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The Other View |
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Issue No.2 Autumn 2000 The Closure of Long Kesh By Tommy Gorman For my sins I have spent a substantial piece of my life inside Long Kesh and as Dickens said, "It was the worst and best of times". The first time I actually saw the place I was travelling in a car along the Upper Glen Road outside Belfast with a friend. It was a cold October evening in 1971 and he pointed to a concentration of orange lights in the distance. "That’s where you will end up Gorman, if you are lucky" "Where Lisburn?" "No, Long Kesh, yuh tube" "No chance", says I, "They’ll never take me alive!" I was captured (alive) two months later and after a brief spell on the prison ship Maidstone I escaped along with six others only to be recaptured in august 1972. My first period within the camp was spent on remand in Cage 6. After going between Long Kesh and the Crumlin Road Jail I was finally brought to court to face charges of escaping from ‘lawful custody’. The judge deemed me guilty, but, because I had spent ten months on remand, decided that I should go free. Unfortunately for me this didn’t tally with the plans of the RUC Special Branch. I got as far as the door before being re-arrested and quite soon I was back in Long Kesh, this time as an internee. Between that day in June 1973 until December 1975 I would spend differing periods of time in all but one of the internment cages. I must have ran a million miles to get fit and read a thousand books to get smart. But I still ended up having my balls kicked in a hundred times for not being smart enough to keep my mouth shut or not being fit enough to ride the batons and the heavy duty army boots. These little tiffs invariable occurred during the regular British Army ‘searches’ of the internment cages. I was involved in many attempts to get people, including myself, out of the place. Most were unsuccessful and we could always laugh at ourselves afterwards. After successful escapes there would always have been a British army ‘search’ where the authorities extracted their pound of flesh from the rest of the cage members. Afterwards we would lick our wounds and celebrate another small victory in the Long War. The cages of Long Kesh have been dubbed a ‘University of Revolution’ and there is no doubt that many used the time well to hone their revolutionary skills. But it has to be said that it was also a breakers yard. Some men were broken in body and spirit by the system. In around 1974-75 we noticed heavy construction taking place in the south of the camp. On inquiry screws told us a new cookhouse was being built. It was, in fact, new H Blocks being constructed to accommodate prisoners of war after they had been depoliticised by legislation passed by the British Parliament. Those acts of war that had been recognised as being political from 1972, would, after the last day of February 1976, be deemed to be criminal. This formed the cornerstone of new British tactics to break the resistance struggle – Criminalisation, Ulsterisation and Normalisation. Walking out of the gates that day in December 1975 and into the arms of my loved ones I realised that the struggle was far from over. When the British Government ceased using the weapon of interment there were many other big guns left in their legislative armoury that could be taken out at any time. I was arrested in February 1978 and ended up in the H Blocks that we had witnessed being constructed. This time there were no books, no running around the yard but I still got plenty of kickings and I wasn’t alone in this. The H Blocks were, for the British Government, their most concerted attempt to break the republicans in mind and body. There was little subtlety involved. We were the subjects to regular beatings and deprived of any sort of mental stimulation. Despite our circumstances and despite being surrounded by shit we were able to construct an environment within the blocks where we provided our own entertainment and education. I strengthened my Irish and fell asleep most nights listening to our own "Book at Bedtime". Some of the prisoners had great memories for the books that they had read. After the day shift had gone home these ‘seanachies’ stood at their locked cell doors, wrapped in a blanket and retold the story to the rest of us. In the quiet of the evening their voices carried out of the door and up and down the wings of each H Block. The worst of times was during the hunger strikes when there was little or nothing we could do while our comrades were dying in the prison hospital. This feeling of anger, sadness and utter powerlessness is one that will be with me for a long time. I was one of the lucky ones who came out at the end with my life and most of my sanity. In my case I was blessed with a good wife who managed to keep our family together in the hardest of circumstances. In comparison to what she endured and achieved my time in the cages and H Blocks of Long Kesh was wee buns. As for its closure, I am not so naïve to think that it marks anything else but part of a new British initiative. Long Kesh was opened to address a particular problem. Internment was used and then scrapped to facilitate a change in tactics. The H Blocks regime was tried and failed. The latest move is hardly the last in a long and painful list of British Government initiatives to resolve ‘Their Irish Problem’. |
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