Learning Behind Bars – How IRA prisoners shaped the peace process in Ireland, Dieter Reinisch, University of Toronto Press, 2022
As its title suggests, Learning Behind Bars is about education in prison. However, as the sub-title then tells us, it is about considerably more than that. Dieter Reinisch brings together a mass of information, mainly distilled from detailed interviews with 34 former prisoners of war, to provide an accessible account of education behind bars across three decades of the incarceration of Irish freedom fighters in both the Six and 26 Counties of Ireland.
The book concentrates on those men imprisoned in Portlaoise in the south and Long Kesh/The Maze in the north. While the experience of women in Armagh and Maghaberry prisons is also mentioned, it is not dealt with in depth. Reinisch interweaves the direct, and often brutal, experience of the prisoners with what was going on outside prison both in the war and within the liberation movement. In particular, the 1969 split between the Official and Provisional wings of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the 1986 decision by the Provisional IRA’s political wing Sinn Fein (SF) to drop abstentionism in relation to the Irish parliament, and most crucially the decision in the late 1980s to engage in the ‘peace process’ which would eventually lead to the cessation of the armed struggle and freeing of all the prisoners.
Internment
The earliest period covered is from 1971 to 1976. The British authorities reacted to the fightback against loyalist terror and military occupation by rounding up and interning some 3,000 people in the north of Ireland. Some had joined the IRA, others were simply active on the streets, others completely uninvolved. They were overwhelmingly working class and very few had completed formal education; only those from longstanding Republican families, had much grounding in Irish history and politics.
Although arbitrary and harsh, internment periods were relatively short and the prisoners were accorded Special Category Status, meaning that they did not have to do prison work and could plan their own time. Interviewees describe the internment camp as ‘very much a prisoner of war camp as you would imagine, having seen the films The Great Escape… and all that’ (p102). ‘Life in the cages was strictly organised. Lectures, Irish classes, drills, commemorations and sports competitions…’ (p100). Each of the ‘cages’ in the camp had its own library.
Alongside this military structure, the desire for wider reading and educational discussion grew organically. One interviewee tells how he accidentally came across a book by John Steinbeck and went on to read his complete works (p103). Former Sinn Fein politician Danny Morrison describes how he belonged to a Sinn Fein Cumann (branch) in Long Kesh, which ran its own programme of lectures and meetings. Other interviewees describe how some prisoners received left-wing literature from ‘friends, supporters, solidarity movements and Irish migrants in England’. Some of this was censored, not by the camp authorities but by Provisional IRA officers, who at the time associated Marxism with the Official IRA, from whom PIRA had split in 1969. The Officials split again in 1974/5, leading to the formation of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Several former INLA prisoners are interviewed, one describing how ‘We had our own education system. Every cage has its own education system… except in ours there was more Mao Tse Tung, more Marx, you know’ (p107).
Cage 11 in the Long Kesh internment camp was where detainees led by Gerry Adams, and by others following his release, read and debated history and political strategy. The smuggled out ‘Brownie Papers’, mainly written by Adams, were published as a regular column in An Phoblacht/Republican News.
Portlaoise in the 1970s
In the south the 1973-76 period was characterised by prison protests for parity with the Special Category Status for prisoners in the north. Prisoners in Portlaoise demanded educational facilities, which were at times granted and at others taken away, according both to the whims of the authorities and the success of protests. The third chapter is headed, ‘No Prisoner Has the Right to Advance the Education of Another’. Despite this formal position that ‘no prisoner can educate another’, the men used association and exercise periods to educate one another, give lectures and hold discussions.
Following the protests the harsh regime was liberalised and prisoners were able to openly give lectures and Irish classes to one another on history, Irish language and politics. They even succeeded in establishing an Irish language (Gaeltacht) wing in the prison (p84). Sinn Fein had set up a Portlaoise Cumann, which held both internal meetings for members and wider monthly meetings which any prisoner could attend: ‘lectures on everything and anything. Socialism, Communism… on [the Irish Rebellion of ] 1798, we had one on [the]1916 [Easter Rising]’ (p78).
The struggle for political status in the north
In 1976 Special Category Status was removed and the Long Kesh/Maze prison opened next to the internment camp. From the outset of this new phase of ‘criminalisation’, Irish prisoners fought to be treated as political prisoners, with the struggle intensifying into the dirty and blanket protests and finally the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981, the second of these leaving ten men dead.
Amidst the bleak environment of the blanket, no-wash and dirty protests which preceded the hunger strikes, prisoners found ingenious ways to educate themselves: ‘Communication in Irish became possible by shouting from cells or along the heating pipes that linked the cells. Thus the learning of Irish by shouting from one door to another, for books and all learning materials were forbidden to protesting prisoners – was, on the one hand, a tool for “secured” communication, and on the other hand, it was another form of resistance to the British prison system’ (p126).
Although the British government refused to grant political status during the hunger strikes, once they were over all the individual demands which the status effectively comprised were conceded. Prisoners now had access to association with others and to a wide range of reading material. Many took the opportunity to study formally at this point, undertaking degrees with the Open University. Others concentrated on self-study and sharing revolutionary education with comrades. One interviewee describes three ‘must-reads’ representing three pillars of self-education, Irish republican history, anti-imperialism and the prison struggle: Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (Desmond Greaves), The Wretched of the Earth (Frantz Fanon) and Soledad Brother (George Jackson). Laurence McKeown also describes (p132) how ‘a well thought out education programme’ was devised, ‘very much influenced by Paolo Freire’s book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’.
All the while that some prisoners were widening their political horizons and seeking to understand their own struggle in the global context of anti-imperialism and socialism, other influential players were trying to pull them back to a strictly nationalist and increasingly social democratic way of thinking. Danny Morrison, who was Sinn Fein Director of Communications at the time, openly describes the post-1983 mood among prisoners as ‘ultra-leftism… Marxism, Communism… not based on reality’.
The end of abstentionism
In 1986, Sinn Fein dropped its previous position of abstentionism, in place since 1923, whereby it would stand candidates in elections to the 26 Counties Irish Parliament, but then refuse to take up the seats. Given that the military struggle was being waged intensely at the time and fighters being sent to prison for lengthy terms, this turn from a purely military strategy to the policy of the ‘bomb and the ballot box’ could only be effected with the support of both the Army Council of the IRA and the majority of the prisoners. Two different sections of Learning Behind Bars, one on Portlaoise, the other on the H Blocks, set out in some detail how this co-operation was achieved.
In the south, all political prisoners, whether Sinn Fein members or not, were ordered to attend a special meeting of the Cumann ‘for a cover to discuss abstentionism’. The ‘outside IRA faction’ then imposed a leadership on the prisoners which supported the change and whose task it was to ensure a majority. When a section of Sinn Fein split off to form Republican Sinn Fein in response to the dropping of abstentionism, the prison leadership issued a communiqué to the specific effect that the new political organisation had ‘no sanction whatever to speak on our behalf, nor… to run functions or take up… collections in the name of prisoners or Prisoners’ Dependents’.
In the north, following internal debate which resulted in the publication of the book Questions of History[i], a section of prisoners eventually left the IRA to form the League of Communist Republicans (LCR). Tommy McKearney was a leading member of this group. He describes the ‘three strands of political thought’ on abstentionism. Firstly, there was the ‘keep on shooting’ stance of traditional southern nationalist republicans. Secondly, the ‘bomb and ballot box’ position of the Adams-led Sinn Fein (with its promise of a renewed military surge, backed by Libyan weaponry, alongside the parliamentary campaign). Finally, there was the minority position of the LCR, who argued for armed struggle alongside building a grassroots working class movement, involving trade unions and community action. McKearney was clear that, however it sounded, the ‘bomb and ballot box’ would inevitably become the ballot box alone. Although prisoners across the system were by now reading Che, Giap and other anti-imperialist and communist writers, McKearney argued that this was not equipping them for the tasks they faced, and that they should read Marx, Engels and Lenin, and discuss how these could be applied in Ireland (p140).
The end of the war
Once abstentionism had ended, the process began towards the end of the armed struggle. Tommy McKearney’s prediction was correct – the bomb and the ballot box were not compatible. Talks began between Sinn Fein and the SDLP in 1988 and with the British government in 1993, leading to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The book describes in detail how the prisoners, whose support was to in turn convince the majority of SF/IRA supporters outside of the correctness of the moves, were gradually won over to supporting the ‘peace process’.
Two external events contributed to swinging prisoners behind the move towards compromise: the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the release of ANC leader Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa in 1990. With the events of 1989-91, socialist revolutions were shown to be reversible; simultaneously liberation movements in first South Africa and then Palestine, entered into negotiations with the oppressors they, like the Irish fighters, had waged long wars against.
The global political climate, manoeuvres of the Sinn Fein leadership and war weariness combined to bring the majority of the prisoner around to supporting the ‘peace process’. All the stops were pulled out. The British authorities fully recognised the IRA’s prison command structure and a high level ANC delegation was invited into the Maze prison to address the Irish prisoners on the road to a peaceful settlement. Reinisch describes how at this point, whereas in earlier phases its aim had been to teach about Irish nationalism and then internationalism, now ‘the purpose of political education was to foster the peace process’.
Education is a political question
Learning Behind Bars provides a fascinating account of an important period in history from a unique perspective. The interviewees in this book come from a variety of organisations and the individuals have trod different paths; some are highly critical of the Sinn Fein leadership and others supportive. While undoubtedly picking his quotes carefully, Reinisch allows them to tell their own stories, but adds in a narrative which illuminates our understanding both of the Irish prisoners’ experiences and of how their struggles formed part of the wider processes of war and peace.
[i] For FRFI review of Questions of History, published in 1988, see https://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/europe/ireland/4484-qoh-111116
