A VISIT to the H Blocks of Long Kesh near to the second anniversary of Bobby Sand's death proved to be a grim yet heartening experience.
Passing through the gates, the doors and the checkpoints is a long and laborious procedure: it requires no provocation on the part of the prison warders to make the whole process a daunting and oppressive experience.
Locked in the back of a blacked-out mini bus to be shuttled into have plenty of time to recall the haunting images of the dying hunger strikers and the long struggle of support waged by those relatives crammed into the seats alongside you.
We are all thoroughly searched. Strip searching is now less common in Long Kesh than it is in the women's prison at Armagh. All of us are stripped of our identities other than the clothes we stand up in is a prison envelope into whien our paper money Is We have been lucky today; no road blocks on the way, only average obstruction in the prison. I! is not always like this for those who regularly make ine long and Today we even get 12 extra minutes, the visit lasts 42 minutes!
Finally, into the room where the prisoners sit in cubicles waiting. something like it was before the men were forced long UVCI to go on the blankets, it is almost a shock to see how well ine men look.
Easter and the celebration of the Easter Rising of 1916 is always a high point for those involved in the struggle to free Ireland but in these men seems to be the spirit of today and the future just as much as respect for the past.
We get the impression that the struggle in the prison has moved on, just as it has outside. practice the fight for political status was won, the prisoners have now achieved one way or another what they set out to during the blanket protest and the hunger strikes.
Their energies organisation within the prison, mainly political and cultural education. because the nationalist community is slowly but surely winning. These men, some in prison for life on the basis of a signed confession obtained after days of police 'interrogation., them a time when Britain will be forced to leave We wanted to know what the prisoners and their relatives thought about Labour Party policy on Ireland. that the likes of Rees, Mason and Concannon still have a grip on Labour policy, they were all aware of the gradual but important changes taking place amongst the membership.
The point made by Ken Livingstone at the time of the GLC invitation to Sinn Fein leaders that it is the duty of British socialists to meet with Sinn Fein, to discuss their policies and to look for ways to support them, was re-emphasised by people we spoke to.
We were also assured by the prisoners and this was confirmed by the huge rallies to celebrate the 1916 Rising, that the support for the armed strug gle is not lessened but strengthened by Sinn Fein's Ma Mae, in To dal visited Long Kesh with Callum® turn to electoral politics.
Committee on Ireland.
"The Blocks' themselves, you the only things we can take in sealed.
Long Kesh.
Despite knowing that the dirt men and women with two paragraphs, one in the Guardian and one in the Observer.
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