Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

A Long History

For most working-class nationalists in the North, Long Kesh has been part of their lives for almost 30 years, since it was converted from an RAF base in 1971 into a 'temporary' camp for republican internees. Later, it was expanded to house sentenced republican and loyalist prisoners; and in 1976 was divided in two when the British government opened the H-Blocks with the intention of inflicting a body blow to the IRA, only to suffer a major defeat as a result of the hunger strikes and the emergence of Sinn Fein as an electoral force.

As the last of its inmates, bar a few, are released today it will be a relief to see it close, to see a line drawn through a strife-torn past (even though there will still be political prisoners in Maghaberry as a result of dissident loyalist and republican activities). The impact of this jail on Irish and British politics has been immense. It was during a protest against internment that British paratroopers killed fourteen people on Bloody Sunday - an event that broke hearts in Derry and across Ireland and fuelled at least another decade of conflict.

In 1972 at the age of 19 I was interned, around the time the British government in order to deflect international opprobrium changed the name of the camp to the Maze, renamed the prisoners 'detainees' and announced to the world that it had ended internment and closed Long Kesh! But it will always be known as Long Kesh and the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

Among the inmates were the 'hooded men' who had been tortured after their arrests, and others who would become household names, twenty years down the line. We lived in Cages - compounds of four Nissan huts, a toilet block and an exercise yard, surrounded by British army watchtowers and an ocean of barbed wire. The huts were regularly searched for tunnels and for the 'jungle juice' we used to brew in the fire extinguishers. During raids handicrafts were often destroyed, personal photos and letters stolen, petrol poured into our water tanks, and the food sent in by our relatives tampered with - sugar sprinkled over meats, salt over sweet things. Of course, as far as the soldiers were concerned we were, it is true, the enemy; our mates on the outside were killing their mates, over 100 of whom were killed in 1972 alone. The authorities recognised us as political prisoners of POWs and dealt with our O/C. When an escape was successful prisoners didn't care about the revenge assaults that usually followed. But there were also tragedies. One man was paralysed for life when he hid under a bin lorry but was crushed going over ramps. And in October 1974 Hugh Coney from County Tyrone emerged from an escape tunnel only to be shot dead by a British soldier. I also remember the Sunday when news came across to our Cage that Paddy Crawford, suffering from depression, hanged himself.

But what also stands out are the powerful friendships that were forged in adversity, the comradeship that developed between country men and city men, the politicisation, the confirmation of one's convictions, the banter, the good times. Locked up in a freezing hut , watching a John Wayne film, all of us wearing three overcoats and two pairs of trousers, singing to the top of our voices, 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'!

In 1976 Long Kesh was again transformed when the H-Blocks were opened and a British Labour government announced the end of political status. Penologists and seasoned observers advised the government not to make the prison a battleground (up until then no prison warder had lost his life), but the British government thought it could do on the inside what it had failed to do on the outside - bring the IRA to heel by criminalising its prisoners.

And so the blanket protest begun and culminated five years later in the hunger strikes, during which ten prisoners died, but over sixty others on the outside in related violence lost their lives, including women and children killed by plastic bullets and almost 30 prison warders. I had been on visits with Bobby Sands in 1980 and after his death during tentative negotiations I met with a group of hunger strikers in the prison hospital, six of whom would die in the coming weeks - images which haunt me to this day.

Later, I was sentenced to eight years, four of which I spent in the H-Blocks. But by then, political status had been conceded as the authorities realised they couldn't run such a unique prison without the co-operation of the inmates. During this period, with men serving Mandela-like sentences, the most difficult aspect of life was in maintaining with wives or girlfriends meaningful relationships, the vast majority of which broke down.

Conflict produces irresolvable inequities and injustices all around. Understandably, the early release of prisoners has been highly distressing for many relatives of the dead. On the other hand, for hundreds of mostly nationalist and republican families the killers of their loved ones - British soldiers and RUC men protected by the state - never served a day in jail for the lives they took, the homes they destroyed.

You learn nothing if you choose to forget history and that is why I think the prison hospital, a H-Block and a Cage should be preserved as some sort of testimony to what was suffered and endured but that the story of those prison officers who died should also be remembered in monument or tribute, so that each side is reminded that there were other sides to the conflict. For some, the line of duty was the meaning of their life; for others, it was the struggle for freedom. It couldn't be done back in those fraught and emotional times, but now at a time of, albeit, fragile, peace, it would be a powerful symbol of understanding and reconciliation to recognise humanity in one's adversaries.

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