We look back at the stories that were making the headlines in the Andersonstown News this week in 1979
Press meet Kieran Nugent
KIERAN Nugent was released from the infamous H-Block 5 at Long Kesh last Friday and a press conference was held in the Lake Glen Hotel following his release.
A large number of TV and press reporters grilled him for an hour and a half about conditions inside the H Blocks and especially the ‘no wash’ campaign which was forced on the prisoners by the action of the warders.
Kieran explained that because they wouldn’t wear the prison garb they were prevented from using the toilet facilities that were available. They were given pots to use and it was the daily practice of the warders to empty these pots over the prisoners bedding. To overcome this practise the prisoners then threw the contents of the pots out the window. Again they were thwarted by the warders who threw the contents back through the window. Eventually the only alternative open to them was to spread the stuff over the walls of their cells. So it was not really a self-inflicted ‘no wash’ campaign.
Kieran said he had been beaten, punched and pulled by the hair of his head and his beard innumerably throughout his internment, as had almost every prisoner in the H-Blocks. He also said that he knew the names of the prison officers concerned but would not divulge them at the press conference.
One strange fact emerged from the press conference which does not seem to have been reported. On the Wednesday night before his release Kieran was washed forcibly and brought to a clean cell some distance from H5 and installed there with clean bedding. Later on the prison Governor arrived at his cell with Ray Maloney of Independent Television News programme and asked for an interview which Kieran refused. Before leaving the Governor asked Maloney if he wanted a photograph of Kieran. He said that he already had one.
At this the rest of the reporters erupted into uproar and demanded to know how Maloney had got into Long Kesh and what promises he had made to the Northern Ireland Office. Maloney, who was at the conference, admitted that he had got into Long Kesh, but denied that he talked about a photograph.
Tom Hartley, who chaired the conference brought the room to order and refused to allow any discussion on the subject of Mr Maloney or the secret document which was also brought up.
Party for Betty Finch from St Oliver Plunkett NSPCC playgroup staff and mothers, in the Glenowen. Mrs McGuinness presents the flowers
Bernie to make H-Blocks an issue
THE former Mid-Ulster MP, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, has been nominated as an independent candidate for the June 7 EEC election.
She will be campaigning on an anti-repression platform aimed at highlightling the fight for political status being waged by the republican and socialist prisoners in the H-Blocks, Long Kesh, Armagh and Crumlin Road prisons.
Bernadette was selected as a candidate at a meeting held in Coalisland last Thursday night which was attended by over 250 people from all over the Six Counties. She has already been pledged support by many relatives of prisoners among them Mary Nelis from Derry who has two sons on the blanket.
At a press conference in the Lake Glen Hotel last Saturday, Bernadette explained that she agreed to run so that a genuine anti-unionist voice would be heard during the election. Unlike the SDLP and Workers’ Party candidates she would be urging British withdrawal so that the Irish people in all 32 counties could determine their own future.
Asked if she was in favour of the EEC, Bernadette said she was not. “The European Parliament,” she said, “will not solve any of our problems whether it is repression, unemployment or poor housing. We will have to solve these problems ourselves through organised workers’ action.”
Ms McAliskey told reporters that she was not embarrassed by Sinn Féin’s refusal to support the campaign. She regretted that the opportunity of a strong united campaign in defence of the prisoners and for British withdrawal might be missed.
John Cully (Holy Trinity) beat Peter Meeke (Beechmount ABC) at the Holy Trinity Show. Referee John Brady
Tarmac danger warning in Saint James’
THE residents of St James’ Road are up in arms about the condition of the area since the flag stones were lifted and replaced by tarmac.
Now the housewives are complaining that in warm weather tar from the kerbs is being carried in through their houses over their carpets and rugs, stuck to shoes.
This is the new policy of the Department of Environment who complain that car owners are responsible for breaking the flags and making footpaths dangerous. When it was pointed out to the DoE that flags were being laid in the Botanic and Queen’s University area they said that the new policy did not extend to the city centre.
A petition organised by the local Francis Liggett Sinn Féin Cumann and signed by 300 residents of St James’ was completely ignored by the DoE. Concrete Another problem for residents is that there are a number of gas mains which need renewing.
The Gas Department have renewed those by digging up paths into the house and tarmacked a number of these. Mrs McAleese, who owns her house, refuses to let the Department lay tarmac because she had a solid concrete path and wants the path left the way it was before the gas main renewed.
The same problem arose when Mrs Heaney at 108 St James’ Road had her gas main renewed and the path filled in with tarmac. Mrs Heaney, who is crippled with arthritis, thought it was only a temporary measure, allowed the department to lay the tarmac but found out how dangerous it was when last week she sat out in the sun. Her chair sank into the tarmac and she was thrown to the ground. She had to be helped by neighbours back into her house.
Marie Ferguson, Pauline Long and Marette Nolan at a charity dance in the Lake Glen
