M谩ire Drumm on the ending of 'special category' status
M谩ire Drumm, vice-president of Sinn F茅in, warns Secretary of State Merlyn Rees to expect republican prisoners to respond to the ending of 'special category' status.
Reporter Brian Walker asks M谩ire Drumm, vice-president of Sinn F茅in, how republican prisoners will respond to the ending of 'special category' status. M谩ire Drumm says Sinn F茅in will support whatever decision republican prisoners take to protest against the ending of what amounted to prisoner of war status for both republican and loyalist prisoners in Northern Ireland's jails.
She mentions, in support of her position, the names of republicans in the past who protested against being treated like ordinary criminals: the late Jimmy Steele went on 'strip strike' and wore no clothes rather than wear prison garb; in 1972 Billy McKee fasted to the point of death: his hunger strike was supported by women prisoners in Armagh gaol.
Drumm marvels at how a Conservative government in 1972 could grant political status and four years later a Labour government could take it away.
Asked whether she "foreshadows" violence, M谩ire Drumm responds by saying she wouldn't foreshadow anything and she doesn't prophesy; however, she reminds Merlyn Rees (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) that it was provisional republican prisoners who burned down Long Kesh jail and states: "The girls in Armagh gaol were able to take a governor hostage".
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'Blanket' and 'no-wash' protests in the Maze prison
Maze prison inmates protest for the restoration of special category status.
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