State Violence (15 page)

‘Well, these are the thoughts in my head tonight. No harm in re-examining our commitment to things in life, in trying times like this asking what would be the best thing to do. You know you are strong and there is no chance of reneging on it'.

There is a crisis of human existence. The H Blocks are like the empty desert Jesus went into. The desert of the mind, the dry parched desert places of the mystery of man, the limits of human endurance. Amid the rocks and stones of deprivations, sufferings and anxiety a new man emerges. Out of Christ's H Block came his compassion. He recognised the dignity in the human person – the woman who suffered from bleeding, the deaf-mute, the boy with an evil spirit, the men killed by the tower at Siloe, the widow and her offering. For him no one was insignificant. He welcomed the lovable and the unlovable. He accepted the Samaritan woman at the well. He listened to Nicodemus. He told us not to show off, to invite to our dinner the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame. Not to be anxious for our body. Who says the prisoners in H Block are bitter? Will they be bitter? No. They have learned compassion in the school of suffering.

Christ did not wear fancy clothes. He was a beggar who had nowhere to lay his head. He is still the beggar who keeps coming back to the door when we hurt him. His bloodied body still lies in death from Brazil to Iran. His little belly is still swollen with hunger in Kampuchea. He keeps coming back, for the love of people who are suffering, for people who die in tragedies, for their families and those who mourn for them. He is a human being standing defenceless before us full of goodness and understanding. He would not be ashamed to go into the H Blocks, or give clothes to the naked, or bury the dead. The risen Christ dwells in every man. This is the new creation. ‘I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in you homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.'

Christ wants us to be beggars too, to be moved with compassion for the helpless, the hunger and poverty of oppressed peoples. Not by words only. By action. We are to pour in the oil and wine and put the wounded on our own beasts. Not just because we are Christians but because we are human beings.

Homily delivered by me on a tour of Northern Italy. Published in The Furrow, March 1980.

In Ireland the names of the hunger-strikers are hardly mentioned. Now when an occasional political prisoner in Ireland or the European mainland threatens to go on hunger strike to highlight an injustice, he or she is met with severe opposition from organisations and friends. Why is that? Is it because Irish people no longer revere the men who died so bravely ? No. It is because the whole episode hurt everybody too deeply. Everybody suffered. Everybody longed and prayed for an early and just solution of the prison problem. It was a simple enough problem; basic demands for prison conditions that would respect dignity and admit the fact that there was an extraordinary situation in the north of Ireland which had led to many people being imprisoned who otherwise would not. Everybody could see that a compromise solution was possible and easy; in fact now that the men are dead such a solution was found and the conditions they sought now exist in the Maze prison. Why then had they to die? Because the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not allow the plan worked out between the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace and the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Mr Humphrey Atkins, to be implemented. That is why it is so sad. The men need not have died. Their families need not have suffered. The country need not have been torn apart. So one understands why, when Irish people think of these men, it hurts them so deeply that they do not want to talk about them. It is a kind of on-going grief.

The present war in Ireland has been waged for twenty years. It makes Irish people very sensitive to troubles elsewhere and makes them very wary of the policies and motives of powerful states. There is so much trouble in the world. It is all brought home to us because the world is a smaller place. The plight of starving children in Ethiopia, the civil war in Afghanistan, the agony of Lebanon, the oppression of the Palestinians, perennial problems of racial and religious conflicts, perennial power struggles between great powers, economic wars, political wars, tribal wars.

What lesson are to we to learn from the deaths of Bobby Sands, Kieran Doherty, Joe McDonnell, Raymond McCreesh, Martin Hurson, Thomas McElwee, Patsy O'Hara, Francis Hughes, Kevin Lynch, Michael Devine?

The world cries out for justice. Small nations, nations that are economically weak, the poor and the oppressed can not accept a situation where the Great Powers and lesser Great Powers and the Churches of the west condemn them for taking up weapons as a last resort to defend their basic rights and their human dignity. At the same time powerful nations loudly boast their own nationalism, control the raw materials and trade of the world, hand out ‘gifts' and ‘aid' with their own political strings attached and invoke ‘God' ‘democracy' and ‘free world' at every turn. The powerful nations do not hesitate to use violent military might, either invasion or repulsion of every little revolution of the poor and oppressed. The same powers are weighed down with weaponry of the most deadly kind.

In time the deaths of the hunger strikers, their thirst for justice, will demand a chapter in the history of Ireland. Then the hurt will be over, the wound healed. The salve of time heals everything. It would be lovely to think that their deaths would also demand a footnote in the wider history of our world, that they would be taken as examples of courage, that it would be understood that they died for justice, and that one could learn not to leave the oppressed and the weak in the lurch but come to their aid with faith, justice and love.

The hunger strikers suffered. There are others like them in the world today. They will have hope if we are ready to carry the Cross with them, to share life and death with them.

They need the deeds of our love.

They must experience that we are Christ.

... For Christ has no other heart

to have mercy on mankind

except yours

except mine.

This short talk was prepared for the annual Mass for the Irish Hunger Strikers in Holy Redeemer College, Washington DC, 1990.

Dear Sir,

Since strip searching was introduced into Armagh Prison on 9 November 1982, Cardinal Ó Fiaich, Mr Peter Barry, congressmen and senators of the House of Representatives, USA, the Irish Missionary Union, the National Council for Civil Liberties, London, Amnesty International, Action des Chrétiens pour l'Abolition de la Torture, and many more national and international organisations and individuals have voiced their concern. Labour MPs in particular, such as Kevin McNamara, Joan Lestor, Tony Benn, Clare Short, Joan Maynard, Sarah Roloff, Jeremy Corbyn, Peter Archer and Clive Soley, have by visits to the prison, by letters or public statements, shown their distaste for this new procedure. Mr Kevin McNamara in particular has campaigned to have it ended by raising it in Parliament and by his pointed written questions at Westminster. The nationalist community in Northern Ireland will share his disappointment that the Minister for Prisons, Mr Nicholas Scott, finds the strip searching acceptable. As chaplain to the prison I would like to take Mr Scott up on some issues and explain to him some of the feelings of the nationalist Catholic community.

1.
The stripping was introduced on 9 November 1982 shortly after a delegation from the Help the Prisoners organisation, consisting of Cardinal Ó Fiaich, Councillor Jim Canning, Fr Denis Faul and myself met Lord Gowrie, then Minister for Prisons, and some civil servants. We pointed out then how a restoration of lost remission, releases of young prisoners sentenced at the Secretary of State's pleasure, ill prisoners, those who had completed long sentences, improvements in legal proceedings, education and meaningful work in prisons, Irish magazines and journals, ending of degrading searching, would help to create a climate towards peace. Their answer was the stripping of the women, a new procedure, an end to dialogue. We took it as the customary slap in the face to our community from our colonial masters. The subject more than two years later fits into the ‘Alienation' context.

2.
Since there is no internal searching of the women, as the Northern Ireland Office has often pointed out, what is the logic of stripping them completely naked, even during their periods, and visually examining the genitals and anus? Can you blame people for logically concluding that the purpose is to degrade and cruelly punish them? Punishment was uppermost during the ‘Blanket Protest' period; the authorities thought nothing of the mental suffering of the Armagh women prisoners at that time and only ameliorated the situation when public protest grew.

3.
It is unfair for the Northern Ireland authorities to say that the prisoners do not object. They have objected in the past and were punished severely. Furthermore prisoners on parole or taking inter-jail visits may not want to jeopardise their position; this is a form of emotional blackmail.

4.
The Northern Ireland authorities constantly point out that their procedure compares favourably with England and Wales. I am not convinced by arguments that compare degrading practices in England, Republic of Ireland, or any country. However the comparison does not stand up. Dr Susan Kramer has pointed out in the
British Medical Journal
from parliamentary questions, for example, that between 11 November 1982 and 1 March 1983 a total of 722 strip searches were carried out in Armagh on an average population of 40 women, most of whom were long term prisoners and never left the prison; during the same period 1,430 strip searches took place during routine cell and special searches in women's prisons in England and Wales where the average population was 1,400.

The serious decline in the standards of behaviour on the part of the Northern Ireland Office prison management took place on 9 November 1982 and has continued. This type of degrading inhuman treatment had not been used during the previous fifteen years of my chaplaincy, nor in the seventeen years of my predecessor, not in the worst times of the 1970s when the situation was very bad and there were some hundred political prisoners in Armagh Prison.

Why now, when the number of killings has decreased significantly, are we still faced with such grievances as plastic bullets, stripping of women, ‘Shoot-to-Kill', corruption in the ‘Supergrass Courts', the PTA? Is it not a matter of the authorities putting in the boot?

A letter from Fr Raymond Murray, Chaplain Armagh Prison, to Nicholas Scott, Minister for Prisons, 11 January 1985. This letter was issued as a leaflet by the Armagh Social Action Group.

When Pope John XXIII visited San Angelo Prison in Rome, his simple action, screened universally on television, brought tears to many an eye. One could feel the gentle compassion emanate from him as he raised his arms in greeting to meet the outstretched arms of the prisoners, so wretched looking in their pyjama-like garb. He showed his solidarity, not only by his love and prayer, but by confessing that his own brother had done a term in jail for poaching. Like Jesus washing the disciples' feet, Pope John had given an example.

I often thought Cardinal Ó Fiaich in his attitude to prisoners was a true disciple of Our Lord and another Pope John. He reached out in love and compassion to them. I was chaplain in Armagh Prison for nineteen years. He took an interest in the prisoners there and did his best to intercede for them in times of stress and sickness, adopting some particular cases and pursuing the issue even though he met with criticism and opposition. Every November we had a Mass in the prison for the dead relatives of the prisoners. The women prepared the liturgy very well and it was always a moving occasion. After the Eucharistic celebration we would chat and put on an informal concert. The cardinal would oblige with the ‘The Boys from the County Armagh', ‘Henry Joy' and ‘Tráthnóna Beag Aréir'. One looks back on those times with a nostalgic mixture of joy and sadness.

In January 1990 the cardinal invited me to visit some prisons in the north and midlands of England in his company. I was delighted to accept. I contacted Sister Sarah Clarke in London and she quickly provided me with a list of English prisons, complete with addresses and phone numbers, and where Irish prisoners like the Birmingham Six and the Winchester Four were located. As so often happened with the cardinal, we had a tight schedule. On Saturday 27 January we set out from Armagh to Belfast in the cardinal's car, John Ward driving. The cardinal was the special guest at a dinner reunion of past members of the GAA in Queen's University. John and I left him in the welcoming company of Fr Ambrose Macaulay and other members all in dress suits. I thought it was a sign of a new Ireland to see the GAA celebrate in the Great Hall of the university. Next morning the cardinal and John called for me at 6.30am at my sister's house in Glengormley. We had already said our private Masses in the early morning and so we sped off for the 8am ferry from Larne to Stranraer. The cardinal was in bubbling form recalling the speeches and personalities of the night before. Of course he had not gone to bed until 4 and so could only have had an hour's sleep; that was so often typical of his routine. On arrival at Stranraer we were met with a cold biting wind and flakes of snow. The bad weather did not daunt us. Sunday was to be a ‘day off' when we would fit a bit of sight-seeing into our long journey down to Durham. The cardinal always liked to slot in a visit to an historical place when on a journey. He had been reading about the excavations at Whithorn so we headed down through Glenluce into the peninsula taking the coast-road. Naturally we had the excavations to ourselves. We hopped around in the half rain and sleet reading the signs and tracing out the remains of ancient house sites. There was a Presbyterian church nearby. A few parishioners were still there after morning service so we chatted with them and studied the list of ministers from Reformation times. Then we were off and apart from stopping for dinner on the way made no delay until we reached Durham. There wasn't much traffic on account of the bad weather. The countryside, whitened eerily in the dark by snow, seemed lonely and desolate. I was delighted when the cardinal pushed in a cassette and broke into song, inviting John and me to join in the chorus.