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During the seventies, former bishop of Derry Edward Daly experienced the earliest, bloodiest years of the Troubles in close-up. He would visit both loyalist and republican prisoners in the infamous Long Kesh prison – later known as the Maze.
In 1976, paramilitary prisoners had their ‘political’ status removed and were treated as normal convicts. This sparked the blanket protests – where prisoners refused to wear jail uniforms – and these later escalated to hunger strikes. In an extract from his new book, Bishop Daly describes the foul conditions at Long Kesh.
IN MARCH 1978, the prisoners ‘on the blanket’ escalated their protest by refusing to clean out their cells, wash or go to the toilet. They smeared the walls and ceilings of their cells with their own excrement and the floors streamed with urine. The lasting memory of visits to Long Kesh during that protest was the horrendous stench. The cells were industrially cleaned by the prison authorities with power hoses from time to time and prisoners were moved to other cells. I have no idea how people lived or worked in those conditions. During my visits there to the wings, I was violently ill on several occasions. The revolting and foul smell seemed to permeate everything I wore, even days after the visit. Items of outer clothing, even after dry cleaning, were virtually unusable subsequently.
In 1980, after four years of unsuccessful protests appealing for special status, a status that would recognise them as political prisoners, prisoners of war rather than criminals, rumours began to circulate that a hunger strike was imminent.
Individually and jointly, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich and I made several lengthy visits to the H-Blocks in Long Kesh Prison in the spring and summer months of 1980, meeting virtually all the protesting prisoners individually in their cells. These visits usually lasted from early morning until late in the evening. We also met with the prison authorities and visited some Loyalist prisoners, including some of their better-known leaders.
Those lengthy visits to Long Kesh are etched forever in my memory. Spending seven or eight hours at a time going around cells visiting young men in those conditions was unforgettable. It was a parallel universe. There were usually two men in each cell. Their hair was matted and they had long unkempt beards. They were thin and haggard and their eyes were sunken. They wore long blankets. There was no furniture in the cells. The stench was intense and allpervasive. I simply do not know how people retained their sanity after spending such a long time in that environment. Yet I always found the prisoners in high spirits and imbued with a steely determination. Only a few of them talked about a hunger strike.
However, Cardinal Ó Fiaich and I were both convinced that if they embarked upon that course, they would see it through. We also believed that if these men were to embark on their threatened hunger strike, it could have disastrous consequences for the community as a whole. We decided to approach the British Government jointly on behalf of the prisoners. We believed that they had a legitimate and arguable case and that both the Government and prisoners and society generally in the North would benefit from a less stringent and degrading prison regime. We reached this conclusion on the basis that were it not for the political circumstances that these young people found themselves in, most of them would never
have seen the inside of a prison. Most of them came from stable family backgrounds.
We also believed that these protests were undertaken on the prisoners’ own initiative, rather than on bidding or orders from any group outside the prison. Equally, we believed that the protest in the prison was perceived by the prisoners as their continuing contribution to the struggle going on outside the prison.
The issue was further complicated by the fact that a sustained paramilitary campaign was going on contemporaneously throughout the North. In the course of that campaign, many prison officers were murdered. Those who perpetrated these murders claimed that they were acting in support of the prisoners on protest. There was intense anger and hatred between the prisoners and prison staff. There were many allegations of assault. Intimate body searches were frequently carried out, often in a brutal and demeaning manner. There are few dignified methods where intimate strip searches are concerned. The searcher and the searched are dehumanised. Long Kesh was a loathsome, hateful place as well as a powder keg as the 1970s moved to the 1980s.
Edward Daly and Cardinal Ó Fiaich would later meet with the British government in an attempt to negotiate an end to the 1981 hunger strikes, in which ten prisoners died. He writes that the strikes worsened community divisions, and intensified violence, concluding: “I hope there will never again be a hunger strike in Ireland.”
Edward Daly’s autobiography A Troubled See: Memoirs of a Derry Bishop is available now in bookshops, published by Four Courts Press.
Let us never forget the alternative to peace is the hell gone through by the few for all of us. Let us never go back. Never forget our Heros who brought us here
Good article, those men, those political prisoners, were incredibly brave, they knew what they were letting themselves in for with the hunger strike, and I don’t think i can ever forgive margaret thatcher for her inablility to recognize the wrong doing of her government.
Martina, if we have had Loyalist Convicts in Mountjoy Prison would you be comfortable with them having any special status?
For all her faults – and she had many – she didn’t starve them to death. They did that all by themselves. And all for what? The border is still there. Not a single life they took – including their own – moved it by an inch.
All of those men and women were republicans who supported the ongoing war by the IRA or INLA. If it were for civil rights, I’d have supported them in a heartbeat. But not for a murder campaign. Bobby Sands died for somebody’s cause, not mine.
I like these columns, they offer insights that news stories can’t.
I appreciate the fact that Daly and O’Fiach didn’t just make statements from the comfort of their own church / homes, but went out and engaged with those involved. Wish we had more of that leadership in all aspects of Irish life today.
The tone of this debate is appalling, the person attacking Cardinal Daly’s views appears to have no idea of his back ground and the moral authority with which he speaks. The IRA where terrorists who committed atrocities and engaged in a campaign of death and misery which more often that not was directed at innocent people, which they argued was on a mandate given to them by the actions of the British Government. The British government on the other hand engaged in a campaign that involved the use of deadly force and the denial of human rights, but when a legitimate government acts or reacts in this manner the moral high ground automatically flows to their opponents. Before one of the intellectual midgets who have posted previously tries to invert that argument and throw it back at me let me explain; what the British government did in murdering innocent citizens, jailing them without trial, or jailing them on evidence fabricated by authorities acting on it’s behalf, or using it’s agents in proxy assassinations and car bombings, (lets not forget the Dublin-Monaghan bombing was the worst atrocity of the troubles) was a betrayal. A betrayal of democracy, of hundreds of years of parliamentary process, of it’s constituents, the ordinary British people, of the rule of law, of the judicial system, of the government it’s self and even the Queen, in whose name it was done. It was a betrayal of every institution of British democracy. That betrayal was aided and abetted by every British politician between 1978 and 1998, in particular ultra conservative Margaret Thatcher, who history will no doubt judge harshly. In the end it took two brave British people to break the paradigm, Tony Blair in 1998 with the Good Friday agreement and the Queen in May this year. Cutting through the royal protocol, what she said was an apology for the actions of her governments, and I believe they where her words too. That’s good enough for me, once they come clean about Friday 17 May 1974, we can all move on. Although the fact that she gave that apology in the Garden of Remberance, not 100 metres from where one of these bombs was detonated, I suspect was an acknowledgement.
Hey, you won’t catch me arguing with you against British duplicity. Irish history is full of it!
A voice of reason, thank you.
Sean C is the voice of reason here!
Aye! Can’t believe he only got 19 green votes. Can we get him nominated as President?
Time to move on! Bitterness will remain until the generations die out but no point hauling these debates up! Not one of you can deny we are better at peace!
There where no Heroes during the troubles, just massive losers…no more then the families left behind!
Tony I fully agree with you ,it does not suit everyone`s agenda to talk about peace though…
Edward Daly seems to have lost sight of the fact that these men murdered other Irish and British Men who were doing their duty trying to make NI a safer place… He talks about ‘degrading’ and ‘inhuman treatment.’ What’s degrading is taking the Father, Son, Brother or Husband from a family because you disagree with his politics…
…Or murdering innocent children with rubber bullets that were supplied by who?
So you are defending the murder of British Soldiers and RUC members?
I don’t defend any murders but you’re acting like the violence only came from the IRA which is far from the truth.
The British didn’t murder in our name. The IRA did.
I think if you read it again you’ll see he has made a lot of effort to not support anyone, on either side.
The degrading conditions were self imposed, in protest at non-pow status. But it was great for IRA propaganda at the time. He says a consolation by the government would have been good for everyone; the prisoners, the government itself, and more importantly, the whole of Northern Ireland.
If the government had given them back their POW status, we’d have no hunger strike, no hunger strike martyrs, no-one would know who Bobby Sands is, and there would have been far less support for the IRA at the time. It would have been a minor, short lived victory for the IRA, but would we even remember it now? Of course not.
There have been many films, books and documentaries about the hunger strike, many of which romanticise, continue the support of the action.
I don’t think even the hardest republican would be entertained by a film where the finale is that prisoners get to wear their own clothes.
I think Bishop Daly was right. If the government had conceded and given pow status, Northern Ireland could have been a much less grim place in the 80s.
it was a case that those political prisoners where beeing dehuminised as they where treeted like animals eventhought there fight was for there country but there is no mention of how the paris regement where a law onto there own any time they would do a tour of duty in the north they always done shut to kill policises where they murder 3 inocent men in newry one night the brits were on the roof of wollworths on hill street and open fire on 3 inocent men on there way home from the pub they werenot even armed with guns they had nothing on them and the young boy in his bed shot through the head by rubber bullet 13 years of age the paris killed that child in his bed magela ohare from whites cross a 12 year old girl shot through the head walking to her home kevin heatly fron newry my school pall shot through the head by the paris for lighting a fag age 14 these are the forgoten people who had nothing to do with the provos or the stikys all inocent and there lifes stol by the thatcher goverment on her shoot to kill policy these are gone but not forgotten r.i.p.to them
What do you expect from the british, from a crowd of uniformed thugs?
Ahh but that’s where the provos failed, right at the start. Because they DID have right on their side. And threw it all away the moment they started acting like the paras. The moment they did, they became criminal. And killed 1,700 times more than the British army. The ‘army’ of the Irish killed more than all the British civil and military forces combined. That was the cause the hunger strikers died for.
Don`t set the rules for me Barry .
Well, then you better define your rules, John.
where did you spend this time Derry, belfast ? or in Galway with your head in a book.
Wow, you figured out that I live in Galway. Good work, considering my restricted profile. Spooky, actually.
Anything but an Irish man who dares to differ?
John, how about a constructive argument rather than a personal insult?
It’s the borders in peoples minds and hearts that have to be addressed before physical borders can be tackled.
Well spoken and so true.
the whole northern irish situation stank like a protesters cell. the point that is being missed is that long kesh inmates were victims all round. martyrs are victims of the oppressors on the opposing side and those on their own side who capitalize on their notoriety. i think of those shout in their cause and further their own ends through fuel smuggling and protection rackets. would those in who died in 1916 die for today’s ireland. would those who died in long kesh have died for todays racketeers.
man this is tiresome! an article about a catholic clergy man’s recollection of long kesh has sent a pair of idiots off on a mud sling tribal rant. it’s gobshitery like this that caused such apathy towards the northern crisis among southerners. no wonder the peace process took so long.
I hereby apologise for all my personal gobshitery.
Hi Adrian
If your Apology to me???.or someone else ???.
Gerry.
Sean
Please do not be ashamed to show your Photograph, By hiding behind a Stop Sign, I can agree with a lot of what you stated but , I cannot and will not understand Why the Queen of England was allowed to Visit our Country after all the Troubles in the North of Ireland, What the Queen said in her Statement was Not a Genuine Apology to the Irish People after 800 ears of Terror and Mass Murder and Imprisonment without Trial.
Gerry,
PS; Please do not take offence from this message as it was not meant to be offensive.
What I look like is not relevant to the debate so I’m not offended. In fact asking what I look like is akin to asking age or religion on a job application. The only possible reason information like that can be used is to discriminate so why bother asking.
All I can hear today is ‘fighting talk’. And ‘tit for tat’. Been going on for decades. Shame
Totally agree,
Hi Gerry,
Summary of Organisation responsible for the death: Organisation_Summary Count
British Security 363
Irish Security 5
Loyalist Paramilitary 1016
not known 85
Republican Paramilitary 2060
TOTAL 3529
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Organisation_Summary.html
Anything but an fellow Irishman who dares to differ?
where did you spend this time ,
If you’ve gone to the trouble to research someone’s surname (because genealogy is very relevant when it comes to countering an argument?) it’s strange that you didn’t notice it’s a tribal name from Galway which has been a common name in Ireland since the Normans… How far back do we have to trace our lineage in order to have the right to an opinion that’s different from yours?
But getting back to the point, someone else said it best: their cause was a just one but they blew it when they acted like thugs bullies and murderers
You need to re read or perhaps just read the 1998 agreetment Gerry, and I hardly think MCG would be that happy with your argument. Abusing somebody for their name and views,grow up, we live in a democracy and everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how much you disagree without ‘shouting’ them down. As for Long Kesh of course everyone should have been treated as a human being , a lot of these men chose to live like this as a protest and for their cause. ironically Cardinal Daley said many funerals of IRA victims. Just because I don’t support the IRA does not mean I believe these men should have lived in these less than human conditions, neither do I believe the British government should be blamed, nobody made them smear their own excrement on the walls. Perhaps thats the problem with the North and the ‘Troubles’ , when do the IRA/INLA/ UDA/UVF take ownership of what they did and say yes it was wrong to tie Patsy Gillespie to his van and send him to his death for example. It was bad enough living through all the crap and it’s great there is now peace, next step deal with the victims, acknowledge them, don’t justify it and then we will be getting some where, but please don’t abuse some one for having an opinion.
Hi Gerry,
Well the majority of Irish people approved the Belfast Agreement of 1998. So, if you’re a democrat, I’m not sure where that leaves you.
“i know more about you than you think”
Really? Such as?
Thanks, Stephen. However, if people don’t counter the likes of Gerry, where does that leave us?
the war is over and it was a war even the english admitted that a dirty war on both sides, lost lives,men and women,jailed nelson mandela was classed as a terrorist so was martin mcguinnes now he is excepted as deputy first minster so why not except him in the south, 1916 the war of indipendence cival war the people who fought in these conflicts are they terroist.
Fair Enough Adrian.
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