The men on the blanket

...They were pallid and naked except for a blanket draped over their shoulders...

...The government refusal to acknowledge the political status of the prisoners is symptomatic of its general approach to Northern Ireland, treating it as a "law and order" problem while merely tinkering with temporary measures...

...The stench and filth in some of the cells, with the remains of rotten food and human excreta scattered around the walls, was almost unbearable...

...Four years later a Labor government abolished such privileges for any prisoner convicted of a crime after March 1976...

...another 142 prisoners joined them a few days later, with every prospect of a further escalation of the protest...

...He is hauled upside down so that his back passage can be probed with long tweezers, or he is made to squat naked over a mirror for the same purpose...

...This alone would tell the world that the British government is not being candid or even consistent in its arguments that the Provisional IRA are just ordinary criminals and therefore not deserving of "special" i.e., political, status...

...But this is a tactic within the realm of propaganda and should not be mistaken for a universal moral principle...

...their hunger-striking members were near to death when the government conceded, afraid that the security forces would be unable to contain the upsurge in violence expected if Commonweal: 652 they died...

...The Sunday Times of London published figures in 1977 which showed that over 90 percent of those tried in Northern Ireland courts during the mid-1970s were convicted...

...Until the authorities abandon this narrow-sighted and politically dangerous view, which has helped create the present inhuman state inside the prisons, there is little chance of that crisis ending...

...this demand entailed that the prison authorities recognize the prisoner's right to wear his own clothes, to associate freely with other imprisoned members of his organization, to refuse to do prison work, and to receive extra visits and extra food parcels regularly...

...It began when Provisional IRA prisoners refused to wear prison clothes...

...The current figures show that the protesting prisoners have been responsible for some 50 murders, 35 attempted murders, 108 explosive offenses, and 80 firearms offenses...

...When the cell door opened they both looked frightened and looked anxiously at us for a moment...

...Sunday Mass is the only chance they 21 November 1980: 653 have of getting out for an hour or so...

...The protesting prisoners are Catholics and completely vulnerable to the animosities of their sworn enemies...

...The nearest to it I have seen was the spectacle of homeless people living in sewerpipes in the slums of Calcutta...

...The authorities can also be questioned from another angle, a purely legal one,that looks not to the nature of the offenses so much as to the nature of the forensic methods used to obtain convictions...

...All the orderlies are convicted Protestant terrorists in jail for serious crimes—including murder— against Catholics...

...Amnesty International in 1977, and a British committee in 1978, found that brutality was used regularly to obtain confessions which in turn led to convictions...

...And England, of course, has resisted such an acknowledgment, which would be tantamount to admitting that there is a justifiable cause for struggle, for violence...

...Its overall policy, known as "Ulsterization," was intended to dispel the view that the problem was a political one...

...The authorities retaliated by removing the mattresses and beds from the cells as well as any reading material...

...In May 1972 a group of imprisoned Provisional IRA men went on a hunger strike to demand' 'political status...

...So the prisoners began to daub it on the walls of the cells...

...Political, or "Special Category" status, was granted to the Provisional (and, incidentally, to the jailed Protestant loyalist terrorists...

...Most recently some of the prisoners have escalated their protest with a hunger strike...

...I say' 'normal'' because the Northern Ireland courts are special courts} they are non-jury courts where judgment is delivered by a single judge under special legislation known as the Emergency Provisions Act, made law in 1973...

...Now, two years later, the British are still refusing to concede to the prisoners' demands to be treated as political not criminal offenders...

...So wrote Tim Pat Coogan, the editor ofThe Irish Press, in his recently published book about prison conditions in Northern Ireland, On the Blanket...

...There wasn't much of a smell but the light was dim and the atmosphere profoundly disturbing and depressing...

...The prisoners claim that when the wardens came around with trolleys to pick up the slops in the morning they dumped the full chamber pots over the cells...

...Republican terrorist organizations have murdered twenty wardens over the last few years...

...These were boarded up...

...He issued a statement shortly afterwards in which he said: Having spent the whole of Sunday in the prison I was shocked by the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4, and 5, where over three hundred prisoners were jack HOLLAND, a previous contributor to Commonweal, is the author of a book on Northern Ireland, Too Long a Sacrifice, to be published by Dodd, Mead in March 1981...

...The authorities also claim that the conditions the prisoners endure are self-inflicted in the sense that they stem from their refusing to cooperate and they could at any time alleviate their suffering by cooperating...

...of those, over 80 percent were convicted on the strength of confessions alone...

...The special courts, the special legislation, the special methods used to obtain confessions, and the special concessions made to allow those confessions as evidence, point to a special situation which is not an ordinary criminal one...

...Statements have been made by the Catholic church, liberal politicians, human rights organizations, left-wing Labor members of parliament and U.S...

...From then on all prisoners, regardless of motivation, or membership in any terrorist guerrilla group, were to be treated like ordinary criminals...

...RESISTANCE TO the Ulsterization policy has been passive in the prisons...

...As to the conditions the prisoners endure, they can be described as self-inflicted only if one accepts the contention that passive resistance is a form of self-imposed suffering and, therefore, that the authorities are not to blame for the miseries endured by the protesters who use this method...

...THE HISTORY OF England's relationship with Ireland is in one very important sense a history of prison protests like the one currently taking place in the H-Blocks...

...The government's response to anti-H-Block protests is in line with this policy...

...When Gandhi's followers, pursuing their program of satyagraha in South Africa, lay down in front of trains to protest the exploitation of their fellow Indians, would they have been accused of selfinflicted death—suicide—had they been killed...

...The authorities offered to have civilian-type clothing supplied to all prisoners, political and otherwise, in Northern Ireland, but this concession was rejected by the protesters...

...The prisoners refused to clean up and'began throwing the excrement out the cell windows...

...In 1972 the Provisional IRA were at the peak of their strength...

...when mattresses were returned...

...British authorities point out with great emphasis that the prisoners are convicted murderers, bombers, bank robbers, and so on...

...The British referred to the latter as "O.D.C.'s": Ordinary Decent Criminals...

...If it were, one would have to deny the legitimacy of violence as a method of political change under any circumstance...

...In two of them I was unable to speak for fear of vomiting...

...Many are so humiliated by this that they prefer not to have the monthly visit at all...

...Most recently Daniel Berrigan visited Belfast with a delegation of clergy and attempted to visit the H-Blocks but was refused...

...Of course, a government does do this when violence is directed against its organs...

...The cells are power-hosed a few times a month...

...Visits are restricted to one a month...

...NEWEST CHALLENGE TO ULSTERIZATION The men on the blanket JACK HOLLAND "THEY WERE AGED twenty-one and twenty-two, as I afterwards learned, serving ten and twelve years respectively...

...There have been numerous protest marches throughout Ireland...

...We wonder if it is because they want the truth hidden of the inhuman treatment these prisoners are suffering...

...As long as the Irish have resisted the colonialization of their country by England, imprisoned members of Irish" terrorist groups have fought to have themselves acknowledged as political, not criminal prisoners...

...The prison orderlies (prisoners themselves) are responsible for much of the day-to-day running of H-Blocks...

...After he was denied permission he said: "Clergy are supposed to have access to prisons, so clearly these prisoners are a special case...

...and the prisoners are steadfastly refusing to wear prison clothes, do prison work, or in any way accept the status of common criminals...

...Any criticism of British behavior towards the protesters is met by these rejoinders...

...The nature of the offense is hardly an argument against claims of "political" status...

...All that was left in the cell was a chamber pot until 8:30 p.m...

...In one corner there was a pile of rotting, blue molded food and excrement, and the two boys had evidently been using bits of their foam rubber mattress to add to the decor as we entered...

...I felt helpless and angry as I stood and looked at these appalling and disgraceful conditions, prevented by bureaucracy and by history from talking to two of my fellow human beings who had brought themselves and been brought to this condition of self-abnegation...

...members of Congress, calling for concessions from the British government and asking that it recognize the prisoners' claims...

...It was covered with excrement almost to the ceiling on all four walls...

...A hunger strike, combined with the horrendous squalor in which the prisoners live, carries the real possibility of a number of deaths, which in turn would only lead to more widespread and embittered violence throughout Northern Ireland...

...He is one of the few outside observers ever permitted to visit that section of Northern Ireland's Maze Prison know as H-Blocks 3, 4, and 5. There, for the last three years, between three hundred and four hundred prisoners, mostly members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, have been resisting the attempts of the prison administration to treat them as criminals...

...We had to put it somewhere so it was better on the walls than the floors," Coogan quotes one ex-prisoner as saying...

...Another observer allowed in to witness the conditions in the H-Blocks was Cardinal O'Fiaiach, the Catholic Primate of all Ireland...

...In September a group of ex-prisoners who had been on the protest visited the United States illegally to publicize the awful conditions in the Maze, and in the women's prison in Armagh, where forty female inmates are now protesting the denial of political status...

...Prisoners are kept locked in their cells twenty-four hours a day naked except for a blanket wrapped around them (hence the term "blanketmen...

...They claim they are not ordinary criminals but political prisoners whose actions were motivated not by greed or murderous intent but by the political goal of driving the British out of Northern Ireland and creating a united Ireland...

...The resulting stalemate has produced the toughest problem the British government has had to cope with in its recent troubled administration of Northern Ireland...

...Under this legislation, provisions allowing for the admissibility of statements are much less strict than the provisions existing in English common law...

...This compares with a rate in normal United Kingdom courts of between 50 and 60 percent...

...Occasionally, however, the British have made concessions to Irish prisoners which amounted to such an acknowledgment...

...So far, however, the only sign of movement from the British government has been a partial concession to the prisoners' refusal to wear prison uniforms...

...In other words, the law has been specially arranged in Northern Ireland so that confessions can become acceptable evidence with an ease which has alarmed lawyers and led to several inquiries...

...However, when considering the government position it is well to remember several factors...

...But even these have become a source of anxiety because of the kind of examination the prisoner must endure before and after each visit...

...The Labor government was attempting to characterize the violence in Northern Ireland as nothing other than gangsterism...

...They stood silently, fear hardening into defiance, I felt, as we looked at the cell...

...Outside, the reaction has been far from passive...

...The cardinal's visit was in July 1978, when many of the prisoners had already been on the protest for eighteen months...

...It was a strategy aimed at giving back more and more security responsibility to the largely discredited Northern Ireland police...

...There are further humiliations...

...incarcerated...

...The prisoners dread these as they claim they are beaten when moved from the cells during the cleaning operations...

...One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions...

...Commonweal: 654...

...And, after all, it was only appropriate that the police deal with "criminals...

...At the end of October a number of the "blanketmen" began a longthreatened hunger strike...