Showing posts with label Understanding imprisonment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Understanding imprisonment. Show all posts
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Socialist Democracy  raises issues around the housing of transgender prisoners in women's jails.

Limerick Women's Prison.

The recent cases in Scotland have focused attention on the holding of sexual offenders in the female estate or their request for transfers there. The issue became so public and clear that the reactionary First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to do a U-turn on the slogan Trans Women are Women and say well yes, they are but not this one, nor that one either and let’s press the pause button to think of a way out of this woke mess we have got ourselves into.

Another issue related to this has also arisen and it is one that is present in Irish prisons too: that is the institutional sexual assault of female staff at the prisons. It was revealed that, unsurprisingly the rapist Andrew Burns under the guise of Tiffany Scott (formerly the Mighty Almighty) has the right to demand that he be searched by staff of the “gender” i.e. the sex he chooses. It is normal and correct that prison staff, police etc, cannot abuse their position and force women to submit to a body search by males. This is particularly the case when it comes to strip searches, which are common for prisoners entering and leaving a prison for court hearings. Now, however the reverse is happening. Female prison staff at the male prison where the rapist Burns is held have been ordered to search him, including participating in strip searches of this man.(1) This has provoked some outcry in Britain, following from Nicola Sturgeon’s pathetic handling of the issue based around her mantras that transwomen are women, something she no longer believes is the case, in relation to certain sex offenders.

What is less clear in the regulations, though clear enough if we apply common sense, is what happens when a trans identifies as a woman. Who searches him? Well in Scotland, Ireland and a number of other jurisdictions, it is the prisoner who decides the sex of the person who rubs down his genitals or is forced to observe him during a strip search. The issue has now been raised in Scotland in relation to the double rapist Andrew Burns. Female staff are forced to inspect him and his genitalia.

This is also the case in Ireland and the Inspector of Prisons is well aware of the situation. But in the Inspector’s report on Limerick Women’s Prison, this issue was overlooked, in the sense that women being forced to search a male was a non-issue for them. The Inspector, rather than defend the rights of female staff not to be subjected to such an appalling and denigrating situation, went the opposite way. They argued in their report that the sex offenders in Limerick who complained about being searched by females who were on occasion accompanied by male staff was a legitimate complaint. They saw nothing wrong with the female prison officers being forced to search a male with his genitalia intact.(2)

One of those held in Limerick has been convicted of ten counts of sexual assault and one count of the abuse of minor and yet it is to be expected that he be searched by a female rather than a male and also that male staff not be present even for security reasons. This is nothing short of the institutional sexual assault of staff.

In some professions it is not unusual for women to be in the presence of naked or semi-naked males, such as doctors and nurses. But this is not a medical setting. Sex offenders are being facilitated with getting women to rub them down, providing some sexual gratification to the sex offender. This is nothing short of sexual assault. 

In a situation where workers rights and women’s rights were important and defended the unions and even management and the government would not force staff into this situation. But the reality of those who say let’s be kind, is that women are being forced to subject themselves so sexual assault as part of their conditions of employment. The unions are silent, the left go along with this nonsense and the void is left to right wing forces to hypocritically howl about it. This is the same right that moans about women taking rape cases to court, demanding abortion rights, amongst other measures. They are no friends of women’s rights, but unfortunately many left organisations have betrayed women and told them to basically be nice and not complain too loudly, lest the sex offender complain about being misgendered.

Notes

(1) The Daily Mirror (04/02/2023) Fury of female prison officers ordered to strip search dangerous trans convict. Mark McGivern & Graeme Murray 

(2) OIP (2021) ‘Covid-19 Thematic Inspection of Limerick Prison’, 6-7 April 2021, Ireland p. 34

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist in Latin America.

The Institutional Sexual Assault Of Prison Staff

Mary Adams writer and Just Stop Oil climate activist writes on her experience of prison and the state attempt to criminalise climate activism.

6-January-2023

I boarded a prison van along with five others and took my place in the locked metal box allocated to each prisoner. It was 27 September 2022, and we were headed for trial at the Birmingham High court. Our crime – climate protest.

A Just Stop Oil demonstration in London, 10 December.
Photo by Steve Eason

As we pulled out of the gates of the notorious HMP Foston Hall – ranked lowest of women’s prisons in a government Inspectorate Report, September 2022 – I thought of the women left behind on the remand wing, languishing in cramped, drab cells for twenty-three and a half hours a day. No wonder Foston Hall has the highest rate of violence and self-harm amongst its inmate population.

We were locked in narrow single cells converted to double occupancy by way of bunk beds, and our meals were eaten in our cells. Requests for basic amenities such as repairing a blocked sink were dealt with slowly, if not ignored altogether. Hot water was hard to come by.

With broken, cheap shelving and scuffed, peeling paint, a sense of hopelessness was baked into those featureless grey walls.

It was in Foston Hall that I tasted the overwhelming darkness that loss of agency in prison can evoke.

Like everyone on the remand wing, I quickly adjusted to the continuous “beep” of expended smoke alarm batteries. But for two evenings the smoke alarm, itself, emitted a high-pitched shriek every fifteen minutes. After several attempts to get help from a surly prison guard, she terminated any further discussion on the subject.

Slamming shut the narrow aperture on our door, her parting words underscored the desolation of such institutions. “This is prison life…Get used to it!”.

Staring in disbelief at the heavy metal door, a wave of impotency, injustice and rage exploded inside me. That long night I experienced a new level of empathy for the women around me and their periodic outbursts.

Prison expanded my understanding of what being privileged means. Unlike other inmates in Foston Hall, I had loved ones and a life to return to. Many don’t. I also had a reason to be there beyond adverse life circumstances.

Inside Foston Hall prison
My appreciation of simple human kindness and connection deepened. Stolen gestures meant a lot; bright moments of shared humanity in an institution that can easily strip you of this.

Who are the criminals?

There is something profoundly wrong when ordinary citizens – students, teachers, nurses, vicars, grandparents, construction workers, and academics – are compelled to take up the moral and political stance of civil disobedience, as a last resort, to activate political will.

Formerly law-abiding citizens are being imprisoned, fined, tagged, charged with excessive court costs, and threatened with lengthy suspended sentences.

This is a deliberate strategy by the government and judiciary to silence voices challenging the status quo of political apathy and collusion with the fossil fuel industry.

A few of the most egregious cases are:

  • Louis McKechnie, a 21-year-old former mechanical engineering student from Weymouth. Refused bail, Louis will remain in prison until his trial in 2023.
  • Josh Smith, 29, a construction worker from Manchester. Held on remand for five months. Awaits trial in 2023.
  • Louise Lancaster, 56, a former schoolteacher from Cambridge was fined £22,000 in court costs for hanging a Just Stop Oil banner from a gantry on the M25 following 40 degree temperatures in England this year – a temperature escalation climate scientists were shocked by. After ten days in prison, Lancaster was released but banned from any form of protest until October 2023. She faces a year in prison if she breaks this.

These penalties stand in stark contrast to the position the courts take vis a vis the relentless contravention of global agreements by the fossil fuel industry.

International agreements reached at the conferences of the parties (COPs) over the past three decades, designed to halt the spiralling destruction of our planetary systems, are regularly breached by an industry with deep pockets and strong political affiliations.

The legal system undermines climate policies

More dangerous perhaps is the role the legal system plays in enabling corporations and fossil fuel investors to undermine efforts by nation states to limit global warming.

Fossil fuel companies use a mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in international corporate tribunals, to claim compensation for climate policies they see as “illegally” cutting into their profits. Bypassing local courts, companies are filing arbitration cases that frustrate new climate regulations, using ISDSs.

One example is Rockhopper. After a four-year case against the Italian government, whose moratorium on oil projects within a twelve-mile radius of its coastline effectively blocked this British company’s plans, in September 2022 Rockhopper was awarded €I90 million euros plus interest.

Although its actual investment amounted to $40-50 million, the company claimed a foregone loss of profits estimated between $220-300 million. As a result, Rockhopper’s share price doubled, and the company plans to use this “profit” to drill for oil near the Malvinas islands in the south Atlantic. Italy is challenging the tribunal’s decision.

Italy has left the Energy Charter Treaty, the international agreement under which ISDS cases are brought. France, The Netherlands, Spain and Poland are on their way out, and Germany and Belgium are thinking about it.

Challenging a judiciary in step with governments and corporations

“It’s a David and Goliath situation”, remarked a vicar sitting beside me in the autumn sun. We were part of a group of 51 ordinary citizens, peacefully but purposively blocking the main entrance to Kingsbury Oil terminal in Warwickshire, the UK’s largest inland oil depot, on 14 September 2022.

The intention of this action was to challenge the position of the government and courts by breaking a court injunction preventing protest at this site.

Struggling to stem the rising tide of civil disobedience, the UK government and judiciary are pursuing a strategy of applying draconian measures against climate activism, largely outside of the public’s view.
Action at Kingsbury Oil Terminal,
14 September 2022
What democratic government wants to be seen jailing peaceful pensioners, grandparents, and students for raising the alarm about a crisis our institutions are acutely aware of, yet largely avoid? Who wants to be seen creating prisoners of conscience? Usually, this is the terrain of authoritarian regimes.

That afternoon, all 51 of us were arrested for contempt of court, for climate protest outside of Kingsbury Oil Terminal. We were taken to police cells across the Midlands.

At our first court appearance, three of us stood in the dock together. To demonstrate our refusal to accept the legal authority of an injunction designed to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry while penalising climate protestors, we each turned our back as the judge entered the court. Tension rippled through the room as shocked court personnel duly stood. The judge proceeded to lay out the contempt of court charges.

Stating our position in unison, and effectively drowning out her voice, we were quickly bundled out of the courtroom and sent down on remand. Later I heard that every person had staged a similar action, which meant that night all 51 of us were sent to prisons dotted across the Midlands and Outer London.

Initially I was remanded to HMP Peterborough, along with five others. The extra freedoms permitted at Peterborough prison allowed us to meet, and to mingle with other inmates.

Despite the risk of incurring steeper sentences and higher court costs, refusing to make a guilty plea provides a valuable opportunity for a counter defence against the oil industry, in a court environment. We went to work preparing our cases in our cells.

After a week we were moved to HMP Foston Hall. In this new environment, despite the isolation and lack of resources, we managed to create a co-ordinated defence, having decided to self represent.

When we were finally brought before the Birmingham High Court, after a few hours held in the basement holding cells, we ascended the stairs to the courtroom. There, upon entering the dock, each of us outlined specific points regarding the nefarious actions of the fossil fuel industry, and the consequences both past and present.

We told the court that today in the UK, injunctions are frequently used to protect an industry that is well-documented to have deliberately misled the public for decades. Research by the industry’s own scientists sixty years ago made accurate predictions of the consequences of burning fossil fuels, including the perilous impacts of climate change, now an everyday reality. (There’s more about this in a BBC documentary and on the Climate Files site.)


We also raised the matter of context. The UK government declared a climate emergency in May 2019, yet no proportionate change in policy, or the law, has been passed since.

Laws do change according to evolving societal values, knowledge, and conditions. In court we cited examples such as laws regarding homosexuality, which until 1967 was illegal in the UK, a punishable “offence”.

The judge appeared to be affected by our testimony but ultimately unwilling to re-evaluate her ruling. We were all convicted of breaking a court injunction designed to ban climate protest outside Kingsbury Oil Terminal.

I was sentenced to 56 days in prison, with a suspended sentence of 30 days, allowing for time already spent in prison.

One of my fellow activists, a social worker and grandmother, was given 156 days for being a “repeat offender”. She was sent back to serve time in HMP Foston Hall.

The UK government is bent on criminalizing climate protestors. To date, dozens have been incarcerated in the UK: at present, 12 prisoners of conscience remain in prison on remand. Others await jury trials.

However, one aspect of civil disobedience is that it engenders thousands of conversations between climate activists and members of the public, the police and state workers in the judiciary and prison system.

Many are genuinely curious as to why we would jeopardize our freedom for such a cause. And many reveal they know little about the climate or ecological crisis. People are often shocked on realizing how absent the true picture is from government and public forums, including the media.

We are living in a time of unprecedented crisis. A profound change of course is required by society and its leaders. The knowledge and solutions are out there. What is missing is the political will to implement these.

None of us can afford to be bystanders to the needless destruction unfolding around us.

Citizens have changed, and do change, history.

And until our government responds with authentic leadership to the meta crisis, climate activism in the form of civil disobedience will be part of all our lives.

More on People & Nature about climate action


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Climate Protests Are Being Criminalised ☀ But We Will Not Stop

Anthony McIntyre 🏴‍☠️ My experience with seagulls is quite different from Bobby Devlin's, immortalised in his book An Interlude With Seagulls. 

Published in 1982, it joined the work of John McGuffin, also rooted in the internment camps, and later became part of a considerable corpus of prison memoirs. 

My dislike of seagulls can be traced back to the cages of Long Kesh camp. Often we would feed them as they flocked to the football pitches adjacent to the cages we were housed in. The prison authorities, pretending to be civilised, resiled from terms like camp, cages and Long Kesh, in their stead using what they considered more sanitising language such as prison, compounds and the Maze. It was all polishing a turd.

The problem with feeding seagulls is that they quickly home in on, and hang about, the feeding area. So, in the cages, some people during the night for the hell of it would throw scraps of bread on the tin roof of the hut next to their own, often selecting the piece of roof above the space where the target of this particular mix would be bedded down. The gulls would land early in the morning screeching and banging, causing an infernal racket, which seemed amplified by the acoustics internal to the hut. That is how I came to dislike seagulls as much as I did British Army helicopters which would swoop over the H Blocks creating a din ever worse than what the seagulls had managed.

From feeding seagulls in the cages I progressed to chasing them. Then Joe Rafter started chasing me each time he caught me shooing away the seagulls. It was an exercise not without learning. What I discovered and imparted to my next door H-Block neighbours, Martin Livingstone and Gerry Donnelly once I arrived on the blanket protest, was that there were only two things a seagull would not eat. One was a dead budgie and the other was Long Kesh liver. 

Neither believed me and decided to put it to the test. We had no dead budgies with which to seek to disprove my assertion so the claim would stand or fall on liver alone  I told them that even if they put the liver inside a round of bread the gulls would shake the sandwich apart and take only the bread. Long Kesh liver really was that unpalatable. On the day of reckoning, Martin and Gerry conceded the point, and I could always claim thereafter to have brought some worthwhile knowledge from the cages to the H-Blocks. 

A few months back my wife started to tend to the garden and create a veritable bird sanctuary. Not having a great interest in them initially, it wasn't long before I took to feeding them, rather than give the scraps to my dog, which had recently recovered from an illness possibly induced by fatty human food. With so many different species appearing, I was reminded of my old friend Seamus O'Brien whom Pádraic Mac Coitir told me had acquired a reputation as something of an authority on bird speciation during the blanket protest.

Each morning I concoct a bread based feast for the birds with dry cat food mixed in to create a bird-suitable champ. They love it. Problem is so do the gulls. So every morning there is a battle between me and them so that the rest of the birds can feed. A single gull can gobble down what fifty other birds can make a meal of. The trick is: break the food up so that it can't be grabbed and spirited into the skies in one fell swoop. 

Last night my son dropped his pizza on the floor and threw it in the bin. Suggesting that food should never be wasted and should be fed to the birds or put in the compost bin where it would go to good use down the line, I asked him to retrieve the pizza. I put it outside this morning, committing the cardinal feeding error of not breaking it up. I had hardly turned my back when the triumphant squawking began, not quite as irritating as scripture squawking from sandwich board men, but annoying all the same. 

Into the garden I shot, faster than a woman escaping a morality peeler in Tehran. The bastard beat me to it and started to flap beyond reach with the entire pizza in its greedy gob. Slowed down by the weight of its booty I lunged in its direction flapping my arms as it flapped its wings. It held on tenaciously before reaching a safe height. Greedy bastard, I muttered as I saw it land on the roof of a house across the street. Then another gull, as opportunistic as itself, tackled it on the roof. Determined not to share the cuisine, the thief flew back in my direction, dropping the pizza on the road in front of my eyes. It hovered, I roared and clapped to frighten it. Passing children on their way to school looked on. They may have thought I was homeless, and driven by starvation, was desperately trying to snatch a free meal from the gull.  

Upshot is I got to it before the gull and gleefully retreated to the garden, where I broke the retaken meal up into small pieces to prevent a one take repeat. The school kids observing the tussle most likely understood the bird's behaviour but not the auld fella with the beard and cardigan performing a victory jig in the garden. 


Before anybody from the swollen ranks of the Most Offended People Ever take offence, my victory chant was not Up the Ra, but Up the Da.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

An Interlude With Seagulls

Anthony McIntyre  ☠ A prison visit by Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív to Jonathan Dowdall has poked something of a hornet's nest in certain media circles where a search expedition has been sent out to find a storm in a tea cup. 

Dowdall has been described as having been involved in "the most notorious gangland murder in State history." If nobody else, then journalists at least would be expected to feel, not forget, that Veronica Guerin's murder best fits that bill.

Dowdall has become a toxic figure of late, emitting a social radiation that drives the great and the good to don protective suits at the mention of his name. Mary Lou McDonald has amplified the moral panic in her bid to distance her party from him, when in fact Sinn Fein is no more responsible for Dowdall that it was for Pearse McAuley.

Prisons house many people who have inflicted great harm. When TDs attend such penal establishments they are not visiting a care home for the elderly or an orphanage, where the residents are not there because of some law they fell foul of. The Pharisaic admonishment is more worthy of attention than the visit.

Ó Cuív's visit took place while Dowdall was serving a sentence in Portlaoise Prison for a physical assault on a man which included torture. They discussed standard fare matters. Dowdall, his sentence served, has reemerged in the headlines as a result of his conviction in relation to facilitating a murder at Dublin's Regency Hotel which led to a fatal spiral of inter-gang rivalry across the capital and sometimes beyond. But for Dowdall's more recent newsworthiness, it is unlikely Ó Cuív's visit to him during his fist spell of imprisonment would have been picked up on the radar.

Ó Cuív in explaining his decision to visit said:

The work I do is mainly concentrated on the republican movement and republican prisoners and I've been doing that work openly for years and I think there has been very good practical results from that work and one that in my view has saved a lot of lives.

He added that he:

doesn’t deal with gangland criminals. I've never visited them and I have no connection with them but I'm sure other people are doing great work with them.


Here, while Ó Cuív did say “everyone was blindsided” when knowledge came out about Dowdall's involvement in Regency Hotel slaying, he was not criticising those people who do visit gangland prisoners, but merely laying out that his particular focus is on republican prisoners.

There is a detectable unease amongst other TDs about visiting prisoners who have no republican connections. Fianna Fáil Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue said:

Deputy Ó Cuiv would have a long-standing record of engaging with republican prisoners ... But had he known the background in relation to Mr Dowdall he wouldn’t have met him.

McConalogue does not explain why it is less odious to visit a prisoner convicted of subversion than one serving time for gangland crime. The public is left to figure out this hierarchy of unworthiness for themselves in a society that formally does not favour one type of violent activity over another.

Éamon Ó Cuív for three decades has proven a champion of prisoners' rights, not a cheerleader for their unlawful activity. It would be a serious indictment of any penal system in which the inmates were so demonised that elected representatives were reticent about visiting them, not as friends but in their capacity as public representatives. 

The virtuous grandstanding found a parallel in recent criticisms of John Finucane who represented someone alleged to have been associated with the KOCG. The old familiar refrain at play of identifying solicitors with their clients or politicians with the prisoners they visit. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Visiting Dowdall

Matt Treacy Once again the shining star of European left-liberalism has proven that when the vital interests of it’s country’s citizens are at stake that they are willing to ignore the wailing of the NGOs and extremists.


On Wednesday this week, Denmark announced a deal with Kosovo for that country to take 300 non-Danish prisoners in order to reduce the demands on the Danish prison system whose population has increased by 20% since 2015. Much of that increase has been driven by increased crime and convictions by and of first and second generation immigrants.

Already by 2015, around 40% of the prison population of over 4,000 was not ethnically Danish. At that time, non-ethnic Danes were four times as likely to be convicted as Danes. Of course, many on the left ascribe this to racism rather than recognise the reality that serious crime in Denmark is more prevalent among some, but not all, immigrant communities.

Of particular concern has been the steadily rising number of rapes, which are relatively high for a country that does not or has not had a major history of violent crime. In 2015, the rate of reported rapes in Denmark was 18.5 per 100,000 compared to 11.5 in Ireland. Many rapes are not reported and the estimates for both Denmark and Ireland vary.

Some of that has to do with the culture of certain immigrant communities in which an unquantifiable number of rapes and other crimes are not reported to the authorities, because of lack of trust in the police and other issues. The proportion of rapes that are brought to court committed by non Danish nationals is substantially out of line with the country’s demographics. This is similar to Sweden where 58% of convicted rapists were born outside of Sweden.

Amnesty International published a report in 2019 on what it described as Denmark’s “pervasive rape culture” without highlighting the clear link between younger male immigrants from certain countries and that culture. The clash between open European societies and its respect for human rights including the basic rights of women and children and gay people is stark. Ireland too, has experience of this

There are some other interesting comparisons between Ireland and Denmark. The 300 prisoners to be sent to Kosovo, along with others who will remain in Denmark, have had deportation orders made against them when their sentences are served. Here of course, we have the situation where such orders are as rare as hen’s teeth and strongly challenged by the liberal legal sector, and where people who have been told to leave the country when they are released are left to do so voluntarily. And as Gript has shown, some do not.

The prison population here is close to the overall rate of incarceration in Denmark for a similarly sized population. However, while Denmark’s prison population has steadily grown, the Irish prison system reported fewer sentenced prisoners in 2020 mostly due to a planned release of 500 inmates between March and June 2020, so that they would be less likely to get Covid. Indeed.

It is difficult to get statistics on non-national prisoners in Ireland. I have sent several Freedom of Information requests that have not been answered in relation to what was asked – such as the numbers of prisoners from other countries sentenced in Ireland who have convictions in other countries.

The 2020 annual report of the Irish Prison Service stated that 23.2% of the prison population were “non-nationals.” This is not only out of proportion to the supposed % of the population that is non-national, but probably does not count prisoners who have successfully attained Irish citizenship, although that is something that we do not know for certain.

Meanwhile our own justice authorities might look at Denmark as a model of how to address such problems, especially given that Denmark and its ruling social democratic party are usually the exemplars of what our own liberal-left admire and attempt to emulate in so many other respects.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Denmark To Send Foreign Criminals To Prison In Kosovo

Kate Yo 🔖 This sad tale is an elegy, it’s like a poem of serious reflection, a lament for the dead. It is also a memoir.


Laurence McKeown's story is unique in that it is told from inside the prison hospital as he spent 70 days on the fast. The background of the author is dealt with in a small preface and the memoir proper begins in chapter 1. He is on the run and went home one night after a dance in Moneyglass and had not prepared a billet, causing him to wake up around 4 a.m. to an RUC man standing in his bedroom.

Taken to Castlereagh where he is interrogated and removed to the Crum where he is on remand for causing explosions in Randalstown and Antrim, and attempted murder after an attack on a mobile patrol.

There are shadows while on remand. The building at the Kesh of new blocks to house newly sentenced prisoners under the new criminalisation policy. One Sunday Barney McReynolds, the OC, gathered his men together in the yard and told them that any prisoner who is sentenced and sent to the blocks is not to wear a prison uniform and not to do any prison work. Short and sweet, it was as simple as that.

The first prisoner to be sentenced under the new rules was Kieran Nugent. Kieran had already suffered a loyalist gun attack when he was shot eight times in the back, arms and legs at the corner of Merrion street and the Grosvenor road. His friend with him was fatally wounded.

The story of the hunger strike is widely known so it's best to look at the book in a somewhat different way: the degree of light that over shadowed everything, and the dark spectre of death.

The light is a joy to read, and it was that joy was always overcast. A little story is told of a guy from Belfast who was chatting to his friend through the door and became somewhat boastful, saying his area had all the up to date equipment when a rural guy jumped in and said:

I bet you guys never got your hands on a Massey Ferguson 165
Fer fuck sake said the Belfast slabber, we had that many of them we were sending them to you lads down the country
The response was well we could put them to better use seeing as how the Massey Ferguson is a tractor you idiot.

These lighter moments are beginning to surface.  Seamus Kearney’s new memoir tells of sing-songs and skits taking place. After half eight at night, things on each wing became much livelier. The guards had left and the prisoners could speak privately without being overheard.

The author recalls being asked to sing and confessed that he didn’t have a note in his head, but the good natured abuse you got was much worse. So he sang going through the desert with a horse with no name.

At night when the prison was quiet, Bobby’s singing was always left to the end. He says that Bobby had a folksy voice rather like one of the Simon and Garfunkel two, and that his voice was filled with emotion. Included in his batch of songs was Bobby McGee.

Freedom is just another word
With nothing left to loose.
Nothin ain’t worth nothing when it’s free
Feeling good and easy lord when Bobby sang the blues,
Good enough for me.
Good enough for me and Bobby McGee

Hack Ramsey put a chair outside the author’s cell door and took the record player from the canteen and proceeded to play the latest ELO album. He played it over and over again. The wing fell silent while he played the ELO. It was the first time the men had heard music in a number of years.

After 70 days on hunger strike, Laurence's mother had him moved to the RVH. It was here that he awoke to a female voice and a gentle woman’s touch. Raw emotion. This is very symbolic moment, rather like Seamus Kearney’s woman in the pink coat, or the little girl in the red dress in Schlinder’s List.

Darkness is never far away, as the protest took it’s toll upon the minds and bodies. Paddy Quinn was going through a rough patch and was unable to keep water down. This was a bad sign, Martin Hurson had suffered dehydration and his death was partly due to this.

Death shadows had sounds. This haunting sound came from Paddy’s room. A loud bellow, like the sound of an animal in distress. Then it would stop and begin again, almost running into each other. He was hyperventilating. Paul Lennon, the MO, put a paper bag over his patient's face and held him down reducing the amount of oxygen Paddy was taking in. He started to calm down and his mother had him removed to an outside hospital.

This book was only published last year, in 2021. And there are responses to more recent events. In an interview the author had with Brendan Hughes, the author reports what Brendan had to say.



Then there was the confusion as to who was OC, Brendan or Bobby. Bobby had always been subordinate to Brendan, but when the two met in the evening on 18-December-1980 Bobby reportedly said, Dark you fucked up. The author believed that Brendan could not live with the decision he made on the evening of December 1980. The author believes that Brendan’s ego had been dented, and in later years he moved the blame on to others. In Brendan's mind he was the one who was right and it was the others who let him down.

The author feels that Brendan then became very vociferous in his public attacks upon the republican leadership. Brendan attacked those who had been close to him, such as Gerry Adams, and that by identifying and naming him this introduced a new low. Richard O’Rawe made a claim that there was a deal on the table in 1981 just before Joe McDonnell died, and that the army council on the outside had rejected this deal and allowed 6 hunger strikes to die unnecessarily.. This claims the author, caused division.

He goes on that’s it’s ironic after all that the British state had thrown at the prisoners “it was one of our own who in one short sentence sewed division and doubt”.

Laurence McKeown, 2021, Time Memoirs. Beyond the Pale Books.
ISBN-10: 1914318110
ISBN-13: 978-1914318115

Kate Yo is a Belfast book lover. 

Time Memoirs

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

Alex McCrory I remember my first Christmas in the H-Blocks. 

It was 1979 and I had just been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. I was shocked by the severity of my punishment, especially being such a young age.

Because of my youthfulness, I was remanded to St Pat's on the Glen Road; a training school for young boys. Therefore, the prospect of going to an adult prison was daunting, to say the least. I was mentally ill prepared for the challenge.

As a regular reader of the Republican News, I was aware of the ongoing brutality in the H-Blocks, for example, the beatings, the mirror searches, and the forced washes. I was in awe of the prisoners and wanted to join them. But, I doubted myself.

My mother was prominent in the RAC committees and spoke at public events. Already, three of my cousins were on the blanket protest for political status. Although they were older, I always thought myself their equal. A part of me actually looked forward to joining them inside the belly of the beast. Where we would face the enemy together.

That first Christmas was a very dark time. Never had I felt so demoralised and out of my depth. There no shame admitting I cried myself to sleep that night thinking of my family. It was my first Christmas away from home; the first of many more to come.

Enough of my moaning. My present thoughts are of the current cohort of political prisoners and their families as Christmas approaches.

With seven days to go to Christmas, it is worth remembering that Republicans prisoners have not had physical contact with the families for two years. We take having our loved ones close to us for granted. The very thought of being separated from them for a long period is enough give us sleepless nights. But, for Republican prisoners, this is a painful reality. How they cope with such deprivation is unfathomable. 

So, spare a thought for these women and men over the festive season.

Alec McCrory 
is a former blanketman.

Christmas Behind Bars

Sean Matthews reviews a pamphlet which helps enhance understanding of imprisonment. 


The issue of prisoner neglect and abuse is never far from the public domain when it comes to Maghaberry prison and this new pamphlet provides a welcome step in highlighting prison struggles and life from the inside.

Coming on the back off the largest prison strike in the US in 2016 and 2018, involving tens of thousands of prisoners, that including work stoppages and hunger strikes, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Ireland Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee (IWOC) are trying to provide an organising voice for prisoners fighting for collective rights to education, health and employment.

This 23 page well designed pamphlet contains a variety of article and poems from prisoners ranging from healthcare, to disability awareness and the damaging affects of isolation and punishment. As the authors of the pamphlet point out:

Prisons are weapon of class warfare. Though there stated aim it to protect the public, the real aim of prisons is to maintain class privilege and inequalities … The IWOC was founded on the basis that harms prisons do to working class communities can only be combatted with the conscious participation of prisoners and solidarity with fellow workers on the outside.

While many of the contributors to The Pensive Quill are no strangers to the harsh reality of oppressive imprisonment, this pamphlet marks a new step in seeking to provide a voice for the voiceless and one I am sure the Maghberry prison censors will try to silence. Solidarity is Strength!

As one anonymous contributor wrote in their poem called Who am I:

‘What defines me is what I do, What defines me is what I’ve been through…’


⏩To find out more about the IWW and IWOC or to contribute to Bulldozer write to: Bulldozer, PO BOX 346, Derry City, BT48 4FZ, Ireland.

Bulldozer - The Only Vehicle For Prison Abolition

Family Of John Paul Wootonwith an appeal to end what it feels is discrimination against their imprisoned loved one. 


Following recent protest action at Maghaberry Prison, the family of John Paul Wootton are now calling upon the current Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, Ronnie Armour, to intervene to help end the ongoing acts of discrimination against their son, brother, uncle and miscarriage of justice victim, John Paul Wootton.

On behalf of John Paul, the family have launched a letter and email campaign which directly highlights the issues behind the ongoing acts of discrimination he faces on a daily basis, while being held within Maghaberry.

We, the family of John Paul Wootton, ask you to please support our call to demand that Ronnie Armour, Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, immediately ends all acts of discrimination against John Paul.

Please sign the following letter of protest, email and/or write to:

Director General
Northern Ireland Prison Service
Dundonald House,
Upper Newtownards Road,
Belfast, BT4 3SU
niprisonservice@nics.gov.uk


For the attention to the Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service:

It has come to my attention that John Paul Wootton, a person you hold in your custody is being subjected to discriminatory practices.

John Paul has attempted to avail of opportunities open to other prisoners however he has unfortunately been blocked without justification, this is wrong.

For example, he has been applied to take part in peers support and mentoring schemes, requested social activity and asked with regret to the prisons regimes, yet despite meeting appropriate criteria, these have not been facilitated.

Over the years and in an ongoing bases, John Paul has had to deal with harassment such as regular sleep disruption unfair punitive actions both formal and informal, and more recently restrictions on his communications with the outside world. Formal complaints about his treatment have been ignored.

A transfer to Magilligan prison has been identified as a solution to many of these problems, as well as opening up specific educational opportunities. However despite a two year wait, John Paul remains in Maghaberry.

I write to object to this treatment. John Paul should be given equitable access to any opportunities and all harassment should end. A move to Magilligan should be facilitated without delay.

I hope these matters could then be brought to a close.

Yours sincerely

Signed:________________________

Help End Discrimination Against John Paul Wootton

Galway AdvertiserLaurence McKeown - an Irish Republican’s journey from prison cell to published writer.

Kernan Andrews
19-Nov-2020

The Arts are essential to politics, precisely because they can go beyond ideologies and entrenched positions, into the mind and lived experience of another person. Through the artist’s presentation of that life, we can see another perspective; who we might be in other circumstances; or into a reality we have been fortunate enough not to have lived.

For Laurence McKeown, the playwright, academic, and author, who also took part in the 1981 hunger strikes in the H-Blocks, the arts, particularly theatre, has a vital role to play in activism, politics, and public discourse. “The arts take us to a different place, a more human place,” he says.

Lawrence is one of the featured readers at this evening’s Over The Edge, where he will read from his debut poetry collection, Threads. Although published by Salmon Poetry in 2018, it contains poems which date back to his years as an IRA prisoner, and it was in prison his development as a writer began.
 
Continue reading @ Galway Advertiser.

‘The Arts Take Us To A Different Place, A More Human Place’

Miami Herald ✒ Witnesses called it a vicious mugging. The alleged ‘perps’: prison guards.

Carli Teproff

Ryan Dionne held the emotionally distraught woman down and Keith Turner kneed her repeatedly in the head and back, according to witnesses to the brutal daytime assault.

The two men then allegedly dragged their victim across a long field and a pavilion — her head “bobbing” off the ground, her eyes rolled back in her head — as they ordered potential witnesses: “Look away! Look Away!” 

Some did as they were told. But others looked on.

Now they are telling their stories as part of a lawsuit that seeks to recover money for Cheryl Weimar, 51, who is paralyzed from the neck down as a result of the Aug. 21, 2019, attack.

But because it happened at Lowell Correctional Institution and Weimar was an inmate, afforded few rights and little dignity, and Dionne and Turner were staff members, the alleged attackers have not been charged with a crime, and one of them remains on staff, his salary covered by the taxpayers of Florida. 

Continue reading @ Miami Herald.

Witnesses Say Staffers Beat Florida Inmate Viciously

The Journal - Report details case of mentally ill inmate found lying naked on floor of cell
 
Hayley Halpin  

The Council Of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture found a mentally ill prisoner lying naked in his cell in an Irish prison, with faeces and urine on the floor. 

The CPT has today published its report on its seventh periodic visit to Ireland, which took place from 25 September to 4 October 2019.

In the five prison establishments visited, prisoners stated that the vast majority of prison officers treated them correctly.

However, a small number of prison officers are inclined to use more physical force than is necessary and to verbally abuse prisoners, the committee outlined.

The CPT also found that the current complaints system cannot be considered fit for purpose.

The committee outlined that most people stated that they were treated corrected by gardaí when detained.

However, it said there were several allegations of physical ill-treatment and verbal disrespect from remand prisoners. These allegations mostly involved slaps, kicks and punches to various parts of the body.  

Continue reading @ The Journal.

Report Details Case Of Mentally Ill Inmate Found Lying Naked On Floor Of Cell

Belfast TelegraphIn the last of our trilogy of interviews with ex-terrorists who have found God to varying degrees, Billy McCurrie discusses sin and forgiveness.

Gail Walker 

The passage of time can be unforgiving and, for Billy McCurrie, 45 years have not dulled the memory of what it felt like to take the life of another man one winter's morning in Belfast.

Talking at his home in England, where he has been a pastor for two decades, he's immediately transported back to that moment, to that street in the east of the city, to those bewildered, panicked eyes that met his, as dawn broke on February 19, 1976.

"The opportunity came to take part in an execution," he says, his Belfast accent still strong despite the years across the Irish Sea.

Like us, he was a member of the UVF. We were told he was an informer. There was myself and an accomplice. We picked up the guns. My accomplice knew more of the details. He knew where the guy worked and what time he turned up for work. We were waiting for him in a derelict street. Nobody saw us during the shooting. It was 20 minutes after it before the police turned up. We were clean away.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Ex-UVF Man Billy McCurrie ➖ 'What Happened To Me Was Tragic, But You Can't Justify Taking Life.'

Irish Times - Prisoners at Mountjoy Prison have been granted online access to college lectures and tutorials during the coronavirus pandemic and this could be instrumental in establishing third-level education in Irish prisons in the longer term, a review of a new project involving the Dublin jail and Maynooth University has concluded.

Conor Lally

The access to courses at Maynooth granted to prisoners could “bring the university into the prison and the prison into the university in ways we could never have previously imagined”, a review of the scheme by Sarah Meaney of the College Connect programme, which aims to increase diversity, in third level has found.

It concluded the project resulted in the prisoners reflecting on their lives in a meaningful way and also made third-level education seem more attainable for them as they learned the college students were often from similar backgrounds as themselves.

Lack of confidence

“One of the key barriers for young working-class men to educational progression, is a lack of confidence that university life is for them,” Ms Meaney concluded in her review.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Mountjoy Prisoners Gain Access To Third-Level Education During Pandemic

Belfast Telegraph. ✒ The second of three interviews with ex-terrorists who have found God to varying degrees. Former bomber Shane Paul O'Doherty talks about turning away from the Provos and helping victims.
 
Gail Walker 

The dead have travelled with Shane Paul O’Doherty down the decades on a religious journey that has seen him transformed from IRA bomber and ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ to one of the terror organisation’s most searing critics intent only on exploding its lies and hypocrisies.

They come to him, these ghosts, bringing their memories of lives cut short, bothering his conscience. Those who, like him, were youngsters when they were recruited into the IRA. Here is 12-year-old Cathy McGartland and 13-year-old Sean O’Riordan, both “killed in action”, and David McAuley (14) who accidentally shot himself in the head with a weapon he was handling.

But O’Doherty’s most frequent visitor from beyond the grave is a young RUC officer Paul Gray, whose name is to haunt a wide-ranging interview with a man by turns reflective, angry, remorseful, indignant and utterly obsessed with helping victims get the truth.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Former Bomber Shane Paul O'Doherty ➖ 'Getting Away From The IRA Was The Best Thing Ever For Me'

Belfast TelegraphEx-UVF man Bobby Mathieson on his path to redemption: 'I told myself I was evil, that I'd be better off dead but God saved me'

Gail Walker

From prison to pulpit: The first of three interviews with ex-terrorists who have found God to varying degrees. Former UVF man Bobby Mathieson opens up about the mental torture he endured after he took a life and his path to redemption.  

For Bobby Mathieson, being part of a UVF gang that murdered a Catholic man eventually left him wanting to kill himself.

Ten years into his life sentence in the Maze, the back-slapping camaraderie with fellow paramilitaries had worn thin.

Studying maths and art A-levels was a fulfilling distraction, but when he closed the books and put away his canvas, he would paint a mental picture of his own life - and the sum total was worthless.

Playing football allowed him to show off the silky skills that had seen him signed as a teenager by Linfield and, outwardly, his sporting prowess added to his status as one of the big personalities of the H-blocks, full of character and banter. But inside, in his own head, he felt small, despairing and empty - and increasingly that vacuum was filled with a deep self-loathing.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

From Prison To Pulpit ➖ Bobby Mathieson