1978-1985 (Volume 2): The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 2: 1978-1985 (Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons) - Softcover

Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons 1978-85 [Vol. II] is a comprehensive, well researched, accessible and educational study based upon a plethora of primary sources, personal interviews and real time experiences of IRA prisoners. The stories which O Donnell seamlessly introduces are a testament to those he writes about as he explains to the reader their real life struggles against the background of a remarkably harsh and exceedingly cruel prison system. --Shane Kenna, The Irish Story

This major 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.