Blocks at Long Kosh. members doors.
day a robin redbreast landed in the prison yard.
ONCE a month I took a visit because I'm married, with two children. of the reasons for the visits have contact with the outside world, so that people, through your own people, could hear was going on in the H Blocks. •visit do we out you pure. opened your door. on a small cotton towel: it was well above your knees below your belly button, just enough to cover you. And you went up to the end of the wing to a big cell - it's coo knocked into one, and they call it Room 26. This is where mirror is sitting waiting, flash lamp, the metal detector, and this is where all the prison clothing is kept. Degrade The first thing they do is. 'Towel off! Over the mirror!' And they say to you, 'Squat!' You refuse to squat. Maybe they give you the odd slapping, but they don't want to dõ too nuch when you're going out on a visit. But they always remind you, 'We'll get you when you come back . They always plant this in your mind, it's always a reality, it's a thing you never forget about while you're on the blanket.
This search is being done to try and get you off the blanket. • It's being used as a weapon to humiliate you and degrade you. And • that's just what it does. You can never get used to it. You can get hardened to it, because you're there because you want to be there, because you're political and not a After the search I get the prison clothing and put it on. It's usually big. boots are about tens, there's big flaps on your trousers and your coat's massive. We called them monkey suits - something you'd see a monkey wear. Blocked Then the PO would come out, and he had your book with all your particulars. And he said straightaway to 'Name?? And you give hin your name. 'Number?' And I said, 'I haven't got a number.' So after that he'd maybe just hit you on the nose with book and says, 'Your number is 594, you'd better remember it when you come back.' JOSEPH MAGUIRE spent a total of three and a half years or the blanket at Crumlin Road Prison in Belfast and in the H Roleased on 25 January 1980, he has talked to three of the Toops Out Moment about those long yoars of dogradation at the hands of Loyalist prison officers.
In this, the second instalment of Joseph Maguire's story, he describes the procedure of seeing a visitor, and how the prisoners in the H Blocks learned Gaelic from behind locked In the final instalment next week Joseph Maguire relates how he learned 200 books without having read them and the 'When you arrive visit, you sit at one side of the main table and your wife, or whoever was to it might be, side. It's a table that's blocked, sheeted down the middle.
Hit At times I have been denied to have my children on knee, even touch my children, and or hold my wife's hand. At a visit one day I had no contact whatsoever with my wife. couldn't even and of the visit. The screw just the imThe took it on himself, and I could do nothing about it. If I had objected, my visit would have you been stopped immediately.
When you're sitting on your visit, you're trying to concentrate on what your wife's telling . the yuu. things, she's maybe telling you You're asking news, and most of all you're concerned about your relationship VOl wite sits at the other • 111 kiss ber at the worried about her. She's worried about enough. the kids. You want to how they're doing, she's making out on her own, with the kids.
But I couldn't do this, couldn't concentrate, because I couldn't stop thinking about Room 26, You're Because I've been through it I just said, I can't pu ing back.' frightened just bone.
Vitabors Batons fected me.
Wing about the after a visi on the visit. I'm think about go One particular day I was coming back with my mate. He front of •ine and counted, they hit him I think it was 52 times. And I was hit 40 When I got out of H Block.
I knew I had lost weight, with But you've never seen a mirror, except the mirror on the floor, when saw myself naked in front of the mirror. I was just bones. I was eight stone two when I got on the scales that morning. I had lost about three stone.
My legs now at the minute, there's no thigh there at all. It's just as if they've died. I would be ashamed to pull my trouser leg up and let you see my leg, because it's just white and it's When you're walking in the cell, you walk four paces, it's not really exercise. And you're just not getting any your food, It's hard for me to say to you that I think it's mentally af.
I think it's left a mental scar. I can't stop thin You see now at this minuie.
and You those it's twenty past eight, they're only after saying the rosary the door, seand iss to the door, stands al door, and one man shouts it out, in Gaelic. And the rest answer. And even when they're saying that, they're harassed officers come up and bang the doors their batons, playing drums with two batons. And they've a suction machine that sucks up the urine from the lan dings, and they would bring that in and turn it on, and just leave it on.
I think that without Gactic the men would be insane. Thes talk in Gaelic, have debates in talk English too, but atic % Gaelic, sing in Gaelic. more widely spoken.
How you learn it is, there's men on the blanket now who served terms in the cages, and they learned their Gactic there. Now they're on the blanket, they just pass their Gacti They start a rang, • The wing will into three rang. screws lock up.
Rosary and anything metal write He stands and I would shout out the spellings of say 20 words, a couple of phrases, and you would write ihe spellings down. Then the pronunciation what it means. And he would go over the pronuncia. tions with you, just like teacher. You go gradually just from the verb to be' right up, until you're at the stage for the gold fainne, when you can b I became fluent in there. I'm taking part now in a class in Belfast where there are fluent Irish speakers, and when I went in they all understood me. They have books and blackboards: we had nothing. We never saw our teacher, we just heard him.
don't him, he's shouting it out the door.