Prisoners’ Bodies : Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972–1985

Table of Contents

• Prisoners’ Bodies: Activism, Health, and the Prisoners’ Rights Movement in Ireland, 1972-1985 1
• Cover 1
• Half Title Page 3
• Series Page 4
• Title Page 5
• Copyright 6
• Dedication 7
• Contents 9
• Figures 11
• Acknowledgements 13
• Content Note 17
• Abbreviations 19
• Introduction: The Prisoner’s Two Bodies 23
• Themes: Three Red Threads 24
• What Is Communication? 26
• Prison Discipline: Communicating without Words 27
• Legitimate Voices: Encoding Trustworthiness 31
• Asymmetric Communication 33
• Retrieving Voices: The Challenges of Asymmetric Communication 35
• The Literature on Irish Prison History 39
• Structure 42
• The Politics of Names 45
• Absent Bodies: A Note to the Reader 47
• Expanding the Prison System 49
• Reform 54
• Political Prisoners and The Troubles in the Republic of Ireland 60
• ‘School for Revolution:’ The Attica Prison Rebellion and Irish Public Discourse 63
• Conclusion 66
• 1 ‘Join Your Prisoners’ Union!’: A Microhistory of Daniel Redmond and the Prisoners’ Union, 1972–77 67
• Introduction 67
• Becoming a ‘Hard Man’ (1964–72) 68
• ‘I Am Not Political, Far from It’: Daniel Redmond and the Prisoners’ Union (1972–73) 70
• Hunger Strikes and the Prisoner’s Union in the Curragh (1975) 78
• A New Prisoners’ Union in Mountjoy (1977) 80
• Daniel Redmond: Coda 82
• Conclusion 83
• 2 ‘A Voice for Prisoners’: The Prisoners’ Rights Organisation, 1973–76 85
• Introduction 85
• What Did the PRO Do? 88
• Who Were the PRO? 98
• A Passive Voice? 106
• Conclusion 110
• 3 ‘A Project against Authority’: A Microhistory of Karl Crawley’s Disruptive Autonomy 111
• Introduction 111
• The PRO’s Campaign for Karl Crawley 112
• Karl Crawley’s Early Life 114
• ‘My Right to Resist’ 117
• ‘The Punishment Centre, Irish Style’ 122
• Conclusion 127
• 4 ‘The Beginning of the End’: Protest, Rioting, and Revenge, 1979–86 129
• Introduction 129
• The Prison Officers’ Association 132
• Prisoner Protest after the PU: Mountjoy, 1979 134
• Prisoners’ Revenge Squad, 1979–86 139
• Prisoners’ Bodies and Antibodies: The 1986 Arbour Hill Riot 145
• Conclusion 148
• 5 ‘It Is Doubtful If There Is a Single Prisoner or Ex-prisoner Here’: The PRO’s Sociological Turn, 1977–86 150
• Introduction 150
• The Old Guard: McCartan, de Búrca, and Walsh 151
• Respectability: Surveys and the MacBride Commission 155
• ‘The Toilet Assumption:’ The MacBride Commission Report (1980) 162
• Partial Success: The Death Penalty (1981) and the Curragh (1981–83) Campaigns 165
• Conclusion: The ‘Crime Wave’, Prison Expansion, and the Decline of the PRO 171
• 6 ‘What We Thought We Had Achieved’: Whitaker, Reform, and the Legacy of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement 175
• Introduction 175
• The Establishment of the Whitaker Inquiry 177
• The Reception of the Whitaker Report 180
• The Implementation of the Whitaker Report 182
• The Legacy of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement 189
• Conclusion 192
• Epilogue: Communicating Bodies 194
• Constructing Articulate Bodies 194
• A Haunting Absence: Kevin and Paul Kenna 197
• Notes 201
• Bibliography 229
• Index 253