Irish Northern Aid
The Hunger Strikers
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5. The “Dirty” Protest Begins
At the end of March 1978, the men on The Blanket refused to wash and slop out because of the beatings they received every time they left their cells. The men's primary motivation wasn't defensive, but an aggressive tactic to push the prison protest to a new level. Anything was better than the status quo and so the "No-Wash, No Slop Out" protest began.
A gradual escalation of defiance
It wasn't a single event but a gradual escalation of defiance. Initially, the men refused to mop out their cells. Then they refused to wash, then to accept clean sheets. The men were now in control, even though it was their own suffering that they controlled and spat back into the face of the Brits, the screws and the prison regime. The screws never knew what would happen next and it drove them into new depths of sadism and brutality.
In the beginning the screws came around to slop out the pots and served the men their food wearing the same filthy, rubber gloves. The orderlies and screws made sure to spill the contents of the slop-out pots all over the floors and on the bedding.
After weeks of not slopping out or sweeping out, the cells were disgusting pig pens. Rotten left-over food and spilled excreta festered in the corners. In the summer, the stench was horrific. At one point the men smashed the windows out knowing that they would be near freezing come winter.
The Men Wreck Their Cells & Get Hammered by the Screws
At this point, because of the conditions in the cells, the screws decided to take out all of the furniture. They went to one wing and removed all the beds, tables, lockers, and chairs from the cells, leaving the men with nothing but a mattress, three blankets and a pillow.
Word was shouted to the other wings and the men took things into their own hands by smashing their furniture before the screws arrived. They threw the wreckage out the windows into the prison yard. When the screws descended upon these wings, they beat the men mercilessly two by two in their cells. Upwards of fifteen screws would pile into a single cell.
When their arms and legs were weary of beating the men, they dragged many off by the ankles or hair up the wing and taken to "The Boards" or punishment cells, tiny cells with no direct light and concrete floors. A single concrete bed and a concrete chair with boards on them completed the arrangements. They were kept there for 17 days and given a punishment diet of bread and tea. Ironically, many were charged with assault.
When the men returned to their wings, the cells were now without furniture and the windows were knocked out to provide ventilation for the heavy concentrated disinfectant poured into the cells. The fumes were so toxic some passed out. All were miserable and there was fear of permanent damage to lungs, throats, and eyes.
The First Visits with Family
Many of the men had not had a visit with family for almost two years. The prison authorities insisted that in order to get a visit, the men had to wear prison clothes, so they refused. After a long debate, the men decided, for the sake of worried family members, to take their first visits.
Kevin Campbell, in Nor Meekly Serve My Time, tells what these first visits were like:
"In my first visit in almost 18 months my family were very shocked when they saw the state we were in. They nearly didn't recognize me when they came into the visit boxes. To them I looked like someone from an asylum. My eyes were staring and glazed over, with dark rings under them, and my face was deadly pale. I had lost a lot of weight by then and the beard I'd been growing for almost a year didn't help matters at all. Everyone who took visits that week came back with stories of how shocked their visitors were on seeing them."
The men now found that people outside didn't understand the situation inside and were receiving only Brit propaganda. They decided from then on to take regular visits, but these were hardly pleasant events. During a visit, a screw stood in-between the prisoner and the visitor or stood behind the prisoner staring directly at the visitor. There was no privacy. If there was any contact, the men were dragged off. A small cabin was erected outside the visiting area to search the protesting prisoners and there they were beaten coming and going.
Conditions Worsen and a New Phase Begins: The Dirty Protest
Maggots infested the cells, invading the men's bedding. Maggots had to be thrown out the cell window to waiting birds, but it was a loosing battle. They began to shove the maggots under the cell doors into the wing giving screws thousands of disgusting, squirming presents to walk through.
The men started spilling their slop-out pots out of their cell windows into the prison yards. The screws retaliated by hosing down the yards, but their purpose was to drench the men through their windows with their own excrement and tons of water which soaked their bedding and blankets making sleep nearly impossible.
They decided that throwing it out the windows was not an alternative. They had no option but to put their excrement on the cell walls and push the urine out into the wing under the doors. They made little dams of wadded up bread or food to stop the urine from pouring back into the cells, but the screws would squeegee it back under the doors.
The men had to overcome their personal disgust, but realized that they had to continue to struggle given the conditions that they faced. Very occasionally, politicians came to the wings to visit certain of the men and see the conditions in the prison for themselves. Frank Maguire was the MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone and came to visit two of his constituents. When he saw the cell with excrement all over the walls and two human beings living together in these conditions, he couldn't even talk. The stench was so horrific that Maguire fled immediately to the nearest toilet.
Archbishop O' Fiaich Visits the H-Blocks
In July of 1978, Archbishop Tomas O' Fiaich visited the H-Blocks to see prisoners from his diocese. The administration did their best to thwart the visit and then to minimize its impact. They wanted him to meet the men in the wing canteen away from the cells. But, he had every right to visit the men in their cells and the screws could hardly cover-up the conditions. A compromise was reached and the men who were to be visited gathered in a single cell -- Martin Hurson's. They spoke with the Archbishop for almost an hour.
A few days later Archbishop O' Fiaich put out a statement that was to break the wall of silence around the H-Blocks and the Republican prisoner's struggle for political status:
“Having spent the whole of Sunday in the prison, I was shocked at the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4, and 5, where over 300 prisoners were incarcerated. One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being. The nearest approach to it I have seen was the spectacle of the hundreds of homeless people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta. The stench and filth in some cells, with the remains of rotten food and human excreta scatted around the walls, was absolutely unbelievable. In two of them I was unable to speak for fear of vomiting.
“The prisoners' cells are without beds, chairs or tables. They sleep on mattresses on the floor, and in some cases I have noticed they are quite wet. They have no covering except a towel or blanket, no books, newspapers or reading material except the Bible [even religious magazines have been banned sine my last visit], no pens or writing material, on TV, or radio, no hobbies or handicrafts, no exercise or association. They are locked in their cells of almost the whole of every day and some of then have been in this condition for more than a year and a half.”
Next: Part 6 - The H-Blocks Become Even More Sadistic with Wing Shifts, Body Searches, and Forced Washes.
