Kieran Nugent, the first Blanketman

Someone told me that the plan of a trip at the beginning, and all what follows a trip (photos, stories, presents to friends and family..etc..in my case also this blog) become part of the trip itself and enhance its beauty...

What I am loving of this "extended-trip" is also the new things that I am learning...

In this case about the late history of Northern Ireland and of The Troubles, 30 years of conflicts (starting in the late 1960s) between the Irish republicans who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland and were mostly of catholic religion, and the Unionist/loyalist, mostly protestants, who considered themselves British and wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom. Another reason of the conflicts was also the discrimination in area such as housing, employment, policing, and electoral procedures, performed by the Unionist majority against the republican minority.

Several Republicans were imprisoned because of Troubles-related offences, and in 1972 after an hunger strike by some of them in Belfast Prison, the "Special Category Status" was introduced. This status granted some privileges to republican prisoners, such as the possibility of extra food and visits, and the exemption from wearing prison uniforms or doing prison work.

However, in January 1975, within a process also known as 'criminalisation policy', the British Government revised the SCS and decided to consider all the political prisoners arrested after the 1st of January 1976 as 'criminals', which meant to wear a prison uniform, do prison work and serve their sentence in the new Maze Prison, after know as H-Blocks.

The first prisoner sentenced after the 1st January 1976 was Kieran Nugent, that refused to wear the prison uniform declaring himself as political prisoner and not criminal. He then covered himself with the blanket of his prison bed. This passive protest was then taken as example by other prisoners and by 1978 nearly 300 Irish republicans were refusing to wear uniform.    

The blanket protest ended in 1981 after ten republican prisoners starved to death during an hunger strike. After this, the "political privileges" were gradually inserted again.  

But who was Kieran Nugent?

In 1976 Kieran was an 18 year old volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who was sentenced three years imprisonment for possessing weapons and hijacking a vehicle....
  

Divis Street, Belfast, 2015

"I was brought straight to the blocks. Cell 17, D wing H1 or 2. I was stripped and beaten. The screws who knew me said, 'We are the bosses now. There are no OCs here'. A screw said to me, 'What size are you in the waist and what size are you for shoes?' I asked him 'What for?' and he told me 'For a uniform'. I said, 'You have got to be joking'. I was the only one in the H-Blocks. They dragged me into the cell. Davy Long [one of the warders] wanted me to compromise. He suggested I wore my own shoes and trousers if I wore a prison shirt. I just laughed. He locked the door. I lay on the floor all night without mattress, blankets or anything else. The heat was reasonable in all fairness and I slept"

(The Provisional IRA, pp. 349–350)

Nugent was given a blanket on the second day of his imprisonment.