interrogation and his support of the IRA’s overall command. Prisoners who pled guilty, thereby tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the courts which tried them, made a statement in the interrogation barracks, gave away the location of arms dumps or other sensitive information, or gave the security forces the names of other IRA members were all classified as suspended volunteers. So too, were volunteers that the prison leadership determined were “involved in any activity which undermined the authority of the IRA or its structures.”63

A volunteer’s classification carried material consequences for his life within the cages. Suspended volunteers were ineligible for staff positions, were not allowed to hear certain communications from the outside leadership, and could not attend military lectures. The IRA command reasoned that suspended volunteers were not going to return to the IRA after their release, and so they should not be privy to sensitive information and training, nor should a suspended volunteer be allowed to make organizational decisions for an organization to which he was not going to return.64 Additionally, suspended

63 Tony Catney, interviewed in McKeown, Out of Time, 39. 64 McKeown, Out of Time, 39.

230 volunteers were responsible for some jobs from which the uppermost IRA prison staff were exempt, such as cleaning floors.65 The consequences of the division of IRA prisoners ensured that the classification system would be controversial.

Those who had friends with a different classification had the hardest time accepting these divisions, but the IRA’s prison staff defended them. Tony Catney, a cleared volunteer with a number of close suspended friends, complained, “Really at the end of the day the camp OC could suspend anyone at will.”66 Jim Scullion, camp adjutant of the Cages at Long Kesh from 1974 to 1976 maintained that the IRA camp staff were

“humane” and that there was “no ill-treatment” of volunteers as they were interrogated about what information they divulged to the security forces. Suspending volunteers was, in his estimation, necessary for the safety of the other volunteers. “If we had started evicting them [from the IRA cages] you wouldn’t have known where they would have finished up and what they would have finished up doing.”67 In the end, no matter what volunteers felt about the classification system, its creation was an action prisoners without special category status could not easily undertake. Classification revealed an organized group of prisoners, one with a hierarchy they could use to challenge prison governments.

Even with special category status, IRA volunteers were not content to serve their sentences quietly. The IRA reacted to the increase in prisoners serving longer sentences with an increased number of escapes. These were more than a matter of timing and luck.

Escapes were coordinated in the prison via the intelligence officer who received the

65 Gerry Kelly interviewed in McKeown, Out of Time, 40-41. 66 Catney interviewed in Out of Time, 39. 67 Jim Scullion interviewed in McKeown, Out of Time, 39.

231 ultimate okay from the IRA’s command structure outside the prison.68 A prisoner’s clearance for escape depended on how he or she had been classified by the IRA’s prison staff. Suspended volunteers were not eligible for consideration for escape, although they could campaign to have their suspension lifted.69 Escapes, moreover, required coordination with the outside so that escapees could more effectively leave the vicinity of the prison and, more often than not, be smuggled across the border. These were full operations for the IRA which required resources and manpower, and the IRA leadership were only going to expend those resources on the prisoners they believed were the most committed to the cause. That escapes began to increase after 1971 revealed two things; one, that the IRA faced a situation in which enough of their members were imprisoned that it was worthwhile to spend time and energy to get some of their volunteers out, and two, that prisons could be used to provide morale boosts to their larger struggle.

In their commitment to escape, the IRA differed from the post-1972 BPP. In a statement to the press following George Jackson’s death in 1971, Huey Newton, speaking for the Black Panther party, said, “The first rule when a people’s soldier is captured is to start planning his escape.”70 Yet, the Panthers did not attempt many escapes, nor did this

“rule” remain in place. Years later, describing the role of agent provocateur, Melvin

“Cotton” Smith in Jonathan Jackson’s attempt to free his brother, George, Newton recalled that Smith was unable to involve the Black Panther Party in the disastrous event because “Smith was confronted by the Party’s official policy against prison breakout

68 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011. 69 Lawrence McKeown, Out of Time, 39, 43. 70 Huey P. Newton, “Press Statement,” August 22, 1971, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Huey P. Newton Papers, Speeches/Lectures/Interviews, Series 1, Box 58, Folder 5, “Press Statement from H.P.N. on Geo Jackson,” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 4.

232 attempts which were considered to have little chance of success.”71 If we take Newton at his word in 1971, it is unlikely the BPP had a policy against escape in 1970 when

Jonathan Jackson attempted to free his brother. Newton’s memory of such a policy, however, indicates that following George Jackson’s death, the Panthers came to see escape attempts as futile.

The IRA, conversely, embraced the idea after 1971. Following the successful

1971 escape of the Crumlin Kangaroos, the IRA increasingly authorized escape attempts for its prisoners, many of which were successful and spectacularly embarrassing for the security forces. On December 2, 1971 three prisoners escaped from Crumlin Road Jail by hiding under a manhole until they could slip out.72 Then, on January 17, 1972 Jim

Bryson, Seán Convery, Tommy Tolan, Peter Rodgers, Thomas Kane, Tommy Gorman, and Martin Taylor, IRA internees imprisoned on the HMS Maidstone escaped. Covered in shoe polish and butter to protect themselves from the icy water of Belfast Lough, the seven men slipped through a porthole whose protective iron bar they cut, and swam for twenty minutes to reach the shore where they were supposed to be met by members of the

IRA’s Belfast brigade who would take them to safe houses. Their drivers, thinking the escape had been aborted because the seven were delayed by a late headcount of prisoners, left, and so, the seven men commandeered a bus. Rodgers, a former bus driver, eluded a

British Army patrol by driving to the republican Markets area of Belfast where the patrol risked ambush if it proceeded further. By the time the army could gather reinforcement,

71 Huey P. Newton, “War Without Terms: The Death of George Jackson,” Unpublished Manuscript, 1978, M864, Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Huey P. Newton Papers, Manuscripts, Series 1, Box 51, Folder 6, “War Without Terms, 1978,” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California, 33. 72 Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 14.

233 locals had hidden and transported the seven internees, quickly dubbed “the Magnificent

Seven,” across the border. Their reappearance in Dublin, where they spoke to the media, was a second humiliation for the security forces in Northern Ireland who had now seen two major escapes in three months.73

Less than a month later, on February 7, 1972, despite heightened security following an attempted mass escape in November and the success of the Crumlin

Kangaroos and Magnificent Seven, Francis McGuigan an internee from the IRA’s Belfast

Brigade, became the first internee to escape from Long Kesh internment camp. Coming days after Bloody Sunday, the escape was an important morale boost to republicans. To the horror of the authorities, who did not discover his absence for a full 18 hours, he had simply walked out of the front gates among a group of visiting priests, dressed as one of them.74 Not only did McGuigan appear at a press conference in Dublin, with the

Magnificent Seven, he went on to give evidence before the Foreign Affairs Sub-

Committee of the US House of Representatives on the situation in the North.75

McGuigan’s example was followed closely on September 9, 1973 when John Francis

Green, an internee from Lurgan, County Armagh, traded clothes with his brother, Father

Gerrard Green, during a visit and walked out of the prison undetected. Patrick Joseph

Campbell repeated the ruse a third time in June 1975 when he dressed as a priest and

73 Aran Foley, “Remembering the Past: The Magnificent Seven,” January 18 2007, An Phoblacht, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/16314; “Tommy Gorman: Recalling the Maidstone,” January 18, 2011, Irish Republican News, http://republican-news.org/current/news/2011/01/tommy_gorman_- _recalling_the_m.html#.U9WkrPldWwV. 74 “The First Long Kesh Escape,” February 10, 2007, Irish Republican News, http://republican- news.org/current/news/2007/02/the_first_long_kesh_escape.html#.U9W8Z_ldWwU. 75 Ibid.

234 asked prison officers in the Tally Lodge to call him a taxi.76 Individually, these escapes embarrassed prison staff. Three men escaping using the same trick over the course of three years compounded the indignity.

The waning months of 1973 brought further ignominy on prison administrations

North and South of the border with the successful escapes of some of the IRA’s highest profile prisoners. The first occurred out of Mountjoy Jail in the South. There, on October

31, the IRA briefly landed a hijacked helicopter at Mountjoy’s D Wing, and flew away with prisoners Kevin Mallon, J.B. O’Hagan, and Seamus Twomey, who until his arrest, was Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA.77 This escape was, by no means, the first from a Southern prison—on October 29, 1972, for instance, seven IRA prisoners tunneled out of the Curragh Camp and returned to active service—but the Mountjoy helicopter escape was an enormous spectacle which not only humiliated the Southern Irish government and

Mountjoy prison staff, it made folk heroes of the escapees. When the Wolfe Tones penned and recorded Up and Away (The Helicopter Song) it spent 8 weeks in the charts and reached number 1.78

The second high profile escape came when Brendan Hughes escaped from Long

Kesh in December 1973. Hughes was arrested with Gerry Adams and Tom Cahill on the

Falls Road in West Belfast on July 19, 1973. The arrest of Hughes, Adams, and Cahill was an enormous blow to the Belfast IRA and wider republican movement and a prime

76 Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 405; Mickey Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 34, 35; “IRA Vol John Francis Green Remembered in Castleblayney,” January 17, 2008, An Phoblacht, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/18017. 77 Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 100; Tom McCaughren, “3 IRA Prisoners Escape from Mountjoy, 1973,” October 31, 1973, RTÉ News, RTÉ Archives, http://www.rte.ie/archives/2013/1030/483643-3-ira-prisoners-escape-from-mountjoy-1973/. 78 Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 95, 100; For Up and Away’s place in the Irish charts see http://www.irishcharts.ie/.

235 catch for the security forces. As Operations Officer of the Belfast Brigade of the IRA,

Hughes was instrumental in the planning of IRA operations including bombings and robberies, and his arrest alongside two other high ranking republicans combined with a second spate of arrests that day demoralized local IRA units.79 Having defiantly informed the security forces who interrogated him at Castlereagh RUC station after his arrest that he would be escaping, Hughes made good on his promise, escaping Long Kesh on

December 8, 1973.80 On that day, Hughes was secreted into an old mattress and left to be picked up by a trusted ODC working with the trash collection truck which made a garbage collection round twice daily. He was subsequently thrown into the back of the garbage truck, and driven out of the prison to freedom by the unsuspecting driver.

Hughes kicked his way out of the mattress, jumped off the truck as it turned a sharp corner, caught a taxi, and fled across the border into southern Ireland.81 In the South he assumed a new identity and within ten days he was back in Belfast organizing IRA operations.82

79 Ed Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 162. According to Hughes, Tom Cahill was the Belfast Brigade’s Finance Officer and Gerry Adams was its Officer Commanding. To this day, Adams denies having been a member of the IRA, maintaining that he was only ever a member of Sinn Fein. For Hughes on his arrest and Adams’ role in the Belfast IRA, see Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 152. Hughes’ interview, presented with author commentary in Voices from the Grave, was part of Boston College’s Belfast Project, in which Moloney and former IRA man Anthony McIntyre conducted interviews with members of the IRA and UVF with the promise that they would be kept secret until the interviewee’s death. When Brendan Hughes died in 2008 and his interview was released, it sparked a renewed campaign to determine the extent of Adams’ involvement in the IRA, particularly his role in the disappearing of widowed mother of 10, Jean McConville. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subsequently subpoenaed a number of interviews from the Boston Project, and although Moloney and McIntyre resisted and the case went to the Supreme Court, Boston College failed to retain control over the interviews. Adams was taken in for questioning by the PSNI in April 2014, but never charged. Meanwhile, some of the interviewees, have taken Moloney and McIntyre up on an offer to return their tapes and have since destroyed them. 80 Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 153. 81 Ibid., 157-162. 82 “Death of Brendan Hughes,” An Phoblacht, February 21, 2008, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/18164.

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Brendan Hughes understood that the morale of IRA volunteers played a large role in his selection for escape. He remembered, “this escape of mine was meant to be a major morale booster to the rank and file . . . . The thinking behind choosing me was simple: operations, operations, operations . . . that was the reason for getting me out, to build up and intensify the operational capacity of the Belfast Brigade.”83 Hughes remained free and continued to plan and carry out IRA operations until he was rearrested on May 10,

1974.84

Part of the embarrassment the IRA caused by escaping had to do not only with the number of escapes they carried out, but also by how far the stories spread. Following the

Mountjoy helicopter escape, in November 1973, all the republican prisoners in Mountjoy

Jail and Curragh Prison Camp were transferred to Portlaoise Prison.85 On August 19,

1974 19 republicans escaped from Portlaoise, proving once again that the Southern Irish government was not immune to trouble from IRA prisoners.86 William Kelly, Owen

Coogan, and Ivor Bell all escaped from Long Kesh in 1974. Bell’s escape even engendered brief mention in The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service which reported that “The army of Northern Ireland considered Bell a major prize when it captured him on February 23.”87 The Panther paper seemed unaware that it was the

British army rather than “the army of Northern Ireland” who considered Bell’s capture a

“major prize.” Moreover, they referred to “The Mazi prison,” an errant transcription of

83 Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 162. 84 “Death of Brendan Hughes,” An Phoblacht, February 21, 2008. 85 Portlaoise Prisoners Relatives Action Committee, “Portlaoise Prison, ‘For Security Reasons . . .,’” 1985, P241, Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 5. 86 Cooper with Contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 97. 87 “Northern Ireland,” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, Volume 11, no. 20, May 11, 1974, 18.

237 the British name for Long Kesh, “HMP Maze,” a name which the IRA never accepted, and referenced “Northern Ireland,” an illegitimate state in the minds of the IRA, numerous times in the short article.88 Even as it described Bell’s escape and his recapture a short time later, drawing readers’ attention to events across the Atlantic, The Black

Panther revealed the distance between the two movements in 1974. As for Bell and the

IRA, although Bell was re-captured, the damage from the propaganda surrounding the escape was done. The embarrassment the escape caused was internationalized.

Often, prisoners attempted to escape via tunnels they dug beneath their cages. At

Long Kesh alone, warders uncovered 12 tunnels between August 1972 and September

1974. These ranged between 3 feet and 20 feet long and were in various states of construction at time of discovery.89 In their communications about anti-tunneling measures, Northern Ireland Office officials admitted that the tunnels came as a surprise

“because the professional advice was that tunnelling at this establishment was not practicable because of the high water table.”90 In May 1975 nine prisoners associated with the Irish Republican Socialist Party, proved that they could overcome this impracticability when they escaped from Long Kesh by crawling along a 15 foot tunnel, cutting a security fence, and climbing a newly built perimeter wall using sheets and blankets. They were not discovered missing until the next morning.91

88 Ibid. 89 “Anti-Tunnelling Measures [sic],” May 21, 1973, NIO/10/16/3, “Tunnels—General, 1973-1978,” PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1.; D.G. Ensor to W.A. Brister, “Appendix Discovery of Tunnels at Maze Prison,” November 1974, NIO/10/16/3, “Tunnels—General, 1973-1978,” PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 90 “Anti-Tunnelling Measures [sic],” May 21, 1973, PRONI, 1-2. 91 Ibid., 35.; Chris Ryder, Inside the Maze: The Untold Story of the Northern Ireland Prison Service (London: Methuen, 2001), 163.

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The threat posed by tunnels presented a dilemma for the NIO and prison guards.

The NIO did not wish to increase the frequency of searches, particularly of the cages at

Long Kesh, “because their primary purpose is not to discover tunnels and because of the unsettling effect they have on the inmates making it that much more difficult to maintain discipline within the establishment.”92 At the same time, the British Army and prison warders who were tasked with maintaining the security of the prison had a vested interest in discovering tunnels before they breached the perimeter. At Crumlin Road Jail the NIO built an “anti-tunnelling barrier” which descended to a depth of 12 feet—boulders prevented the barrier from being sunk to the originally planned 15 foot depth—and which cost $2,072.84 in materials to build. The barrier extended 375 feet, to cover the area most vulnerable to tunneling. Attempts to equip the barrier with alarms proved ineffective.

NIO officials worried about the feasibility of driving a barrier through the runway on which some of the cages were built, and, therefore, did not see the plan as a feasible one for Long Kesh.93 Moreover, they wondered, “just how many of the tunnels discovered, especially at the Maze prison, represented serious attempts at escape rather than propaganda measures to draw attention to the detainees.”94 Every tunnel started was a message of defiance to the prison. Even if they did not lead to successful escapes, tunnels cost the government time and money in its attempt to prevent them and called attention to the internees/detainees which shed an unwanted spotlight on the British government even when no escape took place.

92 Ibid., 2. 93 D.G. Ensor to W.A.Brister, November 1974, NIO/10/16/3, “Tunnels—General, 1973-1978,” PRONI, Belfast Northern Ireland. 94 “Anti-Tunnelling Measures [sic],” May 21, 1973, PRONI, 3. HMP Maze was the name the British government used for Long Kesh from 1972 onwards. Similarly, “internees” became “detainees” after 1972. These changes are discussed in more detail in chapter 3.

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In total, escapes of Irish republican prisoners embarrassed the government, security forces, and prison administrators and allowed key volunteers to return to action outside the prison. On the other hand, they did little to improve or change conditions within the prisons. The escape was a nose thumbed at the authorities, not the opening of a second battle front. Rather, it kept the mythology of Irish prison resistance alive, and helped to prove that prisoners retained agency and dignity within the penal system. The prevalence of escapes from 1972 to 1975 demonstrated that the IRA was hesitant to see the prisons as an area of struggle in addition to their armed campaign against the British

Army and partition of Ireland. Instead, prisoners were soldiers who had been removed from the primary battle, and had to be recovered either by release or escape. In this, the

IRA was often successful, and this, in itself, was significant. It was not, simply, that republicans were breaching their supposedly secure penal facilities. They were doing so on a regular basis, leaving undetected from facilities designed to monitor and control the movements of their inhabitants.

The Moral Polity as Inspiration to Protest

Although internment and escapes remained a concern, special category status, by revolutionizing the way paramilitaries experienced imprisonment in Northern Ireland, shifted the primary locus of sustained IRA prison protest to England until October 1974, when Northern Irish prisons once again became the focus of struggle. Protest in English prisons was difficult. As of June 14, 1974, the London branch of An Cumann Cabhrach, the Republican Aid Committee, reported only 25 republicans imprisoned in England and

240

4 in Scotland.95 The Irish Times said there were 45 republicans in British Jails in late

March 1975.96 Isolated and vulnerable, IRA prisoners in England had little leverage.

Most republicans were sentenced as “Category A” prisoners, that is, the most dangerous offenders who necessitated the highest security rating in England and Wales. As such, their mail was censored, republican publications were prohibited, and visitors had to provide their photograph to prison authorities and submit to police vetting. According to the Irish Political Hostages Campaign, family and friends of republican Category A prisoners were often denied visits. Even for those who were approved for a visit, the process was lengthy. In the three years between his 1972 sentencing for the OIRA’s

Aldershot bombing and 1975, Noel Jenkinson did not meet a single other republican prisoner.97 In this atmosphere, the few IRA volunteers imprisoned in England largely abided by prison rules.

Prison protest in England accelerated following the imprisonment of a group who came to be called the “Belfast Ten.” On March 8, 1973, at 1:56 pm the London Times received a bomb warning via telephone. Despite the warning, between 2:44 pm and 2:50 pm two car bombs exploded, the first at Great Scotland Yard and the second at the

Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) in London. 243 people were injured and one person later died of his injuries. By the time these two bombs detonated, police had ten members

95 London Branch of An Cumann Cabhrach, “List of Republican Prisoners in Scotland and England,” June 14, 1974, Prisons Box 1, Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 96 “News Feature,” The Irish Times, March 24, 1975, www.irishtimes.com/newspapers/archive/1975/0324/Pg015.html#Ar01503. 97 Martin Cowley, “Suitable Cases for Transfer?,” The Irish Times, March 24, 1975, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1975/0324/Pg015.html#Ar01501.

241 of an IRA active service unit out of Belfast in custody at Ealing Police Station.98 Dolours

Price (22), her younger sister Marian (19), Hugh Feeney (21), Paul Holmes (19), Robert

Walsh (24), William Armstrong (29), Roisin McNearney (18), Martin Brady (22), Liam

(William) McLarnon (19), and Gerry Kelly (19) were arrested at Heathrow airport after the discovery of two other car bombs at Scotland Yard and Dean Stanley Street prompted a security crackdown.99 An eleventh IRA volunteer escaped the arrests.100 The ten were subsequently charged under section 3a of the Explosive Substances Act of 1883, with causing an explosion at the Old Bailey, causing an explosion at New Scotland Yard, and conspiracy to cause explosions in the United Kingdom. When the trial opened in

September, McLarnon pled guilty to all three charges, while the others plead not guilty.

All were remanded into custody.101

In an unusual move, on March 15, 1973, the Price Sisters and McNearney, who were initially remanded to Holloway female prison were transferred to Brixton Prison.102

This was already significant to republicans as the site of Terence MacSwiney’s 1920

98 Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions of 8th March, 1973 and Subsequent Events,” 1974, 2004/7/2682, National Archives, Dublin, Ireland, available http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/nai/1973/nai_DFA-2004-7-2682_1974-nd.pdf, 1. 99 “Ten-Minute Warning Saved Many Lives,” The Irish Times, March 9, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0309/Pg011.html#Ar01100; "Car-Bomb Terrorists Face Sentence Today,” The Glasgow Herald, November 15, 1973, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19731115&id=kZBAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8aQMAAA AIBAJ&pg=3312,3749728&hl=en; Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,”1. McLarnon’s name was typically given as “William” in the government reports and newspaper articles surrounding the event. Papers discovered on Dolours Price at the time of her arrest suggested he may have gone by the Irish “Liam” rather than William. I have used Liam here, to differentiate McLarnon from William Armstrong. See “London Bombs Trial Told About Handbag Secrets,” The Irish Times, September 12, 1973. 100“Central London Bombs Trial Opens,” The Irish Times, September 11, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0911/Pg011.html#Ar01100. 101 Ibid; and Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Event in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,” 1. 102 Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,” 1.

242 hunger strike, but Brixton, as the House of Commons would later acknowledge, was a men’s prison and not intended as an accommodation for women.103 Further, according to the prison rules of 1964, which governed English and Welsh prisons, women were to be

“kept entirely separate from male prisoners.”104 Nevertheless, after only three days in

Holloway, the three women were moved to Brixton for “security reasons” where they were housed in cells that were segregated from the male population of the prison and overseen by female warders.105 It was a situation shortly to be experienced by Assata

Shakur who was imprisoned in the basement of Middlesex County Jail, as of September

1973 while awaiting trial. She recalled, “I was the first, and last, woman ever imprisoned there. It has always been a men’s jail.”106 There was a certain irony to the fact that in the age of women’s liberation, it was in the prisons where militant women were finding themselves subject to the same conditions as their male counterparts. There was, however, no feminist victory here. Although the Prices, McNearney, and Shakur were imprisoned in men’s prisons gendered assumptions about female prisoners persisted.

They were deemed just as dangerous as their male comrades, but this, in itself, made them outliers with respect to other women in the minds of prison regimes.

In terms of their rapid attraction of high profile support too, the Belfast Ten were reminiscent of the Black Panthers. On March 25, representatives from left-wing and student organizations and Irish political associations in Britain came together to form the

103Commons Sitting, “Price Sisters,” March 28, 1974, HC Deb 28 May 1974 vol 871 cc 604-5, Historic Hansard http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/mar/28/price-sisters. 104 Henry Brooke, The Prison Rules 1964 (Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1964/388/pdfs/uksi_19640388_en.pdf. 105 “Jail Transfer for Women in Explosions Case,” The Irish Times, March 17, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0317/Pg008.html#Ar00814. 106Shakur, Assata, 65.

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Belfast Ten Defence Committee. 107 Two days later Bernadette Devlin and the actress,

Vanessa Redgrave offered to post bail for the ten and house them so that the remand prisoners might be released until trial.108 This was not unlike the support Panther prisoners had drawn before their split. In 1970, for example, composer Leonard Bernstein earned criticism for wanting to be “radical chic” after his wife Felicia hosted a fundraiser for the families of the Panther 21, which was attended by the likes of Cynthia Phipps,

Barbara Walters, Roger Wilkins, and Otto Preminger.109 Where Bernstein’s fundraiser was aimed at the families of the Panther 21, and, thus, would have, arguably, been successful with any amount raised, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sir Frank Milton refused Redgrave and Devlin’s attempt to provide sureties for the Belfast ten and instead, remanded all ten into custody once again.110

The trial of the nine Belfast IRA men and women who pled guilty to the London bombings ended in dramatic style. In November 1973, eight received guilty verdicts, while the jury declared Roisin McNearney not guilty on all counts. To her co-defendants, this confirmed their conviction that she had given information to investigators, a suspicion first sparked when she was transferred back to Holloway Prison in May, but which she denied in committal proceedings at the end of that month.111 When the jury delivered McNearney’s first not guilty verdict the anger amongst the other defendants

107 Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Event in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,” 2; 108 “Actress Offers Aid to Bomb Trial 10,” The Irish Times, March 28, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0328/Pg008.html#Ar00803. 109 Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s,” New York, June 8, 1970, http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/. 110 “Actress Offers Aid,” The Irish Times, March 28, 1973. 111 Suspicion also clung to McLarnon who was abruptly transferred to a high security wing at Wormwood Scrubs at the same time McNearney was transferred back to Holloway. While McNearney’s subsequent police protection indicated she had made statements which incriminated the ten, McLarnon’s actions were less clear. See O’Donnell, Special Category Vol. 1, 107.

244 was such that Feeney and Brady had to be restrained, and McNearney was moved out of the dock and downstairs. As she was led away, Feeney threw a coin at her shouting,

“‘Here’s your blood money,’” while the other defendants hummed the funeral march from Handel’s Saul.112 The Irish Times reported a further altercation between

McNearney’s father and relatives of other defendants before a crying McNearney was brought back to hear her other two not guilty verdicts.113 Justice Sebag Shaw handed down life sentences to the remaining eight IRA volunteers as well as concurrent 20 year sentences for conspiracy. Having plead guilty in September, McLarnon received his sentence at the same time, three concurrent terms of 15 years.114 The dramatic resolution of the trial of the Belfast Ten revealed some of the divisions within the IRA, operating on a small scale. Like the BPP, they were vulnerable to suspicion among their own volunteers, and if that suspicion was valid, the result was often long prison terms.

The convicted IRA volunteers began protesting their sentences immediately.

When taken back to Winchester prison after sentencing, the six men refused the prison uniform and clad themselves in prison blankets instead.115 With McNearney taken away and put into police protection, the remaining nine began a hunger strike for political status and to be returned to prisons in the North of Ireland to serve their sentences.116 The

112 “Sentences Today as Eight Are Convicted on All Charges,” The Irish Times, November 15, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1115/Pg012.html#Ar01200. 113 Ibid. 114 Martin Cowley, “Life Sentences for Winchester Eight Prisoners Start Campaign,” The Irish Times, November 16, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1116/Pg001.html#Ar00105. 115 Martin Cowley, “Defiance from I.R.A. Group Who Pledge Jail Protest,” The Irish Times, November 16, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1116/Pg011.html#Ar01100. Under the British penal system women prisoners could wear their own clothing, and as such, prison uniforms were not an issue for the Price sisters. 116Cowley, “Life Sentences for Winchester Eight Prisoners Start Campaign.” The department of Foreign Affairs report, “Chronology of Events in Connection with the London Bomb Explosions” suggests that all of the Belfast nine began a hunger strike upon sentencing, but that McLarnon and Brady ended their strike November 21, while two other strikers ended their fast on November 27, leaving five on the hunger strike by the end of November. An Irish times article, London Correspondent, “Forcible Feeding for Two London

245 nine protesters wanted to be part of the moral polity that prisoners built in the North’s prisons. Meanwhile, the IRA issued a statement which read ominously, “In due course, retribution will be exacted from the people who inflicted such callous punishment on

Belfast youth in London today.”117 Although McLarnon, Brady, and Armstrong ended their strike by the end of November, the stage was, thus, set for a protracted struggle inside English prisons with the threat of further IRA violence in England.

When they began their fast, the Belfast IRA volunteers imprisoned in England joined a growing list of republican prisoners who resorted to the tactic in the wake of the successful 1972 Crumlin Road Jail hunger strike for political status. Republicans in

Portlaoise staged one such protest in July 1972.118 In November 1972, after receiving a six month sentence from the Special Criminal Court in Dublin for IRA membership, IRA chief of staff, Seán MacStíofáin promptly began a hunger and thirst strike. Although he began taking liquids again not long after, he continued with his hunger strike until he was ordered off of it by the outside republican leadership on January 15, 1973, after 58 days.

He was released after serving four months and three weeks of his sentence.119

The same month MacStíofáin began his hunger strike in the South, prisoners at the Crumlin Road Jail in the North were also, once again, hunger striking. Unlike the strike that led to special category status, this strike began with Loyalists. On November 9,

Loyalists refused food because prisoners had been denied compassionate parole since

Bombs Men,” The Irish Times, November 28, 1973, suggests McLarnon and Brady never took part in the hunger strike. 117 Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,” 3. 118 “Reporters Waited in Vain for Riots,” The Irish Times, September 29, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0929/Pg009.html#Ar00905. 119 Nigel Brown, “MacStiofain Ends 6-Month Sentence,” The Irish Times, April 17, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0417/Pg001.html#Ar00100.

246

UVF leader Gusty Spence failed to return from a two day parole for his daughter’s wedding the previous July.120 Twenty Official Republicans and five Provisionals joined the strike on November 12, noting that a republican had never “dishonoured parole.”121

The November Crumlin Road hunger strike is worth examining here for the fine line the prisoners trod between cooperation and advancing unique interests. The strikers’ demands included compassionate parole in the event of a death in the prisoner’s immediate family, conjugal visits or periodic parole approximately three times per year for the same purpose, political status for Irish political prisoners in England, Scotland,

Wales, and other British prisons with the option to be transferred to Crumlin Road Jail if the Irish political prisoner so decided, educational facilities with proper tuition provided, privacy on visits, and that these demands be granted as rights and not special privileges.122 Michael Mallon, noted that, although, the OIRA “started another hunger strike in conjunction with the provys,” that they did not, necessarily share all of the same demands. The PIRA did not ask for conjugal visits, nor did they ask for periodic parole,

“since they don’t accept normal parole.”123 Nonetheless, Mallon affirmed that “Any statements issued from the jail will be joint statements . . . and [the PIRA] say that if their demands are met leaving only the extra ones we have then they will hold a meeting to decide whether or not to continue hunger striking in solidarity with us.”124 Given their newfound cooperation, Mallon suggested, “We would appreciate expressions of

120 “Trouble in Shankill and East Belfast,” The Irish Times, October 12, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/1012/Pg001.html#Ar00104. 121 “Hacksaws Found in Prison Cells,” The Irish Times, November 16, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/1116/Pg010.html#Ar01008. 122 Mick Mallon to Kevin, November 1972?, Prisons Box 1, Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1-2. 123 Ibid, 1,2. 124 Ibid, 1.

247 solidarity for the political prisoners without provy or sticky.”125 That is, without reference to the Provisional Irish Republican Army or Official Irish Republican Army.126 Despite the fact that in actuality, the demands of loyalists and Official republicans more closely aligned, the PIRA and OIRA would present a united front to all inside and outside the prison.127 The collective was preserved despite differences within it. In the end, the PIRA ended their hunger strike on November 28 while the OIRA continued their strike until

December 10.128 With the cessation of their fast, Whitelaw assured prisoners he would personally consider every case of parole.129

The issue of political status led, yet again, to hunger strike in September 1973, when republicans imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail in Dublin began their own protest.130 A combination of remand and convicted PIRA prisoners refused food on September 13, calling for political status, remission of sentence, and later hours of association and recreation. The Irish Minister for Justice alleged that the prisoners threatened violent reprisal in the event anything happened to a hunger striker.131 This strike spurred demonstrations in support of the hunger strikers, which on September 22 ended in

125 Ibid, 2. 126 OIRA members were sometimes referred to as “sticks” or “stickies” because they produced and distributed an Easter lily to sell and wear in support of republican ideals and to raise funds, with an adhesive back, rather than the pin back favored by the Provisionals. The Easter lily has long been a republican symbol of the 1916 Easter Rising. See “The Easter Lily,” An Phoblacht, April 5, 2007, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/16643. 127Mick Mallon, “The Hunger strike by political prisoners in Belfast Prison…,” November 1972?, Prisons Box 1, Northern Ireland Political Collection, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 128 “Jailed Provisionals End Hunger Protest,” The Irish Times, November 29, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/1129/Pg011.html#Ar01107; “Jail Hunger Strike Reports Denied,” The Irish Times, December 13, 1972, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1972/1213/Pg011.html#Ar01113. 129 “Jailed Provisionals End Hunger Protest.” 130 “Petrol Bombs in Riot Near Jail,” The Irish Times, September 24, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0924/Pg013.html#Ar01300. 131 “Action at Mountjoy Explained by Cooney,” The Irish Times, September 29, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/0929/Pg009.html#Ar00900.

248 violence and arrests. Garda blamed the demonstrators, while spectators reported that the

Garda batoned people indiscriminately while they heard speeches against internment in the North and for political status in the South.132 Within the prison Official republicans dissociated themselves from the hunger strike, issuing a statement that said, “We believe any improvement in prison conditions must apply to all and not an elite group.” They simultaneously claimed the status of revolutionary for themselves and their duty to spread republican ideals to others in the prison.133 The strike ended on October 3 with an announcement that the striking prisoners would take care of their own wing of the prison, and because of this would qualify for the remission and privileges they were previously denied because of a campaign of passive resistance, including refusing prison work.134

None of the plethora of hunger strikes which occurred between May 1972 and

October 1973 had anything like the publicity generated by the hunger strikes of members of the Belfast Nine, as the Belfast Ten became known after McNearney’s acquittal.135

The press covered their trial from start to finish and showed no signs of slowing with the announcement of a hunger strike. The Price sisters, their star already on the rise throughout the trial, proved to be of particular interest. Stories about them ranged from the mundane to the speculative to the bizarre. On November 19, 1973, The Irish Times reported that the Prices received a visit from their mother, were in good spirits, and

132 “Petrol Bombs in Riot Near Jail.” 133 Jack Fagan, “Mountjoy Hunger Striker Very Weak’,” The Irish Times, October 2, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973. 134 Dick Walsh, “Mountjoy Prisoners End Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1004/Pg001.html#Ar00100. 135Following their sentencing, the Belfast ten became the Winchester eight, for the eight members of the Belfast ten sentenced to life in prison. This name gradually gave way to the Belfast nine, a grouping which included every member of the Belfast ten sentenced to time in prison.

249 determined to see the hunger strike through to the end.136 They later covered rumors that swirled about where the Prices were transferred after the trial.137 US newspapers picked up on the fact that on February 23, 1974 as the struggle for repatriation wore on, thieves took “The Guitar Player,” a Vermeer masterpiece, from a North London gallery. Not long after, a London newspaper received a slip of paper torn from the painting demanding the

Price sisters be returned to the North to serve their sentences.138 For their part, the Price family denied any knowledge of the theft and told reporters that Marian and Dolours asked that the painting be returned.139 In May, the Chicago Tribune reported that after the gallery refused to negotiate for the painting, it turned up, wrapped in newspaper and propped against a gravestone in a London churchyard.140 Hugh Feeney and Gerry Kelly were often mentioned in these articles, but the media made clear that the Price sisters were the real stars.

Despite the intense press scrutiny, what was actually happening to the Belfast

Nine was not always clear. Initial reports suggested that Feeney and Walsh were being force-fed by the end of November, but were not definitive.141 Shortly after it appeared that the Prices’ solicitor was considering seeking an injunction to prevent them from being force-fed, but reporters could not confirm when that would begin. At the same

136“Price Sisters Visited by Mother,” The Irish Times, November 19, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1119/Pg010.html#Ar01011. 137 “Jail Switch for Car Bomb Sisters,” The Irish Times, November 24, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1124/Pg008.html#Ar00808. 138 Joseph Cerutti, “Stolen Vermeer Found,” Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1974, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1974/05/08/page/3/article/stolen-vermeer-found/. 139 “Price Sisters Ask That Painting Be Returned,” The Irish Times, March 11, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0311/Pg008.html#Ar00803. 140Joseph Cerutti, “Stolen Vermeer Found,” Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1974, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1974/05/08/page/3/article/stolen-vermeer-found/. 141Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection With the London Bomb Explosions,” 3; London Correspondent, “Forcible Feeding for Two London Bombs Men,” The Irish Times, November 28, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1128/Pg009.html#Ar00901.

250 time, a Home Office spokesman reported five prisoners eating normally and wearing the prison uniform, three taking only fluids, and one being “fed artificially,” but prisoners’ supporters disputed the claim.142 The PIRA responded to that Home Office report with a statement of their own. They stated that the Price sisters were taking only water, an important distinction from the Home Office’s assertion that prisoners were taking

“fluids,” and that Feeney and Kelly were being forcibly fed. Holmes and Walsh ended their strikes by the beginning of December, but republicans asked the public to treat the idea that Holmes and Walsh put on prison uniforms and ended their fast voluntarily, as the Home Office alleged, with skepticism. As evidence, they cited the fact that Paul

Holmes’ brother believed Holmes to be “deeply drugged” during a recent visit to

Parkhurst prison where Holmes was being held. The PIRA also alleged that Walsh was seriously ill from a combination of force-feeding and a beating he received from prison officers.143 Just as the PIRA released their statement the Price sisters were force-fed for the first time.144 Nevertheless, Michael Farrell of the People’s Democracy announced that

Dolours Price was close to death on December 22, 1973.145 The Home Office denied

Price was in such dire condition when Labour MP, Renee Short (North-East

Wolverhampton) announced her to be in “very grave danger” during the first full week of

142 Martin Cowley, “Legal Bid to Prevent Force Feeding Sisters,” The Irish Times, December 4, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1204/Pg009.html#Ar00904. 143 “Assault, Drugging of Prisoners Alleged,” The Irish Times, December 5, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1205/Pg011.html#Ar01104. 144Department of Foreign Affairs, “Chronology of Events in Connection with the London Bomb Explosions,” 4. 145“Hunger Strike Solidarity March,” The Irish Times, December 24, 1973, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1973/1224/Pg009.html#Ar00906.

251 the new year.146 This situation, of reports and counter reports about the conditions of the protestors, persisted largely unchanged until the fast grew larger in the spring of 1974.

On March 30, 1974 IRA volunteers Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, imprisoned in HMP Albany on the Isle of Wight, joined the fast in solidarity with

Feeney, Kelly, and the Prices, to protest conditions at Albany, and in an effort to gain their own repatriation to Northern Irish jails.147 Their hunger strike began when another of the IRA volunteers sentenced for the 1973 London bombings, Paul Holmes, refused food after he received a punishment of dietary restriction for failing to cooperate with a cell search. Holmes ended his fast three days after he began and attempted to convince

Gaughan and Stagg to cease their fasts as well, but they refused and continued their protest.148 In April they were transferred to the hospital wing of Parkhurst Jail.149

Gaughan and Stagg’s fasts and demands for repatriation to the North were complicated by the fact that both men hailed from County Mayo in the South. They were clear that they wished to be sent to a prison in the six counties of the North where the bulk of IRA prisoners were held. To Gaughan and Stagg, as to all republicans, there was only one Ireland. The border was illegitimate. The impetus behind their demands, then, was not simply one of personal preference or proximity to family and friends. Indeed,

146“Carr to Probe Prison Visits Refusal Claim,” The Irish Times, January 7, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0107/Pg008.html#Ar00807. 147 There are some discrepancies in the sources as to who joined the hunger strike, on what date they did so, and how long an individual remained on hunger strike. The start date to Gaughan and Stagg’s 1974 hunger strike is sometimes listed as March 31, 1974. Such is the case with Aengus O Snodaigh, “Remembering the Past: 25th Anniversary of Michael Gaughan’s Death, Take me Home to Mayo,” An Phoblacht, July 1, 1999, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/5080. I have used the March 30 date as it is the date listed in articles from The Irish Times in 1974 (See Martin Cowley, “Call for British Jail Inquiry Unconfirmed,” The Irish Times, April 25, 1974). Additionally, some sources, notably An Phoblacht, list Hugh Feeney as beginning a hunger strike on March 31, with Gaughan, Stagg, and Holmes. This would indicate that he came off the hunger strike begun with Gerry Kelly and Dolours and Marion Price begun in November 1973. 148 O’Donnell, Special Category Vol. 1, 177, 179. 149Martin Cowley, “Call for British Jail Inquiry Unconfirmed,” The Irish Times, April 25, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0425/Pg010.html#Ar01004.

252

Gaughan and Stagg both lived in England for years before their arrests and were closer to their immediate support bases in England. Their hunger strikes were attempts to partake in the moral polity that had been created in the prisons of the North. In doing so, they would link with the main force of IRA prisoners, strengthening that body by increasing their number, and in turn, being strengthened by the privileges of special category.

Even with force feeding, by May 1974, the hunger strikers reached a critical stage. In the House of Commons, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins noted that the force- feeding of the Price sisters, which began on December 3, 1973, had continued at regular intervals until May 18, 1974 when prison medical officers determined that the sisters’ non-cooperation with the feeding procedure made it dangerous to continue.150 Labour

Party MP Jock Stallard, in favor of returning the IRA prisoners to Northern Ireland, duly asked the Home Secretary whether the discontinuation of the Price’s force-feedings was tantamount to allowing hunger strikers to die.151 This debate in the House of Commons exemplified the growing push from Stallard and his Labour Party colleague, Lord Fenner

Brockway, to grant the hunger strikers their demands. While Stallard argued with the

Home Secretary in the House of Commons on May 23, Lord Brockway visited the Prices in Brixton prison. Stallard made his own visit on May 29.152 Each attempted to persuade the sisters to come off their protest in order to take some pressure off of the Home Office which, they assured the sisters, had not ruled out the possibility of a prison transfer.153 In

150Commons Sitting, “Price Sisters,” May 23, 1974, HC Deb 23 May 1974 vol 874 cc 599-602, Historic Hansard http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/may/23/price- sisters#S5CV0874P0_19740523_HOC_194. There is, again, a discrepancy in the date of the Price sisters’ first force-feeding. Jenkins dates it to December 3, 1973. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Ireland listed December 5 as the first incidence of force-feeding for the Prices. 151 Ibid. 152 O’Donnell, Special Category Volume 1, 184, 185. 153 Ibid, 184.

253 fact, on June 1, Roy Jenkins made a statement in which he confirmed, “I believe it would be possible and reasonable for them to serve the bulk of their long sentences near their homes in Northern Ireland.”154 Two days later, Paddy Devlin of the SDLP flew to

London to offer his services as a mediator between the hunger strikers and Jenkins, in an effort make this statement the beginning of the end of the hunger strikes.155

Devlin’s intervention came too late to help Michael Gaughan, who died the evening of June 3 in Parkhurst Prison. The British Home Office reported that Gaughan developed pneumonia the day before and succumbed to it at 7:30 pm that Monday evening. Sinn Fein president, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, on the other hand, called the IRA volunteer’s death a “callous, brutal and premeditated murder by the British

Government.”156 Gaughan’s mother, Delia, believed force-feeding contributed to her son’s death. When she saw him the Friday before he died, she observed that six people were required to hold him down for the ordeal the day before, and that his throat was bleeding and torn as a result of the practice.157 In this manner, controversy followed

Gaughan even after death.

In death Gaughan gained the media attention that was largely absent during his hunger strike. Covering Gaughan’s death for The Irish Times, Martin Cowley noted,

154Walter Ellis, “Devlin Played Leading Role in Jail Talks,” The Irish Times, June 10, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0610/Pg008.html#Ar00803. 155 Ibid. The British Home Office announced that Hugh Feeney resumed eating the day after Jenkins’ statement, but began refusing food again on Tuesday June 4 following Gaughan’s death. His mother and the Joint Action Committee, a group formed to campaign for the repatriation of the Belfast hunger strikers, denied Feeney had ever resumed eating. See Martin Cowley, “Mother Denies Son Has Ended Fast,” The Irish Times, June 4, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0604/Pg001.html#Ar00103; Martin Cowley, “Home Office States Feeney Has Resumed His Fast,” The Irish Times, June 5, 1974, Https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0605/Pg009.html#Ar00902. 156Martin Cowley, “Irish Hunger Striker Dies in U.K. Jail,” The Irish Times, June 4, 1974, Https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0604. 157Martin Cowley, “Republicans to Bring Gaughan Remains Back to Co. Mayo,” The Irish Times, June 5, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0605/Pg001.html#Ar00102.

254

“Gaughan, who has largely remained unnoticed because of the publicity surrounding the

Price sisters, is the first Irish prisoner to die on hunger strike in an English jail since

Terence MacSwiney . . . died in 1920 in Brixton Prison.”158 Republicans understood this fact to be of deep significance. With Gaughan they were connected to a long line of revered figures and also had a contemporary martyr who would garner sympathy for their cause. Indeed, with his death, Gaughan brought people out onto the streets in protest of various penal policies and became the figure crucial to changing British policy regarding force feeding.

Force-feeding drew condemnation and calls to stop the practice from a variety of quarters from the time prison doctors first employed it with the Belfast Nine hunger strikers.159 Not long before Gaughan’s death, 50 doctors demonstrated outside the British

Medical Association against force-feeding.160 In the months before Gaughan and Stagg joined the hunger strike, even the loyalist Ulster Defence Association called on the

British to stop force-feeding the Prices and allow them to die or return them to Northern

Ireland. On January 31, 1974 they issued a statement which, while decrying the Price sisters’ “foul deeds,” nevertheless, firmly stated, “If the Price sisters wish to die rather than accept forcible feeding, then we believe if Westminster intends to keep them there, they should be allowed to exercise their choice.” The other option, they reasoned, was to repatriate the sisters to Northern Ireland. Sounding rather bewildered, The Irish Times

158Cowley, “Irish Hunger Striker Dies in U.K. Jail.” 159The Irish Times reported numerous protests on behalf of the hunger strikers and frequent calls to see them transferred to Northern Ireland and/or their force-feeding to cease. In fact, the stories they ran the day Gaughan died had to do with protests on behalf of the Price Sisters. See Renagh Holohan, “Protests Grow Over Refusal of Jenkins to Agree to Transfer of Price Sisters,” The Irish Times, June 3, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0603/Pg005.html#Ar00500; James Downey, “Lynch Attacks Jenkins’ Decision on Sisters,” The Irish Times, June 3, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0603/Pg005.html#Ar00501. 160Cowley, “Republicans to Bring Gaughan Remains Back to Co. Mayo.”

255 noted that “the U.D.A. has rarely commented on the plight of any Provisional prisoners, certainly not in the mood of concern implied in its statement.”161 If force-feeding was enough to bring loyalists and republicans to a common conclusion, the death of a forcibly fed hunger striker set the stage for widespread sympathy for the hunger strikers and condemnation of the British policy of force-feeding.

Gaughan’s death increased the pressure on authorities to transfer the remaining hunger strikers. At Parkhurst prison, 90 prisoners staged an overnight sit-down protest between June 3 and 4 to protest Gaughan’s death and the deteriorating condition of Frank

Stagg.162 Outside, protesters assailed Home Secretary Roy Jenkins calling him a

“murderer.” Two Labour MPs from Coventry, lately the home of Stagg and his family, pressed Jenkins to repatriate Stagg. Ivan Cooper, assemblyman for Mid-Ulster, made a similar request for all Irish political prisoners in Britain. In Ireland, the People’s

Democracy called on Irish workers of British owned factories to strike on the day of

Gaughan’s funeral. On June 4, members of the Political Prisoners Committee hung banners featuring the hunger strikers, including Gaughan, on railings across the street from the GPO in Dublin and passed out literature on the hunger strike and the strikers.

Then, before the coroner even released Gaughan’s body to his family, the actual funeral proceedings for Gaughan began with a requiem mass at the Church of St. Thomas on the

Isle of Wight near Parkhurst Prison. There, Sinn Fein organizer Brendan Magill kept the press and photographers away from Gaughan’s father Patrick as he left the church,

161“Let Sisters Die or Bring Them to N.I. Says U.D.A.,” The Irish Times, February 1, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0201/Pf009.html#Ar00900. 162Martin Cowley, “Independent Postmortem to Be Conducted Today on Gaughan,” The Irish Times, June 6, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0606/Pg001.html#Ar00104.

256 virtually ensuring the press’ interest in subsequent events. That evening, 250 people turned out to a Sinn Fein organized demonstration for the hunger strikers in Monaghan.163

Gaughan’s body was released to his family on June 7, by which time Sinn Fein and the National Graves Association had planned his funeral.164 Gaughan’s coffin was draped in an Irish tricolor and topped with the black beret of the IRA and carried one and a half miles through Cricklewood and Kilburn, heavily Irish areas of North London, to

Sacred Heart Church on Quex Road. Thousands turned out to accompany the coffin, which was led by a contingent of uniformed IRA men.165 The coffin, itself, was made of

Irish wood and shipped from Dublin at the request of Gaughan’s father.166 In a statement which drew condemnation from his diocesan superiors, Father Michael Connolly told mourners, “This is a fitting tribute to a great man. The price of freedom has always been very high and Irishmen have always been prepared to pay it in full.”167 Between the massive crowds of mourners, openly uniformed members of the IRA, and Father

Connolly’s praise of Gaughan, the press reported every step the coffin took, making

Gaughan a household name by the time his coffin arrived in Dublin on June 8.

Republicans ensured Gaughan’s funeral procession continued to draw media attention from the time it landed on Irish soil. At the mortuary in Dublin airport, as

Gaughan’s coffin was loaded into the hearse, the Irish tricolor draping it was replaced with the tricolor that accompanied Terence MacSwiney’s coffin to burial in 1920.168 With

163Cowley, “Republicans to Bring Gaughan Remains Back to Co. Mayo.” 164 O’Donnell, Special Category Vol. 1, 201. ; Cowley, “Irish Hunger Striker Dies in U.K. Jail.” 165Martin Cowley, “5,000 Walk With Body of Gaughan in London,” The Irish Times, June 8, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0608/Pg010.html#Ar01005. 166Cowley, “Republicans to Bring Gaughan Remains Back to Co. Mayo.” 167“Priest’s Remarks At Gaughan Funeral,” The Irish Times, June 11, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0611/Pg008.html#Ar00802. 168“Silent Crowds Watch Dublin Procession,” The Irish Times, June 10, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0610/Pg009.html#Ar00900.

257 this direct link to a previous republican martyr, the coffin was then driven at a walking pace to Adam and Eve’s Church at Merchants Quay. Some 3,000 marchers followed, many coming in to lay cards and wreaths as the coffin lay in state with an IRA honor guard overnight.169 The next day, the procession continued on to Gaughan’s final resting place in Ballina and was once again met by thousands of onlookers and supporters along the way. The Irish Times reported IRA honor guards in nearly every village and town through which the funeral cortege passed.170

At the requiem mass in Ballina a priest was once again the center of controversy when the curate, Reverend Michael Keane suggested, “England is always seen as our enemy. But we may think how good a country it has been to us in the past, giving us work, opportunity, and money. It is a pleasant land and it is a sad thing to see the fighting going on and on. Can we not sit down and talk?” Someone in the congregation yelled that this was not the sermon for a “true Irish soldier,” and that the priest was being offensive and insulting. A group of people led by Dáithi Ó Conaill walked out in protest.171 Ó

Conaill, a known leader of the IRA, an illegal organization in Ireland, nevertheless, spoke at the graveside, and, despite being surrounded by over 100 gardaí, affirmed that

Gaughan had been tortured by “the vampires of a discredited empire.” Gardaí did not move to arrest, and Ó Conaill disappeared with the crowd following his own speech.172

Thus, the funeral, from the Isle of Wight to Ballina, provided the drama hitherto ignored by the media in reference to Gaughan’s hunger strike. It had all the trappings of a send-

169Ibid. 170Joe Joyce, “Protests at Mass for Republican,” The Irish Times, June 10, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0610/Pg001.html#Ar00103. 171Ibid. 172Ibid.

258 off of the moral polity. Gaughan was demonstrably linked to past martyrs, his dignity as an Irish soldier was celebrated, and a collective stood positioned against the British government.

As Gaughan’s funeral procession made its way to Ballina, the Price sisters negotiated an end to their hunger strikes. Paddy Devlin met with Roy Jenkins on June 4, arranged to meet the Price sisters later that night, and brought them the message that he believed a compromise could be reached which would end the strike.173 In a series of meetings that week in which Devlin, Lord Brockway, and Jock Stallard all participated, the Price sisters enunciated a number of demands they saw as pre-conditions to ending their strike. The first demand was to wear their own clothes. As women in British prisoners were already accorded this right, this made clear the Price’s commitment to see the results of these negotiations extended to their male comrades. They also demanded the right to write letters to internees in Long Kesh, the right to abstain from prison work, the right to outside food at mealtimes, and asked to be kept in Brixton prison until their return to Armagh Jail.174 On June 7, as Michael Gaughan’s body was released to his family and marched through Cricklewood and Kilburn, Dolours and Marian Price reached a deal with Jenkins, and ended their fast after 205 days. Word was then sent to

Gerry Kelly in Wormwood Scrubs Prison and Hugh Feeney in Gartree Prison who ended their strikes the next day, as did Francis Stagg in Parkhurst.175

173Ellis, “Devlin Played Leading Role in Jail Talks.” 174Ibid. 175 Martin Cowley, “Price Sisters Abandon 205-Day Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, June 8, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0608/Pg001.html#Ar00101; “Hunger Striker May Have Kidney Ailment,” The Irish Times, July 3, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/0703/Pg010.html#Ar01009.

259

While the end of the hunger strike was a relief to nearly everyone, the events surrounding Gaughan’s death, funeral, and the opposition to force feeding worried many

British politicians and led to a change in British prison policy regarding hunger strikes.

On July 10, members of the House of Commons lamented Gaughan’s death, but only because it was the catalyst for IRA supporters to follow his funeral procession through the Isle of Wight and London as his body was brought back to Ballina for burial.176 In the ensuing discussion, Roy Jenkins assured his colleagues that a sustained campaign of demonstrations in support of paramilitarism would not be tolerated and maintained that the hunger strikes would not lead to the repatriation of the hunger strikers.177 This, assurance came despite his statement of the previous month and the widespread belief that a deal on repatriation had brought the hunger strikes to an end.

Seven days later Jenkins announced a change in medical policy regarding prisoners on hunger strike. If prison doctors deemed a hunger striking prisoner’s judgment to be sound, he would be informed that doctors could remove him to the prison hospital at any time, that his condition would be monitored and food made available, but that no rule existed to compel medical officers to begin “artificial feeding (whether by tube or intravenously.)” To make absolutely certain the prisoner understood his position,

“he should be plainly and categorically warned that the consequent and inevitable deterioration in his health may be allowed to continue without medical intervention, unless he specifically requests it.”178 That is, unless a hunger striking prisoner changed

176 Commons Sitting, “IRA Demonstrations (London),” June 10, 1974, HC Deb 10 June 1974 vol 874 cc 1223-30, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/jun/10/ira-demonstrations- london. 177Ibid. 178Roy Jenkins, “Northern Ireland Office Press Notice, Statement Made in the House of Commons,” July 17, 1974, HSS/32/1/10/10A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

260 his or her mind and asked for medical intervention he or she would be monitored, but ultimately allowed to die.

Before the issue of whether or not IRA prisoners would be repatriated to Northern

Ireland was settled, attention was diverted back to the prisons in Northern Ireland. In late

1974 internees/detainees and sentenced republican prisoners cooperated to burn Long

Kesh to the ground because of grievances that amounted to violations of the moral polity.

In Long Kesh, especially, internees/detainees lived in huts close to those of sentenced special category prisoners, and large numbers of prisoners grew increasingly frustrated with the prison conditions after 1972 despite the existence of special category status. Joe

Doherty, an internee in 1972 and a special category prisoner from 1973, described the huts where prisoners lived as “damp, underheated, rodent-infested, insect-ridden, and grossly overcrowded.”179 Of particular concern to the republicans were the lack of laundry facilities in their cages and “cold and under nourishing” food. In 1974 the republican camp command produced a list of twenty demands for the prison leadership which covered issues such as visiting, compassionate parole, British Army searches of the internees’ cages, prison food, and structural improvements to the huts. Negotiations between the republican command and the prison authorities carried on for months without any meaningful progress, leading republican prisoners to protest by throwing their bedding and prison food containers over the fences surrounding their huts. In response, the prison authorities stopped all incoming packages, and republicans began to prepare for the eventuality of a physical confrontation.180

179 Joe Doherty, “The Burning of Long Kesh,” An Phoblacht, October 12, 2014, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/24472. 180 Ibid.

261

On October 15, 1974 an altercation between the republican commander of Cage

13 and the prison staff touched off events which would reduce much of the prison to rubble, but which also shed light on the workings of the moral polity within Long Kesh.

A statement from the Association for Legal Justice reported that sentenced republicans in

Cage 13 had been provoked into an attack by a loyalist guard spouting bigotry.181 In an attempt to avoid confrontation, the cage’s Officer Commanding (OC) invoked a procedure whereby the OC of a cage could ask an “undesirable prison officer” to leave, notify the chief officer of the prison that he had done so, and summarily ask the offending guard to remove himself from the compound. Fathers Denis Faul and Raymond Murray, chaplains to Long Kesh and Armagh Jail, respectively, noted “In the past [this procedure] had proved to be absolutely successful on the occasions on which it had been used, with no embarrassment on either side.”182 This time, however, the guard in question refused to leave, and in the ensuing fight he was injured, as were some of his fellows who rushed into the cage to assist when the fight broke out.183 When the governor, William

Truesdale, called for the men responsible to come forward for punishment, republicans refused and communications between prisoners and staff broke down. Truesdale then relinquished control of Long Kesh to the British Army, and republican sentenced prisoners and internees/detainees took up the positions they had practiced in their preparation for a confrontation with authorities and proceeded to set fire to the camp,

181 Father Denis Faul and Father Raymond Murray, “The Flames of Long Kesh and the Murder of Hugh Gerard Coney, Internee,” December 1974, D/3564/1/6, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3. 182 Ibid., 9,15. [Faul and Murray, The Flames of Long Kesh] 183 Ibid, 9.

262 destroying their huts, and a number of other prison buildings. As night fell, the army withdrew to gather reinforcements.184

The army’s actions in retaking the prison camp ensured that the situation would lack a rapid resolution. Kevin O’Hagan, of cage 10 reported that around 8:00 am on the

16th, army helicopters flew over the camp dropping gas onto the football pitches and other areas where prisoners had gathered. At the same time, ground troops entered the camp firing rubber bullets. In the ensuing confusion the army captured most of the rebellious prisoners.185 According to O’Hagan, when things settled down, it was loyalist prisoners Gusty Spence and John McKeague who approached the republicans’ camp OC,

David Morley, and the British Army to arrange a truce. Morley reportedly told republicans to lay down their weapons having been assured that if they showed no more aggression, the army would not use force when escorting prisoners back to what was left of their cages. As the republicans were rounded up and led back to their cages, however, soldiers forced the men to stand spread-eagled against the wire, beating them if they fell.

Brendan Devlin of cage 22 noted that men were left in this position for up to five hours and some were set upon by army dogs. When they were finally ordered to sit in their compound, men who needed to use the toilet were forced to run a gauntlet of armed soldiers.186

When all was said and done Father Faul and Father Murray compiled a booklet containing statements from internees and sentenced prisoners, newspaper accounts of the burning of Long Kesh, and a list of injuries sustained by the prisoners. The priests were

184 Doherty, “The Burning of Long Kesh,” An Phoblacht 185 Faul and Murray, “The Flames of Long Kesh,” 28-29. 186 Ibid., 30, 33.

263 meticulous in their documentation, dividing their list of injuries into prisoners who were treated in the camp, those taken to the prison hospital, prisoners taken to outside hospitals, and those who required treatment but had not yet received it. In cage 3, internee

Phil McCullough had been seen inside the camp for bruising on his head resulting from being hit with a rubber bullet. Joe Doherty from the sentenced prisoners’ cage 18, required three stitches in his head. John Deeds of cage 10 was taken to an outside hospital with a broken left arm and body bruises.187 Faul and Murray’s work, published in

December 1974 helped keep attention focused on the prisoners and their grievances two months after they burned down their cages.

More disturbing were prisoners’ allegations that the army had not dropped CS gas on the prisoners during the retaking of the prison. Rather, many prisoners now contend that the British forces dropped CR gas that October day. Most of the prisoners had experienced the effects of CS gas, notably watering eyes and vomiting, in previous engagements with security forces, but now described new consequences from exposure to the gas dropped by the British. They reported effects such as temporary blindness, sharp chest pains, convulsive shaking, and the temporary loss of limb control. George Gillen, representing the internees at Long Kesh claimed that at a meeting to discuss general prison issues, the prison administration informed him that the army had used CR, not CS gas to retake the prison on October 16.188 Fathers Faul and Murray were inclined to agree that CR gas had been used on the rioting prisoners. Describing specific incidents from within the burning of the prison camp, they noted that “CR gas was used in great

187 Ibid., 35, 44, 36. 188 Ceartais with Joe Doherty, Jim McCann, and Joe Barnes, “CR Gas: Time for Truth, The Story of and its effects on Political Prisoners in Long Kesh, 1974,” commissioned by Coiste na n-Iarchimí, funded by SEPB, 12,13. Provided to author curtesy of Joe Doherty.

264 quantities” and that “The denials of the Northern Ireland Office that it was used are lies.”189 Faul and Murray attributed to the gas the worrying side effect of paralyzing those in its vicinity.190 Former prisoners also remember medical officers from the Ministry of

Defense coming to the camp in 1975 to take blood tests from some of the prisoners. At the time prison officials asserted that these were just general wellness checks, but the prisoners never received the results of these tests and say that the British government now denies that the tests ever took place. This has led some ex-prisoners to come to the conclusion that the British army had used them in an experiment to test the effects of CR gas.191

The burning of Long Kesh revealed an aspect of prison culture which would come to be crucial to the progress of the conflict as a whole, that of cooperation between loyalist and republican prisoners. Despite government denials of any such cooperation, republican accounts of the burning repeatedly cited the support of the loyalist prisoners.

Francis Brolly recalled that the republicans had received news from “such notables as

Gusty Spence, John McKeague, and Jim Craig” and stated unequivocally that loyalist prisoners were sympathetic to republicans’ actions, but were prevented from joining in the burning because of pressure from loyalists outside the prison as well as internal differences between the UDA and UVF which hindered cooperation among loyalists. In his recounting of the burning of Long Kesh, Brolly was quick to assert that despite their inability to join in the destruction of the camp, loyalists offered vocal support and even tended to injured republicans.192

189 Faul and Murray, “The Flames of Long Kesh,” 11. 190 Ibid. 191 Ceartais, “CR Gas: Time for Truth,” 13. 192 Faul and Murray, “The Flames of Long Kesh,” 25.

265

The violations of the moral polity which led to the burning of Long Kesh had engendered further violations of the moral polity as the British Army retook the prison, and this led to further unrest. As word emerged of the burning of Long Kesh, other prisons across the North witnessed their own protests. One such event occurred at

Armagh Jail on October 16 where IRA women prisoners captured the prison governor and three prison officers, including the chief officer and held them hostage.193 This was not the first incident from the women in Armagh. In September 1972 a combination of special category and remand prisoners broke windows and burnt their bedding. The

NIO’s report on the incident indicated that the prison staff was unaware of the motivation behind the destruction.194 In 1974 the women’s motivation was more clearly articulated.

Armagh’s assistant governor discovered that his four colleagues had become prisoners upon hearing “singing and thumping” from the women of the prison and, going to investigate, finding a staircase barricaded. Eileen Hickey, the officer commanding of the sentenced republican prisoners informed him that the governor and three guards were unharmed and that they would be held until representatives from Sinn Fein, the UDA and the UVF were brought to the prison with assurances that republican prisoners in Long

Kesh had not been harmed following the burning of the camp.195 The governor reported that he believed the women to be acting under orders from the republican movement on

193 Governor H.M. Prison/Borstal Armagh to Northern Ireland Office Security of Prisons Branch, October 21, 1974, “Armagh Prison Riots and Disturbances, 1974-1975,” NIO/10/7, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 194 “Armagh Prison,” 1972, “Armagh Prison Riots and Disturbances, 1974-1975,” NIO/10/7, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 195 Deputy Governor H.M. Prison/Borstal Armagh to Governor H.M. Prison/Borstal Armagh, “Disturbance Armagh Prison 16 October, 1974,” October 18, 1974, “Armagh Prison Riots and Disturbances, 1974- 1975,” NIO/10/7, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

266 the outside.196 Whether that was the case or the women acted of their own volition, it was clear that IRA prisoners were not isolated from their comrades via incarceration. A network of communication continued to exist, and this ability to communicate facilitated protests which extended beyond a single prison.

In the end, it was a network of communication between the inside of the prisons and the outside republican leadership which diffused the situation at the women’s prison and secured the release of the hostages. Father Raymond Murray, who had recorded the events at Long Kesh, and was a trusted figure to the IRA’s women prisoners, led the push to deescalate the conflict at Armagh. Murray and Reverend McComish, Armagh’s

Presbyterian chaplain, both spoke to the prisoners whilst Father Toner and Reverend

Pedlow traveled from Long Kesh to elucidate the situation at the Men’s prison for the women.197 With Toner’s help, the Northern Ireland Office contacted Sinn Fein, who reported that the women would cease their protest provided that they were not disciplined for the action.198 Thus, despite the fact that women prisoners tend to take a backseat to their male counterparts in analyses of prison protest and histories of this period, they were very much full participants at the forefront of prison resistance in late 1974. The women’s actions forced the NIO, Sinn Fein, and Armagh’s governors, warders, and religious liaisons to address the situation at Long Kesh with respect to the women’s needs.

196 Governor H.M. Prison/Borstal Armagh to Northern Ireland Office Security of Prisons Branch, October 21, 1974. 197 Deputy Governor H.M. Prison/ Borstal Armagh to Governor H.M. Prison/Borstal Armagh, 16 October, 1974. 198 Ibid.

267

At the same time that the women in Armagh were holding hostages, IRA prisoners in Magilligan and the Crumlin Road Jail also reacted to the events at Long

Kesh. Like the republicans in Long Kesh, Magilligan’s prisoners were also in open conflict with their warders by October 1974. They too had grievances over visits and the quality of the food they were served. After hearing a statement by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since March 1974, where he accused republican prisoners of setting their huts on fire before the army was called in, trying to escape, and of perpetrating “sheer vandalism” which was “not associated with any complaint,” the republican prisoners at Magilligan “decided to let Rees know just how much his polished statements meant.” Magilligan resembled Long Kesh in its compound structure and so prisoners there mimicked the protest at Long Kesh, climbing the fences surrounding their cages and setting their camp on fire. They burned everything except the huts in which they lived.199 Similarly, as visiting time was coming to an end on October 16, republican remand prisoners on A wing in Crumlin Road Jail started a riot to demonstrate their solidarity with the men at Long Kesh. Around 4:00 pm that afternoon these prisoners set to work destroying A wing, having barricaded themselves inside the canteens and cells.200

For prisoners across the North, the institution of special category status had created a new series of reciprocities between prisoners and prison administrations. For much of the period between 1972 and 1975 this meant that prisoners were relatively quiet, having achieved exactly what they wanted within the prisons. When this moral polity was violated, however, the resultant protest could be an enormous spectacle. Additionally, the

199 Faul and Murray, “The Flames of Long Kesh,” 48, 49, 59. 200 Ibid., 60-61.

268 series of events which began with the burning of Long Kesh revealed that a protest in one prison could quickly become a crisis across the prisons of the North.

The burning of Long Kesh, the subsequent hostage situation at Armagh, and the unrest at Crumlin Road and Magilligan, rapidly and efficiently brought to light the fact that republican prisoners had grievances within their situations, but the long term ramifications of the events of October 1974 were more subtle. In the first place, the NIO took tentative steps to renew negotiations with republican prisoners, tacitly admitting in internal NIO communications that there were problems with compound searches carried out by the British Army.201 When, on November 13, 1974 the internees/detainees of Cage

3 complained to the assistant governor that soldiers searching the compound threw the prisoners’ blankets, mattresses, and parcels into the rain, urinated on those mattresses, broke windows, and stole cigarettes, the assistant governor agreed to a meeting between the prisoners’ representatives, a member of the NIO, prison staff, and an independent priest observer. The republicans requested an army representative attend as well, but the

Army denied the request.202 At the subsequent meeting the republicans, represented by

G. Gillen and Phil McCullough of Cage 3, H. Fitzsimmons of Cage 4, and J. Taylor of

Cage 5, laid out five demands which included prison staff carrying out searches rather than the army, expedited redress of grievances, and increased access to the governor for republican spokesmen.203 In response, W.A. Brister of the Northern Ireland Office, noted that “Professionally, it would be better if prison staff carried out compound searches,”

201 W.A. Brister, “Republican Detainees—Demands by Spokesmen on 13. 11. 74,” November 15, 1974, NIO/10/11/4, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 202 D.G. Ensor, “Meeting with Representatives of the Republican Detainees At the Maze Prison on Wednesday 13 November 1974,” November 14, 1974, NIO/10/11/4, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 203 Ibid. Republicans also asked for admission to the prison for Máire Drumm and Seamus Loughran following any serious incident, and for facilities to be granted to a solicitor of the prisoners’ choosing for the purpose of enquiring into the loss of personal property.

269 and that “Politically, it would remove a constant source of embarrassment,” but he feared the Army would not agree to it.204 Thus, representatives of the NIO were prepared to negotiate with prisoners’ representatives in the month following the burning of Long

Kesh, although they did not, in the end, find it feasible to entirely remove the Army from searches.205

As Long Kesh burned and the North’s prisons erupted into protest, Roy Jenkins moved closer to allowing the transfer of the Price sisters, Kelly, and Feeney, but the position of Frank Stagg remained problematic. The path to repatriation was contentious even after the hunger strike ended, and as with the successful 1972 hunger strike, part of the impetus to grant the hunger strikers their demands was a precarious cease-fire which the British hoped to prolong. In October 1974, Stagg embarked on another hunger strike, this time in protest over the visiting conditions at Long Lartin Prison where he was, by that time, imprisoned.206 Stagg had not been included in the negotiations which ended the hunger strikes of the Prices, Kelly, and Feeney. The Irish Times reported that, although

Stagg wanted to be transferred to Northern Ireland, his main goals were for political status in England and to avoid being sent back to Albany prison’s punishment blocks.207

His new hunger strike, therefore, addressed conditions in the English prison where he was incarcerated. He continued until November 5 when Frank Maguire, the independent

MP from Fermanagh-South Tyrone convinced him to desist.208 He would ultimately die

204 Brister, “Republican Detainees—Demands by Spokesmen on 13. 11. 74.” 205 J.H. Parkes to Mr. Robinson, “Demands by Republican Detainees,” November 21, 1974, NIO/10/11/4, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 206 “Stagg Goes on Hunger Strike Again,” The Irish Times, October 10, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1010/Pg009.html#Ar00913. 207 Cowley, “Price Sisters Abandon 205-Day Hunger Strike.” 208 Martin Cowley, “Stagg on Third Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, February 21, , https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1975/0221/Pg001.html#Ar00107. When Stagg ended this hunger strike, the Irish Civil Rights Association in London and his sister, Veronica Phillips maintained that

270 in Wakefield Prison on February 12, 1976 after 62 days on what was his fourth hunger strike, still attempting to be transferred to Ireland.

In late 1974, with all four Belfast hunger strikers still in English jails, Roy Jenkins stated that they might yet be repatriated to Northern jails, but that transfer was incumbent on “no great outbreak of violence or deterioration in the security situation.”209 Although

Jenkins denied that the Price sisters would have already been transferred had it not been for the Guildford pub bombings, of that October, these undoubtedly complicated the issue, and made repatriation of any IRA-associated prisoners politically dangerous.210

The Birmingham pub bombings of 21 November further delayed the transfer. In their wake, Jenkins informed the House of Commons that “There can now be no question of an early move to Northern Ireland.”211

In response, Marian and Dolours Price returned to hunger strike on November 28.

They stressed that Jenkins failed to uphold his end of the deal reached to end their previous protest. Within 36 hours, however, they ended this protest, called off by the leadership of the republican movement. The Prices’ parents issued a statement which

Stagg had been granted the right to write letters and was promised an end to strip searching prior to visits. See Martin Cowley, “Stagg Ends Prison Hunger Strike,” The Irish Times, November 6, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1106/Pg007.html#Ar00704. 209 Renagh Holohan, “Price Girls: Jenkins Denies Stand-By Story,” The Irish Times, October 9, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1009/Pg001.html#Ar00105. 210 Ibid. On October 5, 1974 the IRA detonated one bomb in the Horse and Groom and another in the Seven Stars Pubs in Guildford. Five people were killed and 65 injured. In 1975 the “Guildford four” were charged and convicted with the bombing. They spent 14 years in prison before their conviction was overturned in a court of appeal. They are now known to be victims of a massive miscarriage of justice. In Out of Time, Laurence McKeown attributes the Guildford bombings to the Official IRA and says seven people were killed. See McKeown, Out of Time, 241n21. 211 Martin Cowley, “Price Sisters’ Transfer out for Now,” The Irish Times, November 29, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1129/Pg005.html#Ar00502. The Birmingham pub bombings resulted in a miscarriage of justice for the “Birmingham Six” similar to that of the “Guildford Four.” In June 2016 Louise Hunt, the senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, ordered a new inquest into the bombings because of concerns that police failed to act on advance warnings of the attacks in which the IRA bomb killed 21 people. See Ian Cobain and Henry McDonald, “Birmingham Pub Bombings: Coroner Orders New Inquests,” The Guardian, June 1, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2016/jun/01/birmingham-pub-bombings-coroner-orders-new-inquests.

271 indicated that the republican movement’s leaders made the decision in the previous weeks, but that the order had not reached the sisters in time.212 When the sisters called off this short-lived hunger strike they issued a statement in conjunction with Feeney and

Kelly which called on Lord Brockway, Jock Stallard, and Paddy Devlin to step in as guarantors of the original agreement and call on Jenkins to uphold his end of the deal.

They also criticized Jenkins for relating his latest pronouncement on transfer to the Price

Sisters alone. There were, they reminded him, four prisoners involved in the deal, and

Feeney and Kelly needed to be kept up to date on developments by Jenkins, himself.213

The Price’s were well versed in the collective nature of the moral polity and remained committed to it as they fought to be transferred to a place where it existed in practice.

A few days after the four Belfast hunger strikers criticized Jenkins, representatives of the IRA met secretly with Protestant clergymen at Feakle, County

Clare, and began talks which led to a period of ceasefire and the repatriation of the Prices,

Feeney, and Kelly. The talks at Feakle, held on December 10, 1974, led to a truce which ostensibly lasted from February 9, 1975 to January 23, 1976.214 With the violence of the conflict checked, Dolours and Marian Price were transferred to Armagh in mid-March

1975. Reaction to the transfer was mixed. Lord Brockway, Paddy Devlin, and Jock

Stallard all welcomed the news. The Prisoners’ Aid Committee in London expressed support for the transfer but regretted that it came a month after the sisters were denied compassionate parole to attend their mother’s funeral. Ulster Vanguard leader, William

212“Price Sisters Say Jenkins Failed to Keep Bargain,” The Irish Times, December 3, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1203/Pg008.html#Ar00800. 213 Ibid. 214 Martin Melaugh, “IRA Truce: 9 February 1975 to 23 January 1976 –A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/truce/chron.htm. Despite the official truce, the violence of the conflict continued at irregular intervals.

272

Craig suggested the transfer was evidence of collusion between the British government and the IRA while Sinn Fein president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh looked forward to the transfer of all Irish political prisoners to jails in the North. For their part, the Price family issued a statement which denounced the fact that Kelly and Feeney remained in prison in England despite their part in the hunger strike. The family then called for the return of all Irish political prisoners in English jails.215 In what looked to be an effort to calm unionist and loyalist opposition, the Home Office transferred Protestant Robert Watt from a Scottish prison to the Crumlin Road Jail in his native Belfast shortly after the Price sisters’ transfer.216

Kelly and Feeney were transferred the following month, in April 1975. Again, a loyalist prisoner, this time, William Campbell, received a transfer from prison in Scotland at the same time. As with the Prices, and most cases of transfer, authorities kept the move a secret in an effort to enhance security. In the case of Kelly and Feeney, Kelly’s wife,

Isobel arrived at Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire only to find that her husband had already been transferred to the North.217 The two men were sent first to Crumlin Road

Jail and treated as ordinary long-term prisoners pending their applications for special category status.218 The Price sisters, too, did not automatically receive special category status. They had to apply. Most expected these formal requests to be granted, as indeed they were.219 Dolours and Marian Price remained in Armagh while Hugh Feeney and

215 “Price Sisters Now in Armagh Prison,” The Irish Times, March 19, 1975, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1975/0319/Pg001.html#Ar00103. 216 Deering and Holohan, “Special Status for Sisters Expected.” 217 Renagh Holohan, “Feeney and Kelly Moved to N.I. Jail,” The Irish Times, April 9, 1975, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1975/0409/Pg011.html#Ar01107. 218 Ibid. 219 Deering and Holohan, “Special Status for Sisters Expected.”

273

Gerry Kelly were transferred to Long Kesh to serve their time with the special category prisoners there.

As of July 1, 1975 1,348 prisoners claimed special category status in Northern

Irish prisons. 846 were republicans, divided between 764 PIRA, 67 OIRA, and 15

INLA/IRSP prisoners.220 In December 1974, led by Séamus Costello, a number of

Official Sinn Fein’s Comhairlí Ceantair had broken from Official Sinn Fein and created the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP).221 They objected, not only to the ceasefire of the OIRA, but to Official Sinn Fein’s decision, arrived at during the 1974 ard fheis (party conference) to end its absentionist policies.222 Costello’s new party was strong enough to create an armed wing, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) shortly thereafter.223

The INLA, like the OIRA and PIRA understood themselves to be different than other prisoners across the North, and, in practice, prisoners from these groups completely separated themselves from prisoners serving sentences for non-political crimes. For those republicans sentenced south of the border, who had no such status, this was yet another maddening and arbitrary division of the 32 counties of Ireland. For republicans sentenced in Britain, their lack of special category status was confirmation of the injustice of the

British system. For both these groups, the possibility of gaining special category status and seeing their moral polity put into practice was a reason to protest.

220 Written Answers, House of Commons, “Northern Ireland,” 14 July 1975, HC Deb 14 July 1975 vol 895c353W, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1975/jul/14/prisoners- and-detainees. 246 UDA prisoners and 256 UVF prisoners also claimed special category status. 221 The Comhairlí Ceantair are part of Sinn Fein’s organizational structure. The party’s policies are brought to the people by Cumainn consisting of five to twelve members. The Comhairlí Ceantair oversees these Cumainn in a given electoral area. See http://www.sinnfein.org/documents/introsf.html. 222James Downey, “Official S.F. Denies Mass Defections N.I. Members Not in New Party,” The Irish Times, December 10, 1974, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1974/1210/Pg008.html#Ar00800. 223 Ibid; Henry McDonald and Jack Holland, I.N.L.A.: Deadly Divisions (Dublin: Poolbeg Books Ltd, 2010), 697 to 740, Kindle edition.

274

Trouble to Come

Special category status was a major success for Irish republican prisoners, but

Britain quickly came to see it as a disaster. The ceasefire under which it was created collapsed, and violence continued while paramilitary prisoners claimed political status.

In an attempt to stem the violence, the government of the United Kingdom appointed a committee to “Consider what provisions and powers . . . are required to deal with terrorism and subversion in Northern Ireland, including provisions for the administration of justice, and to examine the working of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions)

Act 1973; and to make recommendations.”224 Lord Gardiner was subsequently appointed to chair the committee. When they published their report in January 1975, Gardiner’s committee recognized no legitimate strategy from the IRA either inside or outside the prisons.225 Members of the IRA were “terrorists” engaged in campaigns of “terrorism,” classifications which precluded seeing volunteers or their actions as in any way warranted. Indeed, listing the assumptions that provided the foundation for their report, the committee maintained, “[the terrorist organizations] can offer no gifts to the people of

Northern Ireland by way of greater freedom, security, or prosperity which the people cannot now attain by legal and democratic means.”226 They also suggested broadening the definition of terrorism from “the use of violence for political ends” to include

224 Lord Gardiner, Chairman, “Report of a Committee to Consider, in the Context of Civil Liberties and Human Rights, Measures to Deal with Terrorism in Northern Ireland,” (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1975), http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/gardiner.htm#2. 225 Ibid. 226 Ibid.

275 violence for sectarian ends.227 The Gardiner Committee thereby explicitly denied that the

IRA had any inclination toward a moral polity. IRA volunteers only wanted to “bludgeon the British out of Ireland,” to use brute force to achieve a rudimentary kind of nationalism not an alternate organization of political relations.228 Thus, this report to consider measures to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland was predisposed to come into conflict with the IRA’s ideas of the moral polity of the prison.

Nevertheless, in an uneasy way, Gardiner and his fellows tacitly agreed with the

IRA that some of the policies intended to end the violence and maintain order should be repealed. Gardiner’s committee admitted that detention could not remain on the books as a long term solution to the violence of the North and recommended that it be done away with as soon as possible. By the time the Gardiner Report was released, the IRA and more moderate nationalists across the North had been saying this for four years. Having made this recommendation, however, Gardiner’s committee refused to suggest any timetable for ending detention, maintaining that the present level of violence was too high, they could not predict future violence, and could not, then, say when it would be safe to release the detainees. That decision, they left to the government.229 This can be attributed to the Gardiner committee’s aim to end the terrorist threat rather than uphold a moral polity. The ideology of the moral polity called for an immediate end to the explicitly political imprisonment of internment/detention, not necessarily an end to political violence. Gardiner and his committee were pursuing the opposite, an end to the

227 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/53/pdfs/ukpga_19730053_en.pdf, 16; Gardiner, “Report of a Committee.” 228 Gardiner, “Report of a Committee,” 1975. 229 Ibid.

276 violence, not necessarily an end to political imprisonment. They opposed the latter in this case because it had fomented more violence and discontent, not because of the inherent violations of individual rights in the practice.230 The British government eventually listened to the Gardiner committee and on December 5, 1975 the last 46 internees were released. In total, 1,874 Catholics were imprisoned between the introduction of internment in August 1971 and the end of internment/detention in 1975 as were 107

Protestants.231

Gardiner’s assessment of special category status proved to be far more threatening and detrimental to the IRA’s moral polity of the prisons. The committee determined that the introduction of special category status in 1972 had been “a serious mistake,” and recommended that “the earliest practicable opportunity should be taken to bring special category status to an end.”232 This struck directly at the IRA’s long held contention that their members were political prisoners entitled to be treated as prisoners of war, but the

Gardiner Committee was not constituted to assess the British government’s dealings with a legitimate rival army. It was tasked with combatting “terrorism and subversion,” and this conceptual framework of the conflict did not allow for the existence of a program such as special category because special category helped legitimize an organization, which, in the minds of the Gardiner committee, was, by definition, illegitimate and to be stopped. According to Gardiner, “Terrorism and subversion in Northern Ireland can only be defeated, or guarded against, by the energetic pursuit of measures against them by the

Government, and equally important—of continued, parallel progress in other fields of

230 Ibid. 231 Martin Melaugh, “Internment-A Chronology of the Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/intern/chron.htm. 232 Gardiner, “Report of a Committee,” 1975.

277 social, political and economic activity, especially of community relations as a whole.”233

One could only combat terrorism, work against it. Working with the wider community was acceptable and, even, necessary, but special category could not stand as working with “terrorist” prisoners could not be countenanced.

III. Conclusions

It was in the fact that each organization continued to hold a large and increasing

prisoner population that the BPP and IRA most resembled each other between 1973 and 1975.

Yet, while the Panthers and Irish Republicans each had large prisoner populations to support, they had vastly different abilities to do so. The IRA could succeed in protests because they operated from within a system that viewed paramilitary prisoners as essentially political in nature, and therefore, deserving of certain rights and privileges denied to the “ordinary decent criminals.” Successful prison protests in this atmosphere only raised the status of republicans. People may not have agreed with the IRA’s tactics, but in 1974 they could not turn away from the spectacle of the Price sisters’ hunger strikes or the funeral of Michael Gaughan.

On the other hand, in their divided position as the central committee moved away from the moral polity, it is remarkable that the Panthers managed to continue to support their prisoners to the extent that they did. Prisoners connected to areas where the Party still operated received support and publicity in the BPP’s newspaper. Inside prisons,

Panthers continued to recruit and fight the injustices of the prison system. It was a testament to the former strength of the Party that their moral polity remained engrained

233 Ibid.

278 enough to struggle through this period. After 1974, however, with Newton in exile, Seale,

Hilliard, and Cleaver gone, the Party would move in an entirely different direction.

Having moved in disparate directions between 1973 and 1975, from this point, the

IRA and BPP would each see their moral polities threatened. For the Panthers, the movement back toward a moral polity was further complicated by the direction in which

Elaine Brown took the Party, followed by Newton’s return to the BPP and United States in 1977. Brown would manage to save the Party from ultimate ruin at a time when it was floundering, but this came at the, perhaps, unavoidable expense of a complete commitment to a moral polity. The Party would then fold under Newton in the early

1980s, portions of its moral polity that remained, its lasting legacy. In Northern Ireland, by 1975 the direct rule government had come to see special category status as a grievous mistake and began the process of dismantling it. Having lived since mid-1972 with special category status and the moral polity it ushered into the prisons, the IRA simultaneously prepared to resist the revocation of special category status. It is to these events we now turn.

279

Chapter 5

“The Real Revolution Has Just Begun:” IRA Prison Wars and the Last Years of the Black Panther Party, 1976-1982

In 1981 Joe Doherty escaped from Crumlin Road Jail with seven of his comrades.

He had been remanded to Crumlin Road Jail in early June while the judge considered evidence in the infamous “M-60 Machine Gun Case,” in which Doherty and three other

IRA volunteers were charged with the May 1980 murder of British officer, Captain

Herbert Westmacott, attempted murder, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and illegal membership in a proscribed organization, the IRA. The trial earned its nickname because Westmacott was killed with an American-made M-60 machine gun, known to security forces, to have been used in IRA operations in February and April

1980.1

As with all prison escapes, this required careful planning and coordination between the prisoners and the organization on the outside. In this instance, Doherty and company managed to have guns smuggled in to them.2 On June 10, as the eight met with their solicitors, Doherty turned to Paul Magee and inquired about the weather, the signal they agreed upon to set the escape in motion. Guns in hand, they subdued the guards and rounded up the solicitors, the ordinary prisoners, and their visitors. Doherty and Peter

Ryan put on the guards’ uniforms, while Anthony Sloan donned clothing taken from a solicitor. The eight men made their way, gate by gate, to the exit, threatening warders as they went. As the escaping men breached the outermost gates they ran into three police

1 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011; James T. Kelly, “The Empire Strikes Back: The taking of Joe Doherty,” Fordham Law Review 61, no. 2 (1992): 330, 331, 332, http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3012&context=flr. 2 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011.

280 detectives in a car waiting for a fourth the come out of the Crumlin Road courthouse which sat across the road from the prison. Initially confused by the men in warders’ and a solicitor’s clothing, the detectives moved their car forward to investigate and were met with shots from the IRA men. The police returned fire, but, despite shattering the back window of a car into which some of the escaping men jumped, all eight got away.3

Safiya Bukhari found the medical care in the Prison for Women at Goochland,

Virginia startlingly inadequate. In late 1976 she began hemorrhaging, the result of large fibroid tumors from which she had long suffered. She proceeded to escape Virginia

Correctional Center for Women and managed to evade recapture for two months.

Bukhari’s stated reasons for escape pointed directly to a sense that prison officials violated the moral polity. She recalled that, “In December 1976, I started hemorrhaging and went to the clinic for help. No help of any consequence was given, so I escaped.” She further argued, “I decided to use the lack of medical care as my defense for the escape to accomplish two things: (1) expose the level of medical care at the prison and (2) put pressure on them to give me the care I needed.”4 The charge of inadequate medical care was a frequent one in prisons across the nation, and Bukhari’s escape likely, had, at its heart, a robust core of self-preservation. She admitted as much in her second reason, above. Her insistence on exposing the inadequate medical care at the prison pointed, simultaneously, toward a drive for better care for all prisoners. She sought, not only, redress of her own grievances, but what she saw as the basic right of medical care for all.

3 Joe Doherty, Interview with Author, November 2011; Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 191-193. 4 Ibid., 9.

281

For Doherty and the IRA, the late 1970s and early 1980s were a period of fierce confrontation over the IRA’s moral polity of the prisons. The Gardiner Committee’s 1975 recommendation to remove special category status paved the way for the wholesale destruction of the IRA’s moral polity. When the British government accepted Gardiner’s advice, republican prisoners fought to regain what they lost. The Black Panther’s moral polity, from which Bukhari had come, was also under threat between 1976 and 1981, but the threat to the Panthers’ moral polity was more complex. In the latter half of the 1970s the BPP leadership moved away from some of the tenets of their moral polity, but this allowed the Party to continue to operate and serve the people despite being weakened by events of the early 1970s. This move away from aspects of the moral polity did not extend into the prisons, however, where prisoners continued to look to the Party to uphold the moral polity and struggled to recreate portions of it in their penal institutions.

I. Moral Polities in Jeopardy

By 1976 the moral polities of the BPP and IRA were under threat. For the Black

Panther Party these were years of decline. The FBI and other forces of law and order in the US had done untold damage to the organization, and it was moving in a new direction in an attempt to stay afloat. In Northern Ireland, the IRA was in a relatively strong position in 1975, but the Gardiner Committee’s report ensured the status quo would be shaken in the North in short order. The British government agreed with the committee that special category status should be done away with entirely, although they continued to maintain that special category status was not political status. Nevertheless, with the end of internment in December 1975, if the British dismantled special category status, there would be no more uncomfortable questions about political prisoners.

282

The Revocation of Special Category Status

With Gardiner’s recommendation in place, the Northern Ireland Office was left to work out the details of removing special category. This would be a delicate balance of undermining the moral polities of the IRA and other combatants without creating further conflict. In a July 30, 1975 paper, NIO official, M.K. Harris, recommended denying special category status to anyone whose offense was committed after an agreed upon date.5 He argued that this would be preferable to other scenarios because it would allow the NIO to give advanced warning and phase out special category gradually, thereby removing some possibility of conflict, because offenders would enter prison knowing they would not receive special category status, depending on when they committed a given offense.6 In a statement to the House of Commons, a month before the last internees were released, on November 4, 1975, secretary of state, Merlyn Rees, announced his desire to bring special category status to an end. This would have to be handled carefully, and required new accommodation to prevent those without special category from being imprisoned in the compounds, thereby living in a virtual special category regime without the name or classification. To this end, Rees stated that building had already begun on a cellular prison at HMP Maze and 200 cells would be ready that month with more to be ready in the ensuing year.7 He further announced a new conditional release scheme which would allow prisoners not serving life sentences, who

5 M.K. Harris, “Ending of Special Category—Prison Accommodation,” July 30, 1975, NIO 12/102A, “Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category,” PRONI, 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Commons Sitting, “Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions),” November 4, 1975, HC Deb 04 November 1975 vol 899 cc233-94, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/nov/04/northern-ireland-emergency-provisions.

283 exhibited good behavior, to be released after serving half of their sentences on the condition that if they reoffended they would have to serve the remainder of their old sentence in addition to any new time behind bars.8 With these two conditions met, he said, they could begin to deny special category for prisoners convicted of offenses committed after March 1, 1976, the same day the conditional release scheme would be introduced. Those who had already been sentenced and received special category status would not be affected.9 The shift to a prison system completely free of special category would, therefore, be a gradual one with special category and non-special category prisoners literally imprisoned side by side, because, at the Maze, at least, the cellular prison was directly adjacent to the compounds at the site.

The NIO and British government understood that within the communities they came from, paramilitaries commanded respect, and many people tacitly agreed with their ideas and methods even if they did not support these groups outright. Consequently, to avoid backlash against the revocation of special category status, government officials had to change these perceptions. In December 1975, Peter England of the Northern Ireland

Office received a minute detailing the need for a “major ‘hearts and minds’ campaign,” with regards to the ending of special category status. Its author noted that “The villains have already started to mount their campaign against this policy: the campaign will become a major one as soon as detention ceases to be an issue. It follows that our campaign should surely begin now.”10 The campaign the author foresaw included

8 “Proposed Treatment of Offenders Order in Council,” 1975, NIO 12/102A, “Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, 1. 9 Commons Sitting, “Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions),” November 4, 1975. 10Redacted to Mr. England, “Ending of New Admissions to Special Category,” December 5, 1975, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Beflast, Northern Ireland, 1.

284 stressing to the public the “positive aspects of prison policy,” such as education and vocational training, ensuring the public support of members of Parliament and the clergy, and making young people aware of the stark contrast between idle life in the compound prison system and “the usefulness of constructive training,” in the cellular prison system.

At the same time, the writer suggested undermining the credibility of paramilitary prisoners. To wit, he recommended presenting “a few random ‘case histories’ . . . to remind the public of the sort of crime they are being asked to regard as ‘less criminal’ than other crime,” while similarly pointing out that many special category prisoners possessed “perfectly ordinary criminal records.”11 Of particular importance, he claimed, was the need to emphasize that anyone campaigning against the revocation of special category status was essentially suggesting that crimes would be committed the following spring, that they supported these crimes, and that they would support these crimes no matter the political situation.12 These suggestions formed the inner-workings of the policy of criminalization.

Criminalization was, itself, part of the three pronged strategy of Ulsterization, normalization, and criminalization, which sought to redefine the conflict as non-political.

To this end, under Ulsterization the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence

Regiment were to take over the security of Northern Ireland from the British Army as much as possible. Ulsterization would be bolstered by normalization which sought to create hegemonic support for the rule of law. This would be achieved by removing the political meaning from conflict violence and other conflict related offenses. Finally, from normalization followed the idea that all conflict related offenses were criminal, not

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid, 2.

285 political.13 In this scenario, special category status had to be removed and detention ended, lest the government’s denial of holding political prisoners ring hollow. In effect, the direct rule government’s approach to the conflict in Northern Ireland was to undermine the paramilitaries’ established moral polity within the prisons as well as their struggle to create that moral polity outside.

The NIO anticipated numerous protests, particularly from republicans, as they prepared to implement criminalization and remove special category status, striking what they hoped would be a fatal blow to the moral polity of the prisons. On December 8,

1975 W.I. Davies, Director of Prisons (Operations), wrote to the prison medical officers to instruct them to determine departmental policy on “such emotive subjects” as whether, and under what circumstances, force feeding would be used.14 By the end of the month

Davies was aware that more than just republicans were angry about the impending end of special category status. Writing to Colonel Charles Tarver MBE he noted that with the announcement of the revocation of special category, there were “extensive rumblings from all paramilitary organizations both inside and outside prisons.”15 Davies anticipated a number of protest responses, including hunger strike, street demonstrations, attempts to obstruct the movement of prisoners into or out of the prisons, the burning of the compound style prisons, demonstrations by prisoners already sentenced under special

13 Mary Corcoran, Out of Order: The Political Imprisonment of Women in Northern Ireland (Devon: Willan Publishing, 2006), 11-12; Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, “From War to Uneasy Peace in Northern Ireland,” in Michael Cox, Adrian Guelke, Fiona Stephen, eds., A Farewell to Arms? Beyond the Good Friday Agreement, 2nd ed., (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 48. 14 W.I. Davies to Dr. Weir, December 8, 1975, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 15 W.I. Davies to Colonel C. Tarver MBE, December 23, 1975, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1.

286 category, and the intimidation of “‘Ordinary’ class prisoners” who performed maintenance and cooking jobs within the prisons.16

A small minority within the NIO questioned whether some privileges might be left to the prisoners in order to keep them from the kind of protests anticipated by Davies.

One NIO official argued, “I am aware that [the requirement to wear a prison uniform] . . . is widely regarded as an important aspect of prison discipline. I have never quite understood why.”17 The official reasoned that Northern Irish prisons were unlikely to see the emergence of “clothing barons” who controlled a black market for clothing from behind cell doors and that other prisoners in Britain already wore their own clothes. “It may be a woolly liberal approach,” the author concluded, “but it has always seemed to me that prison uniform is one of the dehumanizing aspects of prison life and I think on merits there is a case to say that prisoners should be allowed to be either comfortable or smart in clothing of their own choice.”18 This correspondence acknowledged the dehumanization of the prison uniform and advocated doing away with it, which would have preempted one anticipated aspect of the protest thought to be brewing amongst republicans. The author reasoned that the NIO could work around the IRA’s moral polity of the prisoners by granting small concessions to prisoners.

The correspondent was keenly aware of the strength that ideas about customary rights had for political prisoners, their communities, and how this shaped their encounters with the prison system. The letter warned that there was “a widely held belief that when

16 Ibid. 17 Redacted to Mr. Harris and Mr. England, “Ending of New Admissions to Special Category,” December 30, 1975, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 18 Ibid.

287 the troubles come to an end there will be an amnesty for ‘political prisoners.’”19 Denials that amnesty was forthcoming would prove futile because they would “fly in the face of all the evidence of previous campaigns.”20 The NIO was, therefore, faced with the question of how to undermine this belief in order for the policy of criminalization to succeed. The solution presented within this correspondence was to emphasize the idea that if violence ceased, the cases of long term prisoners of the conflict would be considered on an individual basis whether or not that prisoner had special category status.

The author acknowledged that this might prove difficult to say in public, and suggested undermining the ideas of collective justice sought by republicans and loyalists alike by dividing similar prisoners into individual cases to be considered.21

In early January 1976, as he presented reasons to deny prisoners their own clothing and limit their other privileges, William J. Kerr, of the NIO, outlined the fundamental divide between the moral polity sought by the IRA and the government’s commitment to criminalization. Kerr argued that simply granting prisoners the right to wear their own clothing would not stem the protest against the ending of special category status because to retain their “cloak of respectability” paramilitaries would still have to oppose the ending of special category on principle.22 What was a “cloak of respectability” for Kerr was part of the moral polity for the IRA, namely, the idea that their volunteers were political prisoners, and so, bound to resist all of the criminalization policy, not just parts of it.

19 Ibid, 2. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 William J. Kerr to Mr. Davies, “Ending of New Admissions to Special Category,” January 6, 1976, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

288

Kerr further objected to allowing prisoners to receive parcels, on the basis that it would place an undue burden on prisoners’ families. That is, that individuals might be negatively affected by the obligations to the group. He contended, “Once a parcel is permitted then the family consider there is a moral obligation and a need to such a parcel to the limit permitted. This is an unnecessary drain on an already limited income.”

[emphasis added] Moreover, he reasoned that high numbers of parcels would pose a security risk, would lessen the incentive to perform prison work because prisoners would have less need of earning money to buy supplies within the prison, and would provide a rallying point for people outside the prisons to raise support and sympathy for criminal prisoners.23 For Kerr, the NIO needed to remove the privileges associated with special category status because they helped paramilitary prisoners establish moral norms within which their communities operated, which would, in turn help paramilitary prisoners resist the dismantling of the moral norms they established within the prisons.

Additionally, the NIO understood that their policy of criminalization was strengthened by the fact that while paramilitaries had realized their claim to moral polity in the prisons, outside, this was not always the case. In particular, the, at-times, sectarian undertones of the conflict helped the NIO build a case against special category privileges.

With this in mind, Lord Donaldson encouraged NIO officials to emphasize that recent

“vicious” sectarian murders would lead to a more careful scrutinization of applications for special category status for anyone convinced of an offense carried out before March

1, 1976 because “no reasonable person” could support special treatment for sectarian

23 Ibid, 2.

289 killers.24 He predicted, “An announcement of this kind while the murders are still fresh in people’s minds would, we think, strengthen our hand and would be very difficult to counter.” He continued, “It may be that we shall have some cases before March 1 which will be the subject of general public condemnation and on which the supporters of special category would find it hard to take a stand.”25

What the NIO feared, then, were events that could swing sympathy back to the paramilitaries and their moral polities, undermining criminalization. D. Gilliland argued that the NIO should not be “unduly sensitive” in their discussions about the removal of special category and that its removal was likely to result in “a certain level of nastiness” from all sides of the conflict. He further asserted that vilifying the idea of special category status in favor of portraying prisoners as criminal would eventually “wear thin,” and the NIO should, therefore, simultaneously emphasize the idea that this change in policy was not arbitrary. Rather, Gilliland recommended describing it as one of a number of measures implemented to “improve standards of accommodation and treatment of prisoners in Northern Ireland.”26 He hoped that this would undermine the moral polity of the prisons by describing the shift in prison policy as one being implemented on behalf of the prisoners, which would materially better their lives. Coupling Gilliland’s strategy with criminalization would help the NIO deny paramilitaries their claim to the moral high ground and occupy that space themselves.

24 Lord Donaldson to the Secretary of State, “Ending of New Admissions to Special Category,” ND, likely January 1976, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 25 Ibid, 2-3. 26 D. Gilliland to Mr. Leahy, “Programme of Publicity in Relation to the Ending of Special Category Status in Northern Ireland Prisons, “January 14, 1976, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast Northern Ireland, 1.

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Gilliland’s recommendations did not proceed without challenge, however. Other

NIO staffers feared that a publicity campaign that descended into nastiness would ultimately hurt the government. In response to Gilliland D.K. Middleton warned that they needed to tread carefully where those who already enjoyed special category status were concerned. If the NIO highlighted the criminal pasts of those prisoners they would expose the government to criticism for granting them special category status in the first place and then allowing them to keep it when others were being denied such privileges. Moreover,

Middleton feared that maligning the character of existing prisoners could cause problems for prison administrations by creating rallying points for protests.27 Instead, Middleton suggested emphasizing that men convicted of offenses after March 1, 1976 were not going into solitary confinement but into double occupancy cells with access to recreational facilities. “We must take advantage of public dislike of the POW-type compounds—the “terrorists’ finishing schools,” he insisted.28 Finally, Middleton urged that their publicity campaign remind the public that none of the reasons that existed for introducing special category status in 1972 existed in 1976, and that the NIO was responding to public demand by removing special category from the prison system.29 In this manner, as the date for the withdrawal of special category status approached, the NIO zeroed in on a strategy that undermined the moral polity of the IRA and other paramilitary groups by defining them as criminals while insisting to the public that the removal of special category would be beneficial to prisoners and the public alike.

27 D. K. Middleton to Mr. Gilliland, “Publicity in Relation to the Ending of Special Category Status,” January 16, 1976, NIO 12/102A, Prisons, Special Category, Ending of Special Category, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 28 Ibid, 2. 29 Ibid.

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The time between Rees’ November announcement of the ending of special category status and March 1, 1976 gave the IRA time to plan their response. As the NIO predicted, republicans were not content to meet the revocation of special category status passively, because to republicans special category status was more than just an advantageous prison condition. Special category status had established a set of relations between republicans and prison warders. It had conferred a certain legitimacy and respect on prisoners, and allowed prisoners to retain their dignity despite imprisonment.

Removing special category status would lead to widespread protest, but that protest aimed for more than just a series of lost privileges. It called for an entirely different way of looking at republican prisoners.

Where the IRA had time to plan their reaction and to the British government’s decision to remove special category status, the Black Panthers had to respond to the destruction of their moral polity from within that very situation. By 1976 police and the

FBI had greatly weakened the BPP’s moral polity nationwide, destroying it in all but a few locations. Newton’s centralization of the party in Oakland in 1972 might have recreated the moral polity at a small base from which it could expand, but the Party’s move into electoral politics complicated the matter, as did events such as the end of the

Vietnam War. By struggling for rights from within a system the Party had long repudiated, they tacitly accepted the principles that upheld that system. This was, perhaps, as some scholars have suggested, necessary to maintain alliances with more moderate organizations, a necessity as the end of the Vietnam War signaled the end of militant anti-war protest, but the entrance into mainstream politics shifted focus away

292 from programs crucial to sustaining a moral polity.30 From 1976 until the Party folded in

1982, the Panthers continued to move further into mainstream politics, but a tension existed between this move and the remaining desire of some members to lead a revolution and create a moral polity. This meant that even while the Party moved away from their original revolutionary views and rhetoric, they continued, in some instances, to uphold and perpetuate aspects of their moral polity.

The Final Decline of the Black Panther Party

From their first forays into the political arena, the Panthers continued to push further into the American two party political system after 1976. In October 1976 a special issue of the Party’s newspaper included a list of “recommendations and endorsements” for the November 1976 elections.31 The BPP endorsed Margaret Wright and Dr. Benjamin Spock of the Peace and Freedom Party for President and Vice

President and two other third Party candidates for Senate, but in the rest of the races where political party was listed, the Black Panthers endorsed Democrats.32 That the Party found candidates to endorse and devoted the front page of a special issue of their newspaper to an American election signaled that the BPP was moving ever deeper into the American two party system. Although they retained a significant skepticism of many

American politicians, the Party now saw a small group of politicians within the established political system whose policies they could endorse.

30 See Bloom and Martin Jr., Black Against Empire, 386-387, 390. 31 “Recommendations and Endorsements for the November Election,” The Black Panther 15, no. 29, October 30, 1976, 1, 14. 32 Ibid.

293

In 1977, the Party again threw their weight behind a mayoral candidate in

Oakland, but this time that candidate was not a Panther. Lionel Wilson was, instead,

Alameda County’s first black judge, at the time serving on the Superior Court. The Party described him as “much-respected.”33 This, Wilson was. What he was not was a revolutionary proponent of moral polity. Announcing his candidacy, Wilson promised that his campaign would focus on unemployment, Oakland’s eroding tax base, and

“crimes of violence and crimes of theft that are becoming commonplace in every neighborhood.”34 Wilson’s conception of theft as a crime rather than as a symptom of a society whose systemic racism and capitalist exploitation forced people to theft to survive, ran counter to the Panthers’ 1972 platform. That document stated that the BPP called for the “ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the U.S. military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment.”

[emphasis added]35 The BPP’s support for Wilson, therefore, required a step away from the stated aims of their 1972 platform and moral polity and towards establishment politics.

Bolstered by Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown’s strong, if ultimately unsuccessful, campaigns of 1972-1973, the Party pressed further into mainstream politics during the latter half of the 1970s and continued to run for elected office, with some success. In

1976 Ericka Huggins won election to the Alameda County Board of Education. “I

33 “Lionel Wilson Announces Candidacy for First Black Mayor of Oakland,” The Black Panther 16, no. 10, January 15, 1977, 1. 34 Ibid. 35 “The Black Panther Party Program March 29, 1972 Platform What We Want What We Believe,” The Black Panther 16, no. 10, January 15, 1977, 16.

294 originally ran for the board because of my concern over the way children were mistreated in the juvenile institution [detention centers],” Huggins later recalled.36 Seeking reelection in 1980 Huggins acknowledged that she had not seen “substantial changes” in the running of juvenile detention facilities but that curriculum and housing had improved.

She also praised the new director of juvenile detention schools, Peggy Smithson.37 Gone were the days of demands for immediate change. By 1980, Huggins was willing to work gradually for change and to run for office within the established political system to do so.

Thus, Panthers still fought for some of the tenets of their moral polity, in this case, the right to education and fair treatment in the corrections system, but were no longer portraying themselves as the vanguard of a revolution that would sweep those changes into being.

The trajectory of the Party was discernable in the titles Huey Newton took to describe his position within the Party. Having begun as the Panthers’ Minister of Defense in 1966, Newton later became the Party’s Supreme Commander and then Supreme

Servant of the People.38 Early 1970s legal defense cadre reports to Newton were often addressed simply to “The Servant.”39 In 1977, upon his return to the United States his title evolved once again. Having been described as the Party’s “founder and leader”

36 “Ericka Huggins Seeks Second Term on County Education Board: ‘Poor People Have a Voice in Me,’” The Black Panther 20, no. 2, February 25-March 9, 1980, 4. 37 Ibid. 38 Donald Cox, “The Split in the Party,” in Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy, ed. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 121. 39For two examples see Comrade Aaron Dixon to The Servant, September 17, 1972, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 9 “Legal Information— Party Cases [1 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.; Legal Defense Cadre to Servant, January 23, 1973, M864 Huey P. Newton Foundation Records, Black Panther Party Records, Legal Series 2, Box 32, Folder 10 “Legal Information—Party Cases [2 of 4],” Stanford University Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford, California.

295 through much of the press surrounding his return, the July 30, 1977 issue of The Black

Panther began to refer to Newton as the Party’s “founder and president.”40 Minister of

Defense, Supreme Commander, and Supreme Servant of the People were titles which defined Newton’s role within the Party, his relationship to its members, and ultimately his own hubris. These titles had no counterparts within established politics in the United

States. President, on the other hand, did. This was a title that gave anyone familiar with

American politics a frame of reference with which to understand Newton’s power within the Black Panther Party. It made him a figure that could fit into mainstream politics, at least rhetorically. As “President” Newton was a more approachable figure for non-

Panthers, but it divorced him from the Panthers’ struggle for a moral polity. In this,

Newton was the embodiment of the evolution of the Black Panther Party from revolutionaries calling for a moral polity to an organization with a more moderate approach that operated within the US two party system.

Despite the fact that the BPP’s ultimate trajectory pointed to establishment politics after 1976, they did not take an unwavering path to that destination. At times, the

Party was openly critical of mainstream politics even as they continued to participate in them. In July 1976, Elaine Brown, serving as a delegate to the Democratic National

Convention, accused the Democratic Party of abandoning Black people, working people, the disenfranchised and the oppressed, and taking “a clear turn to the right.”41 She then referred to Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson as “Uncle Toms” for their support of Jimmy

40 “Huey Released,” The Black Panther 17, no. 7, July 30, 1977, 1. For The Black Panther referring to Newton as the Party’s “founder and leader” see “Welcome Home Huey,” The Black Panther 17, no. 4, July 9, 1977, 1. 41 “Elaine Brown Issues Statement at N.Y. Convention, ‘The Democratic Party Has Abandoned Black People,’” The Black Panther 15, no. 15, July 24, 1976, 1.

296

Carter’s “reactionary” policies, before calling on all poor and progressive people to leave the Democratic Party and create a new party of their own.42 Nevertheless, alongside

Brown’s condemnation of the Democratic Party, The Black Panther praised

Congressman Ron Dellums for refusing to switch his delegate vote from California governor Jerry Brown to Jimmy Carter.43 While Dellums was critical of the Democratic

Party, his speech at the convention sought reform from within, calling on all campaigners to guarantee “the full participation of the people” and open the campaign to “a serious debate on the vital and critical issues of our time.”44 He further described Vice

Presidential nominee, Walter Mondale, as “a good and decent person.”45 Thus, even as

Brown called for a break with the Democrats, and later referred to Dellums as having “a radical spirit,” the Party newspaper offered space to the words of a Democratic congressmen calling for reform from within his own party.46 Moreover, Brown had issued her critique while serving as a delegate, a key component of the Democratic Party structure at the convention.

Even as she criticized the Democratic Party, Elaine Brown embraced mainstream political measures by speaking in favor of the “Yes on 14” campaign in California during the fall of 1976.47 Proposition 14 was designed to protect farm workers’ rights to secret ballots to vote for the union of their choice.48 In their campaign for the passage of

42 Ibid, 1, 8. 43 “Text of Congressman Ron Dellums’ Address to Democratic Convention: ‘We Must Keep Committed to Lofty Ideals,’” The Black Panther 15, no. 15, July 24, 1976, 4. 44 Ibid., 8. 45 Ibid. 46 Brown, A Taste of Power, 409. 47“Elaine Brown, Larry Tramutt, Highlight OCLC Community Forum: Black Community and Farmworkers Unite for Yes on 14 Campaign,” The Black Panther 15, no. 27, October 16, 1976, 5. 48Farm Workers Yes on 14 Committee, “For Farm Workers Vote Yes on 14,” 1976, United Farm Workers Archives, UC San Diego Library,

297

Proposition 14, the Farm Workers Yes on 14 Committee highlighted Cesar Chavez’s non-violent tactics and the endorsements of Governor Jimmy Carter and Senators Alan

Cranston and John Tunney.49 Having only months before condemned Jimmy Carter as a reactionary, and the Democratic Party as having moved too far to the right, by October,

Elaine Brown found herself on the same side as Carter and two Democratic Party senators, at least for this issue. Moreover, she advocated expressly non-violent franchise based change in order to secure fair union selection, something which the Panthers’ moral polity had not originally engaged or advocated.

Indeed, by 1977 Elaine Brown acknowledged that the BPP had moved away from revolutionary action, although she left room for the Party to return to the politics of revolution in the future, further muddying the waters for anyone trying to pin down the

Panthers’ beliefs at that time. Of the Party’s survival programs she said, “They are neither revolutionary nor reformist.” Nevertheless, she asserted that “a continuing demand for more will lead to the final ultimate demand the powerful will refuse to grant . . . It’s then that serious business will happen.”50 The revolution may have been delayed, but in this explanation of Panther actions Brown argued that they still sought to create a moral polity, and that called for people who were clothed, sheltered, healthy, fed, and educated.

Brown explained, “the Party recognizes that while on one hand the existing structure must be destroyed . . . an alternative machinery, one that serves the love-interests of the

People must be operating.”51 Here, the Panthers called for key structures of the moral

https://libraries.ucsd.edu/farmworkermovement/ufwarchives/RogeroPitt/04/Yes%20on%2014%20Flyers_0 02.pdf. 49 Ibid. 50 Elaine Brown, “Comment: Whatever Happened To The Black Panther Party,” The Black Panther 16, no. 8, January 1, 1977, 2. 51 Ibid.

298 polity to be in place before revolutionary change came, whereas, in previous years, the

Party advocated the reverse, a revolution to bring on the moral polity.

Outside media frequently reflected the tension between older Panther calls for moral polity and their subsequent move into establishment politics. For many outside the

Party, the Panthers’ move to the mainstream was difficult to reconcile with their existing conceptions of the organization. When Huey Newton returned to the United States in the summer of 1977 Lionel Martin of the The Washington Post acknowledged that Newton

“helped to shift the party’s emphasis from a gun-toting, leather-jacketed ‘off the pigs’ approach to community-improvement programs.”52 At the same time, Martin spent considerable time describing Newton’s unrepentant belief in revolution, ending his article by reminding readers that Newton was “still a firebrand who believes in changing

America into a socialist country.”53 The images of Panthers as gun-loving leather-clad militants were, by this time, deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the American public. This meant that portrayals of the organization tended to have, at their heart, and older image of the BPP.

Similarly, in describing the Party under Elaine Brown in the Los Angeles Times,

William Endicott reminded readers that, although they seemed “tamer” the Panthers were still committed to revolutionary change, reflecting the tension within the BPP. He noted that “if the lunging black panther that is the party’s symbol seems to be purring more than snarling these days, it is not because the Panthers have lost any of their radical fervor.”

Instead, he argued, “Their tactics may have been refined, but they are as committed as

52 Lionel Martin, “Huey Newton to Return to U.S. to Face Charges,” The Washington Post, June 25, 1977, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/06/25/huey-newton-to-return-to-us-to-face- charges/b76cb552-0de4-4f46-8ba8-c232831a1676/. 53 Ibid.

299 ever to fundamental social change.”54 He pointed out that, according to Brown, Panthers’ involvement in electoral politics was not necessarily a total endorsement of those politics, but at the same time opened his article with the news that Oakland’s political and business leaders had sought help from Brown and the Panthers to secure a commitment from the governor to build a link between Oakland and the freeway.55 Thus, he showed the Panthers as having, at least, a rhetorical commitment to change, the likes of which would create a moral polity, while at the same time working toward far less revolutionary goals.

In their stance on prisons and prisoners the Panthers also occasionally continued to push toward a moral polity in their later years. This was possible given the fact that many prisoners and high profile cases of the post 1976 era were continuations of cases from earlier years, which allowed the Party to use their older more militant rhetoric in relation to those prisoners. Panther Johnny Spain’s case was one such example. On

August 12, 1976, a jury convicted Johnny Spain of conspiracy to escape and two counts of first degree murder for the shooting deaths of two San Quentin guards on August

21,1971, the day of George Jackson’s killing in that same prison.56 Noting that Spain, the only BPP member on trial in connection with the events of that day, received the heftiest punishment of the “San Quentin 6,” the Party issued a statement which argued, “his conviction proves positively one thing, beyond a doubt; that government assassination and murder can be justified in this country’s judicial system and that only a serious

54 William Endicott, “Black Panthers Stalk Same Goals but on a Tamer Path,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1977, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.cmu.edu/hnplatimes/docview/158330327/9D85C1CC68214B2AP Q/23?accountid=9902. 55 Ibid. 56 “B.P.P. Statement on the Conviction of Johnny Larry Spain: ‘S.Q. 6 Jury Collaborators in Assassination of George Jackson,’” The Black Panther 15, no. 19, August 21, 1976, 1, 16.

300 change in that system, a court system controlled by the people, will produce justice.”57

This was a clear iteration of one of the tenets of the Panther’s moral polity: people’s control of the scales of justice. Here, the Party called for a clear break with the established legal system. Only by dismantling that system could justice be done.

The BPP, similarly, continued to espouse a belief in a moral polity through their remaining prison-related survival programs. In May 1976, the Legal Aid and Education

Program sponsored a “Soul Show” to entertain women prisoners at Santa Rita County

Jail. They then brought the show to Santa Rita’s male inmates.58 In late December 1976 and early January 1977 volunteers working at the Oakland Community Learning Center gathered material for 500 packages containing clothing, toiletries, dried fruits and meats, sweets, and cigarettes to be sent to men’s and women’s prisons across California.59 This effort was part of the Panthers’ Free Prison Commissary Program, itself one of several sub-initiatives of the Free Legal Aid Program.60 The Party continued to maintain that such projects were necessary because state prisons “badly neglected” the basic needs of their prisoners, and that when they did provide necessities via prison commissaries, these supplies were often priced out of the average prisoner’s reach.61 In this instance the BPP continued to supply for prisoners what they felt prisoners deserved, but that the justice system would not supply.

In this manner, as the BPP declined between 1976 and its ultimate collapse in

1982, Party leadership wavered between their move into mainstream politics and their

57 Ibid., 16. 58 “O.C.L.C. Legal Aid Program Presents ‘Soul Show’ at County Jail,” The Black Panther 15, no. 4, May 8, 1976, 9. 59 “Free Commissary Program Gives 500 Packages to Prison Inmates,” The Black Panther 16, no. 8, January 1, 1977, 1. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

301 older calls for a moral polity even as they generally moved in the direction of establishment politics. This created a rather confused situation, particularly for people who were not Party members, but who looked to the BPP as the vanguard of a revolution.

It did not help that as early as 1972, as the Party deteriorated, some rank-and-file BPP and former BPP members from chapters across the country made the news for

“embarrassing violent activity.”62 The media, having picked up on these stories, and slow to accept a new characterization of the Party, continued to portray the Panthers as revolutionaries eager for the violent overthrow of the American government. In reality, as the Panthers struggled to find a new identity, the situation was more complex. The BPP might work comfortably within the established political system, and it might return to pressing for a moral polity depending on the individual situation it faced.

Under Elaine Brown, from 1974-1977, the Black Panthers walked a fine line between moral polity and establishment politics. The BPP moved closer than it ever had to established political structures. Oakland mayor, Lionel Wilson, and even California governor Jerry Brown owed their offices to Brown and the BPP under her.63 At the same time, the Party continued to operate survival programs which helped provide services and support that government institutions did not. Under Brown the centerpiece of these programs became the Oakland Community School run by Ericka Huggins assisted by another Panther, Regina Davis.64 At a time when the Party was in danger of disintegrating completely and other revolutionary groups were disbanding in the wake of the end of the

Vietnam War, Brown succeeded in establishing Oakland as “a base of operations” by

62 Bloom and Martin Jr., Black Against Empire, 380. 63 Ibid., 383, 384. 64 Ibid., 384.

302 moving the Party toward the establishment while retaining those portions of the Panthers’ moral polity that served the citizenry most.

The Black Panther party entered a final stage of decline when Huey Newton returned to the United States in August 1977. Elaine Brown left the Party and Newton returned to the destructive behavior he exhibited prior to fleeing the country in 1974. In his absence membership slipped to less than two hundred people.65 By 1980, only twenty seven members remained.66 The Black Panther, long the mouthpiece of the Panther’s moral polity, capable of reaching outside the Party, ceased production in 1980. Those few who remained with the Party grew more and more frustrated with the Party’s lack of direction and the sacrifices they were making for the Party while Newton and a select few of his favorites lived in luxury.67 The Party managed to tread water for two more years, but in 1982, the last survival program, The Oakland Community School, and the last

Black Panther Party Office closed finally drowning under the weight of internal divisions, external subterfuge, and leadership scandals. It was a quiet, suffocating death for the once vibrant organization.

II. Prisoners and the Moral Polity

The Black Panther Party

The undermining of the BPP’s moral polity had, as we have seen, resulted in a considerable number of imprisoned Panthers across the country, who took the Party’s message of revolution and moral polity into lock-up with them and spread this message into America’s prisons. Divorced from the everyday operations of the Party, prisoners did

65 Johnson III, “Explaining the Demise of the Black Panther Party,” 407-408. 66 Austin, Up Against The Wall, 331. 67 Ibid., 330, 331-332.

303 not follow the Panthers’ leadership into the mainstream. Rather, they continued to look to the Party to create and uphold the moral polity, and worked to recreate key aspects of it within their prisons. Under Elaine Brown’s leadership, the BPP would give voice to prisoners’ demands and calls for a restoration of the moral polity, but the Party’s gaze narrowed to focus almost exclusively on Huey Newton’s legal concerns as it staggered through its final years.

Vernon “T.C.” Benton, a Houston Panther imprisoned at the Harris County

Rehabilitation Center in Texas, was one such Panther who brought ideas of the moral polity with him into prison. In January 1976, The Black Panther reported that Benton successfully defended himself from an attack launched while he was waiting to enter the mess hall. The paper informed readers that, despite the fact that he was the victim in this situation, prison authorities threw Benton into solitary confinement after the incident. The

Black Panther attributed this, and the entire attack on Benton, to his successful prison organizing, noting that he was highly respected amongst fellow inmates who first advanced the allegations that the prison administration instigated the attack.68 Benton was just one example out of numerous of Panther prisoners across the country connected to the Black Panther Party who, in the absence of large prison cadres such as the San

Quentin branch of the Party, organized the un-affiliated prisoners around them.

Individual Panther’s status as prison organizers coupled with The Black Panther’s long held focus on prisons and prisoners led many unaffiliated prisoners to continue to view the Party as agents of change and conduits to a larger audience of sympathetic ears.

68 “Murder Attempt on Jailed Houston B.P.P. Member Fails,” The Black Panther 14, no. 16, January 3, 1976, 3.

304

For his part, Benson would attempt to create aspects of a moral polity via a hunger strike begun shortly after The Black Panther ran the article on his attack. For approximately three weeks, Benson and other prisoners at the Harris County

Rehabilitation Center refused food to draw attention to conditions in the prison. Prisoners complained of overcrowding, with as many as three men to cells originally designed for one, unsanitary conditions, and food preparation. Benson told The Black Panther that it was time for the people to be made aware of the situation in the jail. For its part, the newspaper added that prisoners had recently been denied their weekly phone calls because the prison administration alleged that prisoners were making unauthorized long distance calls and driving the prison’s phone bill up.69 The demands of the prisoners coincided with the Panthers’ ideas of a moral polity, specifically their call for everyone to have access to shelter fit for human beings. Prisons were, emphatically, not what the

Panthers referenced when they called for “decent housing,” but the Party’s simultaneous criticisms of the inhumanity of the US prison system demonstrated that they believed prison conditions needed to be vastly improved so long as these institutions continued to exist.

Prisoners maintained near constant contact with the Party, and until 1979 were given space in The Black Panther to espouse their views on numerous issues. The paper frequently featured poetry and other writings by prisoners, especially Panther prisoners, and published a continual stream of letters to the editor from individual prisoners, groups of prisoner agitators, and their supporters.70 Individual prisoners often wrote to request a

69 “Texas Prisoners Stage Hunger Strike Over Bad Conditions,” The Black Panther 14, no. 23, February 21, 1976, 8. 70 Johnny Spain, “Frankenstein’s Monster,” The Black Panther 14 no. 26, March 13, 1976, 10.

305 subscription to The Black Panther or thank the BPP for a subscription supplied free of charge by the Party.71 They looked for support for their fellow prisoners and used the paper to seek correspondents for themselves.72 In April 1976, Bobby Joe Williams, a death row inmate in Oklahoma wrote to the paper hoping to be connected with other death row inmates so that they could work collectively to overturn their convictions.73

Supporters also used the paper to publicize the plight of death row inmates as well as prisoners serving other sentences.74 Constant reports of violence levied against prisoners similarly appeared in the pages of The Black Panther.75 These letters offered a window into the changing landscape of America’s prisons, which saw their populations double between 1970 and 1980.76 They simultaneously demonstrated that the BPP saw prisoners as a population deserving of a voice.

Prison correspondence revealed that until 1978, at least, some prisoners still saw the Party as a viable organization to advance revolutionary goals and build the moral polity. A January 1976 letter from Kevin Crockett sought permission to start a chapter of the Party in Illinois’ Chester Mental Health Center.77 Crockett wrote to the paper as a representative of “Patients Legal Defense,” an organization formed by the Chester Mental

71 Al-Kabir Alrukn (John Gibson), “Understanding Forces Which Determine Our Existence,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 23, February 21, 1976, 25. 72 Collin Fearon, “Prisoners’ Mailing List,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14, no. 22, February 14, 1976, 25; Watson Jordan Jr. and Darrell Sneed, “Prison Inmates Seek Correspondence,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14, no. 19, January 24, 1976, 25. 73 Bobby Joe Williams, “Death Row Unity,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 30, April 10, 1976, 25. 74 Eleanor Mabry, “Get Mabel Glenn off Death Row,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 26, March 13, 1976, 25. 75 Dennis L. Sanders, “Black Soledad Inmates Shot by Racist Guards,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 17 no. 24, December 3, 1977, 25. 76 Norval Morris, “The Contemporary Prison: 1965-Present,” in The Oxford History of the Prison, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), Kindle Edition. 77 Kevin Crockett, “Patients Legal Defense Protests Forced Medication,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 19, January 24, 1976, 25.

306

Health Center’s prisoners. July 1978 saw Moses Evans Jr., imprisoned in Georgia, write to the paper, suggesting that prisoners who subscribed to The Black Panther and followed the teachings of Huey Newton wished that they were in a position to contribute financially to the Party. Evans pledged that if his situation changed he would contribute all he could to help alleviate some of the Party’s financial issues.78 Both men saw the

Party as worthy of support and sought to assist the Party by expanding its base and offering vocal and potentially financial support, respectively. Crockett and Evans wanted to strengthen and expand the Party because they still saw it as the vehicle through which a society could be transformed. In the case of the former, he sought transformation within his prison, specifically a new branch of the party to prevent prisoners being given medication against their will, and in the case of the latter, he sought to spread the ideologies of George Jackson and Malcolm X so that more people could understand “our key to freedom.”79

Crockett, Evans, and other supporters’ beliefs in the viability of the BPP was encapsulated best in the letter of a third prisoner, Harry James Snow who wrote to The

Black Panther 4 months before Evans. Snow opened his letter by complementing the articles printed in the paper and asserting that he was “sincerely a revolutionary.”80

“Some of our black comrades,” he continued, “tell me that the revolution is over but I find it very much absurd for any individual to talk that kind of nonsense because for our

Black and poor people struggle the real revolution has just begun.”81 Snow then

78 Moses Evans Jr., “Prison Inmates Support B.P.P.,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 18 no. 17, July 15-28, 1978, 2. 79 Ibid. 80 Harry James Snow, “Support Huey,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 18 no 8, March 11, 1978, 25. 81 Ibid.

307 suggested that he might contribute to the revolution, even while in prison, by writing an article for the paper every two to three weeks. Like Crockett and Evans, Snow sought a way to contribute to furthering the Party’s objectives. In this, they demonstrated that ideas about building a moral polity were still alive within America’s prisons, because

Crockett, Evans, Snow, and others like them all expressed a desire to help the BPP for the benefit of others. They saw the Party as the conduit by which they could participate in that project of communal uplift. In essence, they all sought to be, what Snow termed, “A voice coming from this prison cell.”82

Whether or not they saw the Party itself as viable, prisoners saw the BPP newspaper as an important part of their struggle. A short January 1976 letter revealed much about the importance of The Black Panther to prisoners. That month Vinson

Washington wrote a follow-up to a letter which the newspaper published the previous

July. After thanking the Party for publishing his first letter, he inquired about the Free

Commissary for Prisoners Program noting that he’d seen it mentioned in a previous issue of the paper and wondered about the criteria for a prisoner to qualify for the program.83

Washington then went on to ask for a subscription to The Black Panther “because the brother who had been getting them has been transferred to a different jail.”84 Although he provided no background to his request for information about the free commissary for prisoners program, the very fact that he sought information revealed an interest in the program if not an outright need for it. Moreover, Washington’s indicated that prisoners

82 Ibid. 83 Vinson Washington, “Seeks Info. On Free Commissary for Prisoners Program,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14, no. 18, January 17, 1976, 25. 84 Ibid.

308 were sharing a single copy of The Black Panther. Theirs was a collective approach to bettering the conditions in which they found themselves.

Washington was one of many prisoners who saw The Black Panther and other

BPP publications as tools to use in their organizing, especially organizing around education. Two months after Washington’s letter, another prisoner, who identified himself as “Comrade Brother Marshall” requested a subscription to The Black Panther.

He told the paper that he was a member of a Black Studies group in Indiana State Prison and that he wanted the subscription to “share and discuss news and political matters with my fellow comrades here.”85 Susan Stuart, a prisoner at North Carolina Correctional

Center for Women wrote shortly thereafter seeking a copy of Insights and Poems by

Huey Newton and Ericka Huggins. She told her readers that she sought the book because

“the voices of others who have endured and survived . . . are vital to our continued struggle.” [emphasis added]86 Stuart was not concerned solely with her own imprisonment, but more broadly with all who struggled within the North Carolina

Correctional Center for Women. When Judge Wade wrote to the paper in January 1978, he encouraged the editors to send his subscription to someone else because Clinton

Correctional Facility in New York now considered the publication to be contraband. He reasoned, “Some other comrade could appreciate receiving the consciousness-level raising material [the issues] hold. As I told you once, when I read them I pass them on!”87

To these prisoners and others, Panther publications had the power to educate and uplift

85 Comrade Brother Marshall, “Prisoner Seeks Subscription,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 25, March 6, 1976, 25. 86 Susan Stuart, “Woman Prisoner Wants ‘Insight and Poems,’” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 14 no. 27, March 20, 1976, 25. 87 Judge Wade, “Dehumanization,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 18 no. 2, January 28, 1978, 2.

309 their prisoner communities. They shared these materials to spread knowledge and raise the revolutionary consciousness of their fellows, a key component of building and operating within a moral polity.

Examining collective action and solidarity within prisons demonstrates how crucial it was to prisoner survival, and points to the fact that prisoners and their jailers operated from divergent assumptions about the organization of society. As Zola Agona

Azania explained from prison, in March 1978,

children and adults living by the first law of the ghetto (survival) get arrested—

another form of kidnap—are taken to jail away from home, family, and loved

ones and placed in a human warehouse (prison) compelled to work for pennies a

day, if any, slaving to repay their ‘debt’ to society, so to speak.88

Crucial to, and imbedded within, Azania’s analysis of the situation was the idea that “the capitalist, imperialist misleaders” of the United States punished black Americans by oppressing them and forcing them into poverty, instead of looking to correct the structural forces which caused so-called “crime” to begin with. This dichotomy succinctly encapsulated the differences the Panthers and prisoners’ saw between their moral polity and the ideology of the US government and prison regimes. Panthers and the prisoners who followed and sympathized with them wanted to create a society where the people’s basic needs were met. They saw the power structure in the US as first ignoring these needs and then punishing those who committed “crimes” while attempting to ensure that people’s basic needs were met. The Panthers’ survival programs were a step toward meeting the population’s basic needs. Azania and other prisoners saw this and, therefore,

88 Zola Agona Azania (Rufus L. Averhart), “Modern Servitude,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 18 no. 7, March 4, 1978, 2, 25.

310 continued to look to the Panthers to create a moral polity that did not punish its citizens for responding to conditions created by the government.

Thus, a belief in a moral polity still existed within America’s prisons, and protests would continue to erupt where tenets of the moral polity were violated. By 1976, however, the Black Panther Party was in a state of such decline that prison protest often occurred without any visible input from Panther prisoners or the outside organization. For a week in early January 1976, women inmates at the county jail in Milipitas, California staged a hunger strike to highlight the poor quality of their food, and to protest the hair and insects they often found in it.89 In May 1977, inmates at Angola similarly went on hunger strike to demand that the wardens address charges of harassment, brutality, and poor living conditions. In this case, one participant wrote to The Black Panther suggesting that advice would be appreciated, but both the Angola and California hunger strikes began without any input from BPP members.90

Indeed, by the late 1970s, prisoners had alternative organizations to whom they could look in times of crisis. In the early part of the decade prisoners in California, North

Carolina, Michigan, Washington, the District of Columbia, Wisconsin, Delaware, Maine,

Rhode Island, and Massachusetts formed prisoner unions. So too did female prisoners in

New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility and Washington D.C.’s Women’s

Detention Center.91 Although prisoner unions were dealt a major blow with the 1977

Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, in which the supreme court overturned

90 Wilfred McFadden, “Angola Prison Hunger Strike,” in “Letters to the Editor,” The Black Panther 17 no. 2, June 25, 1977, 2. 91 Victoria Law, “Prisoner Unions,” in Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities, ed. Mary Bosworth (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2005), http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412952514.n286.

311 a lower court’s decision to allow inmate solicitation of other inmates for unions, meetings between union members, and bulk mailings from outside the prison concerning unions, the drive to unionize had already created networks of inmates prepared to organize for the rights of all prisoners. Moreover, unions were not the only groups organized within the prisons to assist inmates with their needs. Prisoners often formed their own unique organizations to collectively lobby for various rights. One such organization was

“Inmates for Action,” whose lobbying on behalf of prisoners like Johnny “Imani” Harris and other Atmore-Holman inmates often made the pages of The Black Panther.92 These groups lobbied for goals which were often similar to the tenets of the moral polity espoused by the Panthers, but they did not set out to completely re-order society, as the

BPP had once done. Instead they tackled individual problems within the confines of singular prisons.

As their influence in the prisons waned, the larger Black Panther Party turned away from all but a select few prisoners. After 1978, The Black Panther stopped printing letters to the editor regularly, and the voice of many prisoners was, thereby, lost.93 To be sure, the Party continued to monitor the situation in American Jails. Sporadic articles briefly covered rebellions in prisons across the United States, and, occasionally, the paper followed the story of a single protest, but much of the Party’s energy was concentrated on

Huey Newton’s continuing legal battles and, to a lesser extent, the ongoing imprisonment of Johnny Spain.94 Following his return to the United States in 1977, Newton faced a

92“Families of Slain Prison Activists Sue Wallace and Ala. Prison Officials,” The Black Panther 14 no. 27, March 20, 1976, 8; “Atmore-Holman Brother Johnny Harris Seeks Stay: Ala. Prison Activist Fights March 10 Execution,” The Black Panther 18 no. 6, February 25, 1978, 11. 93 Letters to the editor appear in at least three issues of The Black Panther in 1979, but they were no longer a regular feature of the paper. 94 See, for example, “People’s Perspective: Washington Inmates Rebel,” The Black Panther 19 no 7, May 14- 27, 1979, 6; or “‘They Walk Around like Zombies:’ Black Women Drugged at Georgia Prison,” The

312 series of trials related to the alleged pistol whipping of his tailor and murder of a seventeen year old prostitute. None of the charges led to a conviction, but the Party spent considerable time and money trying to ensure that outcome. For his part, Spain continued to challenge his San Quentin 6 conviction and The Black Panther covered his efforts.95

He would not be successful while the Black Panther Party existed. The cases of Newton and Spain brought the Party full circle. By 1979 they had returned to fighting their battles through the US legal system.

Not covered in the paper were the long prison sentences then being served by numerous BLA members arrested in the wake of the split of the BPP in the early 1970s.

The BLA never adopted establishment politics as the BPP did, and BLA members held strongly to ideas about the moral polity upon arrest and in prison. Like Safiya Bukhari,

Assata Shakur also escaped from prison during this period. Assata Shakur’s response to her own 1979 escape showed similar collective sensibilities and support for the moral polity as Bukhari had when she escaped. Remembering her ideology at the time, Shakur said, “I believed that a higher level of political sophistication was necessary and that unity in the Black community had to become a priority.”96 At the same time, “It was also clear that without a truly international component nationalism was reactionary. . . . Any community seriously concerned with its own freedom has to be concerned about other people’s freedom as well.”97 She, therefore, concluded that a victory for oppressed

Black Panther 20 no. 6, May 12 -25, 1980, 5; and the coverage of the repercussions of the 1978 Pontiac Prison rebellion. “Black Inmates to be Tried for Pontiac Prison Rebellion,” The Black Panther 19 no. 6, April 30-May 13, 1979, 7; Jeff Haas, “Pontiac 17 Fight Death Penalty,” The Black Panther 19 no. 10, October 1-14, 1979, 9; “Behind the Walls: Trial Begins of Pontiac 13,” The Black Panther 20 no. 2, February 25 – March 9, 1980, 15. 95 “The George Jackson Murder Case—1971- 1979 Johnny Spain Seeks Reversal of San Quentin 6 Conviction,” The Black Panther 19, no. 10, October 1-14, 1979, 16. 96 Shakur, Assata, 266. 97 Ibid, 267.

313 people, anywhere, was a victory for the Black community, a chink in the armor of imperialism that would take Black people one step closer to true freedom and liberation.98

Shakur’s concern for the totality of black and other oppressed people, coupled with her explicitly anti-imperialist stance, placed her staunchly alongside advocates of the moral polity.

As with similar actions by Irish Republican Army volunteers, Bukhari and

Shakur’s escapes can be read as part of their adherence to the ideology of a moral polity.

Both expressed unwillingness to remain in prison, not simply because the experience was unpleasant, but because being a cooperative accommodating prisoner meant tacitly accepting the idea that their incarceration was justified, that they had done something wrong. Instead, both women saw their imprisonment as the result of a coercive system which first criminalized actions that State oppression made necessary for survival in the first place, and then punished people for those actions. Further, both explicitly asserted that their incarceration was as much about their political beliefs as it was about any action they took in support of their ideology. Bukhari understood this, recalling that after her recapture she was placed in a segregation cell, “because of my politics.” She argued,

“other women have escaped, been brought back, and been released into the general population. Yesterday, after twenty two months, my codefendant on the escape charge was okayed for release into the general population. I was denied.”99 Similarly, speaking to the jury during her trial for an alleged 1972 kidnapping of a drug dealer, Shakur stated,

“I am not on trial here because i have committed a crime. . . . Throughout amerika’s history, people have been imprisoned because of their political beliefs and charged with

98 Ibid. 99 Bukhari, The War Before, 10.

314 criminal acts in order to justify that imprisonment.”100 In essence, their escapes showed that they were unwilling to let a system they saw as unjust delegitimize their visions for a society based upon greater equity and care for black citizens. Support from their communities and a broader network of sympathizers indicated that the women’s contention that the prisons were tools of a repressive State was a relatively widely held conviction.

In the end, prisoners connected to the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation

Army, still believed in the creation of a moral polity, but found it increasingly difficult to create one after 1976. Isolated and divided, they allied themselves with prisoners not affiliated with the Party in order to face a prison system that was growing exponentially and hardening its resolve against prisoner organizing. Between 1970 and 1980 the prison population in the United States doubled.101 Much of this increase was the result of the war on drugs, begun by Richard Nixon in 1971, which disproportionately targeted black

Americans. Despite similar drug usage statistics, the number of whites arrested for drug offenses remained at approximately 300 per 100,000 between 1969 and 1990, but for blacks that number steadily rose from 300 per 100,000 in 1968-1969 to 1,050 per

100,000 in 1990.102 As the Black Panther Party disintegrated this massive influx of drug war prisoners entered the system. Amongst them, Panther and BLA prisoners continued to organize, typically by focusing on a single aspect of the moral polity, often adequate medical care, education, or creating prisons “fit” for habitation. In the end, this type of

100 Shakur, Assata, 167. 101 Norris, “The Contemporary Prison,” Kindle Edition. 102 Ibid.

315 organizing from within prisons, as prison populations changed, outlasted the Black

Panther Party, itself.

Irish Republicans

True to the expectations of the NIO, the IRA were quick to respond to the removal of special category status. In the months leading to March 1, 1976, the PIRA made it clear to the NIO that their prisoners were prepared to fight the removal of special category. In December 1975, W.I. Davies, director of Prison operations noted, “The

PIRA representatives at HMP, Magilligan, have stated quite categorically that the withdrawal of this concession is seen as an important issue by those prisoners . . . and they propose to frustrate our plans by any means, including force.”103 Davies then made assurances that the prisons were ready to meet the protest that republicans might throw at them. An extra gateway was under construction at the Crumlin road to allow ambulances, personnel carriers, water cannon, and fire tenders to enter and leave the prison via

Girdwood Barracks.104 All prisons were equipped with additional riot equipment and a new supply of riot shields was due to arrive in early January 1976. Medical staffs had issued instructions on how to deal with hunger and thirst strikes.105 Republicans agreed that no matter who was first given a criminalized sentence, he would refuse the prison uniform.106 The stage was, thus, set for the first prisoners to encounter the Northern

Ireland prison system without special category.

103 W.I. Davies, “A Paper for Discussion: Contingency Plans to Accommodate Changes in the Prison Population and to Deal with Prisoner Reaction to These Changes and Subsequent Relocations,” December 29, 1975, NIO/12/102A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 104 Ibid., 2. 105 Ibid., 3. 106 PIRA Volunteer in Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 154.

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As it happened, the first prisoner to be sentenced for an offense committed after

March 1, 1976, was IRA man, Kieran Nugent, of Belfast. Jackie McMullan, arrested in

May 1976 recalled that following Nugent’s sentencing, “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 but confirmation of this original story and then he disappeared. They took him away—we hadn’t a clue where.”107 Nugent began the blanket protest, the first volley in the war the IRA waged against the policy of criminalization. Nugent’s nudity stemmed from his refusal to wear the prison uniform and accept the badge of criminality it represented. Instead, Nugent and men sentenced after him wore only their prison-issued blankets. With the blanket protest IRA prisoners called for the restoration of the moral polity achieved by special category prisoners. If special category prisoners could wear their own clothes and refrain from prison work, so too would the prisoners now being sentenced without special category. The IRA had not changed their actions. Their members were being sentenced for the same offenses that had, until recently, carried the possibility of special category status. It was the British government who had changed tactics.

Nugent and those sentenced after him were sent to the newly constructed H-

Blocks of Long Kesh/the Maze prison. Named for their distinctive “H” shape, eacH-

Block could hold as many as 100 men, split across the four wings which made up the “H” shape.108 Initially, the blanketmen were placed into cells by themselves and isolated from one another, but in April 1977, the protesting prisoners were moved to H5.109 By

107 Jackie McMullan in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 2, 3. 108 Jackie McMullan in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 7. 109 Ned Flynn and Jackie McMullan in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 4, 8, 19.

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October 1977, H5 was filled to capacity, and H3 was opened as a second protesting block.110 Although some IRA men chose to conform to the prison rules after sentencing, the protest continued to grow. The loss of special category status struck at the heart of the

IRA’s moral polity by seeking to delegitimize IRA actions by classifying them as criminal. As this classification touched more and more volunteers, the protest to restore special category, and with it, the moral polity, grew.

Women continued to be sent to Armagh to serve their sentences. Those booked without special category status were assigned a separate wing of the prison. Unlike their male counterparts, the women were allowed to wear their own clothes, but they fought criminalization by refusing to do prison work, and adopting attitudes of non-cooperation to most prison rules. Síle Darragh, imprisoned first on remand, and then, after February

1977, as a sentenced prisoner joined the protest at Armagh. Like her blanketmen counterparts, she believed that cooperating with the prison administration would be “To accept that the British were right in branding us and our comrades criminals; that our families and communities had no rights, no recourse to justice and could be abused and denigrated by unionists and loyalists, by British politicians, their army and police force.”111 To accept criminalization, then, would be to accept the loss of the moral polity within the prisons, and to ensure that it would never be created outside the prisons.

Despite the swelling protest, prison authorities had no intention of allowing republicans to recreate the prison system as it existed under special category. Since the refusal to wear the prison uniform and do prison work was in breach of prison rules,

110 Kevin Campbell in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 23. 111 Síle Darragh, ‘John Lennon’s Dead:’ Stories of Protest, Hunger Strikes and Resistance (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications Ltd., 2011), 47.

318 specifically those set out in Prison Rules (Northern Ireland) 1954, the blanketmen lost privileges such as newspapers, radios, parcels, and all but a single statutory visit every four weeks.112 Every two weeks adjudications took place, and protesting prisoners were sentenced with one day’s lost remission for every day that they did not conform to prison rules. They were also often sentenced to three days of cellular confinement, which, when prisoners were not sharing cells, meant that guards removed a prisoner’s bed, mattress, and bedding, minus the blanket he wore, from the cell during the day.113 Until September

1978, prisoners might also be subject to dietary punishment if they committed offenses in addition the blanket protest.114

Although using a restricted diet as a punishment was discontinued in English and

Welsh prisons in 1974, it remained a punishment in Northern Ireland. There, prison governors were divided over its use, but the governors of the Maze and Crumlin Road, the prisons with the highest populations of noncooperative prisoners, favored its use.

They noted that dietary restrictions had the advantage of taking immediate effect, as opposed to the loss of remission which could take years to become an issue and didn’t apply to prisoners serving life sentences.115 Each punishment violated a different aspect of the IRA’s moral polity. Taken together the IRA saw these penalties as a concentrated assault on the totality of the moral polity, and this was how the IRA conceived of prison

112 “The Current Protest Campaign in the Prisons Against the Refusal of the Authorities to Grant ‘Special Category’ to Convicted Prisoners,” 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, 2-3; 112 E.N. Barry, “Prisoners Protesting Because they Have Not Been Granted Special Category Status,” April 4, 1977, NIO/12/63, PRONI, 2. 113 E.N. Barry, “Prisoners Protesting Because They Have Not Been Granted Special Category Status, 1977, 2. 114 Lords Sitting, “Northern Ireland Dietary Punishment,” HL Deb 07 November 1978 vol 396 c169, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1978/nov/07/northern-ireland-dietary- punishment#S5LV0396P0_19781107_HOL_19. 115 “Background Note,”1978, NIO 12/119, PRONI, 1.

319 punishment, not as consequences of individual actions, but as a focused assault on the very heart of republicanism.

Republicans carried the blanket protest and non-cooperation into 1978, but became increasingly worried that the protest was gaining little traction. On April 1, 1977 the NIO counted 97 protesting prisoners, 83 men in the H-Blocks, 4 men in Crumlin

Road, and 10 women in Armagh. 94 came from the PIRA while three were INLA affiliated.116 By September 16 women in Armagh were refusing to work along with seven of their comrades in Crumlin Road, and R. Sweeney, of the NIO, reported that with four new committals, “the total number of strippers” [Blanketmen] was 170.117 Despite an increasing number of non-conforming prisoners, NIO officials counseled simply waiting the protesters out. E.N. Barry, of the NIO, argued that “There is no room for compromise,” but added, “There has been very little propaganda of late regarding the protesters and this must be discouraging to them and frustrating for the para-military organizations.” This, Barry took to be a good sign and he urged the NIO to maintain their current course of action, stating, “no publicity is good news . . . and any initiative on our part might be construed as a sign that we were worried about this problem and that the protesters were making an impact on the system.”118

A Governor’s Order, issued by the H-Block’s Governor, Stanley Hilditch, in late

November 1977 presented the blanketmen with a further dilemma. The order came at the behest of the NIO’s Director of Prison Operations and laid out new rules for prisoners

116 E.N. Barry, “Prisoners Protesting Because they Have Not Been Granted Special Category Status,” April 4, 1977, NIO/12/63, PRONI, 1. 117 R. Sweeney, “Summary of Situation in NI Prisons over the period 0830 hours on 28 September 1977 to 0830 hours on 29 September 1977,” September 29, 1977, NIO/12/63, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 118 Ibid., 3.

320 who refused to wear a uniform. Hilditch instructed staff to encourage prisoners to wear the uniform, but recognizing that this was not a wholesale solution to the problem of non- conforming prisoners, his order limited the instances where a blanket could be worn.

Prisoners could no longer attend mass, welfare or legal visits, or leave his cell for medical treatment, exercise, use the ablutions, slop out outside of the cell or go to the library wearing a blanket. Instead, prisoners would be allowed to go to mass, the library, seek medical treatment, exercise, slop out and use the ablutions only if they wore at least prison issued underwear or consented to go naked. If a prisoner decided to take a welfare or a legal visit he had to clothe himself in prison underwear if not the full uniform. If he was meeting with a female welfare officer he was, henceforth, required to wear a shirt and trousers.119 The order also instructed that food was to be left in cells if prisoners refused to go to the dining areas, and it allowed prisoners to empty their chamber pots into a slop bucket and then disinfect the pot at the door to their cells should they refused to discard their blankets for slopping out or using the toilet.120 The blanketmen could either conform or go without even their blanket. It is unlikely, that coming from socially conservative Northern Ireland, themselves, and having escorted naked prisoners to their cells for the first time, the prison administration expected prisoners to accept the option of nudity. Rather, the new rules were intended to coerce prisoners into the uniform by giving them a choice between garments intended to criminalize or the vulnerability of nude bodies in a hostile environment.

119 Stanley Hilditch, “Governor’s Order 22, Treatment of Prisoners Who Refuse to Wear Prison Clothing,” November 20, 1977, NIO/12/147, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1-2. 120 Ibid., 2.

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Initially, the blanketmen found ways to navigate the punishments imposed by the warders and governor. When the prison administration informed the protesting prisoners that they could not take visits unless they put on the prison uniform, the blanketmen simply stopped taking visits. So too did they refuse exercise periods.121 They did, however, consent to wearing the trousers of the uniform to attend mass on Sundays.

“Sunday was always a big day for us as we were able to count the numbers and exchange a few words with our friends,” Kevin Campbell explained.122 This was key to republicans’ toleration of part of the prison uniform. If wearing it would not help reestablish the moral polity, the privilege that came with the wearing of the uniform, and the uniform itself, was refused. If, as in the case of wearing part of the uniform to mass, it could help rebuild the moral polity, prisoners consented to wear all or part of the uniform.

Wearing a partial uniform to mass enabled protesting prisoners to determine their strength within the H-Block, in Campbell’s words, “count the numbers.” This, in turn, gave the prisoners information that was crucial to any decision about whether or not to resist a prison policy or a guard’s order. Mass could similarly be used to pass messages, known as comms (communications), and other contraband material from prisoner to prisoner.

Eventually, the blanketmen came to see visits as something that could serve a similar purpose, and they, therefore, consented to the uniform to take their monthly visit.

For some, the decision to wear the uniform was designed to alleviate the pain of being divided from loved ones for long years. After 1977 more blanketmen, particularly those

121 Jackie McMullan in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 16. 122 Kevin Campbell in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 17. Editors’ note, Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 24.

322 with wives, began to wear the uniform to take visits.123 At the same time, Blanketmen began to realize that visits could help them in their struggle. One IRA volunteer recalled, that they began to take visits “in order to get the word out,” that is, to make sure that the media and potential supporters outside, understood the situation inside the prisons. “We realized a principle is a principle, but don’t let it blind us to the extent that we were cutting our own throats. . . . If we could use the uniforms to further the resistance against criminalization, then we should put it on and take a visit once a month.”124 As with attending mass, republicans determined that visits could serve to further their aims, in this case their fight against criminalization. They could use visits to pass on information from inside the H-Blocks and to receive information from IRA leadership outside. Indeed, as the protest continued, it was not uncommon for the “family member” who came to visit a prisoner to be another IRA volunteer sent to give or receive a comm.125 In this way, protesting prisoners’ visits became a tool in the reconstruction of the moral polity, a vital conduit for information to and from the outside IRA leadership.

The women in Armagh similarly used visits for communication with the outside

IRA leadership and other prisons. Síle Darragh, recalled, “We . . . arranged visits in a way to ensure the continuous flow of comms to and from Belfast to keep the movement outside informed of what was happening in Armagh and to ensure a continuous supply of smuggled tobacco also.”126 Tobacco aside, visits became a form of protest in themselves.

Through the smuggling of comms into and out of the prison republicans could counter the narrative of criminalization laid out by the NIO with their own narratives highlighting

123 Editors’ note, Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 24. 124 PIRA volunteer in Feldman, Formations of Violence, 160. 125 Feldman, Formations of Violence, 297n.8. 126 Darragh, John Lennon’s Dead, 48.

323 violations of the moral polity, and they could gain valuable knowledge of what was going on outside and in other prison facilities.

Indeed, despite the deprivations imposed because of their unwillingness to conform to the prison regime, prisoners managed to keep near constant contact with the movement outside via an elaborate system of smuggling. Republicans regularly smuggled in cigarette papers which they used for writing comms as well as rolling cigarettes, flints, matches, cigarette lighters, tobacco, and pen refills.127 After a sympathetic Swedish technician designed a small quartz crystal radio that could be smuggled in, the blanketmen could pick up signals from the nearby BBC antennae.128 Tobacco was sometimes secreted into the prisons by a friendly priest or welfare worker and clandestinely handed to a prisoner. The women of Armagh, for instance, remembered

Father Raymond Murray bringing cigarettes and sweets for non-smokers.129

Women had the added advantage of clothing that they could use to hide contraband items as they moved between their cells and mass. Although clothing was liable to search, it did make carrying items less invasive. The men in the H-Blocks had to find alternate means to transport contraband. Bodily orifices such as the nostrils, navel, under the lip, the foreskin, and the rectum variously served this purpose. These methods of hiding and transport took on their own names. “Bangling” meant hiding something in your rectum and eventually came to stand for the larger process of hiding contraband in one’s body. Prisoners who chose to hide things under their foreskin became known as

127 W. R. Truesdale, “Items Found During Close Body Searching of ‘H’ Block Protesters,” in “Close Body Searching of Prisoners,” November 15, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Appendix B. 128 Feldman, Formations of Violence, 199, 200, 299n26. 129 Darragh, John Lennon’s Dead, 85.

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“hammerhead sharks,” a reference to the bulge the foreign material created.130 By bangling, the blanketmen not only their bodies to subvert the prison regime, they literally changed the conversation surrounding the body. They made space for the tools they needed for prisoners to remain connected to their larger organizations outside the prisons, a crucial step in rebuilding their moral polity. At the same time, they marginally alleviated some of the privations imposed on prisoners within the H-Blocks, a formative step in the recreation of said moral polity within the prisons, and created a language totally separate from that of the prison authorities to aid in this process of rebuilding.

Dirty Protest

Blanketmen’s connection with the outside proved crucial when the protest escalated in the Blocks in March of 1978. As early as December 1977 a feeling began to emerge that “the Blanket was not effective enough.”131 The discussion this feeling generated did not amount to much, but talk of ways to make the protest more effective took off again, shortly thereafter, when Brendan Hughes and a number of other special category prisoners were sentenced to the H-Blocks following an altercation after a visit.

Hughes immediately told the prisoners in the H-Blocks that he believed the blanket protest to be ineffective.132 This angered some blanketmen who noted that Hughes had not yet earned his stripes on the blanket. Nevertheless, at the same time, republicans

130 Feldman, Formations of Violence, 199-200. The term “bangling” referenced a circular ring, or the shape of the anus. Blanketmen also sometimes referred to “fagining,” having renamed the penis a “fagin” after the Dickens character. In the words of one blanketman, “We called the penis a fagin from a character that was a real droopy looking and sinister fucker. Then it went from there to being called faginbush for the pubic hair. Nothing had its right name in the Blocks.” See Narrator 5.32 (PIRA) in Formations of Violence, 200. 131 Jaz McCann in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 25. 132 Ibid., 27.

325 alleged that the prison regime was growing more violent. They reported frequent beatings when they left their cells.133 This gave direction to the blanketmen’s search for a more effective form of protest, one that would not involve putting on a prison uniform. In

March 1978, the blanketmen began what they called a “no-wash protest” wherein they refused to wash or slop out.

The purposes of the no-wash protest were four-fold. In the first place, refusing to leave the cells to wash and slop out served the very practical purpose of keeping the blanketmen from situations where their vulnerability could be exploited. Second, escalating the protest gave the blanketmen a morale boost. With this new phase of the protest many felt that they were actively pursuing the renewal of special category status once again. Thirdly, the escalation of the protest would refocus the public’s gaze on the prisons, which could bring additional pressure to bear on the NIO to reinstate special category status. Finally, the no-wash protest allowed republicans to maintain key aspects of their moral polity. Crucially, they could continue to refuse the prison uniform and the badge of criminality it carried.

The protesting prisoners initially intensified the protest on a weekly basis. Having refused to wash they refused to change their sheets. Blanketman, Jaz McCann recalled the protesters’ morale soared during this period. “We felt that we were winning and for a change we, not the screws, had control over our lives because we dictated the pace of events. The screws for their part were demoralised because they had no control over what happened next.”134 A letter smuggled from the H-Blocks that summer agreed, “the main

133 National Smash H-Block Committee, “H-Block: An Affront to the Dignity of Man,” n.d., H- Block/Hungerstrikes Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 134 Jaz McCann in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 32.

326 thing is that the spirit is high and there is no way we will give in.”135 At the same time, the blanketmen were quick to react when prison authorities countered their protest. When prison authorities removed the furniture from one H-Block wing, the other blanketmen smashed their furniture in protest.136 Because Hilditch’s order prohibited prisoners from slopping out in their blankets, the blanketmen smashed their windows and emptied the contents of their chamber pots out the windows and under the doors. When guards and orderlies started to use squeegees to push the urine back under the doors, blanketmen kneaded the bread that they got with meals into a sort of putty which they stuffed under the doors to stem the tide.137 The protesting prisoners also complained that guards soaked their cells by pointing their high powered hoses through the windows while hosing the waste off the outside of the blocks and often threw waste back into the cells while the blanketmen slept.138 This led the blanketmen to begin smearing their excrement on the walls of their cell.139 This was the dirty protest, and it would soon extend to protesting prisoners across three H-Blocks creating lasting repercussions for the prison system.

Distasteful as it was for the blanketmen, their families and supporters, the dirty protest upheld key components of Irish republicans’ moral polity. Smearing waste on cells walls meant that republican prisoners still did not have to wear the uniform for activities that did not help to rebuild their moral polity. Using the toilet outside of the cells was the result of a biological drive. It would not help build a moral polity in any meaningful way, so the blanketmen refused to wear the uniform to go to the toilets.

135 Blanketman to … … …, received July 1978, in Relatives Action Committee of South Derry and East Antrim, “An Information Sheet,” 1978, PH1545, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 136 Jaz McCann and Kevin Campbell in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 32, 33. 137 Cooper with contributions from Republican Ex-Prisoners, The Prison Story, 45. 138 National Smash H-Block Committee, “H-Block: An Affront to the Dignity of Man,” n.d, H- Block/Hungerstrikes Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3. 139 Kevin Campbell, in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 41.

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Neither did they go naked without their blankets, because while this allowed them to avoid the uniform it left them vulnerable to guards who they accused of near constant brutality outside the cells.140 Even if the dirty protest was no more than a cynical attempt to damage prison property and trouble prison staff, as the NIO and prison staff alleged, the end result was the same.141 The escalation from blanket to dirty protest upset the very people attempting to deny parts of the moral polity to republicans. That fact, in itself, was enough to justify the dirty protest to republican prisoners.

Paradoxically, the dirty protest created an increased number of calls for tenets of a moral polity from groups who shared little else. In fact, those who began calling for aspects of the moral polity seldom believed in the IRA and INLA’s vision for political status or how society should be structured. Nevertheless, by smearing their cells in excreta, protesting republican prisoners in the H-Blocks caused an ever larger number of people to question the policies of the prisons and NIO. However inadvertently, within the

H-Blocks, even those who felt they were opposed to the IRA and INLA, and acted based on that belief, helped to weaken the policies of criminalization. As Jaz McCann contended, the republicans were setting the pace and standards of the debate.

In the first place, the dirty protest caused both prison guards and loyalist prisoners to undermine the prison regime. Loyalist prisoners had a complicated relationship with prison protest especially when it brought them into contact with republicans. Into the

140 National Smash H-Block Committee, “H-Block: An Affront to the Dignity of Man,” n.d., 2. 141 The draft of a statement publicizing the role of medical officers with regard to the dirty protest, first created in 1978, then altered in 1979, for example, states, “the continued concerted actions of these prisoners in using their own excreta, urine and waste food to foul their cells and the areas outside the cells are . . . unprecedented in a civilized society. Their objective is to create disgusting and unhygienic conditions, apparently with total disregard of the consequent risks of health.” Howard Beattie and DJ Sloan, “Publicity for the Medical Role in Prisons,” September 11, 1979, HSS/32/1/15/2, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3.

328 summer of 1978 republicans alleged that loyalist orderlies were tampering with their water jugs. One blanketman reported finding beans, maggots, and pieces of wire in his water, and alleged that a loyalist orderly spit in another blanketman’s tea.142

Nevertheless, at the same time, loyalists certainly wished to see special category status restored and considered themselves political prisoners, but they risked alienating their support base if they allied themselves too closely with republican prisoners. Loyalists had, to this point, attacked criminalization by making segregation from republican prisoners their primary demand. With the advent of the dirty protest, however, some loyalists broadened their protest. Loyalist orderlies who were tasked with cleaning republican wings because the protesting republican prisoners refused prison work, often refused to do their own work once the dirty protest began.143 Sometimes this was a sporadic protest, but by November 23, 1980 with 470 republicans on the dirty protest, eleven loyalists had joined what they called “the clean blanket protest,” also aimed at achieving political status, and 19 others were permanently refusing to work.144 Thus, although it was certainly no one’s intention to bring republicans and loyalists together, the dirty protest did, effectively, position republicans and a small cadre of loyalists on the same side of the prison administration. The clean blanket protesters were calling for the restoration of the moral polity within the prisons, just as their republican counterparts were, and the 19 prisoners refusing to work effectively made the statement that they could not be forced to work in what they saw as absolutely repugnant conditions. Even

142 Your loving son to Mother and Father, received June 1978, in Relatives Action Committee of South Derry and East Antrim, “An Information Sheet,” 1978, PH1545, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 143 Ryder, Inside the Maze, 183. 144 “Regimes in Northern Ireland Prisons: Prisoners’ Day to Day Life With Special Emphasis on Maze and Armagh,” 1980, H-Block/Hungerstrike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3.

329 though their protest grew out of opposition to the republicans, these 19 were, ultimately, agreeing that prisoners needed to be treated with dignity and humanity.

Prison officers, too met the dirty protest with their own protests. With loyalists refusing to clean the wings of the protesting H-Blocks, prison warders inherited the task.

Contact with the defiled cells left guards feeling unclean and just one month into the dirty protest, guards refused to wear or even bring their uniforms home as they had done previously. 145 A prison welfare officer who served both the remaining special category prisoners and prisoners in the H-Blocks remembered that a guard who worked a twelve hour shift in the protesting blocks would typically spend approximately four hours trying to remove the smell from his clothing and body before returning to the protesting blocks a mere twelve hours later.146 Protesting IRA and INLA prisoners were, therefore, dictating the actions of prison officers beyond the time the guards spent in the protesting wings. Republicans, not prison authorities were the driving force in this situation.

Moreover, by abandoning their uniforms, guards came into tacit agreement with republicans over the fact that you could not force men and women to wear clothing that symbolized hostility to those same men and women. Ironically, by fighting the violation of their moral polity, republican prisoners violated something akin to a sense of moral polity possessed by their guards.

When then-Archbishop Tomás Ó Fiaich visited the H-Blocks in late July 1978, his reaction to the protest couched the issue in terms that easily fit within republican’s moral polity. In his now-famous comparison between “the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5” and “hundreds of homeless people living in sewer-pipes in the

145 Ryder, Inside the Maze, 183. 146 Ex-Prison Welfare Officer 5.25 in Feldman, Formations of Violence, 193.

330 slums of Calcutta” Ó Fiaich demanded that privileges be restored to the protesting prisoners “without delay.”147 His reasoning for this was that physical exercise, association with other prisoners, and contact with the outside world were “basic human needs for physical and mental health, not privileges to be granted or withheld as rewards or punishments.” The Archbishop further argued that regardless of the offense that led to the loss of privileges in the first place, long term denial of privileges was “surely a grave injustice,” not to be justified “in any circumstances.” This was, he maintained a matter of respecting “the human dignity” of every prisoner.148 Ó Fiaich’s every word reflected republican prisoners’ calls for a regime based not on punishment or criminalization, but on the idea that every man had fundamental needs that should be met.

For their part, in public, the Northern Ireland Office maintained the opposite stance, but internal communications revealed less confidence. In the immediate aftermath of Ó Fiaich’s statement the NIO reminded the public that more than 80 of the protesting prisoners were serving sentences for murder or attempted murder, upwards of 80 more had been sentenced for explosives offenses, that these me were, at the very least, members of organizations responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, and the punishment kneecappings of over 600 others. The NIO further stressed that the blanketmen had brought their conditions on themselves, and could alleviate those conditions at any moment.149 In confidential correspondence in October, however, NIO

147 Tomás Ó Fiaich and D.R. Ford, “Archbishop O’Fiach’s [sic] Statement on Maze Prison,” August 1, 1978, NIO/12/68, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2,3,6. 148 Ibid., 3-4. 149 Northern Ireland Office, “Press Notice: Comment by Northern Ireland Office Spokesman on Archbishop O’Fiaich’s Statement, August 1, 1978, NIO/12/68, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1.

331 officials debated staying the course or implementing further changes to the prison system.

J. E. Hannigan cautioned,

the regime that is being administered is not one designed for a long drawn out

struggle. Humanitarian concern makes the present regime vulnerable, especially if

something goes suddenly wrong; and humanitarian concern can turn into political

pressure, especially if it emerges that we may be vulnerable at the European

Court.150

The Secretary of State, Roy Mason’s first response was to guess that once prisoners were granted any concessions they would push for more, negating the value of granting concessions for humanitarian reasons in the first place, but he agreed to look into the situation further.151 Mason and the NIO, understood that the dirty protest held the potential to return moral (what they called “humanitarian”) concerns to the discussion of the prisons, particularly to the discussion surrounding prisoners who they wished to see entirely divorced from conceptions of humanity and morality. Nevertheless, the dirty protesters were beginning to make the NIO and the Maze prison administration reevaluate their stance toward the prisoners.

150 J.E. Hannigan, “Protesters in the H-Blocks,” October 20, 1978, NIO/12/68, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1, 6. Here Hannigan likely refers to McFeeley et. al. v. The United Kingdom, a case submitted to the European Commission of Human Rights in 1978 by protesting prisoners alleging that mirror searches constituted inhuman and degrading treatment under Article 3. In 1980, the Commission rejected the admissibility of the case but was, at the same time, critical of the “highly inflexible” approach taken by the British. In 1978, Hannigan would have also known about Ireland v. The United Kingdom tried at the European Court of Human Rights. In January 1978 the European Court decided that the sensory deprivation interrogation techniques used against the “Hooded Men” in 1971 amounted to Inhuman and Degrading treatment, but fell short of torture. 151 J.G. Pilling, “Protesters in the H-Block,” October 23, 1978, NIO/12/68, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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By October 1978, the NIO knew that there was mounting support for the dirty protesters on just such grounds. As the protest gained intensity more and more people called for something to be done to ameliorate the conditions in the H-Blocks. This included prisoners’ relatives, like Rosemary O’Connor, sister of Thomas McFeeley, who wrote to Labour MP Tom Litterick asking him “in the name of humanity” to look into the conditions within the H-Blocks, especially the invasive search procedure and amount of food given to prisoners.152 Litterick then became one of a number of members of

Parliament to bring these concerns back to the NIO.153 Citing similar letters from relatives of prisoners, Robin Corbett Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, reminded Roy

Mason that despite the fact that prisoners had created the conditions now being cited by their relatives as causes for concern, “I am bound to say that if conditions similar to these were known to us outside of the UK, there would be an outcry against them, and rightly so.”154 In September Frank Maguire the independent MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone informed the Secretary of State that he was concerned over “the continued mishandling of the H-Block situation, which I think is morally wrong and inhuman.”155 O’Connor,

Corbett, and Maguire exemplified the shift that the dirty protest provoked in the discussion surrounding the prisons. Increasingly, those who called for change did so on humanitarian grounds, as Ó Fiaich had done in July.

Most of the calls and letters were met with the same sentiment, that political status was not on offer, and the prisoners could improve their own conditions any time

152 Mrs. Rosemary O’Connor to Mr. Litterick, July 20, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 153 Tom Litterick to Roy [Mason], August 7, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 154 Robin Corbett to Roy Mason, August 24, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 155 Frank Maguire to the Secretary of State, September 26, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

333 they wanted. Don Concannon, Minister of State for Northern Ireland, told Robin Corbett, for instance, “We have consistently made it plain that there will be no going back on the decision to phase out special category status. . . . It is for the prisoners concerned, and for those who support them from outside, to decide when to cease the present pointless protest.”156 Roy Mason’s response to Frank Maguire was similarly themed. “They may protest, they may impose upon themselves conditions of squalor, they may attempt to arouse public sympathy for their plight. But on the basic issue of special category there can be no concession.”157 Nevertheless, individuals and groups continued to call on the

NIO to intervene in the prisons. Tom McFeely’s wife, for instance, persistently wrote to politicians and called NIO staffers through the autumn on behalf of the Dungiven

Relative’s Action Committee, prompting SC Jackson to note in the margins of one letter of response that the letter was unlikely to satisfy her as she was the wife of “one of the most determined protesters,” although it was simultaneously “the best we can do.”158

As 1978 ended, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) began to more actively complain about their members’ expanded responsibilities. In November 1978, four of the staff responsible for cleaning dirty protestors cells, a process which involved donning a hazmat suit and spraying chemical cleaners onto cell walls, complained of rashes.

Although a prison doctor agreed to see, advise, and refer them to their own doctors, not one of the four followed through. The prison doctor surmised that the officers did not wish to lose the extra £4 a day they received for working the protesting cell blocks. The rash situation was only mentioned in a meeting to discuss the medical aspects of the dirty

156 J.D. Concannon to Robin Corbett, September 15, 1978, NIO/12/70, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 157 Roy Mason to Frank Maguire, October 30, 1978, NIO/12/70, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 158 S.C. Jackson on W.G. James to PS/Secretary of State, October19, 1978, NIO/12/70, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

334 protest because nine months later, the Prison Officers’ Association requested medical facilities for prison officers.159 At the time, showers were available to guards, but otherwise the medical staff solely treated prisoners, and they and the NIO were reluctant to expand their duties to include prison staff as well.160 Guards were, therefore, asking for privileges that they believed were owed to them based on their position, and the NIO was not inclined to give into these requests. This was not so very far removed from prisoners’ demands for privileges concurrent with the status of POWs. Both groups felt justified because they saw their appeals as being basic rights belonging to people in their respective situations. In this way, the prison officers were moving closer to being a second group attempting to pressure the NIO into forming a moral polity.

As of 1979, assassinations of prison officers were increasingly the backdrop to the tension between those officers and the NIO. These began in 1974 when the IRA killed retired senior officer William McCully, but did not become a regular fixture of the conflict until special category status was removed in 1976. That year the IRA killed two more prison officers and a clerk. They killed three more prison officers in 1977, and two officers in 1978, including Deputy Governor of the Maze, Albert Miles.161 In 1979, the

IRA killed seven prison officers, and the deputy Governor of Crumlin Road Jail. The

INLA killed a Crumlin Road Jail clerk and Agnes Wallace, a guard at Armagh Jail, the first woman prison officer to be killed in the conflict.162 The killings of prison guards and

159 A.E. McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider the Medical Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison, 2:30 pm 21 August, 1979, Dundonald House,” September 1979, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2-3. 160 A.E. McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider the Medical Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison, 2:30 pm 15 May, 1979, Dundonald House,” May 24, 1979, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3; McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider Medial Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison, 2:30 pm 21 August, 1979,” 3. 161 Prison Service Trust, “Memorials,” 2015, http://www.pst-ni.co.uk/memorials.htm. 162 Ibid.

335 employees indicated that the IRA and INLA now saw the prisons as a legitimate field of battle. Although the killings horrified many non-combatants, they were consistent with republican’s moral polity because a popular consensus within republican communities held that under criminalization prison staff were the arbiters of an illegitimate regime.

This threat to prison officers led them to further conflict with the NIO. After a number of murders of prison officers at Crumlin Road, the POA staged a brief industrial action. In November, NIO officials expressed relief that the officers’ protest stayed confined that prison, but noted that the POA was preparing to ask for more money from the NIO, and the killing of more prison officers was likely to provoke further protest which would be difficult to limit to a single prison.163 In the wake of further killings, the

POA did come to the NIO with demands for increased pay. The government granted officers what it called a “substantial increase,” but one that fell short of the POA’s demands. NIO officials, nevertheless, hoped that it would be enough to further discussion and keep the POA from industrial action164 For the time being, it was, but the wedge that republicans had driven between the POA and the NIO remained firmly in place.

Tension between the NIO and POA continued to brew as the dirty protest gained new protesters, this time in Armagh. Officials recorded that the women began their protest after a surprise cell search that was carried out on Thursday February 7, 1980, in which guards confiscated paramilitary uniforms and flags from several of the women’s cells. It was then that 32 protesting prisoners began to throw their waste, food, and trash

163 A.E. McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider Medical Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison at 2:30 pm on 13 November 1979 in Dundonald House,” November 26, 1979, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 5. 164 A.E. McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider Medical Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison at 2:30 pm on 12 February 1980 in Dundonald House,” March 6, 1980, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2.

336 out into the corridors 165 R. D. T. Gibson, the Deputy Director of Prison Operations indicated that the protest worsened over that weekend. By Monday February 11 Gibson reported, “the ground floor of the wing [is] fouled, the wire safety nets between the wings are also fouled and plastic bags of urine drip onto the floor below.”166 That same day,

Armagh’s few male prisoners, who had, to this point, served as orderlies, refused their typical cleaning duties. They told prisons staff that they were due to be released shortly,

“and risked being shot by the PIRA if they co-operated in a cleaning programme.”167

Like the paid prison staff, the orderlies found themselves within the contested space of the IRA and INLA’s moral polity. Assisting the prison administration meant positioning themselves against republican interests and, the orderlies recognized, made them legitimate targets in the eyes of the morality created by republican communities.

Gibson made two crucial additional points. First, Armagh’s prison staff agreed that this was the start of a sustained dirty protest from the women, despite the fact that they were not yet smearing excreta on cell walls. Guards noted that the prisoners stopped washing, and were only using the ablutions to brush their teeth. Moreover, six used their statutory visits to pass bags of clothing out of the prison to their relatives, and the others placed their extra clothing in bags in preparation to send it out of the prison.168 NIO and prison officials, therefore, had to create policies to deal with a long term protest from the women. Secondly, prison staff agreed that the women’s protest “was not motivated by the

165 E.N. Barry to P.S./ Mr. Alison, “Annex A: Armagh Prison—Protest Action by Non Conforming Prisoners,” February 12, 1980, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1, 2. 166 R.D.T. Gibson to Mr. Barry, “Search of the Thirty Three Protesting Prisoners in Armagh Prison and Its Aftermath,” February 12, 1980, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. This report notes that one of the thirty three protesting prisoners came off the protest entirely on Monday February 11. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid., 3.

337 search on the 7th February.” Gibson alleged that “there is evidence from a number of sources that they were considering such action even before Christmas and that it was alluded to in some of their letters. Today Dolores Price informed the governor that she had stopped them taking such action for a long time.”169 The women’s iteration of the dirty protest transferred this form of protest more explicitly to the realm of moral polity.

These were prisoners not simply responding to circumstances but, according to Gibson, using the weapons available to them, in this case, bodily functions, in an attempt to dictate the workings of the prison. The immediate effect of the women’s dirty protest was the intensification of the resistance coming from a second front in the prison war.

The women imprisoned in Armagh remembered a slightly different version of events. Síle Darragh recalled that on February 7 most of the protesting women prisoners were collecting lunch when twenty to thirty male guards came past the prisoners to block the way back to their cells. When Governor George Scott then announced a cell search some of the women attempted to push past the guards to get back to their cells and the guards “whaled into the women who had approached them, their fists and feet flying.

They grabbed women in head locks, twisted arms, kicked and punched.”170 Once this melee ended, the guards searched the cells and eventually let the women back into them.

The next day, the women reported being denied the use of the toilets, and, in Darragh’s estimation, “There was nothing else for it. The directive was given to empty the chamber pots out the cell windows or, if the opportunity presented itself, out onto the wing. We were now determined to make conditions as unpleasant for the screws as we could.”171

169 Ibid., 4. 170 Darragh, ‘John Lennon’s Dead,’ 57. 171 Ibid., 64.

338

This version of events emerged alongside the NIO and prison staff’s version of events so that, in April 1980, the NIO felt compelled to draft letters to the family of protesters countering the women’s narrative and assuring the families that the women had not been beaten, toilets were open, and the women had all the sanitary towels they needed.172 “Of course, we would propose to give publicity to both the answer and the letter, as further proof of the Government’s determination to do their part to maintain humanitarian regimes,” [emphasis added] J.E. Hannigan asserted.173 Whether or not the women were responding to events in the prison, and their dirty protest was not as premeditated as other sources suggested, they still managed to expand their front of the prison war and helped push the NIO to thinking of the protest in humanitarian terms.

The dirty protesters and their supporters put enough pressure on the government that on March 26 1980, Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins, announced a series of

“humanitarian” measures to be implemented in the prisons, particularly the Maze. While emphasizing that no concessions were to be made toward the restoration of special category status, and that the regime for protesting prisoners had to be more stringent than that offered to conforming prisoners, Atkins revealed that the protesting prisoners would be allowed two visits a month rather than one, a letter in and out every week as opposed to their single letter a month, and the opportunity to take exercise in athletic gear provided by the prison, rather than having to wear the uniform.174 Republicans summarily refused the new privileges, but the loyalists on the clean blanket protest, by this point

172 “Draft Letter to Parents/Next of Kin of Armagh Protesters,” n.d., probably April 1980, NIO/12/183A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 173 J.E. Hannigan to Mr. Alison, April 17, 1980, NIO/12/183A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 174 Ibid.; and “The Dirty Protest—Maze and Armagh Prisons,” April 1980, NIO/12/183A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1.

339 numbering only five, took the extra visits, letters, and gave their shoe sizes in anticipation of the new exercise rules.175 For republicans, these added privileges were less

“humanitarian” than they were bribes designed to coerce protesting prisoners into accepting criminalization, because at the same time he announced the new rules, Atkins announced that after April 1, 1980, no one would be granted special category status, regardless of the date on which the offense in question was committed.176 Hence, protesting republicans rejected the new privileges in favor of continuing to fight for the entirety of their moral polity within the prisons.

Meanwhile, gender relations in Ireland ensured that the Armagh dirty protest would be seen by many as a particularly urgent humanitarian crisis, lending credence to the IRA’s push for a moral polity and further straining relations between the NIO and prison staff. Simply by joining the IRA the protesting women in Armagh had rejected the traditional role of women in Irish society. As scholars Margaret Ward and Marie-Therese

McGivern argued, in Ireland, “When a woman steps outside the confines of family life by expressing controversial opinions, she is immediately desexed; but not only is she no longer a woman, her transcendence has transformed her into a malevolent presence.”177

Women republican prisoners fell perfectly into this mold until their dirty protest, when their menstrual blood covering the walls of their cells brought their sexuality back to the fore. At the same time, however, menstruation was taboo. As one of Armagh’s protesting ex-prisoners recalled, “In Ireland you don’t speak about your period. You don’t even mention the word. My mother hardly ever mentioned it to us and we were a family of

175 “The Dirty Protest—Maze and Armagh Prisons,” April 1980, 1. 176 Ibid. 177 Margaret Ward and Marie-Therese McGivern in McCafferty, The Armagh Women, 81, 82.

340 eight girls and one boy,” 178 The women’s dirty protest, therefore, forced anyone paying attention to the prisons into uncharted territory as the people of Ireland were forced to wrestle with the tensions between desexed militant and sexualized prisoner.

Those who ventured into this new frontier did so tentatively and by relying heavily on older tropes to describe the situation. Time and again, republicans described the Armagh women as “girls” forced into their situation by a brutal prison regime and an unfeeling government who denied political status in the first place.179 This characterization allowed republicans to neatly sidestep the issues imbedded in menstrual blood covered walls and frame the Armagh dirty protest as one in which the protesters were victims of an inhuman prison regime. Republicans could simultaneously maintain their calls for a moral polity because it did not deal explicitly with the issue of traditional gender roles, and, in fact, often made use of them, as was the case here. By making the women in Armagh victimized girls, republicans could call for a regime that prevented such things from happening in the first place. Their discomfort with the sexualized aspects of the women’s dirty protest notwithstanding, republicans used the women’s resistance to further their demands for the restoration of special category status. In April, just two months after the women embarked on their dirty protest, NIO officials declared the situation in Armagh to be “particularly vexing,” and worried that it was becoming

“the main focus of the Provisional’s propaganda campaign.”180

As far as they were able, prisoners also worked to publicize their own cause and elicit sympathy from the public. This frequently took the form of letters to the public or

178 Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 140. 179 Laura Weinstein, “The Significance of the Armagh Dirty Protest,” Éire-Ireland 41, 3 & 4 (2006): 22. 180 “The Dirty Protest—Maze and Armagh Prisons,” April 1980, 2.

341 to various groups and public figures smuggled out of the prisons. Republican newspapers frequently ran letters from prisoners, but so too did mainstream publications when they received such letters. As with much of the support for the protesters, prisoners’ letters emphasized calling for change in the prison for humanitarian reasons. At times, these letters came from prisoners still living with special category status, as was the case when an “Ardoyne prisoner of war,” reminded his readers of the irony that, “There is absolutely no difference between the lads in ‘H’ Block and ourselves here in this end of the camp,” and asked that his “friends” help to bring justice to the blanketmen being treated like animals in the cellular portion of the prison.181 In the days after the women began their dirty protest, blanketman Eugene McCormick penned a letter calling attention to inadequate medical care in the H-Blocks. He concluded, “Even if you can’t agree with the methods, you must at least admit that a war is in progress here. We all firmly believe that we are prisoners of war and our protest will continue until we are treated as such. In the interest of humanity, if not justice, you must help.”182 In the conclusion of his letter

McCormick tapped into one of the great strengths of the dirty protest. One did not need to support the ultimate aims of the IRA to believe that prisoners should not live in such horrifying conditions. The aim of the dirty protest was not an Ireland united by force. It was aimed at reestablishing the status of political prisoner which would in turn legitimize the fight for a united Ireland. That step in between provided important space for supporters who might disagree with the concept of a united Ireland, or hate the IRA’s use of violence, but who nevertheless, felt that prisoners of any persuasion should be treated

181 Ardoyne Prisoner of War to Friends, “The Sorrowful Plight of Political Prisoners,” n.d., H- Block/Hunger Strike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 182 Eugene McCormick to Tribune, February 29, 1980, H-Block/Hunger Strike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

342 with dignity. The prisons and the dirty protest made the moral polity, rather than the armed struggle, the key issue around which people could rally.

In January 1980, the protesting prisoners, in concert with the republican leadership outside the prisons, distilled their call for political status into 5 demands.

These were 1) The right to wear their own clothes; 2) no prison work; 3) free association;

4) one visit, one parcel, and one letter per week; 5) restoration of the remission lost while on protest.183 The five demands took the larger call for political status and turned it into actionable pieces. Here was the stuff of political status but couched in a way that also

“gave the Brits plenty of room to manoeuvre since no emotive terminology was attached.”184 The removal of “emotive terminology” was republican prisoners’ concession to the prison administrations and NIO who they now called on to implement these five changes to create what they determined would be a fairer prison experience. In effect, these were the five key components of the moral polity in the prisons, just as the

BPP’s ten point program was the actionable part of their moral polity.

The five demands were quickly picked up by the new National H-Block/Armagh committee. In October 1979 members of the Relatives Action Committees (RACs), Sinn

Fein, the IRSP, Women Against Imperialism, Peace People, the Socialist Labour Party,

Socialist Workers’ Group, the People’s Democracy, Irish Civil Rights Action League,

Trade Union Campaign Against Repression, and Conradh na Gaeilge attended a “Smash

H-Block” conference in West Belfast. At the conference, attendees elected a seventeen member “National H-Block Committee,” which would, after the start of the dirty protest in Armagh, become the “National H-Block/Armagh Committee.” This committee was

183 Bik McFarlane in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 104. 184 Ibid.

343 largely composed of Sinn Fein members, but it was headed by Capuchin priest, Father

Piaras O Dúill and included members of the People’s Democracy and IRSP.185 The new body quickly launched an international campaign to lobby support for the prisoners and pressure the government to grant political status to the protesting prisoners. It was this campaign which the prisoners aided by writing and smuggling countless letters from their cells.

Even as the dirty protest helped republican prisoners make some gains between

1978, and 1980 and increased their visibility and support, protesting prisoners did not feel the dirty protest was sustainable indefinitely or that it would achieve their ultimate goals, alone. The protest had sown the seeds of discontent between prison warders and the NIO and drawn minimal concessions for the prisoners in the form of the March 26 package. It also engendered support on humanitarian grounds and brought together a broad coalition of activists under the National H-Block/Armagh Committee which took the plight of the prisoners to the international media. When the protest spread to Armagh, it resulted in a second prison where order broke down and orderlies refused to do their jobs, further stressing the NIO and prison administrations. During the dirty protest republican prisoners and leadership refined the demand for “political status” into five demands which reflected the humanitarian calls for change that emerged during the dirty protest and gave the British room to avoid the term “political status.”

Yet, as much as their detractors liked to compare republicans to animals who enjoyed living in filth, the dirty protest was one which required considerable mental stamina to sustain, for precisely the opposite reason. There was nothing pleasant about

185 F. Stuart Ross, Smashing H-Block: The Rise and Fall of the Popular Campaign Against Criminalization, 1976-1982 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 62-63.

344 living amidst excreta, rotting food, and maggots, and every protester knew that if he or she conformed to prison rules, they could live under a much more lenient prison administration. In the H-Blocks, protesting prisoners referred to leaving the protest as

“squeaky booting,” a reference to the sound the boots of the prison uniform made as a prisoner left his protesting block for a conforming one. As far back as November 1979 there were indications that the protesting prisoners were looking for a way to, once again, escalate their protest. That month the NIO and prison doctors pondered a prison comm written by “Tony” to another blanketman, Sean which guards seized during a cell search of H5, which lamented,

I don’t know if 12 are going to squeaky boot or not and I suppose we will be the

last to hear about it if they are . . . . I think the protest has reached a stage where

the men don’t know what to think from one day to the other. One day they are

sound and the next they are ready to squeaky and if the flood gates open we won’t

be able to stop it no matter what.186

Despite Tony’s rather pessimistic outlook, the NIO officials and prison doctors who ended up in possession of the note, saw little reason for optimism because “the letter itself was evidence of the leadership’s determination to reassert its authority.”187 Indeed, they simultaneously remarked that newly sentenced men joining the protest had, lately, roughly equaled those abandoning it, and the numbers of protesters remained roughly the same since the previous February.188 At the same time, blanketmen remembered 1979 to

186 Tony to Sean, n.d., HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 187 A.E. McKechnie, “Note of a Meeting to Consider Medical Aspects of the Dirty Protest at Maze Prison at 2:30 pm on 13 November 1979 in Dundonald House,” November 26, 1979, HSS/32/1/15/1A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 188 Ibid.

345 be a particularly brutal year in terms of guards’ treatment of protesting prisoners, a time when it seemed a concerted effort was being made by those guards to break the protest.189

In this way, the dirty protest which emerged in Armagh Prison three months later, in

February 1980, came at a time when many were beginning to feel that something more needed to be done to reinstate special category status and bring the moral polity back to the prisons.

Hunger Strike

The next phase of the Irish republican war against criminalization began some months later, in October 1980, when the IRA announced that they would escalate the protest, once again, and stage a hunger strike in the H-Blocks, but this decision did not come easily or without creating conflict of its own. Throughout the summer of 1980

Cardinal Ó Fiaich negotiated Humphrey Atkins and the NIO, attempting to resolve the conflict in the prisons, but protesting prisoners held out little hope for the success of the negotiations.190 So little faith was placed in the Ó Fiaich/NIO negotiations that through that same summer the prisoners’ leadership, including Brendan Hughes, OC of the H-

Blocks, Bobby Sands, Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, Tommy McKearney, Richard O’Rawe, and Jake Jackson, all imprisoned in H3 by this time, began to discuss going ahead with a hunger strike in earnest.191 Hughes was also in communication with Mairéad Farrell, the

OC of Armagh’s republican prisoners, and the two discussed the pros, cons, and likely

189 For examples see Campbell, McKeown, O’Hagan ed., “Brutality and Resistance, January 1979 to September 1980,” in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 84-106. 190 Bik McFarlane in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 106. 191 Ibid., 108.

346 consequences of such an action.192 Síle Darragh remembered that the idea of a hunger strike had been suggested as early as 1979, but that the IRA leadership had discouraged use of the tactic. The prisoners’ first hurdle, therefore, was the IRA leadership, who were against the use of hunger strike, believing it would put too great a strain on the organization and posed too great a risk.193

This was, at least, in part, due to the unsanctioned solo hunger strike of one of their own. On May 19, Martin Meehan, a high ranking figure within the PIRA and veteran prisoner, having served time as a detainee and special category prisoner before being sentenced to the H-Blocks, announced that he was leaving the protest and intended to begin a hunger strike to protest his most recent conviction.194 In late March 1980 the

Diplock Courts sentenced Meehan to twelve years for conspiracy to kidnap and false imprisonment. Meehan maintained his innocence and commenced his hunger strike on

May 22 without seeking permission from the IRA army council.195 The reasons for fearing Meehan’s solo hunger strike were heavily based in the moral polity.

The hunger strike being proposed by Brendan Hughes and the prisoners’ leadership was a collective one both in terms of who would refuse food and who would benefit from any concessions won by the protest. Meehan’s strike was singular. He undertook it alone and his reasons for doing so were personal. He sought redress for his contention that he was convicted on evidence given by a state-paid perjurer. If he achieved his aim, he, alone, would benefit. If he failed, he stood poised to stop the

192 Darragh, John Lennon’s Dead, 99. 193 Ibid., 98. 194 R.A. Harrington to Michael Alexander, July 23, 1980, PREM 19/282 f228, The National Archives, Kew, available via Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/120454. 195 Ibid.

347 collective hunger strike before it began. Even if he succeeded the blanketmen believed that he could damage the strike that they proposed. In the words of McFarlane, “The Brits were now in a position to monitor the physical effects of a prolonged hunger strike on the individual, but also to assess the support-rallying potential of the Republican Movement as they took to the streets to highlight Martin’s case.”196 Meehan pressed ahead with his hunger strike, giving his republican comrades little choice but to support him.

The NIO agreed that Meehan’s hunger strike was unlikely to benefit republicans.

In July, five days after Meehan began refusing liquids as well as food, R.A. Harrington of the NIO wrote to Downing Street assessing the situation,

PIRA have done their best in the last few days to give the impression that he had

always been ‘one of theirs’ . . . But Meehan has lost status by being unable to

stomach the ‘dirty protest’, and his violent reputation means that there is probably

some relief, even among generally sympathetic members of the republican

community, that he is in custody. For this and other reasons he would be a less

effective martyr now than he might once have been.197

Harrington understood that Meehan’s hunger strike forced republicans to unite around a man who had put his personal situation before that of the whole of his organization, and this made the possibility of his death less likely to result in a mass reaction from people on the streets. In the end, the NIO did not have the chance to see whether republicans could rally they sort of protest that they did in the wake of Michael Gaughan’s death, because Cardinal Ó Fiaich finally convinced Meehan to end his fast after 66 days.

Nevertheless, in those 66 days both the NIO and prisoners had, indeed, learned lessons

196 Ibid. 197 R.A. Harrington to Michael Alexander, July 23, 1980.

348 from the experience. The NIO got the “test run” republicans feared, and, as Harrington’s assessment of the strike shows, were able to begin to analyze the support brought to bear for Meehan’s strike. The prisoners, meanwhile, saw a prisoner force the entire republican movement into supporting his cause when they, otherwise, advised against it.

The prisoners continued to lobby for a collective hunger strike to increase pressure on the British to grant their five demands despite the dangers posed by Meehan’s hunger strike. They were inadvertently helped by the president of the Welsh Nationalist

Party, Plaid Cymru. In May 1980, around the time Meehan announced his hunger strike,

Gwynfor Evans, threatened to hunger strike to the death over the British Conservative

Party’s refusal to honor a party manifesto pledge to give Wales a Welsh language station on a new fourth television channel. Having announced that unless the government capitulated he would begin his hunger strike on October 6, on September 17 William

Whitelaw, then Home Secretary, announced that the Tories would make good on their pledge. 198 The Secretary of State for Wales assured the press that the British government was not bowing to the threat of violence introduced via Evans’ fast, but because of moderate appeals from the Welsh people.199 It was difficult, however, to discount the pressure created by Evans’ threatened hunger strike. In this situation, Brendan Hughes and the protesting prisoners continued to push the republican leadership for a hunger strike, arguing that Cardinal Ó Fiaich’s negotiations had come to naught, and the

198 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 22. 199 Cabinet, “Conclusions of a Meeting of the Cabinet held at 10 Downing Street on Thursday 18 September 1980 at 10:30 a.m.,” September 18, 1980, CAB 128/68, The National Archive, Kew, available via Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/113795, 5.

349 situation in the prisons demanded nothing less. Shortly, thereafter, Sinn Fein announced that the prisoners would begin a hunger strike on October 27.200

Plans for the hunger strike ensured that this would be a collective endeavor, the opposite of Meehan’s fast. Even before gaining permission from the IRA Army Council,

Hughes and the prison leadership asked for volunteers from the protesting blocks and whittled the list down to seven, six IRA men and one INLA volunteer. Conscious of needing public support, they removed men from consideration whose convictions might reflect negatively on their cause. This included McFarlane who was in prison for his part in the bombing and machine gunning of the Bayardo Bar, an operation that saw five people killed and was seen by many as sectarian retribution for the Miami Showband killings.201 Instead, they carefully chose men who represented all parts of the province.202

Brendan Hughes stepped down from his position as OC of the H-Blocks, passing that position to Bobby Sands, to lead the strike. Raymond McCartney Sean McKenna, Leo

Green, Thomas McFeeley, and Thomas McKearney were selected to join Hughes. The

INLA put forward John Nixon. Those not hunger striking, themselves, began, once again, to write letters soliciting support from the outside world.

With the republicans poised to begin their hunger strike, and miniscule letters, once again, pouring out of the prison to elicit support, Humphrey Atkins issued an uncompromising statement on the government’s position. “The Government will not and

200 Bik McFarlane in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 112. 201 Ibid., 111. On July 31, 1975, outside Banbridge, the UVF shot and killed three members of the Miami Showband who were on the way home from a performance. Two UVF men also died when their bomb exploded prematurely during the incident. McFarlane’s IRA unit carried out the attack on the Bayardo Bar August 13, 1975, less than two weeks later. 202 Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to Cabinet Defence and Overseas Policy Committee, “Northern Ireland: The Security and Prisons Background,” November 13, 1980, CAB 148/191, The National Archives, Kew, available via Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/116808, Annex A, 1.

350 cannot make any concessions whatever on the principle of political status for prisoners who claim a political motive for their crimes,” he assured listeners.203 He argued that the circumstances leading to the implementation of special category status were different than the circumstances of October 1980, and that since March the government had offered a series of concessions to protesting prisoners which they refused to take, including an increased number of letters and visits. Atkins, once again, laid the blame for the horrifying conditions in the protesting H-Blocks squarely at the feet of republican prisoners. He concluded by reiterating the Government’s policy on hunger strikes. “The

Government’s position on hunger strikes . . . was made clear in 1974 and has not changed

. . . . [hunger strikers] shall not be fed artificially . . . . If therefore prisoners choose to try to starve themselves to death they may well die.”204 The statement was largely for the benefit of the public who would soon hear news reports of the hunger strike. The prisoners had heard this rhetoric before.

If most of the statement took the form of a stick, Atkins did offer one significant carrot. In light of recent discussions, he announced that “The Government have decided to abolish this prison uniform as such, and to substitute civilian-type clothing.”205 The removal of the prison uniform in favor of “civilian-type” clothing might have carried some weight had the prisoners’ primary concern been their appearance in prison or even their personal comfort, but these were, emphatically, not their concerns. The protesting prisoners had, to this point, made it clear that, where the uniform was concerned, they

203 Humphrey Atkins, “Statement By the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, RT Hon Humphrey Atkins MP, On Threatened Hunger Strike at HM Prison, Maze,” October 24, 1980, NIO/12/189/, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 204 Ibid., 4. 205 Ibid., 3.

351 objected to literally being covered in a symbol of criminality. Since “civilian-type” clothing did nothing to address criminalization it was just another uniform to protesting prisoners. The NIO had not addressed the primary violation of the republican’s moral polity, and so Hughes, Nixon, Green, McKenna, McFeeley, McKearney, and McCartney subsequently refused all meals from breakfast on October 27.

The collective nature of the 1980 hunger strike was evident with an increased number of protesting prisoners as the fast began. The NIO reported that 150 prisoners joined the dirty protest between October 27 and November 7 so that, by that latter date, the number of dirty protesters swelled to 510 in the H-Blocks and 28 in Armagh, with an additional 53 prisoners refusing to work.206 Although not all 150 new protesters remained on the dirty protest—by November 14 their numbers were down to 488 in the H-

Blocks—by the end of the hunger strike in December, the NIO reported 466 dirty protesters in the H-Blocks, indicating that the majority of new protesters decided to stay, or had, at least, been replaced with new protesters.207 By the end of November, seven republican remand prisoners in the Crumlin Road Jail began staging token three day fasts in solidarity.208 The hunger strike, thereby, reinvigorated the protest for political status. It created an increased number of prisoners calling for concessions that would help to create a moral polity in the prisons.

In a somewhat ironic twist, by defying the prison administration and hunger striking, the strikers almost immediately achieved some of their goals, but only for themselves. Initially, the prison administration left all seven in their dirty protest cells,

206 “The Republican Hunger Strikes: 27 October -19 December 1980,” n.d., NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 3. 207 Ibid., 4, 10. 208 Ibid., 7.

352 some with cellmates who were still eating, but on November 6 they were moved to clean, furnished cells in one wing of H3 to facilitate medical supervision.209 Here, they were treated as “unfit” conforming prisoners, and as such, were not required to wear the prison uniform or work, and were no longer subject to the withdrawal of privileges or loss of remission associated with protesting prisoners who did not conform to prison rules.210 By eschewing a basic human necessity the hunger strikers gained special privileges within the jail. They did not, however, gain the crucial status of political prisoners, nor did these privileges extend to all republicans, so they continued to refuse all nourishment except salt water.

On December 1, three women in Armagh joined the hunger strike. Síle Darragh became Armagh’s OC as Mairéad Farrell stepped down to join the strike alongside Mary

Doyle and Mairéad Nugent. They issued a statement placing “full responsibility for the

Armagh jail and H-Block situation [on] the British government who for four years have treated the issue with the utmost contempt, and have ignored all protests and widespread expressions of concern and have allowed the problem to drift to this final stage.”211 All three hailed from Belfast. In choosing their strikers the women faced the issue of a much smaller pool of potential strikers, owing to their small prison population and the fact that not every protesting prisoner was an IRA volunteer. Darragh explained, “Many of the women had been victims of the British government’s criminalisation policy. Most of those subjected to and victims of this policy had not been volunteers. They couldn’t be

209 Ibid., 3. 210 Ibid., 4. 211 Mairéad Farrell, Mairéad Nugent, Mary Doyle, “Announcement of Armagh Hunger Strike,” November 1980, H-Block/Hunger Strike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

353 considered for the hunger strike, no matter how strong their commitment.”212 This made the women’s protest distinct from the men’s as all prisoners in the protesting H-Blocks belonged to the IRA or INLA. It was, however, indicative of the potential for support that the hunger strike held.

The women joined the hunger strike just as the 7 men in the H-Blocks reached a crucial stage, medically and prisoners were escalating the fast. On December 2 the men were transferred to the prison hospital where they could be monitored more closely.213

Twenty three more men joined the hunger strike in the H-Blocks on December 15 and seven new hunger strikers were added to the total in the H-Blocks the next day.214 The republicans showed little sign of giving in. Yet, by the time the 30 new volunteers refused food, Sean McKenna’s health was already causing grave concern, and Thomas

McKearney was rapidly approaching the same state.215 When McKenna was moved out of the prison to Musgrave Park Hospital on December 18, events took on an immediate urgency. Prison authorities reported that at this stage Brendan Hughes wished to end the hunger strike, but McFeeley refused. As leader of the hunger strike Hughes knew that negotiations were going on with the British government and had information that a document was on its way from the Foreign Office in London which contained the possible basis for a settlement. When the prison authorities refused his requests to see

Bobby Sands, Hughes requested medical treatment for McKenna, ending the latter’s hunger strike as he lay at the point of death and signaling that he was not willing to let his

212 Darragh, John Lennon’s Dead, 100.; This mixture of republican, IRA, and sympathetic women prisoners continued through the 1980s. Another former prisoner remembered that this could make organizing and maintaining a command structure difficult. Sinéad, Interview with Author, November 2011. 213 “The Republican Hunger Strikes: 27 October -19 December 1980,” n.d., 7. 214 Ibid., 9, 10, 17. 215 Ibid., 10.

354 comrades die.216 Hughes then requested to see Sands again, and this time the contact was allowed. The two H-Block leaders spoke for a time, and subsequently, each of the remaining six hunger strikers requested food and medical attention, ending their hunger strikes. Sands was then allowed to see the 30 other hunger striking prisoners and relay this news to them.217

Hughes’ move to end the hunger strike was that of a man working within the ideology of a moral polity. According to a 2011 admission by Danny Morrison, who in

1980, as a leader of Sinn Fein, was a key intermediary between the hunger strikers and the republican leadership outside the prison, Hughes ended the strike without having won any concessions. Contrary to the long held idea that Hughes received the documents from

London at the eleventh hour and used them as a basis for ending the strike, as Morrison put it, “we on the outside finessed the sequence of events for the sake of morale and at a midnight press conference merged the secret arrival of a British government document

(promising a more enlightened regime: falsely as it turned out) with the ending of the hunger strike.” This was done, Morrison recalled, because “It was either that or admit— which to the republican base was inconceivable—that Brendan had ended the strike without getting a thing.”218 Hughes had gained nothing for the republican movement as a whole, perhaps, but he saved Sean McKenna, and in doing so he protected a weaker member of his community. He had pushed for the betterment of the whole, but would not do so at the expense of a weaker individual.

216 David Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 28. 217 “The Republican Hunger Strikes: 27 October -19 December 1980,” n.d.,11. 218 Danny Morrison, “The Tragedy of 1980,” January 3, 2011, Andersonstown News, http://www.longkesh.info/2011/01/03/the-tragedy-of-1980/.

355

Moreover, it is not entirely accurate to say that the 1980 hunger strike achieved nothing. Simply embarking on the strike revived the morale of the protesting prisoners. In the immediate aftermath of the hunger strike, the prison administration of both the H-

Blocks and Armagh undeniably acknowledged the command structure of the IRA.

Although they followed Hughes’ instructions to intervene and save Sean McKenna’s life without consulting Hughes’ OC, Bobby Sands, and they didn’t allow Hughes to see

Sands at a crucial time in the strike, prison authorities allowed the two men to speak later and let Sands relay information to the other hunger striking prisoners. Indeed, the fact that authorities barred a meeting between Hughes and Sands when they took McKenna out of the prison indicates that they understood the PIRA hierarchy but isolated Hughes, strategically, in order to push him into having to make the decision to end the strike, alone. When Father Brendan Meagher, who had been working as an intermediary between the republican leadership, the prisoners, and the British through the strike, arrived at the prison that night (10:30 according to the NIO report) with documents from the government and a request to see both Hughes and Sands, he was granted this request.

His request that Danny Morrison be sent to Armagh was denied, but Meagher, himself, was dispatched the next morning for the job. At Armagh he spoke to Síle Darragh, who the NIO called “clearly the women prisoners’ spokeswoman.”219 Whatever the government might say about criminality and there being no distinction between the protesting prisoners and the ODCs, as the hunger strike ended, the prison administration certainly treated the protesting prisoners as distinct and acknowledged and used their hierarchy.

219 “The Republican Hunger Strikes: 27 October -19 December 1980,” n.d.,12, 13.

356

The two documents which arrived with Father Meagher late on December 18 were a thirty four page missive entitled, “Regimes in Northern Ireland prisons. Prisoners’ day-to-day life with Special Emphasis on Maze and Armagh,” and a shorter statement titled, “What Will Happen When the Protest Ends.”220 Atkins delivered the latter to the

House of Commons the next day. “Within a few days clothing provided by their families will be given to any prisoners giving up their protest, so that they can wear it during recreation, association, and visits.” Atkins announced. They would simultaneously be issued civilian style clothing for the work day. Prisoners who came off the protest would also be entitled to 8 letters, 4 parcels, and 4 visits a month. Lost remission would be decided on a case by case basis, and, Atkins assured his audience, “we want to work out for every prisoner the kinds of available activity which we think suit him best—work . . . vocational training and educational training.”221 Atkins’ statement provided the blueprint for a more liberal prison regime, but it did not fully grant the hunger strikers’ demands, a fact which Atkins obliquely acknowledged when he reaffirmed that political status was not on offer.

The hunger strikers responded with a statement of their own which indicated the prisoners’ struggle was far from over. They reminded the British, “that failure by the

British Government to act in a responsible manner towards ending the conditions which forced us to a hunger strike will not only lead to inevitable and continual strife within the

220 David McKittrick and Fionnuala O’Connor, “From the Archives: Documents Reveal No Major Concessions,” December 19, 1980, reprinted December 18, 2015, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/from-the-archive-documents-reveal-no-major-concessions- 1.2468730. 221 Humphrey Atkins, “Northern Ireland (Prisons),” December 19, 1980, House of Commons, Historical Hansard, HC Deb 19 December 1980 vol 996 cc674-9, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1980/dec/19/northern-ireland-prisons.

357

H-Blocks but will show quite clearly the intransigence of the British government.”222 By all accounts, “continual strife” was exactly what Sands believed would happen, and he immediately began to lobby for a second hunger strike which he would lead. The republican leadership was, now, doubly cautious about beginning another hunger strike, as there was still considerable face to be saved from the hunger strike that had just ended.

As Danny Morrison later confessed, “Bobby—who turned out to be right—did not believe the British had any intention of working the unsecured promises contained in the document. But we begged him to put them to the test and that if the administration made things impossible then it could be claimed that the Brits were reneging.”223 Republicans knew that if the British implemented a series of moderate reforms, those reforms might satisfy moderates, drawing support away from republicans’ demands for political status.

The moral polity could be undermined by concessions that were “good enough.”

The Northern Ireland Office was all too keenly aware of their need to be seen upholding their end of the bargain, but this paradoxically, put them in a position where they continued to unintentionally support aspects of political status. Because the documents created by the British and delivered to all prisoners after the hunger strike left room for interpretation—Sands remarked that he could “drive a bus” through the holes in the document—certain issues remained to be negotiated.224 This was left to Sands, who the NIO continued to recognize as a spokesman for the prisoners, despite many reservations about the practice. At the end of January, E.N. Barry worried that while

222 “I have been asked to issue the following supplied statement. . . having completed 53 days of hunger strike . . . ,” December 18, 1980, H-Block/Hungerstrike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland; “The Republican Hunger Strikes: 27 October -19 December 1980,” n.d.,14. 223 Morrison, “The Tragedy of 1980,” January 3, 2011. 224 Séanna Walsh, Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 130.

358 continuing to negotiate through Sands was politically expedient and prevented a third party from misrepresenting the thoughts of either the prisoners or NIO, “such contact undermines the basis of our criminalization policy; under this there is no such thing as a special terrorist prisoner or need for their spokesmen.”225 Additionally, by recognizing and working through Sands the NIO forced the prison administration to do the same, which governors complained undermined their authority, and led to other paramilitary groups demanding the recognition of their OCs.226 Having ended their hunger strike in a position of relative weakness, republican prisoners were, nevertheless, forcing prison officers and the NIO into positions these groups did not wish to occupy because the NIO feared that the situation was too “delicate” to immediately cease communicating through

Sands.227 NIO officials continued to seek a way to undermine the prisoners’ hierarchy, through February, even as they negotiated the ending of the hunger strike with Sands.228

A Second Hunger Strike

Meanwhile, republicans prepared for a second hunger strike, while simultaneously upholding the IRA Army Council’s directive to “seek a principled settlement” to the first. In mid-January the prisoners agreed that two wings of protesting prisoners would move to clean cells and cease their dirty protest in preparation for receiving furniture and their own clothes.229 A wing from H3 and one from H5 were subsequently chosen to conform on an experimental basis. These prisoners washed and

225 E.N. Barry to Mr. Blelloch, “Recognition of Paramilitary Spokesmen,” January 28, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 226 Ibid. 227 Ibid., 1, 2. 228 Brian Blackwell to Mr. Blelloch, “Attacking the Prisoners’ Command Structure in the Maze,” February 10, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 229 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 31-33.

359 received furniture, but on Friday January 23, the prison authorities refused to give the men their own clothes. Livid at this breach of their agreement with the prison administration and NIO, the now-conforming prisoners decided to destroy the furniture in their cells in protest the following Monday.230

Following the destruction of the cells, Bobby Sands issued a statement which outlined the reciprocities which they expected, but were denied. In the first place, he argued, failing to give the prisoners their own clothes contradicted Atkins’ December 18th statement. This meant that the British were “in violation of the whole spirit of cooperation which followed the ending of the hunger strike.”231 The wings who conformed on a trial basis were the first proof of the prisoners’ good will. Their commitment to work toward peace within the prisons was further evidenced when

Governor Hilditch asked for a week’s grace before moving prisoners to clean cells and giving them their clothes, which Sands agreed to during negotiations. In his statement

Sands noted that Father Toner, the prison chaplain, could attest to the prisoners’ acquiescence in this case.232 Furthermore, Sands explained that there was “no legitimate reason why prisoners should not have been allowed their own clothes because after 4 p.m. on a Friday, except for orderlies, there is no prison work carried out and all prisoners are allowed to wear their own (repeat their own) clothes.”233 The prisoners, then, argued that they had conformed as the British requested in Atkins’ December 18 statement, but the British had not upheld their end of the bargain in response. The British had ignored

230 Ibid., 35. 231 Bobby Sands and National H-Block/Armagh Committee, “Prisoners’ Statement,” January 24, 1981, H- Block/Hungerstrike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 232 Ibid. 233 Ibid., 2.

360 the efforts of republicans which were offered in good faith, thus violating the uneasy truce that existed in the winter of 1980/1981. This confirmed the duplicitous nature of the

British government, a position not tolerated within the moral polity.

With the failure of the experiment in conforming, Sands could argue that attempts to reach a principled settlement to the first hunger strike had failed due to the intransigence of the prison authorities, and he continued to plan a second hunger strike.

As they had during the first hunger strike prisoners began to write and smuggle letters out of the prison, seeking support. On February 15 guards discovered a series of these letters during a wing shift in H3. Included were a letter from Bobby Sands to the revolutionary government of Angola, letters from Francis Hughes to the F.L.Q. in Quebec, and a letter from Raymond McCreesh to E.T.A. in the Basque Country.234 The similarities between the letters indicated that the prisoners were working from a single template, one that emphasized that the British government betrayed the prisoners, after the first hunger strike, forcing them into a second strike. As McCreesh’s letter to E.T.A. put it, the

British,

produced a 30 page document which along with certain stated elaborations

contained the basis for a just and principled settlement. But now 6 weeks later and

no further on, it has become infuriatingly clear to all on protest that the ‘step by

step’ approach was but a play by the Brits to release the evergrowing amount of

pressure which had been brought to bear on them as a result of our protest.235

The idea that the British had the chance to create a “just” settlement, but betrayed the prisoners once the pressure of the hunger strike was gone, echoed in all three letters. Each

234 E. Dalzell to Mr. Blelloch, February 20, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 235 Raymond McCreesh to The E.T.A., February 9, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

361 man then indicated that the situation led the prisoners to the conclusion that they had no other choice but to begin a second hunger strike, which would start on March 1, and called on the letter’s recipients to support them in that hunger strike.

The way in which each man identified himself was telling. “Bobby Sands

RSPOW H-Blocks Long Kesh,” Sands signed his letter.236 Francis Hughes opened his letter by indicating that he was a “Republican P.O.W. H-Blocks.”237 McCreesh signaled that he was “Raymond McCreesh R.S.P.O.W. H-Block 5 Long Kesh Concentration

Camp.”238 Sands, Hughes, and McCreesh, who were, not coincidentally, the first three

IRA members to embark on the second hunger strike, each identified himself, not as an

IRA volunteer, but as a republican prisoner of war, or a republican socialist prisoner of war. This is significant given the fact that the intended recipients of the letters were unlikely to disapprove of the writers’ ties to the IRA or to the violence employed by the

IRA in its struggle to drive the British from Ireland and reunite North and South. Sands,

Hughes, and McCreesh’s signatures put their politics in the foreground. They were prisoners of war who were struggling to be recognized as such, rather than being classified as criminals. Identifying themselves as “republican” linked them with the IRA, but crucially, with its politics as opposed to its military goals.

Francis Hughes expressly stated this in another intercepted letter, to “the members of all Irish trade unions.” In the letter, Hughes acknowledged that there would be people who received the letter who ignored it based on its writer. Nevertheless, he asked to be heard out because, “the fact remains that like or dislike, admire or hate the I.R.A. and its

236 Bobby Sands to the Revolutionary Government of Angola, n.d., NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 237 Frank Hughes to F.L.O., n.d. NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 238 Raymond McCreesh to The E.T.A., February 9, 1981.

362 methods, the struggle is politically motivated.”239 The IRA’s “clear” aim, he explained, was a 32-County democratic socialist republic, a political goal, not a criminal one.

Having argued for the political nature of the IRA’s struggle he went on to describe how the British had betrayed their word and forced prisoners into a second hunger strike. In

Hughes’ telling, the 1980 hunger strike ended with the British espousing “a strong commitment to ending this terrible situation,” in the H-Blocks, but the British subsequently “attempted to go totally back on their word.”240 With this, Hughes justified the upcoming hunger strike in a way that would make the prisoners sympathetic figures, but at the same time he shed light on how they believed relationships between prisoners and the government should be structured. Promises, written or not, should be honored and fulfilled. In short, he described the reciprocities that republicans believed should exist between prisoners and the government.

As letters soliciting support began to pour out of the H-Blocks, the women made their case to be allowed to take part in this second hunger strike. With far fewer prisoners, the women began this endeavor with an already reduced candidate base. Nevertheless, they looked for volunteers to join the strike set to begin in the H-blocks. One woman who put her name forward was determined to be too underweight. Two women reconsidered their initial decision to put their names forward. Nevertheless, Síle Darragh wrote to the

Army Council to be allowed to go on hunger strike, herself. She reasoned that “If there is no hunger strike here [in Armagh] it will be seen by the British as weakness.” She said

239 Frank Hughes to The Members of all Irish Trade Unions, n.d., NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 240 Ibid.

363 that she could be ready to strike by March 8.241 Ultimately, the Army Council refused her participation and quashed the idea of a second hunger strike in Armagh altogether.242

Bobby Sands began his hunger strike March 1, 1981, five years to the day of the loss of special category status. As a whole, the 1981 hunger strike was designed to build pressure and add supporters from outside in a way that the previous hunger strike had not.

Like the previous fast hunger strikers were chosen from across the six provinces of the

North, but instead of all protesters joining the hunger strike at once, hunger strikers would join at regular intervals so that they did not reach critical points in their strikes at the same time. In this way, they planned to avoid the crisis point reached during the first hunger strike where a single prisoner grew weaker than those around him who had fasted for the same length of time. Instead, hunger strikers would join the strike alone, leaving that prisoner in charge of his own hunger strike and nothing else. The individual would, therefore, feel the pressure of representing the whole, rather than protecting a weaker member of the community as Hughes felt in December 1980.

With the advent of the 1981 strike there was a general expectation that the first men to embark on the hunger strike would die, and prisoners began to prepare themselves for that eventuality. An intercepted comm from Tony O’Hara, brother of the first INLA man to join the hunger strike, Patsy O’Hara, confessed that he asked Michael Devine to refrain from adding himself as the INLA’s second hunger striker because “he is now O.C. and I will have to take over if he goes on it. I don’t want to unless it is absolutely necessary—as I will be too emotionally affected if my deartháir [brother] dies—and that

241 “To Liam Og from Armagh,” February 18, 1981, in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 53, 54. 242 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 56.

364 may harm my judgement—a level head is needed at a time like that.”243 In the end,

O’Hara’s argument prevailed, and Michael Devine became the third INLA man to join the strike, after Kevin Lynch, by which point Patsy O’Hara had died, and Tony O’Hara was too close to release to be considered for a prison leadership position.

With Sands refusing food the other protesting prisoners moved to support him and, for a brief time, this increased tensions between prison warders and the NIO. On

March 2, the protesting prisoners ended their dirty protest.244 The NIO worried that this was only temporary, and in any case, that the de-escalation was not “motivated by a genuine desire to end this form of protest,” but rather “a pre-planned tactical move designed to focus attention on the hunger strike.”245 For the time being, however, the reaction of prison officers to the ending of the no-wash protest was a more pressing issue.

E.N. Barry of the NIO noted warily that the discipline staff in the protesting blocks received a £3 per day allowance while the industrial cleaners received double that rate daily. He feared the loss of this pay would not sit well with the guards and might color their reaction if the prisoners were issued furniture and proceeded to smash it.246 By

March 6, there were reportedly “a lot of ‘rumblings’” from prison staff regarding this lost pay.247 A March 25 situation report indicated that the issue had been resolved, but rumors persisted that staff in the H-Blocks staged a “go-slow” action in retaliation.248 Protesting

243 Tony O’Hara to Kevin Lynch, February 20, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 244 E. Dalzell, “Situation Report—Monday 2 March 1981—10.30 am,” NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 245 E.N. Barry to Mr. Blelloch, “HMP Maze: Blanket Protest,” March 2, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1. 246 Ibid., 2. 247 E. Dalzell, “Situation at HMP Maze—Friday 6 March (AM),” March 6, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1-2. 248 E. Dalzell, “Situation Report—Wednesday 25 March (AM),” March 25, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1.

365 prisoners had, once again, created tension between prison guards and the NIO, however briefly, an indication that escalating their protest had, indeed, forced warders and the NIO to respond to their actions, rather than the other way around.

Five days into Sands’ hunger strike Frank Maguire, longtime champion of the plight of prisoners, died, leaving his parliamentary seat in Fermanagh-South Tyrone open. This resulted in a by-election, and the republican leadership decided to run Bobby

Sands for the seat. These events have been much discussed in the literature on the Irish republican prison war, and scholars frequently cite Sands’ candidacy as a watershed moment in the conflict, the moment where the IRA and Sinn Fein began their move toward peace and electoral politics. Certainly it was a crucial step in that process, though a close examination of the relationship between republican and loyalist prisoners in the years preceding 1981 lend credence to the argument that the seeds of the peace process were being sown in the prisons as early as 1972, and it only came to be viewed as the genesis of the embrace of electoral politics because subsequent decisions made it so. In

March, 1981, peace and politics were not the primary issues for republicans. Many rank and file IRA members remained wary of entering a political contest that would draw focus away from the armed struggle. A meeting of approximately 150 republicans from

Fermanagh-South Tyrone resoundingly voted against running Sands for Parliament. The leadership present at the meeting, including Gerry Adams, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Dáithí Ó

Conaill, Joe Cahill, and John Joe McGirl simply decided to go ahead with Sands’ candidacy in spite of that vote.249 Nevertheless, entering electoral politics drew republicans dangerously close to a tacit admission of the legitimacy of the Northern Irish

249 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 72-73.

366 state, and a win for Sands could signal an abandonment of the moral polity in favor of establishment politics.

Rather shrewdly, republicans made a series of decisions regarding Sands candidature, which ensured that their push for a moral polity remained intact. In the first place, republicans made no mention of Sands actually claiming his seat in the event of his victory. This put him in line with previous abstentionist republican candidates, who ran for office on the promise that they would not take their seat at Westminster as an act of protest against the illegitimacy of British rule. Maguire, himself, had been largely abstentionist during his tenure as the Member for Fermanagh-South Tyrone. Secondly,

Sands ran as an “Anti H-Block/Armagh political prisoner,” not as a Sinn Fein or IRA candidate. Running without the connection to Sinn Fein or the IRA made Sands’ candidature palatable to a larger segment of the population who could vote as a statement about the prisons without directly endorsing the tactics of the IRA. Running as an Anti H-

Block/Armagh candidate also saved the prisoners’ sought after moral polity from the same fate as that of the Black Panther Party. Yes, Sands, an advocate of the moral polity of the prisons, was taking part in a state sanctioned electoral contest, but he was doing so from outside established political parties, and for explicitly anti-establishment goals.

Sands run for the seat in Fermanagh-South Tyrone was, therefore, more akin to Eldridge

Cleaver’s electoral exploits with the Peace and Freedom Party than it was to Bobby

Seale’s run for Mayor of Oakland.

In addition to drawing attention to the prison struggle, Sands’ electoral bid presented a number of related problems for the government. The Northern Ireland Office was well aware that Sands’ candidature put them in an awkward position, one that could

367 easily lead to accusations that they were subverting democracy. In a confidential minute to David Wyatt, D. Gilliland argued that where media access to Sands was concerned, the

NIO ought to remain firm that Sands was “a convicted criminal,” and make no allowances for access to the media based on his run for parliament. Yet, at the same time,

Gilliland was quick to note “This opens up a very large can of worms. Are we preventing a potential Member of Parliament from putting his case to the electorate? Are we therefore subverting the democratic process?”250

Secretary of State, Humphrey Atkins was less concerned about subverting the democratic process. As late as the day before the election, Atkins judged a Sands victory to be unlikely, but believed the government should prepare for one, anyway. In particular,

Atkins wanted to expel Sands from Parliament in the event he won his election. The

Secretary of State hoped for support from the opposition, but urged that the government be ready to make a motion to expel Sands without the opposition’s backing.251 If Sands won and was not expelled from Parliament, Atkins warned that he would have an

“enhanced opportunity of embarrassing the NI prison authorities, and thus, the

Government” even though he would be unable to take his seat. As an MP he might demand access to his constituents and the media and could use his status to seek more correspondence than he would ordinarily be allowed in the H-Blocks. “He might exploit these possibilities fully as part of his main campaign to get convicted terrorists treated as

‘political prisoners’ rather than simply as criminals.”252 As the campaign for political

250 D. Gilliland to Mr. Wyatt, “Robert Sands, Election Candidate,” March 31, 1981, CENT/1/10/25, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-25_1981-03-31.pdf. 251 H. Atkins to Rt Hon Francis Pym, April 8, 1981, CENT/1/10/25, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-25_1981-04-08.pdf, 1,2. 252 Ibid., 1.

368 status served as the primary motivation to run Sands for parliament, Atkins fears were not without merit, but this did not absolve the government of dealing with the consequences of a potential Sands victory, and, indeed made it more urgent that the government undermine the potential MP. Atkins’, therefore, looked to remove Sands from office in the event of his election.

On April 9, 1981, voters in Fermanagh-South Tyrone proved Atkins’ judgement about the likely election outcome, wrong. Sands had only one opponent, the Ulster

Unionist Party candidate, Harry West, Sinn Fein having pressured all other nationalist candidates to withdraw their candidacy. Sands beat him by a vote of 30, 493 to 29,046.253

Within the H-Blocks and in Armagh prison the atmosphere was tense as prisoners awaited the result to be broadcast over their smuggled radios. When it came, and those holding the radios relayed the information to their comrades, prisoners’ morale soared. In

H3, Thomas Loughlin recalled that the blanketmen cheered, despite strict orders from the

Block OC to keep quiet in the event of a victory so that their radios would not be discovered.254 In H4 Felim O’Hagan’s wing managed to stay quiet. He recalled that after they received word of the results he and his cellmate danced around the cell, mouthing happy screams, and punching the air. “No doubt a similar scene of silent hysteria was played out in every cell,” he mused.255 “Bobby was now an MP. What clearer sign could there be that the people regarded him—and by extension all of us—as political prisoners than by voting for him as their parliamentary representative?” Laurence McKeown and other prisoners now asked. “We felt this would cause the Brits all sorts of problems and

253 Nicholas Whyte and Tineke Vaes, “Northern Ireland Elections: Fermanagh and South Tyrone 1973- 1982,” http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/cfst.htm. 254 Thomas Loughlin in Nor Meekly Serve my Time, 159. 255 Felim O’Hagan in Nor Meekly Serve my Time, 159-160.

369 put them in a dilemma as to how to treat an MP who they were condemning as a criminal.

We felt the contradictions would be hard for them to overcome.”256 Indeed, with his election victory Sands scored a win for the moral polity. By winning a seat in parliament

Sands explicitly linked the prisoners’ cause to politics and drew the prisoners away from allegations of criminality. At the same time, he refocused attention on the prisons as people in Ireland, Britain, and abroad, waited to see if Britain would allow an MP to die on hunger strike.

Tension and pressure grew across Ireland as Sands’ condition worsened. The NIO complained of riots across the North, in early May, concentrated in Belfast. On May 1,

Official Unionist Party MP, William Ross received a hoax letter bomb which warned him, “If Bobby Sands dies, watch out for the next one.” That same day, twelve members of Fianna Eireann and Students Against H-Block occupied the market room of the Dublin stock exchange while other students occupied the Labour Party headquarters in Dublin.257

On May 2 anti H-Block protesters occupied British Home Stores in Dublin and

Conservative MP Lt. Col. S.A. Farr’s residence in Sligo. Meanwhile, the Republican

Action Force, a group the NIO believed to be a front for the PIRA, burned a cottage belonging to Lord Rossmore near Monaghan. They left behind a note which warned, “If

Bobby Sands dies we propose to carry out attacks against all relics of colonialism in

Northern Ireland as well as the Irish Republic.” Five to six thousand supporters attended a rally in Toombridge on May 3, and the next day there were riots reported in Belfast.258

256 Laurence McKeown in Nor Meekly Serve my Time, 161. 257 A.K. Templeton, “Protests and Second Hunger Strike—Weekly Bulletin No. 10—0900 Hours Thursday 30 April—0900 Hours Thursday 7 May,” CENT/1/10/36A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-36A_1981-05-07.pdf, 6, 8. 258 Ibid.,8.

370

Outside Ireland, too, protests intensified in the days leading up to Sands’ death. In the United States, the Irish National Caucus used a visit by Prince Charles to call on the

Queen of England to intervene in the prisons to save Sands’ life. The leader of the Greek opposition Party, Pasok, made a similar appeal. NORAID busily organized demonstrations in support of the hunger strikers, and thirty-three Congressmen sent a telegram to Margaret Thatcher which pressed her to negotiate with the protesting prisoners.259 Protesters staged demonstrations outside the British Embassies in Paris,

Athens, and Wellington, New Zealand and outside the British Consulates in Ghent and

Auckland. Basque political parties sent an appeal to save Sands to the British Embassy in

Madrid. Three trade union federations in Italy issued statements supporting Sands, and

George Marchais, leader of French Communists issued a statement condemning the

British Government.260 In Oporto, Portugal three masked members of the guerilla group, the Popular Forces, armed with pistols and sub-machine guns raided the British Airways office. They painted the walls in pro-Sands slogans and raised an Irish Tricolor. The

Belgian Work Group on Ireland peacefully collected 2,500 signatures on a petition in support of Sands, but members also threw a bag of blood at the National Westminster

Bank in Antwerp.261 Thus, despite the NIO’s early confidence that the hunger strikers had little support, by May thousands had turned out in support of the hunger strikers, across the Western world. While not every protester supported the tactics of the larger IRA, at the very least, the protests revealed widespread tacit support of Irish republicans’ goals with regard to the prison system.

259 Ibid., 8. 260 Ibid., 8, 9. 261 Ibid., 8.

371

Bobby Sands died on May 5, 1981, after 66 days on hunger strike. The NIO acknowledged his death with a terse statement explaining, “He took his own life by refusing food and medical intervention for 66 days.”262 Shortly afterward Humphrey

Atkins issued a statement in which he expressed regret for what he termed Sands’

“needless and pointless death,” but reminded everyone listening that they “should not forget the many others who have died. It is my profound hope and prayer that the people of Northern Ireland will recognize the futility of violence and turn their faces away from it.”263 On May 6 the protesting prisoners responded with their own statement, placing the blame for Sands’ death on the shoulders of the British government as well as politicians and other influential people who failed to condemn British policy in Ireland and the prisons. They contended that by allowing Sands to die the British showed Irish nationalists that “their wishes are totally irrelevant and totally subject to the British

Government’s traditional policy of colonial oppression and of appeasing bigoted

Loyalism.”264 Addressing Margaret Thatcher and her government, directly, they told her,

“You have got your pound of flesh; now give us our rights. . . There are many Bobby

Sands in these blocks,” and these men would continue their hunger strike in order to see that their principles were upheld. They concluded by appealing to the Irish people and the freedom-loving people of the world to take a stand against “British barbarity,” because doing so could bring the prisoners’ hunger strike to a successful conclusion.265 In their references to British denial of nationalist desires, and their call for the support of the people, the prisoners referenced core beliefs of their moral polity, notably its collective

262 Ibid., 1. 263 Ibid., 2. 264 Ibid. 265 Ibid., 2.

372 nature and the need for those in power to acknowledge the needs and desires of those outside the majority community. Prisoners explicitly rejected the idea that Sands died by his own hand. Instead they asserted that his life was sacrificed by the British government in order to break their protest.

Alongside the statement issued by the prisoners, reaction to Sands’ death was swift both in Ireland and abroad. Eleven conforming prisoners and six protesting prisoners refused their food on May 5 in a token gesture of solidarity with their deceased comrade. Eight conforming prisoners indicated that they would not eat until Sands’ funeral. At Armagh six women refused to work for three days following Sands’ death. At

Magilligan 54 refused to work until Sands’ funeral.266 On May 9, Joe McDonnell, who had been arrested with Sands in 1976, replaced Bobby Sands on hunger strike. He joined

Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, and the Patsy O’Hara of the INLA, who had all joined the fast in the weeks after Sands began his strike.

The protests and rioting which began before Sands died, continued across the

North, and violence extended to other areas of Europe. RUC targets and factories were petrol bombed. The government also reported hijackings, acid bombs, the erection of barricades in nationalist areas, “malicious fires and even bolts from a crossbow,” which they attributed primarily to nationalist youths and children. On May 6 an RUC officer was shot and killed in North Belfast and four members of the security forces in Belfast,

Derry, and Crossmaglen were wounded.267 An unknown assailant threw a balloon filled with ketchup at the Queen of England as she visited Oslo. A warehouse in Toulouse was bombed, as was a car showroom in Florence and one in Zurich where “Victory to the

266 Ibid., 4. 267 Ibid., 6.

373

IRA” was spray painted onto its walls. In Manchester, England someone set the stage for the Manchester motorshow exhibition on fire. An anonymous caller later claimed this had been done by a supporter of Sands, though the British media did not publicize that fact.268

Non-violent condemnation of the British was, similarly, evident across the

Western world. Cardinal Ó Fiaich, John Hume of the SDLP, and in the United States,

Senator Ted Kennedy all accused the British government of inflexibility.269 The

Portuguese Parliament observed a minute’s silence for Sands. Roughly 5,000 protesters were reported at the British consulate in Milan. The Union Jack was burnt at the demonstration. French Communists staged a large demonstration in Paris. Protesters staged an anti-British demonstration in Brisbane, Australia, while an anti-H-Block protest took place in Leeds.270

Demonstrations in support of the hunger strikers continued through Sands’ burial.

An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of West Belfast to watch his funeral cortege wind its way to Milltown Cemetery.271 Forbes McFall, reporting for Ireland’s

“Today Tonight,” described it as “one of the biggest political funerals in the history of

Ireland.”272 McFall’s report was telling. He acknowledged Sands as a political figure while covering one convergence of the thousands of people the hunger strike mobilized to support the prisoners. Republican prisoners had not yet recreated their moral polity in

268 Ibid., 9. 269 Ibid., 7. 270 Ibid., 9. 271 Martin Melaugh, “The Hunger Strike of 1981-A Chronology of Main Events,” Conflict Archive on the Internet, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm. 272 “IRA Burial for Bobby Sands,” RTÉ Archives, http://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0505/786340-bobby- sands-funeral/.

374 totality, but Sands’ hunger strike and death helped spread the five demands and proved to the British that the prisoners did, in fact, have considerable support in Ireland and abroad.

By the time of Sands’ death the conditions of Francis Hughes, Raymond

McCreesh, and Patsy O’Hara had begun to cause concern. On May 12 D.E.S.

Blatherwick of the political affairs Division of the Central Secretariat prepared a brief for the Prime Minister regarding a meeting scheduled with John Hume of the SDLP for the following evening. His brief maintained that the prisoners were criminals, not prisoners of war, and that it was the IRA, not the government who were inflexible. Because the

IRA continued to call for all of the five demands, the British determined that republicans would be unlikely to end the hunger strike for any piecemeal concessions, and the British were unwilling to grant all five demands because that would effectively give republican prisoners political status.273 While not prepared to acknowledge republicans’ moral polity within the prisons, the British were, nevertheless, keen to hear John Hume’s opinion on the repercussions of further hunger striker deaths. Blatherwick’s brief admitted that the possible reaction of the Catholic community was “worrying” and suggested that the Prime Minister ask Hume how long he thought a reaction would last and whether or not he believed further deaths would increase support for the Provisionals.

Further, Blatherwick asked that Thatcher call on Hume to inform them how they might

“prevent an alienation of the Nationalist community—apart of course from giving in to the Provisionals’ demands.”274 Unfortunately for Margaret Thatcher, Blatherwick’s concerns came too late. Francis Hughes died on May 12, after 59 days on hunger strike.

273D.E.S. Blatherwick, “Prime Minister’s Meeting with Mr. John Hume,” May 12, 1981, CENT/1/10/36A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-36A_1981-05- 12_b.pdf, 2. 274 Ibid., 3.

375

Hughes’ death created events which mirrored those that followed the death of

Sands. The NIO estimated that Hughes’ funeral drew 15,000 to the village of Bellaghy in

County Derry.275 Seven schools in the province closed on May 15 as Hughes’ funeral took place.276 Brendan McLaughlin took Hughes’ place on the hunger strike. The

National H-Block/Armagh Committee staged a vigil outside the GPO in Dublin.

Sympathetic businesses in border areas closed on the day of Hughes’ funeral. In Dundalk two newsagents were petrol bombed for stocking British newspapers.277 Boston City

Council renamed the street of the British Consulate “Francis Hughes Avenue.”

Supporters of the hunger strikers bombed a British diplomat’s home in Corsica and painted the collapsed walls with pro-IRA slogans.278 Hughes’ death, and the weakening condition of McCreesh and O’Hara behind him, dispelled any lingering notions that this hunger strike would be short lived or that the strikers lacked popular support. On the contrary, the death of Francis Hughes further inflamed passions in the North and around the world.

As McCreesh’s condition deteriorated he became the center of a controversy that threatened the idea that republican prisoners were willing participants in the hunger strike, potentially undermining support for the protest. On Monday, May 18, Maze

Hospital Officers J. McAleavey, Paul Lennon, and Senior Hospital Officer L. Nolan each submitted reports on an incident that they said occurred two days previously. All three

275 A.K. Templeton, “Protests and Second Hunger Strike—Weekly Bulletin No 12 0900 Hours Thursday 14 May – 0900 Hours Thursday 21 May,” May 21, 1981, CENT/1/10/36A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-36A_1981-05-21.pdf, 3. 276 Sixty Six schools closed on May 7 for Bobby Sands’ funeral. P.J. Higgins, “Background Information for Lord Elton’s Reply to Mr Harold McCusker MP Closure of Schools and Absences of Teachers due to unrest at time of death of Hunger-Strikers,” June 16, 1981, ED/13/2/549, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_ED-13-2-549_1981-06-16_a.pdf. 277 Templeton, “Protests and Second Hunger Strike—Weekly Bulletin No 12,” May 21, 1981, 5. 278 Ibid.

376 agreed that on Saturday May 16, Raymond McCreesh’s mother, sister, and two brothers visited their dying relative, because he had, earlier that day, expressed a desire to end his hunger strike. All three also agreed that as McCreesh’s family left, they informed prison doctors that when he was of sound mind, McCreesh had expressed a desire to continue his hunger strike, and those wishes should be respected.279 Doctors were not to intervene.

Otherwise, the three prison officers’ accounts differed in three key ways. First, they disagreed about when McCreesh expressed a desire to end his strike, and, therefore, who was present to witness this sentiment. Second, the reports detailed different stories about the possibility that McCreesh asked for milk. Thirdly, the reports expressed different accounts of what happened when McCreesh talked to his family. Officers Nolan and Lennon each asserted that the other had first come forward with the information the information that McCreesh wished to end his fast, and McAleavey suggested that Dr.

Bill, who was not mentioned in Nolan and Lennon’s accounts, asked McCreesh if he wanted medical intervention.280 McAleavey and Lennon’s report shared a story that they offered McCreesh a glass of water—Lennon maintained it was a joint effort, McAleavey that it was his doing, although Lennon watched—and, that after taking a sip, McCreesh asked, “‘Is this milk?’” When they responded in the negative, but asked whether he would like some milk, they alleged that the prisoner asked whether or not his family was in the prison. They told him, “Yes,” and he responded that he would wait until he had

279Paul Lennon to Sir [Governor], n.d., NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1; J. McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1; L. Nolan to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. Nolan and McAleavey both asserted that McCreesh’s family arrived at the prison at the behest of Dr. Emerson who called to inform them of the situation. 280 Nolan to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 1; Lennon to Sir [Governor] n.d., 1; McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 1.

377 seen his family.281 Nolan’s report also mentioned milk, but in an entirely different context. Nolan contended that, accompanied by Lennon, he had gone to see McCreesh, told the prisoner he had passed no urine all day and encouraged him to drink. He then reported giving McCreesh a drink of water “and I pointed out that he could have milk or any sustenance all he had to do was ask for it. McCreesh expressed a desire to pray and he was left alone to do so.”282 Curiously, prior to his arrest and imprisonment Raymond

McCreesh worked as a milkman, a job he used to help gather intelligence for the IRA.283

The suggestion here, was that at some point on May 16 Raymond McCreesh wavered in his commitment to the hunger strike and asked for or was offered milk.

It was on the debated actions of the family that the prisoners’ potential moral polity hung. McAleavey and Lennon’s reports had the most to say about this issue. Both reported being able to hear most of the conversation based on the fact that McCreesh’s visitors had to speak loudly because his hearing was failing. They recalled hearing

McCreesh’s brother, Father Brian McCreesh telling the hunger striker to remember where he was, and quoted Father McCreesh telling his brother that he was in “Long Kesh

Concentration Camp, being looked after by prison warders.”284 Both also stated that Fr.

McCreesh encouraged Raymond McCreesh to “Remember O’Hara, he is strong and on hunger strike the same number of days as you.”285 They also alleged that McCreesh’s mother told her son, “Now Raymond, you are going back on your word.” Finally, both

281 Lennon to Sir [Governor], n.d., 1; McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 1. 282 Nolan to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 1. 283 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 151. 284 McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 1; Lennon to Sir [Governor], n.d., 1. 285 Lennon to Sir [Governor], n.d., 1. McAleavey remembered Fr. McCreesh’s statement as “Remember O’Hara, he is strong and on hunger strike with you for the same amount of time.” McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 2.

378 stated that McCreesh’s family repeatedly told him to remember that he was in Long Kesh and to listen only to his family, not the prison doctors or staff.286 Nolan said little of the visit reporting that McCreesh’s family arrived at 2030 hours and talked to Dr. Emerson, met Dr. Bill, who had just arrived at the hospital at 2115, and ended their visit at 2215, whereupon they told Nolan, Dr. Bill, and Dr. Emerson, that McCreesh’s previously expressed wishes should be respected, “and he should be allowed to continue his hunger strike with dignity.”287

It was a story closely approximating that detailed by McAleavey and Lennon that the media reported late on May 18. At 10:00 pm BBC Radio 4 News broadcast a story detailing the incident of two days previously, suggesting that McCreesh’s brother, Father

Brian McCreesh was ultimately responsible for persuading his brother to continue his hunger strike. Curiously, on April 17, just a month previously, a situation report from the prison stated, “McCreesh was visited by his brother who is a priest [and] was apparently attempting, without success, to talk his brother off his hunger strike.” [emphasis added]

288 The allegations that Father McCreesh convinced his brother to continue with his fast provoked a swift and angry response from McCreesh’s family who issued a statement in which they denied the allegations. “This slanderous statement is disrespectful to Fr Brian as a brother and as an Irish Roman Catholic Priest,” they contended. The McCreesh family further promised to seek legal counsel unless an apology was issued immediately.289

286 Lennon to Sir [Governor], n.d. 1; McAleavey to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 2. 287 Nolan to Sir [Governor], May 18, 1981, 2. 288 E. Dalzell, “Situation Report—Friday 17 April (AM),” April 17, 1981, NIO/12/196A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2. 289 Belfast Republican Press Centre and McCreesh Family, “We the family of hunger striker Raymond McCreesh…,” May 18, 1981, H-Block/Hungerstrike Box 1, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

379

The idea that Father Brian convinced his brother to continue his hunger strike as well as the idea that McCreesh’s mother told her son that he was going back on his word, were, potentially, injurious to the hunger strike. Republicans had publicized the strike as an action of last resort for the prisoners, one that they did not undertake lightly. If

McCreesh wanted to end his hunger strike then it was possible that he had not thought the process out fully. If that were true, then it was certainly possible that others had not really conceived of the hunger strike as ending in death, and were, therefore, simply trying to blackmail the government into granting political status, as various opponents of the hunger strike had stated since Sands first refused food in March. Moreover, if Father

McCreesh and his mother had pushed Raymond to continue his hunger strike against his own wishes, knowing his death was imminent, it was only a short jump to casting the supporters of the hunger strike as unfeeling ideologues who could send their own relations to the grave without batting an eyelash, if only the greater cause benefitted. If these things were true, then the republican prisoners were not championing any sort of moral polity, merely seeking advantage within the prison system at the expense of a few mislead young men.

As the story that Raymond McCreesh asked for medical intervention, and his brother convinced him to remain on hunger strike, spread, the McCreesh family sought legal counsel. On May 19 they called for an independent inquiry into Raymond’s care and condition between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm on May 16. They asked that the inquiry include an investigation into why his mental condition had deteriorated so rapidly during that period, “the alleged dialogues which were carried on with him,” why “certain questions” were put to him, why his answers to the questions had been interpreted as they

380 had, and why “certain statements” were issued to the news media on Saturday.290 The

NIO responded to the complaints against the medical staff, arguing that McCreesh had, several times, made clear that he was to have no medical intervention as his condition worsened, and that medical staff repeatedly informed him of the consequences of such a decision. When McCreesh subsequently indicated his “willingness to accept nourishment and medical treatment” medical staff judged him to be “in a confused state of mind and the doctors in attendance did not regard his statements as sufficient to authorise medical intervention in view of his mental state and his previously clearly expressed contrary views.”291 The notice then reaffirmed that the McCreesh family, speaking through Father

Brian McCreesh, affirmed that no action was to be taken and their wishes had been respected.292 Both sides of the dispute fell back to the position that they were the ones respecting the wishes of Raymond McCreesh. The NIO contended that prison doctors called the McCreesh family to be sure that they were adhering to the hunger striker’s wishes, while the McCreesh family held that no call to them would have been necessary had medical staff not put the suggestion of milk into the head of a confused man on the

56th day of his hunger strike. For the McCreesh family, however, the stakes were higher.

If the public judged them to have callously pushed a reticent Raymond to continue with his hunger strike, they threatened the very foundation of the moral polity republicans fought for in the prisons, even as their actions would have ensured an uninterrupted hunger strike.

290 The McCreesh family also asked for information on “why the family was summoned in the way they were,” and “why certain leaks were conveyed to the news media before Saturday to expect a certain event.” See N.D. Ward, “Statement on Behalf of the McCreesh Family,” NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 291 Northern Ireland Office, “Press Notice: Case of Raymond McCreesh,” May 19, 1981, PREM 19/504 f33, The National Archive at Kew, available http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125199, 2. 292 Ibid.

381

While the McCreesh family and the NIO sparred publically, behind the scenes,

Father McCreesh wrote directly to Margaret Thatcher. In a telegram he called on the

Prime Minister to think of all his brother had endured as a prisoner for the previous four years, and “respect his dignity and save him,” because “all he ha[d] left [was] his pride as an Irishman and his loyalty to his fellow prisoners living and dead.”293 In the end, however, Father McCreesh’s efforts were for naught. On May 20, Clive Whitmore replied on behalf of Margaret Thatcher, stating that the aims of the hunger strike were

“simply not in any responsible Government’s gift.”294 Raymond McCreesh died in the early hours of the next day, after 61 days on hunger strike. Patsy O’Hara succumbed later that same evening. Kieran Doherty of the IRA replaced McCreesh, while Kevin Lynch of the INLA replaced O’Hara. Tony O’Hara’s argument about order of hunger strikers for the INLA had prevailed. Michael Devine remained OC of the INLA prisoners while

Patsy O’Hara was on hunger strike, so that Tony O’Hara did not have to oversee the death of his own brother.

Even with the deaths of Sands, Hughes, McCreesh, and O’Hara, Thatcher’s government was not meaningfully closer to understanding the ground on which they fought the IRA. In a proposed letter to Cardinal Ó Fiaich, penned by D.E.S. Blatherwick, to be signed by Margaret Thatcher, the British government sought the Cardinal’s continued intervention into the hunger strike. Blatherwick explained the letter, stating, “I have tried to bring out elements of reassurance for the Catholic community, and to butter up the Cardinal. I have not inserted the idea that the influence of the Church is the key to

293 Father Brian McCreesh to Margaret Thatcher, May 19, 1981, PREM 19/504 f 48, The National Archives at Kew, available http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125196. 294 C. A. Whitmore to Father Brian McCreesh, May 20, 1981, PREM 19/504 f5, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125202.

382 progress but it is latent in the concept of consulting the Cardinal anyway.”295

Blatherwick’s conception of the Catholic Church as being a crucial mediator to the hunger strike overlooked the IRA and INLA prisoners’ mistrust of the clergy, particularly following the end of the 1980 hunger strike. The IRA may have drawn support primarily from Catholics, but that did not make it a Catholic organization. Indeed, religious affiliation and political position vis a vis the relationship between Ireland and England had been entwined in Ireland since the days of Daniel O’Connell. The more apropos identification for supporters of the hunger strikers was the nationalist community, as the hierarchy of the Catholic Church had come out largely against the hunger strike as being prohibited suicide rather than self-sacrifice.

Blatherwick’s proposed letter also misunderstood key proponents of republican protest in the prisons. He noted, “They want a separate prison status as justification for the acts of violence. They want a propaganda victory.”296 True, the potential for a propaganda victory for republicans was great, but they were not looking for that victory to directly justify their violence. They wanted political status as an acknowledgement that they were prisoners of war. This status would justify republican’s use of violence, but, crucially, it would also point to the British as belligerents in the conflict. To the extent that republicans sought a justification of their violence, it was secondary to their drive to gain acknowledgement that there was a war in Northern Ireland, and the British

295 D.E.S. Blatherwick to Mr. Wyatt, “Hunger Strike: Message to the Cardinal,” May 22, 1981, CENT 1/10/36A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10- 36A_1981-05-22.pdf, 1. 296 D.E.S. Blatherwick, “Draft Message from the Prime Minister to His Eminence Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich, Archbishop of Armagh, Ara Coeli, Armagh,” CENT 1/10/36A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1-10-36A_1981-05-22.pdf, 2.

383 were willing participants. This was a far more sweeping demand than simply justifying violence.

As Thatcher’s government sought support from Cardinal Ó Fiaich, the prisoners turned, once again, to gaining support via the electorate, this time of the Southern Irish counties. On May 30, 1981, the chairman of the national smash H-Block/Armagh

Committee announced that 9 republican prisoners would stand in the election scheduled for June 11. The candidates included hunger strikers Joe McDonnell, Kieran Doherty,

Kevin Lynch, and Martin Hurson, who took Brendan McLaughlin’s place on the hunger strike after it became clear that McLaughlin had a perforated ulcer which resulted in internal bleeding that would have killed him in a matter of days, and he, consequently, ended his fast.297 Former hunger strikers Sean McKenna and Mairéad Farrell, and republican prisoners, Tony O’Hara, Thomas McAllister, and Paddy Agnew also stood in the Southern election. The prisoner candidates called for “absolute and unequivocal support” for their 5 demands, and if Thatcher and her government refused the five demands, the prisoners asked that the Southern Irish public call for the expulsion of the

British ambassador, withdrawal of Irish troops from the border, and “the ending of all collaboration until the prisoners[‘] demands are met.”298 If prisoners were elected in the

South this would help prove the extent of the support for the prisoners’ sought after moral polity across the entire island, and if Thatcher failed to then capitulate to the prisoners’

297 Donal O’Higgins, “IRA hunger striker Brendan McLaughlin relented Tuesday and Agreed,” May 26, 1981, United Press International Archive, http://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/05/26/IRA-hunger-striker- Brendan-McLaughlin-relented-Tuesday-and-agreed/2201359697600/. 298 E. Dalzell to Mr. Palmer, “Note for the Record: Election in the Irish Republic – The 9 H-Block Candidates,” June 2, 1981, NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_NIO-12-197A_1981-06-02.pdf, 1-2.

384 demands, the people of the South could demand a revocation of Irish support for

Thatcher.

The National H-Block/Armagh Committee was careful to keep tenets of the moral polity at the forefront of the election. When they felt that RTÉ was not providing equal coverage to the H-Block and Armagh candidates they sought legal counsel. They also protested the actions of Louth Returning Officer, Brendan Breathnach, who changed

Paddy Agnew’s address from “‘H-Blocks, Long Kesh,’” to “‘The Maize,’” [sic], and his occupation from “‘political prisoner’” to “‘unemployed.’”299 Terminology was important to the prisoners’ protest. References to the H-Blocks and Long Kesh reminded the listener that the protesting prisoners were part of the same prison where the old Northern

Irish government practiced internment without trial. To republicans the British renamed

Long Kesh “HMP Maze” in order to draw attention away from the internees who became detainees under the British administration. Using “H-Blocks” together with “Long Kesh” indicated that there was another part of the prison, that the government called

“compounds” and republicans called “cages,” which still, in 1981, held men with special category status. These men had been sentenced for the some of the same offences as the men in the H-Blocks, but lived under a totally different regime. Republicans use of “H-

Blocks” and “Long Kesh” subtly alluded to this fact.

The National H-Block/Armagh Committee attempted to convince voters that successive British governments did not understand the true nature of the conflict. “Since

1976, the British government has attempted to reduce the ‘Irish problem’ to one of ‘law and order’. [This] is to deny the existence of any political problem or struggle in the

299 National H-Block/Armagh Committee, “Press Release,” June 3, 1981, Hunger Strike Box 5, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

385 north—any valid national question.”300 They argued that since 1976 the British

Government’s stance was hypocritical because they used special interrogation centers, tried republicans in special courts, and used special rules of evidence, all while declaring that they could not grant special status to any prisoner or admit that the offenses of certain prisoners were different than others.301 Not acknowledging the status of republicans as prisoners of war while simultaneously pretending that they were not treating republicans differently than other prisoners struck at the core ideas behind the republican’s moral polity. In the end, constituents in Cavan/Monaghan and Louth agreed, electing hunger striker Kieran Doherty and protesting prisoner, Paddy Agnew to the Dáil.

The day before the Southern election republicans received an enormous morale boost when Joe Doherty and seven other IRA remand prisoners escaped from Crumlin

Road Jail. Recalled Doherty, “It was, of course, a great feeling to escape from one of the

Brits top security prisons and especially cheer the lads up in the H-Blocks on protest. It was with great joy that I heard that big Joe McDonnell smiled, while weak and near death, when he heard of the escape.”302 The June 1981 escape from Crumlin Road Jail, served a number of purposes. It freed IRA men from prison. It embarrassed prison staff and the British government at a time when their actions were calculated to look strong and unbending in the face of republican pressure for political status, and it raised morale for those men still in jail. The escape was an act of resistance all its own, and an act of support for those protesting in the H-Blocks.

300 National H-Block/Armagh Committee, “Election Manifesto H-Block/Armagh Prisoner-Candidates,” June 1981, Hunger Strike Box 5, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 301 Ibid. 302 “Joe Doc—40 years of republican activism,” December 17, 2009, An Phoblacht, http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/21047.

386

The escape and Kieran Doherty and Agnew’s election were victories for republican prisoners at a time the hunger strike was growing ever more complex. The approaching summer promised increased tensions with the Protestant loyalist marching season set to begin amidst the already tense atmosphere created by the hunger strike. The

British government was concerned that Catholic communities were already dangerously alienated from the government and this alienation would only increase over the summer.

They, therefore, looked to the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland for help, but the hierarchy was suspicious of being used by the British government and already felt the Prime

Minister had damaged relations with the Catholic nationalist community with a May 28 speech.303 Bishop Edward Daly accused the Prime Minister of being negative and cold while clinging to a policy of “no surrender” which was having disastrous repercussions in

Catholic nationalist communities across the North.304 Daly recommended an international body like the ECHR step in, make recommendations, and the British accept those, as a way they might save face and resolve the situation.305

On June 3, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace (ICJP), one of eighty such commissions established after Vatican Two to help the national leaderships of the Church determine their stance on human rights questions, issued a statement on the hunger strike.306 The ICJP stood against the idea of political status, emphasizing that they believed in the right to life, and many of the protesting prisoners had deprived others of this right, but nevertheless, they advocated reform. In particular, they called for allowing

303 D.E.S. Blatherwick to Mr. Wyatt, “Where Next?” June 1, 1981, NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_NIO-12-197A_1981-06-01_a.pdf, 1,2. 304 D.E.S. Blatherwick to Mr. Wyatt, “Call on Bishop Daly,” June 1, 1981, NIO/12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_NIO-12-197A_1981-06-01_b.pdf, 1. 305 Ibid., 1-2. 306 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 205, 206.

387 the prisoners to wear their own clothes, creating prison work along educational and cultural lines so that it was not demeaning to prisoners, and increased freedom of association which excluded military training.307 While the ICJP did not agree that the protesting prisoners’ offenses were political, in a draft of their statement they noted, “The conviction and imprisonment of prisoners for crimes which they claim were politically motivated creates a situation which differs in many respects from the normal prison.”

They went on to explain, “The rehabilitative role of the prison does not exist in the same way, since the ‘broad agreement about the good society’ on which such a role depends is absent.” [emphasis as in original]308 Although they did not agree with republicans’ position, the ICJP recognized that republicans operated under very different ideas about how society should be structured. They understood that the moral polity existed as a separate idea for the protesting prisoners, but removed this idea from their statement before it was released following consultation with Humphrey Atkins. When the ICJP released their statement, Bishop Edward Daly wrote to the Prime Minister urging her to pay careful attention to ideas expressed by the ICJP because he believed that the Catholic community of Derry would respond positively to the implementation of the ICJP’s ideas which would help deprive the PIRA of support.309 This had become imperative to the

British government as it became clearer that republicans’ hunger strike was attracting

307 Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, “Statement on the Hunger Strike in the Maze Prison Northern Ireland,” June 3, 1981, PREM 19/505, The National Archives at Kew, http://09b37156ee7ea2a93a5e- 6db7349bced3b64202e14ff100a12173.r35.cf1.rackcdn.com/PREM19/1981/PREM19-0505.pdf, 2-3. 308 Irish Commission for Justice and Peace, “Statement on H-Block,” June 1981, PREM 19/505, The National Archives at Kew, http://09b37156ee7ea2a93a5e- 6db7349bced3b64202e14ff100a12173.r35.cf1.rackcdn.com/PREM19/1981/PREM19-0505.pdf, 2. 309 Edward Daly, Bishop of Derry to Margaret Thatcher, June 3, 1981, PREM 19/505 f253, The National Archives At Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125211, 1-3.

388 humanitarian support that the actions of the IRA and INLA might not have otherwise drawn to their movement.

Publically, the prisoners and wider republican movement expressed skepticism of the ICJP’s attempted intervention. In the first place, the ending of the 1980 hunger strike left the prisoners wary of intermediaries and the misunderstanding that could result from their intervention. Moreover, the protesters were suspicious that the ICJP members were merely pawns that the British would use to undermine the strike, whether the ICJP knew it or not. Particularly troubling to republicans was the fact that the commission’s statement only addressed three of the protesting prisoners’ demands. On June 17, the

Irish Press carried Dáithí Ó Conaill’s response to the ICJP’s statement. He argued that the ICJP’s statement was dangerously naïve. “Perhaps they assume that if the 3 items were dealt with these two (i.e. visits and full remission) could then be solved, but with our experience we must not make that assumption at all.”310

In the H-Blocks, McFarlane was apprehensive that the British might move forward with the ICJP’s suggestions and that could be fatal to the hunger strikers. He wrote to Gerry Adams on the 28th worrying, “Families of hunger strikers appear ready to grab what comes as a feasible settlement. It will, I believe, be attractive enough to satisfy the church etc. of Brit flexibility and in time they will look to us for a response i.e. terminate the hunger strike.”311 It was a delicate situation. The British gave no indication that they would accept the ICJP’s statement as a roadmap to new prison policy, but if they did, the prisoners feared that they would be pressured by hunger strikers’ relatives to end the hunger strike without having achieved all 5 demands. If they pressed on with the

310 Dublin to FCO, “Telegram 203, Hunger Strike,” June 18, 1981. 311 Bik to Brownie, June 28, 1981, 9 P.M., in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 208.

389 hunger strike, more men would die, and republicans risked being seen as too intransigent, which would shrink their support base. Widespread support was crucial to the prisoners if they hoped to recreate their moral polity within the prisons.

Despite republicans’ wariness of the ICJP, many channels continued to pressure the British to adopt the commission’s suggestions or at least allow them to meet with the prisoners. In late June and early July, Thatcher fielded calls and messages from Cardinal

Ó Fiaich, and both the outgoing and incoming Taoiseach who all urged her to use the

ICJP to resolve the conflict. Both Charles Haughey and Garrett FitzGerald pressed the

Prime Minister to move more quickly in light of Joe McDonnell’s weakening condition.312 Instead, on June 30, Atkins issued a statement reiterating the government’s position, specifically, that as a “responsible government” the British could not grant political status on any prisoner and that control of the prisons had to remain with the prison authorities.313 He concluded, “proposals for change must be fully and carefully weighed, and their implications explored, before they are adopted. This process cannot proceed further while the hunger strike places the authorities under duress.”314 The statement was a hard line reiteration that the British Government did not intend to bend to the pressure the prisoners placed them under.

The ICJP were, at the same time working through prisons minister Michael

Alison to be allowed into the prison as a body. On July 4, Alison telephoned Margaret

Thatcher, and stated that the commission officially asked to be allowed to visit the

312 FCO to UKE Luxembourg, “Northern Ireland Prisons Protest, Telegram number 62,” June 29, 1981, PREM 19/505 f115, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125235, 1; UKE Dublin to FCO,” Hunger Strike, Telegram number 223.” July 1, 1981, PREM 19/505 f 32, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125209, 1-2. 313 FCO to UKE Luxembourg, “Northern Ireland Prisons Protest, Telegram number 62,” June 29, 1981, 2. 314 Ibid., 5.

390 prisoners. He noted, “they want to go in to persuade the hunger strikers to desist from their hunger strike unconditionally, but on the basis that we have a moral obligation to pursue the course of development that we’ve outlined in our public statement.”315

Thatcher replied that it should be “firmly understood that we do not have a moral obligation to give in to the five demands.”316 Despite the disagreement over whether or not the government had a moral obligation to adhere to Atkins’ June 30 statement, the

ICJP were finally granted permission to see the hunger strikers. Michael Alison informed them that they were not going in to negotiate with the prisoners. He hoped, instead, that the ICJP could explain the government’s position, as clarified in Atkins’ June 30 statement. Alison also reminded the members of the ICJP that the Governor and prison authorities were, and had to remain, in control of the facility.317 The government would continue to deny the prisoners any moral standing to a differentiated regime, but other groups were beginning to move towards the idea of negotiations based on moral duty.

Following the ICJP’s visit with the hunger strikers, the prisoners issued their own statement responding to Atkins. The relatively lengthy statement reiterated republican demands and placed the blame for the hunger strike squarely on the British, but appeared to many to, otherwise, take a much more conciliatory tone than republicans typically used. The British could accept the five demands without any loss of face or principle, they said. The prisoners first suggested extending the five demands to all prisoners to avoid the creation of a separate status for certain prisoners. Rather than denying the

315 “Prime Minister Talking to Michael Alison,” July 4, 1981, PREM 19/506 f320, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125242, 1. 316 Ibid. 317 Northern Ireland Office to the Cabinet Office, “Following is a Copy of Mr. Alison’s Statement,” July 4, 1981, PREM 19/506 f323, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125245, 1.

391 administration control of the prison, they argued, implementation of the five demands for all prisoners, would restore prisoners’ dignity and allow prisoners to “cease to occupy the role of establishment zombie.”318 The prisoners also alleged that Atkins had either misunderstood or exaggerated their demand for free association. In mollifying tones they noted, “we do not envisage ourselves (although Mr. Atkins does) running around the block as we please in large numbers.”319 Instead they called for free association between the 25 men of each wing, with the addition of supervised visits between wings. None of this suggested a reduced supervisory role for prison warders. The protesting prisoners expected prison officers to retain their surveillance functions.320 As for prison uniforms, the protesting prisoners argued that the women in Armagh wore their own clothes at all times, and it would not, therefore, involve any abandonment of principle to extend that privilege to all other prisoners. They expressed no major differences of opinion over weekly parcels.321

The protesting prisoners indicated that the primary areas that remained to be negotiated if a settlement was to be reached were remission, work, and segregation. They stated that they were willing to do educational work and maintain their own wings. The prisoners claimed not to understand what the British meant when they said that partial remission could be restored after a period of good behavior. “What constitutes a subsequent good behavior period?” they asked, and “What does one fifth return of remission mean?”322 They also reminded prison and governmental authorities that if the

318 Northern Ireland Office to the Cabinet Office, “This is the Text Issued by the Prisoners Today,” July 4, 1981, PREM 19/506 f323, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125245, 2. 319 Ibid., 3. 320 Ibid., 2-3. 321 Ibid., 3. 322 Ibid.

392 five demands were granted and protesting prisoners were reintegrated into the general prison population, there was a high probability of conflict between republicans and loyalists, and segregation, although not technically one of the five demands, was desirable. The prisoners closed their statement by calling for a member of the British government to come and speak directly with the prisoners so that they could seek a resolution to the protest. This they said, was “a reasonable request.”323 The statement revealed the protesting prisoners to be willing to give some ground by July 1981, but still entirely committed to creating a moral polity in the prisons.

Instead of sending a representative of the government to the prison, Thatcher’s government activated a secret line of communication between themselves and the

Provisional IRA’s eight man leadership team. The intermediary was Brendan Duddy, a

Catholic businessman from Derry, codenamed “SOON” by the British government and known to the republicans as the “Mountain Climber.”324 For Duddy the following days were a hectic series of back and forth negotiations between the parties. According to

Duddy, the prisoners’ statement had come as a surprise to senior republicans and the first hurdle to be conquered was the fact that only two of the leaders, Gerry Adams and Ruairí

Ó Brádaigh were readily available, and they would want all eight to be present for any decisions to be made.325 In addition to Adams and Ó Brádaigh the eight man leadership team included Martin McGuinness, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, and

Edward Howell.326

323 Ibid., 4. 324 Hennessey, Hunger Strike: Margaret Thatcher’s Battle with the IRA, 309-310. 325 “Hunger Strike Conversations with the Channel,” July 6, 1981, PREM 19/506 f298, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125249, 3, 5. 326 “55 Hours Part One: Sunday 5 July 1981,” May 10, 2013, http://www.longkesh.info/2013/05/10/55- hours-part-one-sunday-5-july-1981/.

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The discussions demonstrated that the British government still did not fully understand the republicans’ moral polity. Representatives of the British government spent considerable time outlining possible scenarios whereby prisoners would receive their clothes, finally telling Duddy that the most likely course of action would be to issue the eight men, by that point on hunger strike, with their own clothes immediately upon the termination of their fast, and give the rest of the prisoners their clothing at a later date.

Duddy replied that the prisoners were unlikely to accept this because the hunger strikers were representatives of the total republican prisoner population, not prisoners calling for preferential treatment. If clothing were to be given to a small group first, it should, Duddy argued, go to a group that included both hunger strikers and protesting prisoners not on the hunger strike.327 Duddy understood the collective nature of the prisoners’ ethos, and the idea that the hunger strikers saw themselves as making a sacrifice for the sake of their comrades, not for themselves alone.

Nevertheless, Duddy’s notes revealed that the British were prepared to make concessions to the prisoners based on initial thoughts communicated by the Adams committee. According to Duddy, the republicans wanted immediate action on clothing, parcels, and visits if the hunger strike were terminated. Issues surrounding work and association could be discussed once the hunger strike was over.328 In response, the British proposed that clothes be sent into the prison on July 5 and given out between lunch and the afternoon visit. Upon receipt of his clothing, a prisoner would be expected to clean out his cell. The full issue of work would be resolved within a month. The hunger strikers and some other protesting prisoners would be given visits on Tuesday. The British would

327 “Hunger Strike Conversations with the Channel,” July 6, 1981, 5. 328 Ibid., 4.

394 look for the hunger strike to end four hours after the resolution of the clothing and work issues. Duddy subsequently conveyed this information to the representatives of the IRA and Sinn Fein.329

The timing of the prisoners’ statement and the activation of Duddy as a channel between the British and the republicans was troublesome from the beginning. July 4,

1981 fell on a Saturday when the outside leadership did not typically have contact with the prisoners, and republicans spent most of that day gathering the eight men of the leadership team together because the prisoners issued their statement independently and caught the leadership by surprise. Duddy surmised that the republicans would want to send someone into the prison to discuss any possible settlement with the prisoners, but this would take special permissions from the government on such short notice. Further, candidates for a visit were few, as the number of Sinn Fein and IRA leaders with knowledge of the Mountain Climber channel and the status to act with authority was limited. In fact, Duddy suggested that only Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and

Danny Morrison could function in such a capacity. The British government rejected the idea of either Adams or McGuinness visiting the prisoners, but authorized Morrison as a visitor.330 At the last minute, the British contacted Duddy to see if he could delay

Morrison so that his visit would not clash with a special visit arranged for the ICJP for the same afternoon, but he was already en route to the prison by this time.331

Morrison’s visit, therefore, coincided with a visit by the ICJP to explain their view of the British government’s position. The ICJP knew nothing of the Mountain

329 Brendan Duddy, “The Red Book: ‘Clothes = after lunch,’” POL35/166, National University of Ireland Galway, http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/duddy/web/. 330 “Hunger Strike Conversations with the Channel,” July 6, 1981, 6-7. 331 Ibid., 9.

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Climber/SOON initiative, and were, therefore, unaware, that they would be presenting the prisoners with a plan for ending the hunger strike which had, effectively, been rendered obsolete by the creation of the direct channel between the British government and the republican leadership. They were subsequently undercut when Morrison spoke to the hunger strikers, explaining that outside the republicans were in talks with the British government and had the potential to achieve more in a settlement than the ICJP could offer. He then spoke separately to OC Brendan McFarlane and explained the particulars of the negotiations. Meanwhile, the NIO made the IRSP aware that the situation at the prison was developing and two IRSP representatives were sent in to see INLA hunger strikers Kevin Lynch and Michael Devine, but neither could give specifics on the negotiations or the offer, because Morrison had not passed these on to any of the hunger strikers.332

Blanketman, Richard O’Rawe, who served as the prisoners’ public relations officer (PRO), has contentiously argued that, the prisoners wanted to accept the deal that

Morrison communicated to McFarlane. In 2005 he published, Blanketmen: An Untold

Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike, which detailed the 1981 hunger strike from

O’Rawe’s perspective within the H-Blocks. O’Rawe remembered that after speaking with

Morrison, McFarlane sent a comm to O’Rawe explaining what the British were offering, which asked O’Rawe for his opinion on the proposals from the British.333 “My first reaction was one of astonishment,” O’Rawe recalled. “It seemed that the underlying

332 “55 Hours Part One: Sunday 5 July 1981,” May 10, 2013, http://www.longkesh.info/2013/05/10/55- hours-part-one-sunday-5-july-1981/. 333 Richard O’Rawe, Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike (Dublin: New Island, 2005), 176.

396 substance of our demands was being conceded to us.”334 He thought the proposals over, carefully, and then yelled to McFarlane in Irish that he believed there was “enough there,” to which McFarlane replied that he agreed and would write to the outside leadership to tell them as much.335

On July 6, the British government drafted a document which offered concessions to the prisoners. These concessions did not go far beyond Atkins’ June 30 statement, but did represent movement on the part of the British. They now offered the clothing regime of Armagh to all prisoners. This meant that prisoners could wear their own clothes at all times as long as it met with the Governor’s approval. Parcels, visits, and letters would increase to the level enjoyed by conforming prisoners. The government would retain their position on remission as Atkins’ described it in his statement on June 30; 1/5 of lost remission would be restored.336 Margaret Thatcher personally included the idea that prison authorities had to retain the right to decide what work should be done, but Duddy’s notes suggested that new kinds of work such as Open University courses, building a

Church, and making toys for special needs children were expected to be added from time to time.337 Only on the issue of association did Thatcher add that “very little advance

[was] possible,” and it would continue along the lines laid out in the June 30 statement.338

The message sent to Duddy detailing the offer was clear that the British would issue a

334 Ibid., 179. 335 Ibid., 181. Brendan McFarlane and other republicans, including Danny Morrison have, from the publication of O’Rawe’s book, denied its truthfulness, particularly O’Rawe’s contention, that the prisoners accepted the July deal. 336 Margaret Thatcher and British Government Officials, “Hunger Strike: Message to Be Sent Through the Channel,” July 6, 1981, PREM 19/506 f313, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125250. 337 Duddy, “The Red Book, ‘Reply 11:30 PM July 6,’” http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/duddy/web/. 338 Thatcher and British Government Officials, “Hunger Strike: Message to Be Sent Through the Channel,” July 6, 1981.

397 statement containing the points they conveyed to Duddy, “if, and only if, it would lead to an immediate end to the hunger strike and protest.” Further, if the British received an unsatisfactory reply, including no reply at all, “and there is subsequently any public reference to this exchange we shall deny that it took place.”339

At 3:30 am on July 7, the republican committee sent a message back to the British through Duddy. They noted that in order to make a decision they required the British government to elaborate on their points about remission, work, and association. The republicans pointed out that the prisoners’ July 4 statement addressed the government’s concerns about association between prisoners on the wings, and laid out an argument for the restoration of full remission. The republicans wanted the British to respond specifically to the prisoners’ proposals. They concluded by requesting access to the prisoners.340 This was not the response the British evidently hoped for, and they responded angrily. Duddy’s notes revealed that government could not “move from [the]

30th June principle . . . by suggesting we do move the S.S. [“shop stewards,” the code used for the republicans outside the prison] are inviting us to abandon our principles. This we cannot do. ”341 On July 7, Atkins wrote to Thatcher, and in reference to their offer, stated, “we have received, as you will know, an unsatisfactory response. That particular channel of activity is therefore now no longer active.”342 What began on July 4 with great promise to end the hunger strike seemed, within three days, to be disintegrating into mutual rejection.

339 Ibid. 340 Duddy, “The Red Book: To assist us in taking,” http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/duddy/web/. 341 Duddy, “The Red Book: ‘Mag. Cannot Move,’” http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie/duddy/web/. 342 Humphrey Atkins to Margaret Thatcher, “Northern Ireland: The Hunger Strike,” PREM 19/506 f282, The National Archives At Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125251, 1.

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Joe McDonnell’s death, on July 8 ended the possibility that a deal might be reached without further death. Atkins’ assertion that the government had shut down the

SOON/Mountain Climber channel had not stopped the republicans from continuing to communicate, and for a brief moment it appeared that negotiations might resume.

Following a reply from the republicans, the British came to believe that “it was not the content of the message which they had objected to but only its tone.”343 While staff moved to amend the document’s tone, the ICJP, by now aware of the Mountain Climber initiative, pressed for an NIO official to visit the prisons and present the document to the hunger strikers. At 10:00 pm, they were informed by Michael Alison that no one would visit the prison until the next morning, but that the delay would only be to the prisoners’ benefit. At 4:50 am Joe McDonnell died. When an NIO representative did visit the prisoners in the hours after McDonnell’s death, it was to reiterate that nothing had changed since Atkins’ June 29 statement.344 The concessions of July 6 were no longer on offer.

The failure of negotiations meant that men would continue to die, a fact which their families understood, all too well. Republicans and the British government, alike, were shocked when Martin Hurson died on July 13, after 46 days, before they expected his condition to have deteriorated to such an extent. It was later discovered that Hurson had a stomach infection which hastened his death.345 On the last day of July Paddy

Quinn’s family intervened, authorizing medical treatment for the hunger striker, who had

343 “MT Meeting with Northern Ireland Secretary (record of conversation),” AP/07/50, Northern Ireland Office FOI release, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111766. 344 “Mountain Climber Notes + Timeline,” November 23, 2011, http://www.longkesh.info/2011/11/23/mountain-climber-notes-timeline/. 345 O’Rawe, Blanketmen, 195.

399 endured 47 days without food.346 The action saved Quinn’s life, but it had the potential to entirely derail the hunger strike. If other families took action as Quinn’s family had, then the British government need not fear the negative reaction to further deaths. An enormous amount of pressure, the very leverage of the hunger strike, would be removed.

Eight men were dead when the protesting prisoners issued another public statement on August 6, 1981. To the previous six deaths were added those of Kevin

Lynch and Kieran Doherty in early August. The INLA’s Lynch died on August 1, 71 days into his fast. Doherty died the next day, after 73 days without food. The subsequent statement issued by the prisoners was an elaboration on their July 4 statement, and reinforced the idea that they were attempting to create a moral polity in the prisons. The prisoners reiterated that they were not seeking preferential treatment and did not desire to take over control of the prison. They also maintained their demand for their own clothing, full remission, free association on their wings, and segregation. They explained that it was crucial that the government’s demand that prisoners work include education because otherwise prisoners had to forfeit their evening association to take classes. During the working day education was only available to students who were educationally deficient.347 Critically, the prisoners expounded on two further points. First, they explained,

There is a vast difference between prison conditions and the prison system.

Prisoners can

346 Melaugh, “Hunger Strike of 1981-A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm. 347 Republican Prisoners of War, Long Kesh, “We, Republican Prisoners in the H-Blocks,” August 6, 1981 in NIO to FCO, August 7, 1918, PREM 19/506 f107, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125286, 2.

400

be held in decent conditions but still be treated as sub-human. What in essence we

seek is the uplifting of the present Victorian prison system. We are convinced that

all prisoners are entitled as human beings to retain their dignity and self respect.

The present system virtually unchanged from the 19th century, denies prisoners

both.

They then complained, “the prisoner is an unopinionated robotic object in [the government’s] eyes. Something whose entire life is totally programmed. This govt attitude is wrong and can only lead to more deaths.”348 Together these ideas, that the humanity and agency of prisoners were rights that were being denied, that the prison’s physical conditions were not the only factors in creating a just system, formed the entire foundation of a moral polity inside the prisons.

Atkins’ response revealed a gulf that had to be overcome if the protesting prisoners still hoped to achieve their moral polity and bring the hunger strike to an end.

The secretary of state took on the prisoners’ accusation of a Victorian prison system by reminding them that what they called a Victorian prison system was “a complex of physical facilities of the most up-to-date kind, coupled with a regime which is not only one of the best in the UK but which stands comparison with the most enlightened systems in the western world.”349 Atkins additionally reminded his listeners that the protesting prisoners were convicted of criminal offenses in court, and these offenses were often violent. Thus, a month after the British government and protesting prisoners came close to ending the hunger strike, each side retrenched. The prisoners continued to call for a

348 Ibid., 2. 349 Northern Ireland Office, “Press Notice: Statement by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Rt Hon Humphrey Atkins MP,” August 7, 1981, in NIO to FCO, August 7, 1918, PREM 19/506 f107, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125286, 1.

401 moral polity while the British government fell back to their original policy of criminalization and promotion of their modern prison facilities.

The result of this impasse was further death and polarization of the communities of the North. On Saturday August 8, two days after the prisoners released their statement,

Thomas McElwee died on the 62nd day of his hunger strike. Republican areas were beset by riots as the weekend also marked the 10th anniversary of the introduction of internment.350 Two civilians were killed on Sunday, Liam Canning, a Catholic civilian shot by the UFF, and Peter McGuinness, also a Catholic civilian, killed by the RUC who shot him with a plastic bullet. On Tuesday the IRA killed Charles Johnston a Protestant civilian.351 A third Catholic civilian was killed on August 16 and his body disappeared.

The disappearance of Charles Armstrong was thought to be the work of the IRA, though they deny this, and his name does not always appear on lists of the known disappeared.352

Then on August 20, the INLA’s Michael Devine became the tenth hunger striker to die after 60 days without food. His death coincided with the by-election in Fermanagh-South

Tyrone to fill the seat left vacant when Bobby Sands died in May. Sinn Fein had put forward Sands’ election agent, Owen Carron, who went on to win the by-election by a greater number of votes than Sands, himself.353 The violence, the deaths of McElwee and

Devine, and the election all demonstrated the polarization of society in the North. By

350 Martin Melaugh, “The Hunger Strike of 1981-A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm. 351 Malcolm Sutton, “An Index of Deaths from the Conflict In Ireland, Chronological List of Deaths, 1981,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1981.html. 352 “Widow’s Relief as Remains Found in ‘Disappeared’ Search,” July 31, 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-10813672. 353 Martin Melaugh, “The Hunger Strike of 1981-A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm.

402

August the middle ground in Northern Ireland had virtually evaporated with the population either rallying behind the hunger strike or standing unequivocally against it.

The British had long recognized that the hunger strike was destroying the middle ground, and saw Carron’s election in this light. “Unlike Sands’s election, this result did not come as a major shock,” M.W. Hopkins of the NIO wrote to Downing Street. “Carron assumed the anti-Unionist mantle in the main Orange/Green battle—the paramount issue in this border constituency; he embodied the alienation which has built up amongst

Catholics in the wake of the Government’s firm stance on the hunger strike. . .” 354 That

“firm stance” was a rejection of the prisoners’ moral polity, which meant that those outside the prison who believed in the moral polity were far less likely to vote for any candidate associated with the government who denied that organization of society.

The strikers and republicans outside the prison had problems beyond a recalcitrant government. By August the funerals of hunger strikers were attracting less support than they had early in the strike. Devine’s pulled in very little support outside his native Derry, the otherwise sympathetic populations having grown fatigued through the summer’s relentless march of deaths.355 There was also an increasing threat to the hunger strike from the hunger strikers’ families. Although the strike survived Paddy Quinn’s family intervening to save his life, an increasing number of families stood ready to take similar steps. Devine became the tenth hunger striker to die on August 20, while Pat McGeown became the second hunger striker to be taken off by his family. McFarlane noted, "They told me that Pat McGeown had been sick for a few days and was sinking rapidly. He took

354 M.W. Hopkins to William Rickett, August 24, 1981, PREM 19/506 f29, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/125297, 1. 355 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 315.

403 a bad dip last night and his wife came in and signed the papers.”356 The NIO reported that

Laurence McKeown’s family had already indicated that they would intervene if

McKeown lapsed into a coma, though he was not yet at a critical stage on day 57 of his hunger strike.357 McKeown’s family did take him off hunger strike, but not before

Matthew Devlin’s family had done the same. Devlin was on his 52nd day of hunger strike when his family requested medical intervention on September 4. Two days later

McKeown’s family followed suit. It was his 70th day without food. As the McKeown family requested treatment for Laurence, the INLA announced that it would not be adding hunger strikers to the strike at the same rate as they had to this point, as they had far fewer prisoners than the PIRA.358 The strike was becoming more precarious as people outside the prison began to exert more pressure on the hunger strikers. They were acting, not out of a desire to create a moral polity, but out of a desire to save their loved ones as individuals and to maintain the strength of their larger organization.

While the opposition from families grew, the protesting prisoners remained outwardly committed to the hunger strike, their five demands, and the creation of a moral polity within the prisons of the North. Further prisoners joined the hunger strike through

September, with John Pickering, Gerard Hodgins, and James Devine, joining Liam

McCloskey (INLA), Patrick Sheehan, Jackie McMullan, Bernard Fox, and Gerry Carville who joined the strike the previous month.359 Letters continued to flow from the H-Blocks which called on the recipients to support the hunger strikers and republican prisoners

356 To An Bean Vasal from Bik, Friday August 21, 1981, 1:30 pm, in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 314. 357 M.W. Hopkins to William Rickett, August 24, 1981, 2. 358 There were only 28 INLA prisoners in the H-Blocks at the time while the PIRA had approximately 380. Martin Melaugh, “The Hunger Strike of 1981- A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm. 359 Ibid. Gerry Carville is listed in some sources as Hugh Carville.

404 more generally. “Please don’t let [the hunger strikers] die through indifference,” Sean

Coleman, a protesting prisoner in H6, pleaded with France’s President Mitterand.

Coleman argued that the prisoners’ demands were “not unreasonable when you consider that we the Republican prisoners on protest are the victims of an undemocratic Police-

Army State.” He reminded Mitterand that the protesting prisoners were arrested and sentenced under special laws and courts without juries and “tortured while in police and army custody.”360 Although warders discovered the letter during a cell search, meaning it never reached its destination, the sentiment was genuine. Coleman and the other prisoners for whom he spoke believed that the British government was not living up to its reciprocal responsibilities toward its citizens.

Such was the prisoners’ commitment that as late as mid-September 1981, representatives of the NIO worried that families intervening to save the lives of hunger strikers might not be enough to bring the strike to an end. Paddy Quinn, Pat McGeown,

Matt Devlin, and Laurence McKeown had all been taken off the strike by their families by the middle of September, but while the NIO believed this would make it easier for other families to do the same, they did not necessarily see the end of the hunger strike approaching. “It was too early to say that the strike was crumbling; in particular, it was important to see whether ex-hunger strikers would resume the strike when they returned to the wings,”361 John Blelloch warned. Blelloch’s warning was indicative of the gulf that existed between the protesting prisoners and those outside, particularly their families,

360 Sean Coleman to President Mitterand, September 13, 1981, NIO 12/197A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 361 “Note of a Meeting Held in the Northern Ireland Office on Friday 11 September 1981,” September 11, 1981, PREM 19/814 f 235, The National Archives at Kew, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/137422, 2.

405 who did not see the achievement of a moral polity in the prisons as worth the life of their loved one.

Pressure from the hunger strikers’ families to end the strike grew as the hunger strike progressed into the autumn of 1981, encountering further problems along the way.

On September 24 news outlets reported that Bernard Fox ended his strike after 32 days when Sinn Fein reportedly determined that he was “dying too quickly,” following a rapid deterioration in his condition. From the prison, Brendan McFarlane wrote to Gerry

Adams to say that Fox hadn’t ended his strike, but planned to in the next few days.362 The more immediate problem was that Gerard Carville was having second thoughts and had asked to be replaced on the hunger strike. “Now there’s no way I would try to talk him round. What I will do is to get him to stall for a few days till we pick our best moment to replace him,” McFarlane explained.363 The prisoners were already taking heat from

Father Faul who accused them of “scraping the bottom of the barrel” when they allowed

John Pickering to join the strike, as Pickering had recently been in the hospital for stomach and ear problems and was suspected of having an ulcer not long after he embarked on his hunger strike.364

Faul had begun speaking to hunger strikers’ families in an attempt to get them to intervene and save the hunger strikers’ lives. His conversations were having an effect.

Later in the evening on September 24, McFarlane wrote again to Adams, this time to explain that he had met with the hunger strikers and although they debated the idea of creating a legal document to prevent their families from intervening most thought it

362 To Brownie from Bik, September 24, 1981, 10:30 p.m. in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 322. 363 To Brownie, September 24, 1981, 7 p.m. in Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 321. 364 Beresford, Ten Men Dead, 321, 323.

406 would have no effect. Liam McCloskey’s family was expected to take him off the strike, and Pat Sheehan remarked that with Fox leaving the strike and McCloskey’s family ready to step in, “it will be hard for his clan not to intervene. He reckons they’ll do the deed,”

McFarlane wrote.365 Two days later, Liam McCloskey ended his strike after 55 days in response to his family’s promise to authorize treatment if he became unconscious.366 That same day, the prisoners responded with a statement that called Faul a “treacherous, conniving man,” but it did nothing to dissuade him in his efforts to bring the hunger strike to an end via the families.

On September 27, Father Faul called a meeting of hunger strikers’ families, at which he encouraged them to seek a meeting with a representative of the NIO. This, they did, and the next day Gerry Carville’s brother and sister, Gerard Hodgins’ mother, sister, aunt and uncle, John Pickering’s mother, Jackie McMullan’s father, and Patrick

Sheehan’s sisters met with Lord Gowrie at Stormont Castle. Gowrie had only recently become minister of Prisons. He was appointed by James Prior who Margaret Thatcher made Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in mid-September. The families left the meeting urging Gowrie to visit the hunger strikers or make some sort of a statement on the hunger strike.367 The meetings with hunger strikers’ families made Faul confident enough to assert that he did not believe more hunger strikers would die, unless they suffered a sudden collapse, because their families would seek medical intervention before

365 To Brownie from Bik, September 24, 1981, 10:30 p.m. 366 Melaugh, ““The Hunger Strike of 1981- A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm. 367 David Brooker, “Note for the Record,” September 29, 1981, NIO 12/254, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_NIO-12-254_1981-09-28.pdf, 2, 4.

407 they died, when Cardinal Ó Fiaich brought him along to a meeting with the new secretary of state on September 30.368

None of this was particularly positive news for anyone looking to continue the hunger strike. On October 2, Danny Morrison told BBC radio that

The hunger strike as a pressure on the British Government and as a weapon the

prisoners have been able to use, is being actively subverted by people within the

Irish establishment, by the SDLP but particular by the Irish Hierarchy who are

working on the emotions and putting moral pressure on the understandably

distressed relatives.369

It was too much to overcome, and the next day, on October 3, 1981, the prisoners ended their hunger strike. The prisoners released a lengthy statement which ended with a statement of renewed commitment to achieve the five demands “by whatever means we believe necessary and expedient.” This, they felt bound to do, they explained, because

“Under no circumstances are we going to devalue the memory of our dead comrades by submitting ourselves to a dehumanizing and degrading regime.”370 It was a last, defiant statement of their commitment to seeing their moral polity of the prisons recreated.

With the hunger strike ended, James Prior, now Secretary of State for Northern

Ireland, announced a series of changes to prison policy on October 6. These changes were

368 S.W. Boys-Smith, “Meeting with Cardinal O Fiaich, Stormont Castle, 30 September 1981,” October 1, 1981, CENT 1/10/86A, PRONI, Belfast, Northern Ireland, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/proni/1981/proni_CENT-1- 10-86A_1981-09-30.pdf, 1. 369 Ed Moloney, “Families Unite to End Long Kesh Hunger-Strikes,” October 3, 1981, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/how-the-irish-times-reported-end-of-1981-hunger-strikes- 1.2814663. 370 Campbell, McKeown, O’Hagan, Nor Meekly Serve My Time, 264.

408 applicable to all prisoners, so as to avoid the creation of any special type of prisoner.371

Prisoners could wear their own clothes at all times, and they could enjoy free association between neighboring wings of each H-Block, the exercise areas, and recreation rooms.

The number of visits allotted to each prisoner increased, and prisoners were eligible to have up to fifty percent of their lost remission restored.372 Of the republicans’ five demands this addressed everything except the issue of work, and, as the negotiations of

July indicated, the British were willing to move on this issue over time. By October 25, most of the protesting republican prisoners ended even their blanket protest, and the H-

Blocks were quiet as prisoners awaited the implementation of the October 6 changes.

III. Controversies and Conclusions

The war waged by Irish republicans in the prisons of Northern Ireland between

1976 and 1981 effectively resurrected the moral polity they had achieved under special category status, albeit in a slightly different guise. They had not brought back special category as a distinct status for republican prisoners, but the very act of sustained protest had established these as a different type of prisoner in many minds. More important than official categorization or titles, anyway, was the fact that the prison administration and

British government had been forced to deal with Irish republicans as a legitimate foe.

British official statements and parliamentary debates may have continued to delegitimize the IRA and other paramilitary groups, but behind the scenes the Prime Minister had negotiated directly with representatives of the prisoners, and prison administrations

371 Commons, Written Answers, “Northern Ireland Maze Prison,” October 29, 2981, HC Deb 29 October 1981 vol 10 cc458-9W, Historic Hansard, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1981/oct/29/maze-prison. 372 Melaugh, ““The Hunger Strike of 1981- A Chronology of Main Events,” http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/hstrike/chronology.htm.

409 worked through prisoners’ self-appointed representatives. In the end, the protesting prisoners had achieved the substance of their five demands, which defined how the prison authorities and prisoners would interact and what rights and respect were due to each.

The gains made by republicans in October, however, looked remarkably like what the British had offered in July, and this led Richard O’Rawe to question why the outside leadership balked at the July offer. In Blanketmen O’Rawe posited that the outside leadership cynically allowed six men to die in order to advance the political fortunes of

Sinn Fein, because it was not until Owen Carron was elected to fill Bobby Sands’ vacant seat that the hunger strike was called off.373 O’Rawe’s allegations have attracted both support and derision from fellow republicans. Unfortunately, the documents available relating to the tense days of early July 1981 do not reveal motive. We now know that the

British did offer concessions on July 6, but why the outside leadership expressed opposition to the document is less clear.

In order to assess the effect of the July negotiations on the IRA’s moral polity one must know if Gerry Adams drove the dismissal of the British offer to the extent that

O’Rawe alleges. If Adams controlled the outside leadership vetoed the offer from the

British to move the Northern Irish conflict from armed struggle to non-violent politics, virtually unilaterally, then the moral polity was violated for the sake of moving closer to establishment politics in Northern Ireland. Ironically, then, that move away from the moral polity might be credited with turning the IRA toward the peace process. If, however, the outside leadership simply overreached, believing that they could push the

British into greater concessions before Joe McDonnell died, no such violation of the

373 O’Rawe, Blanketmen, 252-256.

410 moral polity took place. What is clearer is that the prisoners, themselves, did not violate the moral polity, and remained committed to its recreation as the hunger strike progressed. In the end they achieved a situation that approached the moral polity they had initially created under special category.

The Black Panthers took the opposite course between 1976 and the early 1980s.

Having struggled to keep their moral polity afloat through the 1970s, the Party finally collapsed in 1982. The IRA’s struggle for the restoration of their moral polity of the prisons was loud and created a spectacle that fascinated much of the Western world. The

BPP’s demise was quieter, the Party having drawn so far into itself in 1972 that it was no longer a national organization by the mid-1970s. Scattered across the country, Panther prisoners did not have the ability to engage in collective protest without engaging with prisoners who were not members of the Party. Although the remaining chapters attempted to alleviate the plight of prisoners through survival programs like the free commissary and free busing to prisons programs, resources were difficult to come by as the BPP descended into financial trouble as a result of financial mismanagement and lack of resources. Huey Newton’s own behavior ensured that what was left of the Panther’s moral polity was continually violated until the Party finally folded in 1982. Panther prisoners were, thus, left alone, the relics of an attempt to create real change in the United

States.

411

Conclusion

Joe Doherty was bartending in New York when he was arrested again in 1983.

Irish America embraced him as a captured hero during the nine subsequent years he spent imprisoned in federal jails as he fought extradition back to Northern Ireland. Politicians visited him. He wrote columns for Irish American newspapers. All the major networks sent reporters to interview him. New Yorkers renamed a street corner in lower Manhattan for Doherty.1 In 1984 he was joined by American political prisoners. Eventually he shared a cell with Timothy Blunk, arrested for his actions as part of the May 19

Movement which was connected to the Weather Underground. When Blunk received a long prison sentence, Doherty counseled him to get away from armed struggle and into education.2

Despite sharing a cell with Blunk, Doherty confessed that he had trouble understanding the domestic militants in the United States. He could identify with Puerto

Rican nationalist prisoners on the basis of shared nationalist beliefs. At the same time, he questioned why groups like the May 19 Movement thought they could overthrow the US government despite lacking popular support, which Doherty considered essential to waging an armed campaign.3 When a domestic political prisoner asked Doherty to testify at his trial, in order to be classified as a political prisoner, Doherty refused, citing this

1 James Barron, “I.R.A. Fugitive sent to Belfast from U.S. Jail,” The New York Times, February 20, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/20/world/ira-fugitive-sent-to-belfast-from-us-jail.html?mcubz=2. 2 Joe Doherty, Interview With the Author, November 2011; Associated Press, “Radicals Found Guilty by Jurors in Federal Trial,” The New York Times, March 18, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/18/nyregion/radicals-found-guilty-by-jurors-in-federal- trial.html?mcubz=2. 3 Doherty, Interview with the author, November 2011.

412 lack of support.4 The prisoner was appalled, but Doherty came from a moral polity where communal attitudes carried great weight.

Whilst Doherty was on the run and then fighting extradition, republican prisoners in Northern Ireland continued to pick at the prison regime. In September 1983 thirty eight prisoners escaped from the H-Blocks. Although some of the escapees were recaptured soon after, some remained on the run for years.5 It was humiliating for the British government and the NIO, and it was a massive propaganda victory for the IRA who were quick to point out that their men had escaped from a prison that was supposed to be one of the most secure in Europe.6 At Armagh, republican women, ordinary prisoners, and

Fathers Faul and Murray protested the resurrection of the practice of strip searching. For

Catholic women, raised, as Faul suggested “to be pure and chaste like the Blessed Virgin

. . . That purity is being defiled in the city of St. Patrick.”7 For their part, republican women maintained that the strip searching was designed to strip them of their dignity and self-respect as much as it was designed to uncover contraband and ensure the safety of the prison.8 As the 1980s gave way to a new decade, the NIO attempted to integrate republican and loyalist prisoners in the Crumlin Road Jail. The attempt led to violence

4 Ibid. 5 Pól Brennan, “Escape!—Part One: The Takeover of H-7” Northern Ireland Report no. 20,1995, P6784, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 6. 6 Pól Brennan, “Escape!—Part Three: Free At Last” Northern Ireland Report no. 22,1995, P6784, NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 10. 7 Father Denis Faul, “The ‘Barbie of Armagh,’” in Father Denis Faul, ed., The Stripping Naked of the Women Prisoners in Armagh Prison 1982-83, Easter 1983, P530(A), NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 4. 8 Republican Remand POW to Irish News in Faul ed., The Stripping Naked of the Women Prisoners in Armagh Prison 1982-83, Easter 1983, P530(A), NIPC, Linen Hall Library, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 11.

413 between these two communities and further prison protest.9 The IRA bombed a canteen in the prison in 1991, killing a loyalist prisoner. The loyalists retaliated a year later.10

As the Crumlin Road Jail descended into tit for tat violence, Doherty lost his extradition battle, and he was deported to back to Northern Ireland. There, he was sent into the H-Blocks, which by his 1992 return had, what Doherty called, a “commune type atmosphere” where “education was really central.”11 The moral polity created by the IRA was in full operation. Prisoners and warders understood their roles and rights, and these were, in comparison to earlier periods, respected. By the time he returned a younger generation was incarcerated alongside veterans from the 1970s and 1980s like Doherty.

In this manner, the H-Blocks became a place where the wisdom of one generation of republicans was passed to the next.12 Doherty was finally released in 1999 after the Good

Friday Accords ushered in an era of sometimes uneasy peace in Northern Ireland, and led to the release of all those in prison for conflict-related offenses. Release of the conflict’s prisoners and their approval of the agreement were crucial elements in getting republicans to sign the agreement. Upon release Doherty moved into community work.13

He now works with Coiste na nIarchimí, an umbrella organization of groups created to help republican ex-prisoners.

9 John O’Hagan, Interview with Author, November 2011. 10 Reuters, “Bomb Goes Off in Ulster Jail, Killing Inmate, Wounding 8,” The New York Times, November 25, 1991, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/25/world/bomb-goes-off-in-ulster-jail-killing-inmate- wounding-8.html?mcubz=2. ; David McKittrick, “Loyalists Fire Rocket at Prison Canteen,” The Independent, December 14, 1992, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/loyalists-fire-rocket-at-prison- canteen-1563427.html. 11 Joe Doherty, Interview With Author, November 2011. 12 Jim McVeigh, Interview With Author, November 2011. 13 Joe Doherty, Interview With Author, November 2011.

414

Safiya Bukhari was released from prison in August 1983. She returned to New

York and took a job as a social worker with the Bronx office of the Legal Aid Society.

This organization helped the impoverished gain access to legal services.14 At the same time, she understood that the demise of the Black Panther Party and its earlier schism resulted in prisoners who were now left without an organization to support them.

Sometime after 1984 she wrote, “Political prisoners didn’t become political prisoners out of a vacuum. . . . At the time the majority of these people went to prison there was a thriving movement on the street. They are sitting there now and the movement is totally fragmented and in a state of disarray.”15

Bukhari simultaneously remembered that she had support within prison and people waiting for her upon her release, because of her earlier organizing. As such, she determined that the issue of political prisoners had to be central to any movement being formed at that moment.16 In the late 1990s she helped form an organization dedicated to supporting and lobbying on behalf of political prisoners. In 1997 as she worked to create a campaign that became the Jericho Movement to Free US Political Prisoners, she wrote an Essay on “Building Support for Political Prisoners of War Incarcerated in North

America,” which she directed at the Congressional Black Caucus. In the essay she argued that the black political prisoners in America

sacrificed their lives to improve the conditions under which we lived. . . the

motivation of the these brothers and sisters was not to secure wealth or property

14 Whitehorn in Bukhari, The War Before, xxxi. 15 Bukhari, The War Before, 98. 16 Ibid., 101-102.

415

for themselves, but for the greater community. They believed in what they were

doing and their motivation was love of their people.17 [emphasis in original]

She signed the essay as the “Vice President and Minister of Defense” for the Republic of

New Afrika.18 Her explanation of the motivations of black political prisoners was a late indication that, even as they moved on from the Black Panther Party, activists carried forward some of the ideas that had formed the foundation of the Panther’s moral polity.

Unlike Northern Ireland where the end of the conflict also signaled the end of imprisonment for most combatants of the conflict, in the United States Bukhari’s Jericho

Movement maintains a list of political prisoners to the present day. It still includes seven former Black Panthers as well as a number of prisoners associated with the Black

Liberation Army.19 Until her untimely death in 2003 Bukhari traveled the country agitating for the prisoners left behind. The Jericho Movement continues her work.

The post-prison lives of Doherty and Bukhari remind us that community welfare remained, and remains, a core concern for many who once espoused more all- encompassing social changes. In cities like Belfast and Oakland, the conflict and tension between the IRA and the British government and between the BPP, BLA, and the US government, and each country’s respective security forces, has left deep scars. In Ireland republicans have created groups like Tar Anall, Abhaile Arís, Tar Abhaile, and Tar

Isteach to help ex-prisoners get jobs, find emotional support, get advice on a variety of topics, and to work to remove legal barriers still faced by ex-prisoners as a result of their

17 Ibid., 104, 105. 18 Ibid., 109. 19 National Jericho Movement, “Prisoners,” http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.

416 imprisonment. In the United States, too, groups like the Jericho Movement have been created by former prisoners to assist other political prisoners still behind bars. In

September 2015 Elaine Brown, as CEO of Oakland and the World Enterprises started a for-profit farm, owned collectively by the farmers who are all ex-prisoners.20 The alternate socio-political relations and reciprocities created by the IRA and BPP have gone, but the communities at their heart, remain.

We should beware, however, lest we romanticize the moral polities of the IRA and BPP. As one former IRA prisoner explained,

Bobby Sands didn’t go to jail for being a poet. He went to jail because he was a

member of the IRA . . . . We were fighters. We didn’t take the Gandhi approach,

admirable though it is, because we’d been doing that, and guess what? It didn’t

work . . . . You can only corner people for so long and we did come out fighting

and we fought them to a standstill.21

The Panthers and IRA should not be denied their radicalism, but neither should it be imagined that these groups did not have ideological bases for their use of violence. Moral polities were, it should be remembered, based on a morality and did not indicate the absence of all moral ambiguities or heinous acts of violence. As a socially constructed phenomenon the moral polity can include acts of violence considered immoral by many, provided those actions adhere to the internal logic of the envisioned society and political relations. The socio-political organizations advocated by the IRA and BPP were simply

20 Jonathan Kauffman, “West Oakland Farms Sows Seeds of Renewal for Ex-Inmates,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 6, 2015, http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/West-Oakland-Farms-sows- seeds-of-renewal-for-6488552.php. 21 Sinéad, Interview with Author, November 2011.

417 based on alternate criteria than those of the established socio-political system. The established justice systems of Northern Ireland and the United States favored and continue to favor an absolute lack of violence from the populace even if this often means that justice is elusive or denied. The moral polities advocated by the BPP and IRA, on the other hand, allowed for violence from members because they privileged ideas of justice over the goal of an absolute lack of violence. The consequence of this ideological difference was a considerable number of dead. In the United States the dead were

Panthers and policemen. In Northern Ireland, casualties included civilians who wanted no part of either side of the conflict.

Nevertheless, we must consider the fact that the violence or threat of violence that came with the moral polities of the Panthers and IRA was, itself, reciprocal in nature.

IRA members fully expected their violence to be met with incarceration or counter violence, even death.22 Volunteers firmly, believed, however, that they should be treated as political prisoners once they were in prison. Those were the rules of the war as they saw it. They also viewed the British and Northern Irish states as having, historically, deployed violence against their communities, so that their use of violence came in reaction to that long history.23 The Panthers, too, had a reciprocal idea of violence. From their very genesis they rallied against police brutality and murder of black people by the

State. They saw the process of arming themselves as a reaction to that violence.

Furthermore, even their seemingly violent rhetoric had a self-defense component. In his

1970 account of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, explained

22 This fact came up in numerous interviews conducted by the author. 23 Séanna Walsh, Interview with Author, November 2011.

418

Kill in the language of black community does not mean murder, but always comes

as a reaction to someone or something that is about to unjustly attack the person

or threatens to unjustly attack them. You always find the word ‘kill’ in very

defensive language on the part of blacks. 24

Hence, there were situations in which violence could be used and situations in which it was not called for.

Simultaneously, there were, certainly, times when the IRA and BPP could not be said to be working toward a moral polity at all. Both were capable of moments of indefensible violence, violence that did not adhere to the internal logic of the moral polity. The IRA continued to engage in violence even as they fought for a social organization based on justice within the prisons, and at times sectarianism crept into this violence. If this were not the case, Brendan McFarlane’s conviction would not have precluded him from going on hunger strike. Similarly, there was little of the moral polity evident in Huey Newton’s violent episodes during the Panthers’ later years. The reality of

BPP and IRA action on the ground was often complicated and could be influenced by outside forces, and the actions and motives of individual members.

The question, thus, becomes one of whether or not the violence associated with these two organizations helped or hurt them as they pursued their moral polities.

Historians of the black liberation struggle in the United States have divided over the efficacy of armed self-defense as it was used during the civil rights and black power eras.

In “We Will Shoot Back:” Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

24 Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991), 411.

419

Akinyele Umoja argues that “armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation and Black disenfranchisement.”25

Simon Wendt has complicated this idea, by arguing that without a non-violent mass movement, armed self-defense often provoked increased violence on the part of Southern

Whites, and, therefore, the civil rights movement depended on both “the spirit and the shotgun.”26

On the surface it may seem that the Panthers were injured by their commitment to armed self-defense. California legislators altered the gun laws to disarm the BPP; the FBI and local law enforcement officials waged repressive campaigns against Panthers and their supporters which led to Panther deaths; the willingness to engage with armed self- defense may have helped saboteurs create real violence as they did with the murder of

Alex Rackley, since proponents of non-violence would not have condoned such an interrogation. But it must be remembered that the FBI also sent Martin Luther King Jr. a letter urging him to commit suicide and levied other counterintelligence against this champion of non-violence. Police departments across the South also made use of prisons against non-violent civil rights marchers, learning the efficiency of this tactic before the

Panthers came along, so the absence of armed self-defense did not mean an absence of repression. Additionally, the Panthers were not entirely based around armed self-defense.

Their early “guns, baby guns” rhetoric and policies were largely gone by the end of 1968,

25 Akinyele Omowale Umoja, “We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 2. Umoja also advances this argument in earlier articles and his dissertation. 26 Simon Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights, New Perspectives on the History of the South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 13, 7.

420 and they operated numerous programs within black communities that had nothing to do with the threat of violence and everything to do with community survival and uplift.

Where violence hurt, and eventually crushed the Panthers’ moral polity was with

Huey Newton’s increasing volatility after 1978. When he began to profit personally from the shake downs of local businesses, the communal nature of the Panthers’ reorganization of society was lost, and a moral polity could no longer be upheld. This use of violence violated the internal order of the moral polity which said that their struggles were for the good of the community, not to benefit one individual at the expense of others. Thus, violence could be used to protect the moral polity, but it could also be its downfall.

In the case of the IRA, violence occurred on a much larger scale. Indeed, for the

IRA, it was an integral part of their moral polity. They defined themselves in opposition to the British State. They were soldiers, engaged in a war of national liberation. If the

British State oppressed their communities they were, therefore, allowed to rebel, violently if necessary. They considered the violence necessary because the British State used it against them. Remember that moral economists as described by E.P. Thompson were prone to riot when traditional rights and customs were violated, and a legitimizing factor could, therefore, be identified. The millers and bakers against whom riots were directed certainly did not approve or find morality in the action, but the crowd allowed it because it fit their view of how the local economy should operate. The principle is the same with the moral polity. Where violence could be legitimized based on ideas about how society should operate, it was generally tolerated. Where that task was more difficult or impossible, as with cases of sectarian murder or the disappearing of developmentally delayed people, the IRA drew more condemnation.

421

The IRA’s moral polity, was, therefore, strongest in the prisons where the unpalatable violence of the street was less of a factor. Having taken some early inspiration from the Black Panther Party, and through protracted struggle, IRA volunteers were able to create a society in the prisons where they were effectively treated as prisoners of war. Between 1972 and 1976, and again, after 1981 in prisons housing sentenced prisoners, republicans established moral polities while violence operations continued outside. Nevertheless, within the H-Blocks and Armagh, in particular, republican command structures were used and respected, prisoners had control over their own time, and they could pursue education as they saw fit. Increased incarceration had led the IRA to push for a change in the reciprocities between prison governments and prisoners, while the BPP pushed for this change outside leading to an increase in prisoners when the FBI and other law enforcement institutions stepped in to undermine their work.

In the end, therefore, there was a large difference in the ultimate fates of political prisoners in Northern Ireland and the United States. Combatants of the Northern Irish

Conflict were released as a condition of the Good Friday Accords. Prisoners were instrumental in the agreement’s final form and acceptance. Former IRA prisoner Séanna

Walsh delivered the subsequent 2005 statement which ended the PIRA’s war. The statement reiterated the legitimacy of the armed struggle, but committed volunteers to moving forward via peaceful means. Their moral polity, accordingly, came to an end as they accepted a role in the State and Sinn Fein took a spot in the power sharing executive created in 2007. At this point there was no need for the alternative structures of the moral polity because republicans had representation within the government in a way they had

422 never experienced before. Opponents of the Good Friday Agreements and Sinn Fein’s entrance into government refused to accept this, but the majority of the old PIRA seem to have followed the Army Council’s directive to continue forward using peaceful means to bring about a united Ireland. In the United States, former Panthers and BLA members remain in prisons across the country. In this instance, the United States might learn from

Northern Ireland. Despite fears of releasing paramilitary prisoners, rates of recidivism among former combatants remain low. Nevertheless, the United States continues to insist on, and pay for, the incarceration of aging revolutionaries.

The role of the carceral state and its relationship to violence is important to consider before we leave this study. However objectionable the violence associated with the IRA and the BPP, the Northern Irish, British, and United States governments did not always wait for that violence to use their prison systems. The Northern Irish government first deployed internment without trial in 1971 before the PIRA’s campaign of violence was truly underway.27 Moreover, they directed internment exclusively at Catholic and nationalist populations until 1973 despite violence from loyalists. In the United States, counterintelligence programs designed to disrupt “black nationalist hate groups” predated the Panthers and were levied at groups such as the SCLC which were neither black- nationalist nor driven by hate. Violence was, therefore, not always a predictor of imprisonment.

In this manner, prisons became vehicles for silencing political dissent. From the early COINTELPROs against civil rights groups, it was only a short step for the FBI and

27 McCleery, Operation Demetrius and its Aftermath, 3.

423 law enforcement to begin to use imprisonment as a means to disrupt and silence the

Black Panthers. Similarly, the British took over internment, changing it to “detention,” but kept Catholics and nationalists grossly overrepresented among detainees. The loyalist call for internment was heeded. The nationalist charge of inequity was ignored. The

British then went on to remove juries from conflict combatant’s trials. They argued this was to prevent juror intimidation, and while that was a valid concern, the end result was still the silencing of defendants’ voices. When prisoners moved to use the electoral system to regain their voice, parliament outlawed prisoner-candidates. Running candidates for office was a decidedly gentle method of protest for the IRA, an arguably welcome change in tactics after years of bloodshed, and yet Margaret Thatcher’s government put a stop to the practice.

There is also the question of violence meted out by prison officials. IRA prisoners were not shy about accusing their jailers of mistreatment. In later years some former prisoners received compensation for enduring such treatment.28 The United States has repeatedly come under criticism for its use of solitary confinement, a situation all too familiar to former Panthers who spent decades in the hole. Opponents of the practice often cite it as a psychologically violent practice. Violence between prisoners could also be common in both countries. Consequently, although the violence of the IRA might be deplored, and the threatened violence of the BPP feared, these groups did not have a monopoly on the use of violence. They dared to question who might legitimately wield it, however. If we ask whether or not violence was inimical to the creation of moral polities

28 Séanna Walsh, Interview With Author, November 2011.

424 we ought to simultaneously ask how and why a given power structure levied violence at these moral polities.

When the events of 1966-1983 are considered in total, we can see two collectives advancing conceptualizations of how society should operate which were radically different from those held by the State, and it is this difference which brought them into conflict with the governments and prisons of Northern Ireland and the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. In the face of the attempt of the State to silence radical political actors via the carceral state, IRA volunteers and Black Panthers found ways to bring their movements into the prisons. In doing so, prisoners made their jails sites, not of silence, but of struggle and an extension of their larger campaigns for various rights. The

BPP advocated armed self-defense to protect black citizens, and the IRA allowed for offensive violence to drive the British from Ireland, but so too did men and women from each organization suffer violence at the hands of the State, and its prisons. Perhaps, then, as to the questions on how the use of violence affects the morality of a moral polity provoked by this study, we are best left with the words of Father Denis Faul, writing on behalf of women prisoners in 1983:

All morality does come back to Paddy Murphy’s broken arm and Biddy Murphy’s

broken leg, whether it was broken by the IRA, the UVF, the British Army or the

RUC. If one cannot do something effectively in word or deed about it, then one

should not pronounce on morality at all.29

29 Faul, “The ‘Barbie of Armagh,’” 3.

425

If we are not prepared to act to shape the world around us, to prevent the broken bones of the world and heal them should they occur, pronouncements of morality and placing blame will do us little good.

426

GLOSSARY OF TERMS BLA: Black Liberation Army

BPP: The Black Panther Party, founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966.

Crumlin Road Jail/HMP Belfast:

IRA: Irish Republican Army

IO: Intelligence Officer

ICJP: Irish Commission for Justice and Peace

Long Kesh: A prison housing republican paramilitary prisoners, built on a disused World War II Royal Air Force Base. After 1972 and direct rule it was known as HMP Maze by government representatives. Republicans continued to refer to “Long Kesh,” and later, “the H blocks.”

HMP Magilligan: Opened in 1972 on the site of an ex-Army camp in Limavady, Co. Derry, Magilligan housed internees, and short term prisoners who were typically viewed to be less dangerous than those being sent to Long Kesh. Initially it consisted of 8 Nissen Huts. H Blocks were later added.

HMP Maze: see Long Kesh

NIO: Northern Ireland Office

OC: Officer Commanding

OIRA: The Official Irish Republican Army. The IRA which stayed loyal to Cathal Goulding after the 1969 split in the army.

ODC: Ordinary Decent Criminal, a prisoner who was not convicted of a scheduled offense. That is, one who was jailed for a non-conflict related offense.

PIRA: The Provisional Irish Republican Army, formed in 1969 from a split in the IRA when Cathal Goulding attempted to take the organization in a more Marxist direction.

RUC: Royal Ulster Constabulary

SAC: Special Agent in Charge (FBI designation)

SDLP: Social Democratic and Labor Party

427

UDA: Ulster Defence Association

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