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Showing posts with label Blanket protest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blanket protest. Show all posts
Dixie Elliot ✍ I first passed through the gates of H5 near the end of June 1977, about a week after my 20th birthday.


That was 46 years ago. I had just been sentenced to 12 years, which was nothing compared to some of the heavy sentences being handed down by the British judiciary at that time.

Check-in was at the reception area known as 'The Circle'. Why it was called that I'll never know, maybe because it sounded better than 'The Rectangle'.

Having failed to persuade me to check into, what he tried convincing me was 5 Star accommodation if I only conformed, the unfriendly receptionist, who wore a white shirt, told his staff to show me to my new lodgings.

I passed through the bar area, known as, 'The Grills' and found myself on a wing with guys yelling at me all at once about one thing or another.

I had never stayed in a hotel before, but I knew from the time I had spent on remand that I wouldn't be given a room with a sea view.

I was right. The only view I could see, through the concrete bars in the window, was the wing opposite. The men on that side were at their own windows shouting at the men on our side of the block and they in turn were shouting back. Having experienced a check-in during which I was shouted at, I wondered if everyone shouted at each other in this place.

The wing and the cells were all nice and clean at that time, we had bunk-beds, a table and plastic chairs, even a nice piss pot and a clean water gallon.

My first cellmate on the Blanket Protest was a lad called Bailus Boyle, he was from either The Markets or The Short Strand in Belfast. Bailus seemed to know the words of almost any song you could mention. He often sang Jesamine by The Casuals, a group from the 1960s which was only around the corner from the 1970s back then. I suppose it still is.

The only two songs I had in my repertoire were the Elvis songs, 'Jailhouse Rock' and 'Wooden Heart' (I even knew the German part of that one).

Later that night after the screws had left us the wing OC called everyone to silence as the shouting was to begin in earnest, this time it would be official shouting. The best shouters in each block would shout to each other in Gaelic, passing on the events of that day, like who got beat up by the screws, the names of the latest men to join the protest, plus orders and sceal, if there was any.

I realised at that point what all the shouting, during the day, had been about; the men were practicing their shouting, hoping to be selected as the block shouter.

After it was all over, bar the shouting from wing to wing, it was time for the entertainment of the night. There would be the retelling of books out the side of cell doors which, more often than not, were told totally different to the actual books themselves.

There was of course the sing-songs, which consisted of, The Good, The Bad and The Atrocious. I was neither good nor bad and when my time came, after some persuading, I got up and belted out 'Jailhouse Rock' which I shouted rather than sang. To my utter surprise the wing went crazy, I had achieved stardom.

A few months later, in August 1977, a screw called me up to my door to tell me that Elvis had died. It had nothing to do with me, I might have murdered two of his songs but I had an alibi, which put me in jail at the time of his death.

Scuby Brown and Willie Hogan (Hogay) were in the cell next to mine, friends who were also from Shantallow and we had yarns out the windows which lasted long into the night. Over time the same yarns were being retold, having run out of new ones, so our conversations eventually got to the stage in which we ended up talking shite, little knowing what lay ahead of us.

An incident which still stands out in my memory was hearing a fracas coming from a cell just across but up a bit from mine. I juked out the side of my cell door just in time to see a big screw known as, 'The Beol Mór' landing on his back out in the wing. The Beol Mór was one nasty piece of work. He was a big man with lips like the inner-tube of a tractor tyre, thus the nickname, which meant, 'Big Lips'.

He had been in with big Peter Bowe messing him about when he got what had been coming to him, a fist in the mouth. Seeing that big bastard staggering back across the wing, with arms flailing like a young bird trying to fly, before he hit the floor really made my day.

After a month or so I was moved further up the wing into a cell with Sam Marshall from Lurgan, who would later be shot dead by a British murder gang after he left a local RUC barracks.

Not too long after that I was moved to H4. I never got to see Sam again nor have I ever come across Bailus since our time together in H5 that summer in 1977.

Strangely enough I often get called out by family and friends to this day for shouting instead of talking . . .

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Welcome To H5, The Hotel From Hell

Sam Millar ✒ Anything Goes With James English.


Sam Millar is an internationally acclaimed author and former Blanketman.

My Life In The IRA - Sam Millar Tells His Story

Dixie Elliot ✒ A Short Story.

He paced the length of the dark cell, from window to steel door and back again. Orange light filtered in through the concrete pillars barring the window. The lights from the exercise yard kept total blackness at bay as the lights in the cells had been switched off for the night by a screw.

He was a blanket man, so called because of the form of protest he had joined the previous year, 1977; just shortly after his 20th birthday. The protest had come about as a result of the British attempt at labelling Republican prisoners as criminals. After their prison sentence was handed down by a judge in a Belfast court, prisoners were transported to the H Blocks where they refused to wear the prison uniform and conform to prison rules and regulations. They were forced to remove their clothes and were beaten in an effort to break them. When this failed they were given only two blankets and a blue towel and these they used to cover their naked bodies after the cell doors were slammed shut by a gloating screw.

Fourteen long months had since passed and the protest had escalated because of the brutality of the screws. The prisoners had wrecked their cells and smeared the walls with their own excrement. These desperate actions didn’t stop the brutal beatings, they had made things worse. He was now in a cell on his own, which was a rare occurrence, as prisoners were normally put into the tiny cells of the H Blocks in pairs. This meant that, in his enclosed world, he had more room to move around in than the others. He paced it like an animal in a cage. His only bed, a sponge mattress, was propped up against the wall.

His mind weighted heavily on the thoughts of what would certainly happen the following day. Hate-filled screws would drag them from their cells and then brutally beat them across the block to a clean wing, so that the cleaning crews could remove the excrement from the cell walls in the wing he was now in. It was the winter of 1978 and the bitter cold was barely kept at bay by the heating pipes which ran under his cell window down near the concrete floor, so he had wrapped his other blanket over his shoulders. He could hear a few of his comrades speaking in hushed tones to each other across the wing or from cell to cell. It was getting late and most had fallen into a nightmarish sleep. A few more lengths of the cell and he would soon join them. He turned one last time and headed in the direction of the cell door.

The Blanket Man’s dark world lit up in bright dazzling sunlight, as if someone had just flicked on a switch. He spun on his heels. The wall at the cell window was no longer there. Night had become day and winter had become summer. Fear gripped his entire body and squeezed tightly but after a brief hesitation he began to put one foot in front of the other and move towards the unknown. He had nowhere to run to so he needed to confront whatever was happening sooner rather than later. He realised that the wire fence which separated the line of cells on this side of the wing from the exercise yard was gone and so was the exercise yard. There were no barred wire topped barriers blocking his view, nor watchtowers with bored guards manning them. He called out to those in the cells next to his, asking frantically if they were seeing what he was seeing. He got no reply and after several more attempts he gave up trying to rouse them, for this was surely a dream.

He moved out from his cell and stepped into the world of this dream. A dream in which the H Blocks and the high concrete walls no longer acted as barriers to freedom. He looked along the wing of the H Block he had emerged from and although it was still there it had been weathered by time and was heavily stained by green algae. For the first time since just before a judge had handed down his sentence he could feel the warmth of the sun on his body, so he turned and flung the blanket which covered his shoulders back into the cell. He then began to walk across tarmac towards a fence in the distance. He could see buildings and green areas where once the other H Blocks and the high wall separating them from the Cages had been. His bare feet had become hardened to months of pacing a concrete cell and he quickened his step, worried that he might wake before he got free of this hellish place.

The gate was open when he reached it and beyond it there was a road. He crossed it quickly and with difficulty managed to climb a fence into a field. His blanket was a hindrance but without it he was naked. He didn’t want to take the risk of walking the road so he decided to keep to the fields. The grass under his feet felt like a carpet and he drank in the air which no longer tasted of bitterness and hatred. The smell of freedom had replaced the smell of the excrement on his cell walls and the rotting food in the corner nearest the door. Birdsong was a wondrous thing now that he could see them in their natural habitat and not outside the bars of his window.

His way was eventually blocked by a narrow river. The sound it made as it rippled by, with the sunshine dancing on the surface, was like music to his ears. He took it all in and then decided to turn right and follow this river to wherever it might lead him. Further along the river he came to a spot where trees were clumped together overhanging the riverbank. He paused there in the shade to take in a road which crossed a bridge just up ahead. It was busy with traffic speeding by in both directions. He had no other choice, if he wanted to continue on his way, but to risk crossing that bridge, so he headed towards it.

He managed, with some difficulty, to scramble up the bank through heavy foliage and onto a footpath at the side of the road. The passing cars and other vehicles slowed or even braked hard, almost causing accidents, when the occupants saw him. Horns honked at him in bemusement and he realised that his appearance was causing laughter rather than shock. They clearly thought that he was crazy. He decided to play along with being crazy so he sauntered across the bridge and gave the occasional wave to the audience speeding past. He was more taken aback by the vehicles themselves than the occupants. They were more modern in appearance than he had expected, even though he hadn’t seen cars or vans in over sixteen months, as he hadn’t even seen a TV in all that time. Had the outside world changed that much? He wondered. Then again most of the H Blocks had simply disappeared, so what kind of world was he now wandering through?

He soon spotted a pub up ahead and waited until the volume of traffic eased up before attempting to cross the road to get to it. It was more like a large house than a pub but a pub it was, so he approached the front door. There he hesitated, wondering should he dare venture inside. He hoped that someone with Republican leanings might be able to help him. The door was flung open from the inside and a gangly young man almost knocked him over. He took one look at the Blanket Man then turned on his heels and headed back into the bar again. He was clearly going to announce his arrival so the Blanket Man decided to follow him in.

“Wait till yous sees this eejit folks!”

The people inside had clearly seen him and the look on their faces told the Blanket Man that he was a sight to behold. Not that he hadn’t already known that. Here he was, standing before them with matted long hair and a beard, looking like a tramp wrapped in a filthy blanket. He was skin and bone with sunken eyes. What would he say to them?

As he pondered over what he would do next he noticed that some of the customers were holding up thin rectangular objects which began to flash like cameras as they pointed them in his direction.

“He’s a drunk and somebody’s gone and stolen his clothes!”, called out someone.

“Who’d steal the clothes off a drunk?” The question came from elsewhere in the bar.

“Another drunk?”, wondered someone else aloud.

“I’m not a drunk, I haven’t tasted a drop of alcohol in over two years!”, answered the Blanket Man in a subdued tone of voice.

“He’s off it then!”

Loud laughter.

“He looks like one of them blanket men from years ago.”

Everyone went silent and turned to the speaker with incredulous looks on their faces.

That’s it! They’re making a film in the old prison and some smart ass sent your boyo in here to see how we’d react!”

“The smell that’s coming off him’s no acting, I can tell you that!”

“It’s one of those hidden camera tricks, I bet Micky’s in on it. Are you in on it Micky?”

The customers turned to the barman for an answer. He was collecting empty glasses and he swore back at them before adding that the only cameras in that bar were the security cameras.

“That’s how they’re doing it then!”

Micky the barman swore again and lifted another glass from another table.

The Blanket Man noticed the large, very flat TV on the wall. There was horse racing on it. He had never seen a TV so thin in his entire life. It was like a framed picture only the images were moving. Then he noticed a grey-haired man sitting alone at a table up in the far corner of the bar. This man was watching him intently. There was a look of sadness in the man’s eyes. The Blanket Man thought there was something about the man that he recognised but he couldn’t be sure what it was. The man nodded to Micky the barman as if he wanted something. Micky turned and looked at the Blanket Man, took the money the man handed him and walked behind the bar, sitting the used glasses on the counter.

“That fellow told me to give you a pint,” he said. Then without asking what he wanted to drink Micky poured him a pint of lager and set it in front of him.

The Blanket Man found it strange that he wasn’t asked what he drank but it was correct anyway, although he hadn’t tasted lager in a long while. He turned and held the pint up to the grey-haired man as a form of thanks but the man had left his seat and the barely touched pint which sat in front of him.

“Where’s has he gone to?” Asked the Blanket Man.

“The toilet more than likely, but I don’t know why, as he’s barely touched his own pint since he came in earlier.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, never seen him before in my life,” replied Micky, as he lifted a long plastic object with buttons from the counter. “Aren’t you a recovering alcoholic any ways lad?”, he asked, as the Blanket Man lifted the pint to taste it.

“I didn’t say I was. I only said that I hadn’t tasted a drop in over two years.” He sipped the pint, then gulped more down. It tasted great but his head was light and he swayed on his feet a little. This brought howls of laughter from the locals. The Blanket Man thought that this crazy dream would make a great story to tell out the side of his cell door the following night, after the wing shift. It would lift the lad’s spirits.

Micky pressed a button on the long plastic object and the TV began flicking between channels. The Blanket Man choked on a mouthful of lager when he saw this, drawing more laughter from the locals who were now enjoying the show unfolding in front of them. Then he realised that there were no knobs on this TV and that it was controlled by that thing in Micky’s hand.

The local news came on the screen. This now caught the Blanket Man’s interest. Two men in suits who he instantly recognised appeared on the screen, one had a tea cup in his hand. They were engaged in friendly conversation while others stood in the background smiling. The newsreader gave details about the meeting but the Blanket Man only took in the part about the leader of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, meeting Prince Charles. He stared up at the TV in total shock. Gerry Adams and Prince Charles had aged quite a bit but what the hell was going on?, he wondered.

Micky the barman saw the look of disbelief on his face and asked him was he OK. “Has that pint gone to your head lad? You look as if you’re about to throw up. You’d better not.”

“Gerry Adams meeting with Prince Charles. What the hell’s going on?” He was still transfixed on what was unfolding before his eyes on the TV.

Laughter erupted yet again in the bar.

“I’m telling yous, this boy’s winding us all up,” shouted someone. “He’s been sent in here to do just that.” The speaker stood up and looked around, seemingly for the hidden camera. “Someone in here’s filming this on their phone.”

“We know everyone in here,” added another. The speaker then looked up to the corner where the grey-haired man had been. He still hadn’t returned to his pint. “It has to be that boyo who was sitting over there, your man seemed to know him.”

The Blanket Man looked in that direction as well. He had hoped that the man might be able to help, given that he had shown a sympathetic interest in him. He then looked towards the toilets but there was no sign of him coming back again.

Micky the barman noticed that the Blanket Man was genuinely confused. He leaned over and asked him again was he going to be sick. He quickly stepped back having breathed in the stench coming from his body. “I’m telling you lad, this joke is going a bit too far now.”

“How did that come about?” Asked the Blanket Man looking back up at the TV. The topic of the news had by then changed.

“Sinn Féin meeting the royals?” Asked Micky the barman. “You know fine rightly that’s a common occurrence now. It happens most times they pay a visit to Ireland, north or south.”

“They’ve even raised a glass or two to the Queen herself,” called out someone.

Laughter erupted in the bar again.

“They’ve been sitting up there in Stormont with the DUP in government too long. It must be well over ten years now.” This was another man sitting at the corner of the bar counter. he was clearly mocking the Blanket Man, who took a few steps towards him. The man winched and looked towards Micky the barman.

Micky the barman told him to stop right there, which the Blanket Man did. “In government… up in Stormont?” He was staring straight through the man as he spoke.

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Came the reply.

No, no, no, thought the Blanket Man. We’re going to smash Stormont. That can’t be true. “What about the socialist republic?” He had inadvertently said this aloud.

“The socialist republic.” Called out someone else from one of the groups sitting at the tables. “Aren’t Sinn Féin the richest party in Ireland? What would they be wanting with a socialist republic?”

The laughter was now hammering into his head and he really did feel like throwing up. The Blanket Man turned and headed straight for the door of the bar. He had to get out of this place. As he pulled the door open he heard someone calling out to Micky the barman above the laughing.

“Hey Micky, I think that boyo really is crazy. You need to phone the police.”

When he went outside of the bar he noticed that the sky was overcast and that there was a sharp nip in the air. He crossed the road not really knowing where he would go to from there. If this was the future then it wasn’t the future that he had envisaged and he wanted no part of it. He decided to retrace his steps as he worked out the tangled mess that his thoughts had become. Instead of going back along the river he took a more direct route across the fields to the prison.

He had no other choice but to go back. There was no one he could turn to. His parents would be very old or even dead. The thought depressed him. How could he simply turn up at the door of his family not having aged a day? This new found freedom had become more of a prison than the one he had escaped from. He could see that prison just beyond the field he was moving across. He had to escape this nightmare, for that is what it surely was, a nightmare.

Ominous dark clouds were gathering overhead. The rate at which they were moving across the sky was unnatural. It was as if he could see inside his own depressed mind. He tried to get over the barbed wire fence which separated the field from the road. The blanket round his waist was a hindrance so he took it off, threw it across the wire and climbed over it.

As he was putting the blanket back around his waist the Blanket Man noticed a police car some way up the road moving towards him slowly. Blue lights began to flash. Desperation was really setting in now, he simply could not get arrested. He had to get back to his cell, so he tore the blanket off his waist again and ran across the road naked. He still clung to the blanket as he ran. He heard the roar of the police car as it came tearing down the road, then the screeching of tires as it turned sharply in through the open gate.

Darkness was descending like a great shadow across this nightmarish world. He took a quick look over his shoulder and saw that two policemen, who had got out of the car, were standing looking around in all directions. It was as if they could no longer see him. His chest was pounding, there was a sharp pain in his side and he was getting cramps in his legs so he eased up a little.

It was at this point he noticed that the H Blocks were rematerialising in the gloom, like ghostly shapes all around him. The orange lights were dim, as if viewed through a haze. A corrugated iron fence barred his way but he could see through it as if it were transparent and he could see the wing of the block he had been in, as well as the hole in his cell wall. He didn’t stop to think but kept running towards the fence and then passed through it as if it had been formed from grey smoke.

The Blanket Man kept going until he had crossed the exercise yard, went through the hole in the wall and was back in his cell again. He drew up at the cell door and took time to get his breath back. Then he turned around and saw that the wall with the barred window was back where it had been since the day it was set in place. He didn’t bother to go to the window and look outside because the orange light was enough proof that he was back in this all too familiar hell again. Totally exhausted he flipped the mattress down onto the floor, lifted the two blankets and lay down on it before wrapping them around himself. 

He was awakened by the sound of keys rattling in the cell doors further down the wing and the clank of the breakfast trolley as it was pushed up the corridor. He turned on his side, the grey skies were a foreboding of the day which lay ahead. His mind began to go over the dream he had during the night, he could remember so much about it that he wondered how it could possibly be a dream. The breakfast trolley was almost at his cell door so he rose to his feet. They were painful and he almost had to limp towards the door. What had caused this pain? He wondered. Surely not? It was a dream. A key rattled in his cell door and a dour-faced screw stared at him with hatred in his eyes, before stepping aside to let him get what passed for a breakfast. As he held his plastic mug under the tea urn the orderly, who wasn’t the worst of them, leant close to him.

“There’s been some excitement last night,” He whispered. “The guards in the watchtowers saw a shadowy figure moving quickly through the prison. It was running and actually went right through a fence, they say. Apparently it disappeared through the wall of one of these here cells.”

The Blanket Man looked at him in shock and stepped back spilling some of his tea on the floor of the corridor. The screw was enraged. Before he could say anything the orderly continued, wanting desperately to finish his story.

“They’re saying it was the ghost of Harvey. That World War 2 pilot who haunts the jail.”

“Move!” Ordered the screw and the orderly scuttled off to wait outside the next cell with the trolley.

“I’ll be seeing you again shortly for the fun and games. Enjoy your breakfast you Fenian bastard.”

The cell door slammed shut and the screw’s key rattled in the lock. The Blanket Man turned and looked towards the cell window as rain poured down outside.

That was no ghost. It was me, fleeing from my own nightmare. But how could they possibly have seen that?

He told no one about his strange dream for he knew that the others would laugh at him and he’d face endless ridicule.

Footnote:

The moral of the story is, would we have endured so much if we had some way of knowing how it would eventually turn out? Most definitely not.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

What If The Dream Comes True?

Dixie Elliot ✒ This is a true story.

I remember a bitterly cold winter's night back in early 1979 when I shared a cell with Seanna Walsh in H6.
 
Our cell window had a view of the exercise yard and we caught sight of a few flakes of snow which began to drift down from the black skies. As we watched they quickly became a flurry swirling in the wind. We moved closer to the window with our blankets wrapped tightly around us and glazed out upon the barbed wire fences and the orange lights which had briefly been transformed into a winter wonderland.

I escaped from that hellish place and returned to Carnhill. Walking through a winter's night lit only by the street lights, my collar was turned up and the cold nipped my cheeks as the snow swirled in the wind and I cursed it. The crisp snow crunched under my boots and left a trail back to where I had come from.

But I hadn't been anywhere. I was still in that dank cell with my cell-mate, staring out through the concrete bars in the window, as the snow swirled in the wind and clung to the barbed wire. The winter's night was still lit, but only by those damned orange lights.

* This story was inspired by a post by Thadd Mc Gill about a street light reminding him of the orange lights in the H Blocks.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie


A Winter's Night, 1979

Pádraic Mac Coitir ✒ Kicks off  the TPQ 2022 writing with memories of Xmas in Gaol.

I don't dwell on my time in gaol but occasionally I'll be asked to do a talk or write something about it. This morning is one of those times I'll write about food on Xmas day. I'm writing it because when I was out for a dander I met an oul comrade and we spent a couple of minutes talking about food and he suggested I write something.

I spent 15 Christmases inside, most of them in the H-Blocks. The first was 1976 in H1. I'd been on the boards for 5 days and was back on the wing on the 23rd and really looking forward to a slap up meal two days later but the wing O/C told us it was a 'tradition' for Republicans to do a 24 hour fast. I was young and naïve so just done as I was told.

In those days we could get a special parcel from outside. After my visit on the 24th I was called up to the grilles to get the parcel and couldn't believe the size of it. There was a box of Milk Tray, fruit cake, sweets, cheese, ham and fruit. I was in the cell with Joe Craven from Bawnmore - later killed by a unionist murder gang. Joe also got a big parcel and we were like two big kids. The other lads on the wing also got big parcels and someone suggested not taking anything until the fast ended at midnight on Xmas. The fast was easy especially knowing we were gonna stuff our faces that night. About 10 to 12 we heard the other lads laughing so we got our cheese, meat and other treats out and on to the table then a big cheer went up at 12 on the button. It was one of the best Christmases we had.

My next Xmas was in H-2 where we were on the blanket protest. I was in the cell with Paul McGlinchey from Bellaghy. Paul sadly died in August. The atmosphere on the wing was very good and at that stage the screws weren't beating or harassing us too much. We got a half decent breakfast of weetabix, fried soda, egg and bacon and plenty of bread, some of which we kept for that night. We went to mass and at that time most of us were practicing Catholics so took communion and at different parts of the mass we sang carols and it was good oul craic.

After mass we couldn't believe it when some of the screws offered us a cigarette. Even me and other non-smokers took one and gave to our cell mates. We got dinner earlier than usual which consisted of slices of turkey and ham, potatoes, sprouts and carrots. For dessert we got trifle. We were even more surprised when the screws let us go to into other cells. Four of us were from Lenadoon and when we were locked in the cell it was like we had won political status. After half an hour we were locked back in our cells. When the screws came back at 2pm we got our tea which was cheese, spam and a boiled egg and to our surprise a slice of fruit cake. Shortly after that the screws let us slop out and fill the containers with water then they left until unlock next morning.

The following Xmas was to be the worst. It was during one of the coldest times since records were kept. We didn't know until years later the area around Long Kesh it was -18 Celsius. Earlier that year we escalated the protest and it was the start of brutal beatings. The screws threw liquid into the cells which made us wretch so we smashed the windows to give us fresh air. With the windows out in that terrible winter it's a wonder none of us died. On Xmas morning we got a cold breakfast which was left in by smirking orderlies. Morale was very low but we never showed our fears to the screws. At mass we sang carols even though there wasn't the heart for it. Before the screws left we got a very meagre and cold dinner but because we were constantly hungry we ate it. After 2pm most of the screws came back drunk and gave us verbal abuse. One or two screws were ok but we despised most of them and people ask me if I still hate them and I tell them I most definitely do. Fuck all that liberal and Christian crap about forgiveness.

I got released from the protest in July 79 but it wasn't long until I was back in the Crum. Xmas 81 was completely different from my earlier experiences. I was on the 3s in C wing and my cellmate was Bobby Storey. Bobby died last year. We knew each other well and we got on very well during the months we were in the cell. We got parcels 2 or 3 times a week and on that particular Xmas we got special ones.

1976 happened to be the last time we went on 24 hours fast. In the morning we got a hot breakfast and we would could buy sachets of coffee from the prison tuck shop which was great. For our dinner we got vegetable soup, turkey, ham, carrots, sprouts, roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert we got Christmas pudding and custard. Bobby and I were thin then but we loved our grub and both of us were to spend different periods on remand and we always said the food in the Crum was very good.

I was to spend another 9 Christmases in the Blocks and those days were completely different from the terrible days of the blanket and no-wash protest. We ran our wings and the screws rarely harassed us. Christmases were more or less the same but the best for me was 1989. A few years before that republicans took parole so a number on our wing were away for 7 days. The wing was quiet but morale very high. A few lads made hooch which consisted of sugar, yeast (smuggled in!) and lots of jam. During the 12.30-2pm lock up a number of us went into Cell 26 - or the big cell as we called it- after our dinner. Once the screws left the wing we opened one of the plastic gallon drums full of the hooch. We were laughing like big kids as it was poured into our plastic mugs. We shouted sláinte then took a big slug of it. It was terrible but we didn't care. There was only 6 of us in the cell so we shouted out to the other lads, as gaeilge, that it was great. The more we drank the better it tasted and because we hadn't had a deoch in years it started to get us drunk. When the screws came back and unlocked the doors the other lads came down for their fill. We were supposed to go easy but some of the lads drank too much and took sick. The screws knew we were drinking something but they dared not do anything.

So there are some of the Christmases I spent inside. I may have got some things mixed up but I can say I enjoyed most of my time in gaol apart from those terrible days during the blanket protest. Of course many more Irish Republican men and women spent many years in prisons here in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US. And yes, there are Irish Republicans in gaol today and hopefully it won't be long until they get out and spend Christmas with their families and friends.

Nollaig shona daoibh agus Tiocfhaidh ar lá!. No crawling apology from me...

PS. I do have a good memory but obviously forget some things and get mixed up with events. Unlike some people out there I'll admit my mistakes and thanks to a fella I was in the Crum with Xmas 81 he pointed out to me some. He reminded me Bobby Storey and others were moved to the Blocks before Xmas - I was moved a few weeks later. I knew I was in the cell with two Fermanagh lads but thought it was January 82 but after Bobby was moved me and the lads were in the cell together. One was Séamus McIlwaine - shot dead by the SAS in April 86 - and the other was Eugene Cosgrave who died of natural causes a few years. Not just saying it because they are dead we got on very well and although we were locked in our cell most of the day and night we talked and although I loved reading I only read the papers such were the yarns we had.

I said I wouldn't mention him but I have to for putting me right. Go raibh maith agat Kieran Flynn. From now on if I'm gonna write about the Crum at that time I'll defer to you!

Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Xmas Behind Bars

James Kearney ✒ produced a son. The son produced a book. Two things denied during the blanket protest. For him revenge has been the laughter of his child. 

After thumping me to the ground, the Prison Officer Brian Armour proceeded to give me a lecture on conformity, surrounded of course by his body guards, known to us as " the sadistic bunch". 


Brian, nicknamed "the Red Rat", went on to state that he would criminalise me and promised that I would never be able to have children and would break me in the end: Seamus, I will cause so much damage to you that you won't be able to function properly again and you won't be able to have children.

 After 4 years of systematic and barbaric treatment in the H Blocks of Long Kesh Prison Camp, I survived but Brian did not. He answered for his war crimes in 1988 when he was killed in a mine attack. I visited his grave many years later and informed him that I had prevailed against all odds and actually had 3 children - one girl and two boys, dismissing his earlier prediction. 

He had tried to criminalise me but in the end he had only criminalised himself. When I revealed my past history to Thomas, my eldest son, he replied: "Dad, I won't be able to surpass those heights you have gained in your own life." I interjected, "Thomas, you can still achieve great things if you apply yourself, but you must have clear goals and be able to conquer your fears."

I ingrained in him a sense of history, teaching him to be aware of where we had come from, where we were in the present and where we were going into the future. Thankfully he understood. 

In 2015 he set off on his epic journey of self-discovery, landing in South America and beginning his trek in Ushuaia, the southern tip of the Americas, known locally as "the end of the world." From there his adventure commenced, ending on the shores of the Arctic circle in the northern hemisphere, after enduring and conquering the jungles of Latin America, the arid desert of Atacama, the blistering heat of Central America and the freezing conditions of the Arctic. 

Along the way the ghosts of Bobby Sands and Ernesto Che Guevara travelled with him, as he visited the execution site in La Higuera in Bolivia, where Che was killed in 1967. Later, in San Francisco in North America, Thomas stumbled upon a hunger strike in progress by the "Frisco Five", a group of activists protesting against police brutality. He approached the hunger strikers sitting on chairs outside police headquarters and recited a poem penned by Bobby Sands entitled "The Rhythm of Time".

Shortly afterwards, as a result of Thomas explaining the poem, a mother of one of the hunger strikers, Colombian born Maria Gutierrez, began to tell the large crowd surrounding the police station about the 1981 Irish hunger strike. His message had got through. His journey had taken him almost a year to complete and his personal achievement has been immeasurable in terms of self-advancement, self-discipline and self-awareness. I am immensely proud of my son and I hope the reader of this phenomenal travel journal will be also. 

The book Thumbs Up is now on general release and is available on your country's Amazon site in both paperback and Kindle. Enjoy the journey of an Irishman, son of a Blanketman, and the 25,000 kilometers from Patagonia to the Arctic.

⏩ James Kearney is a former Blanketman.

Our Revenge Will Be The Laughter Of Our Children

Dixie Elliot with one of his inimitable stories from life on the blanket protest in the H Blocks of Long Kesh.

I posted a memory of Brendan The Dark Hughes which included a verse from a poem by Ethna Carbery.

Here is a story about The Dark, Bobby Sands and Ethna Carbery.

While we were in H6 in 1979 Bobby got a collection of poems smuggled in which had been written by a nationalist poet from near Ballymena called Ethna Carbery.

Bobby instantly fell in love with her poetry which later inspired many of his own poems.

However, after his first reading of her poetry he sat down and wrote her a letter. Later that night he called The Dark up to his cell door and told him that he had written a letter to Ethna Carbery to let her know how brilliant her poetry was.

The Dark shouted back to him, "You need to get an Ouija board out Bobby, she died 70 years ago."

The whole wing erupted with howls of laugher.

Two legends. 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie


Brendan, Bobby & Ethna

Padraic Mac Coitir met an old friend from the Blanket on one of his danders. 

Yesterday my danders took me far and wide and I ended up in the north of this fine city. It was strange walking past watering holes that are now closed but thankfully some stayed open. In one such place I bumped into a few people I hadn't seen in ages and as we were enjoying pints of Guinness in walked the boul Paddy McGrandles. Paddy is one of life's characters and would bring a smile to anyone's gob - yes even mine!

He joined our company and even though we were having the best of craic he had us in stitches with stories from gaol. Obviously there were quiet moments when talking about serious events such as the hunger strike.

Paddy had just turned 17 in April 76 when he was taken to Castlereagh interrogation centre. For anyone going there for the first time it can be scary because it was well known the peelers tortured people. Ok it wasn't like Abu Ghraib but a torture centre it definitely was. After ensuring a hard time he was taken to Townhall courthouse and remanded to Crumlin Road gaol. 

In those days we were put in the back of a closed-in Transit van and when Paddy was put in handcuffed a number of older men joined him. Tension was very high because of fighting between our lads and unionist gangsters in the Crum. The other men just looked at Paddy and after a bit of questioning they all relaxed. They asked Paddy what he was charged with and when he told them they said he'll get a hard time from the screws. This made Paddy even more nervous so when he went into reception - yes, that's the fancy name they have in prison where prisoners are stripped, told to bath and get their photo taken - the screws gave him a lot of verbal abuse. Instead of being kept in B wing for one night he was he was kept four nights before being moved to C Wing.

Once on that wing he started to feel better and being one of the younger prisoners he got a lot of stick from older lads, especially some who'd been interned with his da.

He was sentenced in December 76 and immediately joined the blanket protest but he was kept in a separate wing from the other lads until just before Xmas. The screws were cruel bastards and one in particular called Jack Todd would regularly go into the cell and give Paddy a beating. Many of us got the same from the scumbag.

I was sentenced in January 77 and ended up on the same wing as Paddy. His was the first friendly voice I heard when he shouted out the window and called for me to get up on the pipes and tell him a bit about myself. I was crapping myself but he told me not to worry. The first time we saw each other was when we we stood outside our doors on the Sunday as we waited to go to mass in another wing. We couldn't speak but just nodded and smiled. That was the only time we wore prison trousers and the rest of the time whether slopping out, going for our grub or the odd time to see the doctor we would go down the wings naked. Paddy was telling us of the time he burnt his balls - it could only happen to him! When going into the canteen for his dinner he stretched across the hotplate for a bowl of dessert coz it had more in it than the others and he forgot how hot it was!

In April we were moved from H-2 to H-5 and with so many of us our morale rose and we would shout out the doors, have sing songs, quizzes and Irish classes. Paddy was in his element and was the life and soul of the wing. I was moved to another wing in July and that was the last I'd see Paddy until three or four years ago and I've met him a couple of times since then. 

So if any of you ever meet Paddy ask him to tell you yarns about the time he was on the wing with Kieran Doherty and Larry Marley. I've said to Paddy to get it all down on paper because although times were very hard there were many funny times and with characters like Paddy we could endure the blanket and no-wash protests that little bit better.


Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Meeting Paddy McGrandles

The following piece by former republican prisoner Seamus Kearney is doing the rounds on social media. It offers an experiential insight  from his days as a H Blocks blanketman on coping strategies which others might find helpful during the current lockdown in a regime without precedent. 

The recent "Lock Down" as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic has generated a mixture of fear, frustration and deep anxiety among a lot of people, which is understandable.

The global pandemic has restricted the freedom of movement and curtailed peoples' lives to such an extent that they are now virtually prisoners in their own homes, which is an unprecedented phenomena. It is now the worst disaster since the "Spanish Flu" , which swept through Europe in 1918.

Without sounding condescending, I can fully understand those fears that people have, but would like to offer some helpful advice to all those who are feeling the strain during this difficult time of uncertainty. Having spent almost 10 years in prison, including over 4 years on the Blanket Protest, some of it in solitary confinement, I feel that I already have an insight into what we all are about to experience.

The following list of measures are not exhaustive, but may offer some guidance on how to cope and eventually overcome the current situation on a personal level. They were employed by myself during the period of the Blanket Protest and certainly helped me to overcome my surroundings at that particular time. They have been tried and tested, so may be useful to those who are about to be tried and tested in this new situation of the pandemic.


The Steps Are As Follows


Step 1: "I am not in this cell, this cell is within me". 

To avoid being overwhelmed and feeling "cabin fever", which a lot are now suffering from in Italy, we have to take control of our confined space, whether in a house, a cell or a room. The only way to do this is to mentally become stronger and not create a sense of panic within ourselves.

Step 2: "Being physically fit is being mentally fit". 

We do not have to be super fit.  But it is important that we all remain or become reasonably fit during this period of confinement. For example, stretching exercises, sit ups, crunches etc are easy ways to remain mobile and to avoid the body seizing up.

Step 3: "Mental Stimulus is vital to Mental Health". 

Keeping the mind active by reading fact or fiction is vital, as it prevents the mind from going into shut down. In my case, we had no books to read, so we improvised by telling stories or recounting films that we had seen earlier. This is a great source for mental stimulus,, but also raises morale within the group or family.

Step 4: "Take one day at a time". 

This is important as it reduces panic and anxiety, allowing the brain to pace itself and not get overwhelmed. We should not dwell too much on the news or media reports, as they can raise expectations, but at the same time lower expectations.

Step 5: "Hope for the best, while expecting the worst". 

Without undue panic, by taking deep breaths in the morning and at night, it allows us to level out and put things in perspective. The situation may get worse, or equally it may improve, but in any event, we have dealt with it before hand.

Step 6: "The food of Life". 

Don't be tempted to over-indulge in food and drink during this period of confinement, as being overweight will not help your mental or physical health. I never had that problem within the H Blocks because we were starved almost to death, but too much consumption of food and drink only adds to the lowering of morale and mental well being, leading to depression.

Step 7: "Be kind to others". 

If you can find within yourself a sense of comradeship or community spirit, then that is invaluable because it allows you to put others first before yourself. However, this can only be realised after a prolonged period and usually not after a short stint locked up, if it is to have a lasting effect.

Step 8: "Seeking out opportunities in times of limitations". 

By turning a negative into a positive, you will enhance your own life and the life of others around you. During this difficult period for all of us, you have the opportunity to tap into your reserves, reserves that you thought you never possessed, revealing your true character and changing the lives of those around you in a meaningful way, remembering that the true character of a person can never be revealed in times of normality, but only in times of strife.

Step 9: "Light at the end of the tunnel". 

There will always be light at the end of the tunnel if you have hope, so never give up, never despair, never lose hope. By believing in yourself and believing that people inherently are good, then you have nothing to fear in the long run. If you believe in God, which I do, then the power of prayer is immense and a comfort to the soul. In the morning, offer up your day for the greater good and put others in need before your own needs.

Step 10: "Plan for a brighter future". 

Don't squander the time spent in confinement. Instead, make use of it and plan ahead for the day when this period finally ends, which it will. If you have been selfish then cease being selfish and instead become selfless, it isn't that hard to do. When my comrade, Bobby Sands, was on the Blanket Protest and in the cell with a man from Derry City, he noticed that this man slept most of his day in the cell, only getting up to eat his meals. Bearing in mind that they were both locked in the cell 24 hours a day, Bobby didn't squander his precious time, but would be doing his exercises in the morning, taking Irish language classes and writing poetry. When he asked his cell mate;" What do you do all day ?", the man replied; "I sleep all day ". Bobby said, "Do you not think that it's such a waste of your opportunities, isn't it?".

I hope the above has been of some use to those who are feeling distressed, lonely and anxious. I am here if any of you need me, so do not be afraid.

Stay Safe.

⏩ Seamus Kearney, a former H Block blanketman, spent four years locked in a cell 24/7. Deprived of every physical and mental stimulation, he and his comrades survived by creating their own.

How To Survive Self - Isolation, Solitary Confinement And Restricted Movement - A Blanketman's View

Ashes

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