The Five Demands

Our Dirty Little Secret

by Emmet Doyle

Bet that title made you inquisitive? He’s talking about something sordid, maybe gossip, maybe a rumour – sorry to disappoint, but please do read on.

Now before we start, I want you to think of the people and this post as 100% neutral. You don’t dislike them, you don’t dislike their politics, only then will you really ‘get’ what I’m trying to convey.

Today was my third visit to Maghaberry Prison, previously I had visited Marian Price, who has since been moved to Hydebank. Even then, I kid you not when I say it took me a week to return to the real world. In this hideous, grey monster’s belly, was a (then) 57 year old woman, looking nothing like pictures I had seen or paintings around the City. Scared the life out of me genuinely, I barely slept over a 3-day period after it – indeed someone who contacted me about the visit afterwards and probably only wanted a 5 minute synopsis of how she was, got an hour and twenty minutes of me trying very hard indeed not to cry down the phone at them!

Since that day the prisoners issue has burned its way into my brain and I can’t forget it. I don’t want to dwell too much on any individual, so I’ll move on.

Today, I went into Roe House, which houses Republican separated prisoners. I should say I hadn’t been feeling well at all today, but a new kind of sickness swept through me as we entered the compound which looked to me to be a prison within a prison. A central walkway leads to the entrance of the building, with two large carges on either side – the yards. One for Loyalist separated prisoners to the left, the other for Republicans.

In the right ‘yard’ circled a group of largely older men, with long grey, black, white beards in jeans or tracksuit bottoms. Walking into the building itself, one would expect to see what Roe looks like in glossy NIPS bookets..

One would be wrong. The smell starts first. Industial cleaner, it smells like a mix of mothballs, formaldehyde and feet. The vapour in the air touches everything, I could smell it in my nostrils 24 hours afterwards.

Then the many people pottering around in chemical suits, like something of ‘Alien’ fame. On top of this are the search team, clad in white boiler suits. Now, outside of the observations, one must look at the underlying reasons for all of the extra personnel and strange circumstances not shown in the above image.

Republican prisoners of differing ideological shades are involved in a protest. They are smearing their excrement on the walls of their cells and expelling their liquid waste under the doors of their cells onto the landings (look at the picture above and try and imagine the mess). The basis of this protest is the business of the groups involved, I won’t seek to delve into the manifestations of the anger felt by prisoners.

This is one strand of the wider issue. The other is our idea of criminal justice. We assume that those who have lost their liberty and are inhabitants of the Prison Estate have been proven guilty of crimes in front of a judge and a jury of their peers. This is not always the case – and I hate to say it. We were promised devolved justice, what we got was devolved policing while the justice systems seem to be stuck in a 1980 phase, controlled largely by politicians in London.

Let me explain. Marian Price. She was arrested for ‘eliciting support for an illegal organisation’. She was bailed by Derry Magistrates Court – though her license was revoked by the Secretary of State the day before. She was sent back to prison – and not just any prison, Maghaberry Prison. Here I should mention that Maghaberry is an all-male prison. So the campaign for her release began, and two very disturbing facts – and I mean facts, these can be independently verified – emerged.

One was that the Royal Prerogative of Mercy granted to Marian in 1980, which wiped her criminal record, had been ‘lost, probably shredded’ – the words of the NIO. FACT.

Two was the basis of her current detention. Under the Life Sentences Order (NI) 2001, the provision of ‘protected information’ was included. Effectively protected information is info given to the NIO by the Security Services. No-one has any access to it – client, lawyers. The Secretary of State revoked Marian’s license on the basis of this kind of information. To this day, she has never been told why exactly she is in prison.

An attempt by some to muddy the waters by some by saying she was returned for a breach of license and will serve the rest of her sentence overlook the principles of the Royal Prerogative. There is no sentence, there is nothing. I should for the purposes of clarity mention that a further charge involving the heinous crimes committed at Massereene Barracks where two British soldiers were killed, have been levelled at Marian. In the interests of sub judice, all I will say is that this was brought forward not long after the terrible event, and yet no evidence has been presented to a court.

Effectively, someone is in prison when they haven’t been proven guilty of a crime, an absentee politician is involved as are unaccountable spooks. Some men in Roe are in prison on the same circumstances, albeit there are variations. They involve people who committed, or are accused of committing crimes pre 1998, sometimes in the late 70’s, early 80’s. Moved on have we?

The Sentences Act Scheme means someone accused of a crime pre-1998 can serve two years then they can apply for release under the Scheme, end of story. So we are putting people in jail for – sometimes alleged – crimes that may or may not have been proven when the justice system spewed out miscarriage after miscarriage of the duty they were charged to dispense.

In the days of ‘NI 2012, Our Time is Now’ and other slogans – we cannot as a society forget about this situation – whether we agree with someone’s view or not – at the very least we must educate ourselves. I don’t support any kind of violence, never have, never will – though those who oppose my view say different because it is convenient. If someone committed a crime, and they have been proven guilty in a court of law in an open and transparent manner, no ‘protected information’, no juryless trials – then they should serve their sentence.

Unionism becomes hysterical when we talk about such things – but what they are missing is simple. We don’t have control over certain aspects of our own justice system. Some people who do glorify violence are using the situation in the prison to attempt to drag us backwards. The institutions are being tarnished by the images coming out of Roe House and Hydebank where Marian now is.

If we addressed these cases, all of them, in a transparent manner and accepted the result, then our dirty little secret would evaporate. If we dont, we are going to need a few more Roe’s. Some say people in Roe have got their justice, and we cannot interfere with that, then they interfere with it – for right or wrong – in other cases. It can’t go on.

What if someone dies in that place? What then? We all want to move on, and rightly so, we’ve all been through alot. We simply can’t move on, in my opinion, until we address every little difficult, dirty, sordid and uncomfortable situation. All of them, Protestant, Catholic, Unionist, Loyalist, Republican, Nationalist, all of them.

I want to move on, I don’t want to see Roe extended, I want open justice – I don’t want it to be me, or you next.