om the rear seat of a black taxi, I peered out at the Falls Road as we made our way to Andersonstown. After the driver pulled over, he tapped the glass partition separating him from those of us in the back and announced, “The Busy Bee.” I scrambled out, paid him my fare, and noticed a supermarket set back from the roadway. Along its right flank, several smaller stores extended towards me. One had a sign that said, “Connolly Books.”
The bookshop was run by a political group called People’s Democracy, a socialist organization that was part of a broader coalition supporting the prisoners’ demands. In a surprising development, two of its members had been elected to Belfast city council a couple of months earlier, at a time when Sinn Féin was still boycotting the elections.
As I entered the sparsely furnished shop, I was greeted by a woman who told me they had received my letter. Shortly after, a young man named Brendan dropped by and said he would be looking after me for the rest of the day. He’d just completed his first year of studies at Queen’s University and wanted to check his examination results posted on campus.
After a long walk to the university, we entered a building and joined others gathered around a board in the hallway. Brendan seemed pleased with what he read. On our return, he suggested heading over to a place called the PDF before meeting up with his brother later in the evening.
We made our way down a narrow alley and emerged in an area of waste ground. He pointed to a squat, single-storey structure in the distance. As we approached it, a husky young man with red hair and a bushy beard was coming towards us wearing a black jacket.
“Kieran,” Brendan said.
The man looked over. “Brendan,” he replied, before giving me a nod.
As we walked on, Brendan said, “That was Kieran Nugent, the first blanket man.”
In 1972, a hunger strike by jailed republicans had forced the British government to recognize them as political prisoners who did not have to wear a prison uniform or do prison work. In an effort to criminalize the struggle for Irish reunification, the Labour government ended that policy in 1976.
Kiernan Nugent was still a teenager when he was sent to the H-Blocks as the first sentenced republican prisoner after the withdrawal of political status. He refused to put on the prison uniform and was dragged naked into a cell with only a blanket to cover himself. For several weeks, not even his family knew where he was or that he was refusing to wear a prison uniform. By the time he was released in 1979, hundreds of republican prisoners were on the blanket. Their protest culminated in the hunger strike of 1981.
After passing Kieran Nugent, we continued on to the PDF, which I learned was a republican bar. We seated ourselves and had just been served when a squad of armed British soldiers entered. Brendan leaned over and whispered, “They’re going to ask your name and address. Use this one.” Then he mentioned a street number on Donegall Road.
A soldier approached our table and held out what looked like a microphone. He asked each of us our name and address. I responded with the address I’d been given. The soldiers spoke with everyone before departing. The last one backed out, holding his weapon with the barrel pointed at the floor, his eyes scanning the room. Brendan explained that the information they recorded was fed back to a central location and used to plot the movements of people in the area.
As we finished our drinks, he checked his watch and said it was time to go and meet his brother at the Felons Club on the Falls Road. Brendan mentioned that normally only men who had “done time” were allowed entry there.
We walked a short distance to a two-storey building. He pushed the buzzer beside a heavily fortified door, and after a few seconds, a small peephole opened covered by a grill. A voice asked what we wanted. Brendan explained that his brother had been invited to celebrate the release of a republican prisoner and had told us to meet him there. After we were allowed inside, I walked up several steps and found myse