successful gesture to in.
of hyacinths and wallflowers.
describe a recent visit.
Only one half-hour visit is allowed each calendar month. Everything has to be said in that time.
In theory the prisoners are allowed one letter each month, but these frequently never reach them. So, in the absence of newspapers, radio, TV. or books, prisoners on protest political status rely on the monthly half-hour for all their intormation about the outside world.
The prisoners have to run a gauntlet of screws and mirror searches to reach the visiting cubicles. They are forced to squat naked over a mirror on the floor to have their back passages examined. If they refuse they are beaten One former blanket man, Joe Maguire, told us that often he was so worried about the beating he was going to get on his way out that he could not concentrate on the visit at all.
The visitors have been worSocialist Challenge 29 May 1980 AT AUSCHWITZ, they had an orchestra at the entrance to the death camp, a macabre and undisguise the within. At Long Kesh they say it with flowers.
In recent months, as a result of the increase in public concern about the conditions in the H Blocks at Long Kesh, five miles south of Belfast, a trickle of influential visitors has been allowed So, in the midst of the great expanse of grey wire and machine-gun posts, the authorities have planted a couple of tiny regimented beds LIZ CURTIS and ALASTAIR RENWICK Trying for days about the visit. What will he be like? Will he be better or worse than the last time? What will he want to know? Will I remember everything 1 want to tell him?
The half-hour visit takes up the most of the day. Minibuses are for organised the nationalist districts of Belfast.
They go first to the Prisoners Welfare Office in a small, endlessly busy building on the Falls Road. There have Loyalist sectarian here, and the front building is now wired in.
Most or une visitors are women, perhaps LOTTICE from visiting. They keep up a the moves out through the Belfast suburbs into the green countryside. Only the children are really cheerful, clambering about the packed bus.
We have been here before.
• 18 months ago. It is still a shock to come up a country road and confronted horrors rugated iron and watchtowers of HM concentration camp They have spruced up the came. The huts at the entrance seem to be new, and you no longer qucue i me open auto show your ID.
Turnstile
They did it up to make us feel worse, son Kieran we are visiting. But while the visitors find it hard to take the contrast between the spotless walls and the degraded beforehand condition of their imprisoned Telauves, the paintwork are response to the growing international Block regime.
turnstile which breaks the acres of grey wire. climb up the turnstile, poking their hands through the bars and shouting at the screws the other side, 'Let us in, you horrible monsters.
Eventually a screw unlocks the gate. Over by a wall another been murders tian dozing at his teet.
into a hut and queue to show our ID. People give in their handbags. Then we sit in rows search. The few men are in a because are barred separate row from the women 'Next!" a shout comes from minibus behind a partition wall. You go Around and a screw sends you into a tiny cubicle of a room with a second door opposite you A screw is sitting at a table.
The other screw the ch.
your the notes, counts them, and tion, says Betty, whose The standing Your belt is new huts and paper in it in fact a criticism of the everything.
Two children side.
Lighters It seems there Wego four matches.
called for the the screws somebody says. in refuse to talk to them. behind you, orders you to open your jacket, and pats you all far over including round the crotWing to Kieran.
The screw at the table takes I and buts l an envelope, then asks for your purse. The screw takes out all bizarrely - selotapes them into an envelope and puts it back in the purse, which is returned to This is a recent innovawhich no one can understand. What can they buy in the H Blocks? The screws perhaps? daunted by it.
screw takes everything out of your pockets and shakes your handkerchief.
removed. Your cigarette packet is examined to make sure there is no silver There is a lengthy list of forbidden items on the wall. Even chewing-gum is not allowed. It seems a subversive use can be found for almost The screw asks you to take off one of your shoes, shakes it and looks inside, then returns it. At last you are let out of the other door into a room the tar onto a broad cruelly flowerbeds. strange innovation.
Till a fortnight before, visitors were allowed to take through Now these are forbidden, and no lighters are allowed anyway. One woman has managed to get through the search with her cigarette lit. We all light up from her. From then on somebody has to have a cigarette alight all the time.
"They're trying to make us ask prisoner light, because we We sit and wait. We spend cubicle sitting and waiting than we will spend talkAt last a screw starts to call out the names and numbers of come.
prisoners who are being visited. Mothers summon their children. We have Kieran's sixyear-old brother Liam with us. He is rushing about the room. Kieran has been two and a half years on the blanket, so Liam is familiar with visiting Kesh and quite unFlowerbeds We file through the door and into a waiting minibus. All the windows except the windscreen are covered in opaque material so that you can't see out. What are they hiding?
travel round the perimeter of the camp and arrive at an enormous pair of parallel gates. The bus is let through the first gate, which is locked after it. The next gafe is opened. The bus goes through and the gate is locked We are let out of the bus out 'avenue' lined with corrugated iron and high wire fencing. We see the two incongruous little go through turnstile into another waiting room. Again the prisoners' sur names and numbers are called out. A screw tells the visitors the numbers of the cubicles where the visits will be.
We sit down at the table. It has a board underneath so that there can be no contact with the There are high parti tions on either side of us. Lian promptly climbs on the table and looks over into the next The waiting is awful. We wait half an hour till Kieran comes out. Betty worries end lessly that he is never going to happened before: visits have been stopped at the last minute.
As the blanket men come through the door at the end of the hut, visitors crane round the partitions to try and see who it is. They smile and say 'Hello' even if they don't know the blanket man.
The blanket men are very pale. Their hair is very long and greasy. They are wearing the most absurd outfits. The so-called uniforms are crumpled bits of demin which would even be rejected for sale as jumble. They are too small for the big men and too big for the small men, a deliberate attempt to humiliate them. The prisoners have no socks on and there are no laces in their boots.
Visits are the only time the men will wear the uniforms. They do so because without the visits there would be no means of getting any information in or Ironically, - those who are not prisoncis n on the protest — do not have to wear uniforms for visits. But the blanket men are forced to.
Martin Vernan -COO through, immediately recognisable looking Tunous. Mechan has been a leading Republican for several vears: the previous week he was tramed in court so blatantly that ever priests protested about it. He got 12 years for something everyone knows he did not do Liam is running up and
oncentration camp DH BLOCK down between the boxes. Betty blanket men like to check their words onto their cell walls with quizzes - using from visitors to other prisoners ter would be overlooked and
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We get out of the minibus and wait by a green-painted