assembled Prisoners' Tn ai Falls Road, CURTIS The building looks disused, with all its windows bricked up. Only a perpetual knot of people rounu thie qoorway betrays the fact that it is in use.
It was drizzling as, with a growing waited tor a minibus.
The minibuses on the run to the Kesh or the Lazv K as some call it] are dilapidated. They are worked hard six days a week, every YCCK There weren't enough buses to take us on the first run, so we waited for one to get back from the Kesh. Finally it arrived.
We drove off through decaying streets past the housing estates on the outskirts and into countryside.
The only along the road was a small old farmhouse painted red, white ane bine flying from a giant pole in TOTE Otherwise the hills rolled awav trom us on ether side. marked out madke. For ali the world en might have been in the Home Counties It was a real shock to arrive at The entire camp is surrouncorrugated iron topped with rolls of barbed wire.
The bus left us off outside the fence and we went to hand in our visiting docket at a hatch in outside the the wall.
Welfare Office in writes LIZ rooms Witn along door, crowd, somewhat tera v airover Any removed anO You sien for them.
anotner walune-room the W eSI jerry-built gated iron fence now the gentle green walls: massive untoward sight walls topped edged with a Union Jack rectangles.
Watch machine-gunners SICAL intervals. netting hanging cobwebs.
waiting-room. graphs", said the notices.
Overseas Visitors"
high fence of that was trying to SCreW DeoD e.
Many visitors gave dole cards as identification. for two hours.
Then it was into the first of a series of prefabricated waiting- blanket for cream-painted wälls scrawled with graffiti. that After waiting in the queue, you go one by one into a small see - and cheer room lo be scarenea Dy two screws. Women go through one Finally men tnrouen anonc You are allowed only four satery matenes, and no silvei paper in your cigarette packet wall. The heels of your shoes are examined and a screw feels you forbidden objects are placcu unlocked. envelope to be collected later.
Then vou are let out of the far door into A tatty coach arrived to take wire, us rounu uc Dunoy ocHicic!
We were through the corruAbove us loomed the camp grey concrete the modern-style barbed wire that razor-sharp The towers containing SLOOC TECHICCS camouflage like filthy The coach halted at the final talk hOLO'No A soldier in battledress held back a huge, growling alsatian attack a The waiting-room was full of VISHOrS women anc children. We met a family who had come up on one of the first minibuses. They had been there All visitors to men on the other political status down. were being kept till the last. so remand prisoners would not be able to - the blanket the name of the remand prisoner we were going to visit was called out, along with the list of others. We went outside, then filed into a glass corridor that goes through the It was lined with screws. The door was locked behind us. We were checked off by a screw, then the door at the far end was We went into a waste of beaten corrugated iron and barbed then into prefabricated hut. At no time could we see the compound.
The first part of the visiting hut is lined on each side with tiny rooms known as boxes" where the blanket men have old.
Ener visus one screw ber room blanket men get nal-nour visit per mont Many of them are now appealing against their SCHI and they get 15-minute visit per day.
But they are only allowed to about their appeal which the presence of a screw anyway makes impossible and if they talk about anything else the visit is stopped.
This is a way of harassing the — but the visitors keer on making the journey.
At the end of the hut is a long room lined with numbered cubicles. A screw overseer sits on a pedestal at one end, and screws walk up and We sat down in our cubicle to wait The remand prisoners came in at irregular intervals. visitors had to wait as long as half-an-hour because the screws did not bother to call thi person they were visiting At last Gerrv came He wa greasy-haired like the rest.
nev naa nol wasne tor a month in solidarity with the blanket men. Yet his hands were surprisingly clean, very waile with uncut nals Gerry said he thought he woue ene lo omma te mer on the blanket. He was savagely Castlereagh and signed a statement.
He will be tried in a no-iurv court, so the doctor's evidence that ho wds badly bruised during interrogation will make no difference He has been 10 months on remand already. He is 20 years He was anxious to know what we were doing in England to get the Brits our. What did we think of the Daily Mirror's "troops out' editorial? Who did we mink woue wn mne nex Unlike the blanket men, who are completely isolated from the outside world with not even a clock, the remand prisoners have radios.
But their parcels have now been stopped so they get no books, and they are not allowec newspapers. From time to time Loyalist prisoners give them Gerri that the