In September 1976, 18-year-old Kieran Nugent became the first Irish republican prisoner to refuse to wear a prison uniform in the newly-built H-Blocks of Long Kesh. Special Category Status, won by republican prisoners of war following a hunger strike in 1972, had been withdrawn by the Labour government for those convicted of offences committed after 1 March 1976. Nugent was the first to confront the consequences. Stripped of his own clothes, he wrapped himself in a prison blanket rather than accept the status of a criminal. Others followed. The Blanket Protest had begun.
In August 1979 the Revolutionary Communist Group’s quarterly bulletin Hands Off Ireland! issue no 8 published the extensive interview with Nugent which we reproduce below. It was conducted shortly after his release on 11 May, by which time hundreds of republican prisoners had joined the protest and it had developed into the no-wash protest. Fifty years after Nugent’s refusal, the interview is an important contemporary record of a struggle whose political significance extended far beyond the prison walls.
Nugent describes beatings, degrading searches, isolation, cold, hunger and the deliberate use of appalling conditions to force the prisoners to conform. The brutality was not incidental to the prison regime. Its purpose was political. The withdrawal of political status was part of the wider strategy of criminalisation, Ulsterisation and normalisation through which British imperialism sought to reorganise its rule in the Occupied Six Counties.
Criminalisation was central to this strategy. Britain sought to deny that it faced a national liberation struggle arising from partition and occupation. Republican resistance was to be presented instead as terrorism and criminal violence, dealt with through the police, non-jury courts and prisons. Republican prisoners therefore had to become criminals. The prison uniform assumed a significance far beyond the clothing itself because accepting it meant accepting the non-political criminal status which the British state sought to impose.
Nugent is remarkably clear about what was at stake. The prisoners were not campaigning for more tolerable prison conditions. ‘The men in H-Block are not in H-Block for concessions’, he tells Hands Off Ireland!. ‘The British could turn round and give us a three-piece suit as a prison uniform and we still wouldn’t wear it. We want prisoner-of-war status.’ Asked about the relationship between the prisoners and the wider struggle, he is equally direct: ‘The struggle within the prisons and the struggle outside the prisons is all one struggle.’
This was 1979. The hunger strikes in Long Kesh had not yet taken place. Bobby Sands had not been elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone and the ten hunger strikers of 1981 had not died. Nugent’s testimony records the political character of the struggle before these events, when its outcome was still unknown.
It is significant also that the interview appeared in Hands Off Ireland! From its formation the RCG fought within the British left for unconditional support for the Irish struggle against British imperialism, rejecting the position that Britain was a neutral force mediating between two communities in the north of Ireland. The prison struggle brought these political differences into sharp relief.
In 1984 the Revolutionary Communist Group published David Reed’s Ireland: The Key to the British Revolution, which returned to this interview in tracing the origins and development of the Blanket Protest. The book developed from articles which had begun to appear in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! as the first hunger strike commenced in 1980, written out of the urgent necessity to build support in Britain for the prisoners’ struggle for political status. The RCG placed that struggle within the position developed by Marx, Engels and Lenin: that the oppression of Ireland and the political corruption of the British working-class movement were bound together. No movement could seriously confront the British ruling class while accommodating itself to British imperialism in Ireland.
Fifty years on, the Blanket Protest can readily be commemorated as an extraordinary story of individual courage. Such a rendering obscures its political content. Nugent’s refusal began a collective confrontation with British imperialism over its attempt to criminalise the Irish liberation struggle. The prisoners insisted that their imprisonment could not be separated from the political struggle which had brought them there.
Fifty years on, there is another contradiction which cannot be avoided. Sinn Féin can commemorate the Blanketmen and hunger strikers as part of a heroic republican struggle while presenting that struggle itself as a closed chapter. The courage and sacrifice are celebrated, but the fundamental political questions which produced the H-Blocks – partition, British rule and the criminalisation of resistance – have not disappeared. In that context the existence of political prisoners in Ireland today is not an inconvenient historical footnote. Their very existence disrupts the story of a struggle safely completed. Political prisoners are easiest to honour once they belong to the past; those imprisoned in the present raise questions which constitutional nationalism would rather declare settled. The lesson of the H-Blocks was precisely that the state cannot determine the political character of resistance simply by prosecuting and imprisoning those engaged in it.
Fifty years after Kieran Nugent first refused the prison uniform, we reproduce the original Hands Off Ireland! introduction and interview in full and unedited. His words should be read as they were spoken in 1979: the testimony of a republican prisoner emerging from the H-Blocks while the struggle for political status was still being fought.
Paul Mallon
INTERVIEW WITH KIERAN NUGENT
First published in Hands Off Ireland! issue no 8, August 1979
Introduction
On 11th May 1979 Kieran Nugent was released from Long Kesh after spending over 2½ years in the H-Blocks. After he was sentenced to three years imprisonment in September 1976 Kieran, then aged only eighteen, became the first man to go on the blanket by refusing to wear a prison uniform in defiance of the British government’s criminalisation policy, under which political status was withdrawn from prisoners convicted of political offences committed after 1st March 1976. Because of his protest Kieran was denied remission and was therefore detained in Long Kesh for fourteen months longer than he would have been had he worn a prison uniform.
Two days after his release thousands of people took part in a victory march on the Falls Road to salute Kieran and John Deeny (who had been the first ‘blanket-man’ to be released two weeks earlier). At a rally after the march the crowd was addressed first by Billy McKee who had led the hunger-strike in 1972 which had won special category status for Republican POWs. He pointed out how in the long history of Irish resistance to British rule the struggle within the prisons has always been linked with the struggle outside the prisons, and that there was no better example of this than the present struggle in the H-Blocks. This theme was echoed by Gerry Adams (Vice-President of Sinn Fein) who said that the struggle in the H-Blocks must be seen in the context of the whole struggle against British imperialism in Ireland since the H-Blocks were part of the attempt by the British government to criminalise this struggle. John Deery then told the crowd that the blanket-men were not individual heroes but part of a collective struggle. Both he and Kieran Nugent expressed their appreciation of the tremendous support for the prisoners and reaffirmed the determination of the prisoners to continue their struggle until victory is achieved. Kieran emphasised that the prisoners were not fighting for special privileges but for the right of POW status — a right due to Republican combatants in the war of liberation.
In the following interview, recorded soon after his release, Kieran describes the present conditions in the H-Blocks and explains how the struggle for POW status has developed since the day when he began the blanket protest.
Hands Off Ireland: What are the conditions like at the moment in the H-Blocks?
Kieran Nugent: Conditions are very bad — the worst conditions that we’ve had so far. Brutality has been stepped up. We believe that this has come from British officials high up — to step up the attacks to try to break the protest. Over these last few months they have begun doing these degrading searches — putting men over mirrors — and men who refuse to accept this are brutally attacked. They’ve blocked up the windows so that nothing in the cells can break the windows, and so refuse is just left lying around the cells. Men are very sick, but they are refused medical treatment unless they wear prison clothes.
HOI: We heard that there was some kind of propaganda stunt that the Northern Ireland Office organised just before you were released. Could you tell us about that?
KN: Two days before I got out I saw my solicitor. On my way back that night I was removed to the punishment cells about half a mile away. As I walked in with a prison uniform on they took a snapshot of me [Kieran Nugent — like other prisoners on the blanket protest — wore a prison uniform solely for the purpose of taking the visit and only for the duration of the visit]. The next day Ray Moloney from ITN came in with the prison governor. The cell we were brought into was away from the H-Blocks altogether. It was all white, the walls were completely clean, there was a bed and a mattress with sheets and a pillowcase, and there was a cup and a jug filled with water which you don’t get in H-Block: everything was completely clean. Moloney came in and was introduced to me to have an interview. He then asked me about the protest. I refused to say anything: I said if I do have anything to say you’ll hear it in due course. He then left, but as he went out of the door I overheard a conversation between him and the governor. The governor said to him, ‘Have you got the snapshot?’ and Moloney said he had. But at the press conference on Friday [11th May — the date of Kieran Nugent’s release] Moloney denied that he had a snapshot, denied that he had been given any concessions and denied that he had talked to the prison staff. The question was asked of him — how did he get in to see any individuals on the blanket when the NIO let a team of journalists in a few weeks ago but wouldn’t let them speak to the prisoners? Why did they let him speak to me before my release?
HOI: Did he answer that question?
KN: Moloney said that he didn’t get any concessions at all, and that he was allowed in because he hadn’t been there a few weeks previously. He denied saying that he had a snapshot and he denied that a conversation with the governor took place. So in fact he couldn’t use the snapshot because he denied he had it.
HOI: Can you tell us how the blanket protest started?
KN: On remand in Crumlin Road jail we decided among ourselves that something was going to have to be done. It was a very funny thing too because it was the screws who stripped us of our clothes and it was them who gave us the blankets, so effectively they set off the blanket protest — they gave us what is now the symbol of the H-Blocks.
It all started when I went into the reception and the screw asked me ‘What size clothes do you take?’ I refused to answer. I said ‘I’m not wearing your gear’. He said ‘You can’t do this here’ — he was astonished. So he went to get the Principal Officer. I was manhandled a bit and then he put the prison clothes in a brown bag and said ‘Right, carry it’. I refused to lift it so he had to carry it himself.
They drove us up to H-Block. When we arrived in the H-Block there were about nine or ten screws there. This was in the main administration part of H-Block. They stood me against the wall and punched me about a bit, and then they grabbed me and ran me about twenty or thirty yards into one of the wings — D Wing. They pushed me into one of the cells and told me to put the uniform on. I said ‘No, I’m not putting that gear on’. So they said ‘Right, take your own clothes off’. I refused, so then they jumped on me and forcibly removed my clothes, and held me down and punched me about. One of them then threw a blanket at me — so in fact he started the protest.
The cell at that time had nothing in it at all. I got a wee bit of food and water at night about five o’clock — that was all until five o’clock the next night. They kept up a barrage of banging and kicking the doors the whole night.
Then they came up with a new idea. I was the only man in this block, which had approximately a hundred cells. They decided that they would have two cells for me — a day-time cell and a night-time cell. So at 7.30 or 8 o’clock at night they put me in a cell with a bed and a mattress and blankets in it. There was no furniture in the other cell — it was an empty cell. So every morning at 7.30 or 8 o’clock they took me to this empty cell, and at 8 o’clock at night they took me back to the cell with the bed in it.
It happened on two or three occasions that I ended up not getting a bed at all — I had to stay on the floor all night. While I was in the cell with nothing in it they patrolled the place all the time and every time I sat on the floor they opened the door and got me off the floor, standing between two of them. This continued for a very long time.
Then a P.O. said I could be his number one orderly and offered me concessions if I would put the prison clothes on. I just refused to answer him. This went on for weeks and weeks. At that time too — in September and October — it was pretty cold. You’re entitled to an hour’s exercise a day, so I said that I would go out because two of the screws had to go out with me: it was just to take them out with me, because they hated it. So I used to go out with only a blanket on and walk round for about an hour in the mornings. It was often raining, pretty hard but they were out with me. This went on for about six to eight weeks, then they stopped it. They said ‘We won’t exercise you until you wear a prison uniform’. I refused to do this.
The protest went on and other men kept joining in. At this time I was in H1. Then they moved myself and three others to H2, which was supposed to be a hard block for young prisoners. I got moved there about November. All this time the food was very bad. They would give you just one slice of bread a day. Sometimes you got tea, sometimes you didn’t — it all depended on whether they wanted to give it to you or not. You ate every meal with a spoon: they wouldn’t give you a knife and fork — not that there was any need for a knife and fork. They wouldn’t give you salt, sugar or sauce which every prisoner is entitled to.
They kept up a steady barrage of brutal attacks on prisoners. Prisoners were assaulted daily — maybe two or three times a day. They were dragged out naked and indecently searched and subjected to degrading treatment.
But as time went on more and more prisoners joined the protest. There were blanket men in H1 and H2, and our numbers were building up. So they moved everybody into an empty block — H5. At this time we were getting washed and we were slopping out — an orderly would bring a pot and you would slop out once a day. You didn’t get out to the toilet — you had to use a pot in the cell. Sometimes they supplied you with a toilet-roll, sometimes they didn’t.
So when we went to H5 we were still — as they termed it — ‘conforming non-conforming prisoners’, because we were still slopping out and so on. At this time, when they moved us to H5, there were about 70 or 80 of us. Before we were moved to H5 we did not have much control — they had the upper hand. We were isolated, because we hadn’t got the numbers and we hadn’t got the contact that we have now with our own people. But when we went to H5 it was a completely different situation. Our own staff structure was set up within H5.
HOI: This was towards the beginning of 1977, was it?
KN: Yes. We were in H1 and H2 until May 1977 and then got moved to H5. As soon as we got into H5 we were together and we reorganised. The screws didn’t like that. Then we got the upper hand. Each wing had an O/C — the men in that wing did what the O/C told them to do. There was also a Battalion O/C — a Block O/C — who controlled the whole Block.
Then all of a sudden men were getting removed to the punishment cells for nothing — taken there for the least wee thing. We got a shower once a week for five minutes. When we went out to the showers they were putting us against the wall and searching us, even though we only had to walk a few feet to and from the showers — what could you possibly have hidden in that space which they wouldn’t have found before they started off with you? They were searching and kicking people about and brutally assaulting people.
When you go up to the showers you go up to the slop-out as well, and when we were slopping out they were brutally attacking us and degrading us — like five or six screws round a naked man, making smart remarks, trying to degrade us, trying to boost their own morale. The screws were all trying to get one ahead of the other so that they could say ‘I can put the boot in better than you can’, trying to prove themselves to each other — it’s a sort of complex that the screws have in there, that they want to get one ahead of everybody so that everybody thinks that they’re a big fellow, that they’re not afraid of anything.
So we decided that this couldn’t go on — we weren’t prepared to take this treatment from anyone, especially screws. So we decided, ‘O.K. we’re not going out’. So we didn’t go out.
They then brought round plastic bowls with about half an inch of cold water in them for washing which were really stinking. We tried to use them but we just couldn’t. They were coming round with a big plastic bin which they wheeled into your cell. They poured your pot into the bin and then pulled it out of the cell. Directly behind it was the food, and using the same gloves and protective clothing — and the gloves were really stinking — they were handling the food.
HOI: When was this happening? Was this late 1977?
KN: This was late 1977 and into 1978. The screws were really starting to step up their harassment and we believe it came from British officials — to step up the harassment to break the protest.
During the day they were coming in and kicking your pot over your mattress — the place was completely stinking. The only thing you had was a mattress and a blanket: we couldn’t sleep in it — there were maggots running out of the blankets. So to save our beds and blankets — the only things we had — we decided to throw the slops out of the windows. But the screws went round the back and shoved it all back through the windows again — everything that was thrown out they threw back again, so it was all over the mattresses again.
So we had no alternative but to put it on the walls — it was either that or on our beds and blankets. I would stress that we didn’t like what we were doing: it wasn’t self-inflicted — it was inflicted by others. We don’t like living in those conditions — I don’t think anybody would like living in those conditions — but it was forced on us: it was the only action we could take to save our own cells.
They then blocked the windows up completely. You see the windows were broken, because they were coming in with these space-suits and spraying the place. One day when we came back from Mass there were big puddles of purple stuff on the floors. As soon as we closed the doors all the vapours started coming in — it was like CS gas. So we put water on it to kill it, but it just made it worse. I heard a lot of men shouting that they couldn’t breathe — guys were collapsing. The way it hit me was that my eyes started to water. I felt very light, I was suffocating — I had to breathe so I had to smash the window. So that’s how the windows got broken.
They then put big steel barriers and perspex over the windows, which is very dim — sometimes you wouldn’t know whether it was day or night in there. During the winter at meal times they kept turning the light out — it was completely dark: if you could find your way to your food you got food. During the summer — believe it or not — they turned the heating up full blast: in the winter they turned it down, and sometimes they turned it off.
The time that we broke the windows it was a very bad winter — the snow was pelting in. It was a very small cell — there’s only room for one person, there’s no room to move: there was nowhere you could go to get away from the snow because you were blocked into this very small cell.
HOI: When all this was going on how did the prisoners keep up their morale?
KN: The prisoners kept up their morale by starting off Gaelic classes. At the moment in there now there are Gaelic classes going on two or three times a day at different levels. So people who have just come in are taught from the beginning by people who are speaking at a more advanced level. They also have — believe it or not — bingo. Men will play bingo or anything like that to pass the time, for a bit of excitement. They have talent competitions, sing-songs, quizzes — anything to keep the morale going. Also there’s the fact that people seeing prisoners can get news in about protests going very well and the war going very well.
HOI: And I suppose harassment was continually stepped up to try to break the protest?
KN: The screws kept stepping up the harassment. At the moment conditions are at an all-time low. When you’ve been up there a couple of years and you know the screws coming round you turn yourself into a sort of ‘psychologist’ — you understand them. When a new screw comes in you study him — how he reacts, what he does, what way he opens the door, what way he does something: you’re able to tell what he’s like. All of a sudden the screws went completely mad — it was out of character for some of them, a lot of them are bigots and some have always done it, but there was the odd one or two who, completely against their nature, stepped up a massive barrage of brutality against the prisoners.
HOI: So the harassment is systematic rather than just the actions of a few individuals?
KN: I would say that the harassment is planned, because it’s not only one man who’s attacked — it’s everyone. Also recently we believe that they’ve been trying to stop the men going out for visits by searching you in a degrading way when you go for a visit — they spread you over and put a mirror between your legs right up to your testicles and shine a flashlight up your back passage and prod you everywhere. Also they attack you physically, beating you with brushes on the way out and on the way in. So we believe that the brutality is not only to break the prisoners — they’re also trying to stop the men taking visits and seeing their people.
You see the thing that they always do is that they start off with a massive attack on you, then they think you’re a broken man and offer you wee concessions like ‘if you put prison clothes on you’ll get an extra 20p a week’; and you’re supposed to be broken — you’re supposed to dive at this. We believe that the plan is to step up a massive campaign of brutality, offer concessions and think that the prisoners are broken — that they’ll go for concessions.
HOI: How do the prisoners see the link between the struggle within the prisons and the wider struggle against the British occupation of Ireland?
KN: The struggle within the prisons and the struggle outside the prisons is all one struggle. The British have tried to criminalise the whole war in Ireland. The British are trying to say that — in their terms — the ‘godfathers’ are using the men in H-Block, whereas in fact it’s the British themselves who are using the H-Blocks — showing them to the world as ‘million-pound blocks’.
So who is using the H-Blocks? Their plan was for us to wear the prison clothes and for them to show us to the world as criminals — so in fact the British Government are using the men in the H-Blocks. They announce every week the numbers who are wearing prison clothes. So in fact they are using the prisoners for their own political ends, for their policy, which has now completely broken down, of normalisation and Ulsterisation — cutting down the British Army, rearming the RUC, taking down the security barriers and so on. All three policies — normalisation, Ulsterisation and criminalisation — have completely failed, but they’re still holding on to this policy of criminalisation.
HOI: So the prisoners are very conscious of being part of this wider struggle?
KN: The prisoners understand the whole situation. It’s a voluntary protest. The men in H-Block are not in H-Block for concessions — they’re not in H-Block for anything other than prisoner-of-war status. They don’t want colour TVs — the British could turn round and give us a three-piece suit as a prison uniform and we still wouldn’t wear it. We want prisoner-of-war status.
HOI: And are the prisoners as confident as ever of winning POW status?
KN: The prisoners are a hundred per cent confident and they are a hundred per cent behind the Republican Movement.
