August 10, 2003 Hunger Strike Threat by Real IRA
by Henry McDonald, Ireland editor, The Observer

The threat of a republican hunger strike looms once more over Northern Ireland's prison system. Twenty-two years after the last hunger strike, which led to the deaths of 10 IRA and INLA prisoners and pushed the Province to the brink of civil war, republican inmates at Maghaberry jail warn that they will follow the path of Bobby Sands in a fight to be segregated from loyalists.

In a message to The Observer from the Real IRA's commanding officer in the Co Antrim jail, the republicans said they 'are prepared to do whatever it takes' to end the policy of integrating them with their loyalist enemies.

John Connolly, commander of more than 20 Real IRA inmates, said several of his fellow prisoners have begun an H-Block-style 'dirty protest' - cells have been smeared with excrement and furniture smashed to pieces and prisoners have refused to wash or shave.

Connolly, a 26-year-old Fermanagh man serving a 14-year sentence for possessing a so-called 'barrack buster' mortar, transmitted his threat this weekend via Marion Price, a former Provi sional IRA hunger striker and Old Bailey bomber.

Speaking after her visit to the Real IRA inmates on Thursday night, Price said she feared a repetition of the 1981 death fast. 'After my visit I have no doubt that these men are absolutely serious about taking this all the way to a hunger strike... This is the last thing I want to see happening, to watch any more coffins being taken out of a prison in the north of Ireland. We all lived through that horror in 1981.

'But I was on hunger strike myself in the 1970s and know that, once you make the decision to go on it, to have the belief to carry it through, then the rest is relatively easy,' Price said.

The Real IRA and small group of Continuity IRA prisoners in the integrated jail want to have their own wing away from loyalists and non-paramilitary prisoners.

The Northern Ireland Prison Service is determined not to allow a repeat of the scenario in the now closed Maze prison, where terror groups effectively controlled their own H-Blocks like PoW camps until they were given early release under the Good Friday Agreement.

Price, who took part in a takeover of the Northern Ireland Prison Service's headquarters in East Belfast last Wednesday, appealed to the wider nationalist community and the Roman Catholic Church to apply pressure on the British Government to end the policy of integration.

'Integration is illogical because on the outside the communities from where these prisoners live are separated by so-called peace walls. Sinn Fein, by signing up to the Good Friday Agreement, agreed to the pretence that there are no longer any political prisoners in the north of Ireland. But they and the Church must realise the dangerous situation the prison ers are now in. Do they really want to see 1981 repeated all over again?' Price asked.

Prison officers agree with Price and the Real IRA support group, the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association, that the inmates are serious about escalating the dispute to a death fast.

'Maghaberry jail is a powder keg and anything could happen there, even a hunger strike,' Finlay Spratt, the chairman of the Prison Officers Association in Northern Ireland, said last night.

Maghaberry has been the focal point of protests and clashes over the last seven days. Last Sunday inmates ended a three-day rooftop protest at the jail over inte gration. Then Real IRA prisoners went on 'dirty protest' while their supporters took over the Prison Service HQ in Dundonald last Wednesday.

The Prison Service insists that integration is the safest environment for both prisoner and staff. 'You only have to look at the history of the last 30 years to realise that segregated jails where the paramilitaries have control of prison wings leads to murder and mass breakouts,' a Prison Service spokesman said.

Segregation exists in de facto form at Maghaberry. Ousted UDA commander Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair is segregated from former comrades for fear that the loyalist feud will erupt inside the jail.