Special Category

Book excerpt: This pioneering three-part work is the definitive history of Irish Republican prisoners detained in England’s maximum security prison ‘dispersal system’ during the entire period of the ‘Troubles’. A resurgence of IRA violence in Britain resulted in a steady stream of prisoners that ensured the organisation maintained a significant jail population. Based on private correspondence, British state archives, declassified government documents, international media reports, and memoirs of key protagonists, account is taken of all major riots, roof top protests, sabotage attacks and escape attempts undertaken by the IRA, as well as the little-known ‘blanket protest’ undertaken in several locations in England. Special Category Volume 2 tells the full story of the Wormwood Scrubs ‘riot’ of August 1979, Brixton breakout of December 1980 and the pivotal Albany ‘mutiny’ of May 1983, told for the first time using fresh eye-witness accounts as well as official and public sources. The perspectives of the Irish and British governments, various judiciaries, international legal forums, ‘ordinary decent criminals’ and prisoner solidarity groups are outlined in detail. This ground-breaking book establishes that the ‘prison war’ in England was a far more important IRA theatre of action than hitherto realised.