Abstract
A number of photographic images from Northern Ireland’s conflict continue to have contemporary resonances. Drawing on Sarah Kember’s theory of the ‘shadow of the object’, I analyse the often recollected and reproduced 1980 photographic image of IRA prisoner Mairéad Farrell in her cell at the Armagh Gaol. I argue that the image and the building that is its context are never read separately from one another and from their physical and symbolic representations. The photographic image and the building evoke and animate one another and both are used to construct and enliven present-day memories about the conflict in Northern Ireland.
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Notes
- 1.
There is no consistent use of accents in Mairéad Farrell’s name; I use a form that illustrates the name’s root in Irish.
- 2.
- 3.
Mairéad Farrell has been regarded as an ‘unlikely’ PIRA volunteer. Despite claims she made otherwise in a 1981 documentary, she did not claim strong republican familial ties (Nic Dhiarmada 2015). Her lack of a strong republican lineage is consistent with Dieter Reinish’s distinction between women who joined Cumann na mBan [Irishwomens’ Council] prior to 1970, and women who joined the Provisional IRA after 1970. He suggests that women who joined the former had strong republican ties, whereas women who joined the latter were motivated by republican ideology (2016, 149).
- 4.
Alice Maher’s artwork, Cell, was installed in 1991 and was recommissioned by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2012.
- 5.
Alternatively, architect Chris Hamill references cell size as twelve feet by seven feet and nine feet in height (2017, 57).
- 6.
In Northern Ireland, membership in a proscribed organisation was a scheduled offence (Gormally et al. 1993).
- 7.
Also killed were PIRA members, Seán Savage and Daniel McCann (Lyons 2003).
- 8.
These circumstances also surround the events at the funerals of those killed at Gibraltar. At their funeral in the Milltown cemetery on 16 March, 1988, UDA (Ulster Defence Association) member, Michael Stone opened fire and killed three people and wounded 68; in retaliation, republicans killed two off-duty British soldiers (Lyons 2003).
- 9.
Photographs have long had fraught associations with Northern Ireland’s conflict. PIRA member Brendan Hughes’s family is reported to have destroyed photographs to limit the possibility of his identification by sight; images of others, such as Gerry Adams, were rare (Radden Keefe 2015). However, images of prisoners were often circulated among community members as a direct challenge to state security measures (Conway 2010; Loftus 1980, 72). Historian Rachel Oppenheimer suggests photographs of prisoners were smuggled out of The Maze/Long Kesh (2014, 16). For this to have occurred, cameras would also have had to have been smuggled in and film smuggled out for processing. Most scholarly discussion is related to the smuggling of ‘comms’ (communication); there is relatively little discussion about cameras or photographs. Photographs that entered the prison with permission and retained by prisoners had to receive approval from the prison censor (Murphy 2013, 161). Beyond the space of prisons, photographs of anti-state republican activities were taken and circulated more widely, including P. Michael Sullivan’s Patriot Graves: Resistance in Ireland (1972), and Oistin MacBrides’s, Family, Friends, and Neighbours (2001).
- 10.
Unlike male republican prisoners at The Maze/Long Kesh Prison, republican women at Armagh Gaol were permitted to wear their own clothing. Some restrictions applied; the black skirts, ties, and berets that were associated with paramilitary dress for republican women at Easter parades and republican funerals were banned and prisoners’ cells were raided to confiscate these items of clothing (Loughran 1986, 60).
- 11.
Much of the publicity surrounding Farrell’s paramilitary involvement was related to her death (Miller 1991).
- 12.
Murals of Farrell in Belfast include: Hugo Street photographed in 2001 (Rolston 2003), Brompton Park photographed in 2006 (Rolston 2013), Gardenmore Road photographed in 2008; and, Divis Street photographed in 2010 (Rolston 2013). Farrell also appears in further wall murals alongside images of Seán Savage and Dan McCann, also killed in Gibraltar.
- 13.
Margaretta D’Arcy and Liz Lagrua spent three months imprisoned in Armagh Gaol, rather than paying a fine they incurred while protesting the gaol’s conditions (McCafferty 1981).
- 14.
Special Category Status was established through negotiation with the British government. Initially, it was granted to men and women interred for acts of civil disobedience and/or violence. Under Special Category Status reserved for internees, prisoners were permitted to wear their own clothes instead of prison uniforms, to refuse prison work, and to associate freely with one another. In January 1975, the Gardiner Committee recommended this status be changed from prisoners of war to ‘ordinary prisoners’. Sociologist Aogán Mulcahy contends these changes were designed ‘to offset the legitimacy that was accorded to paramilitaries by those outside of the prison’ (1995, 453).
- 15.
The three women who went on hunger strike at Armagh Gaol in 1980 were Mary Doyle, Mairéad Nugent and Mairéad Farrell. Prior to the Armagh hunger strike, British intelligence predicted the hunger strikers would include Mairéad Farrell, Mary Doyle and Christine Beattie (CAIN 1980).
- 16.
Consistent with Sinn Féin’s approach, Farrell also prioritised the national struggle over women’s struggles, ‘I am oppressed as a woman, but I’m oppressed because I’m Irish. Everyone in this country is oppressed and we can’t successfully end our oppression as women until we first end the oppression of our country’ (Farrell in Power 2015).
- 17.
Feminist groups in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Great Britain were divided over whether or not republican women’s incarceration at Armagh should be considered a feminist issue. According to Christine Loughran (1986), Women Against Imperialism formed in April 1978 and was disbanded in early 1981; they published Saorbhean: Free Women from 1979 until 1981 (Conlon 2016, 124).
- 18.
Later, republican prisoners published their own quarterly magazine, An Glór Gafa/The Captive Voice.
- 19.
In 1981, while she was a political prisoner, Mairéad Farrell ran as an independent political candidate (one of 12) in the riding of Cork, North Central, Republic of Ireland. Unelected, she received 2751 of a total 45,452 votes cast (Took and Donnelly 2016).
- 20.
Raymond Murray was appointed curate at Armagh, 1967–1986 (Murray 1998). A video of Monsignor Raymond Murray’s recollections in the Armagh Gaol is part of Cahal McLaughlin’s Prison Memory Archives, see: https://vimeo.com/22413800. Farrell is remembered popularly, through her own written words, in ‘The Ballad of Mairéad Farrell’, by the Irish-American band, Seanchaí and the Unity Squad. In it, Farrell counters gendered constructions: ‘a woman’s place is not at home/the fight for freedom it still goes on/I took up my gun until freedom’s day/I pledged to fight for the IRA’ .
- 21.
Initially, male internees were at the Crumlin Road Jail; however, because of overcrowding some men were also housed at The Maze/Long Kesh in Lisburn and the Armagh Gaol, which also served as a remand centre for men (Conlon 2016, 54). Over 2000 men, with republicans in the majority, were interned at The Maze/Long Kesh between 1971 and 1975. Internees were released by December 1975 when the practice of internment was replaced by the no-jury Diplock Court system (Mulcahy 1995, 452, 453; McLaughlin 2017, 4).
- 22.
Armagh Gaol chaplain Raymond Murray notes that during the 1970s, the number of women imprisoned was under a dozen (1998, 7). Criminologist, Arzini Wahidin suggests that during internment, 33 women republican prisoners were held in Armagh Gaol (2016, 32). Loughran suggests that the gaol, at its peak capacity in 1975, held 120 women prisoners; half of these were internees and half were sentenced prisoners (1986, 60). Media scholar Mary Corcoran sets this number higher: she suggests the female prison population reached its peak a year earlier, in 1974, and held a significantly higher number of women, 162 prisoners (2004, 115).
- 23.
The image is available at: http://www.belfastexposed.org/iotw/Prisons_Armagh_Republican_Prisoners_1970s Marian Price was released from prison in 1980. She was re-sentenced to and served a term in HMP Maghaberry, from 2011 until 2013, for her role in the death of two British soldiers in Northern Ireland. She was paroled in 2013. Dolours Price was released from prison in 1981; she died in 2013.
- 24.
This film archive is to be housed at the Public Records Office on Northern Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland (McLaughlin 2017).
- 25.
This is not the first time women who were prisoners returned to the Armagh Gaol. Former republican prisoner Roseleen Walsh wrote about a visit by at least 29 women to the Armagh Gaol in 1998. See: http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/. There are two exceptions to McLaughlin’s depiction of memories by female prisoners; these are recollections by former (female) prison guard, Daphne Scroggie, and former (male) prisoner, and civil rights activist, Niall Vallely.
- 26.
An account of Wallace’s death is available at the Prison Service Trust, http://www.pst-ni.co.uk/memorials.htm and her image is included in Malcolm Sutton’s Index of Deaths (CAIN).
- 27.
This is in contrast to HMP The Maze. Robert White argues, ‘the British saw The Maze as a “state-of-the-art” facility that complemented one of the most progressive approaches to crime in Europe’ (White 2017, 144). The numbers of protesters in each were also significant. At the time of the 1980 hunger strikes, The Maze/Long Kesh housed over 300 republican men, while just 25 republican women were held in the Armagh Gaol (White 2017, 170).
- 28.
This term is attributed to James Smith and his examination of the treatment of women in the Magdalen laundries, by the church and Irish state, with the culpability of communities and families (2007, 183).
- 29.
Thomas Cooley (1780–1784) was also responsible for the design of Newgate prison in Dublin (now destroyed) and nine district lunatic asylums (Dictionary of Irish Architects). Architect William Murray’s (1789–1849) father’s family originated from Armagh.
- 30.
Use of the Armagh Gaol overlapped with two other prominent gaols, Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, which operated from 1796 until 1924, and the Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, which operated from 1885 until 1996.
- 31.
This spectacle was less obvious when moving suspects from the Gough Barracks in Armagh, whose construction predates the Armagh Gaol. Built in 1773, the Gough Barracks was the headquarters of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and operated as a secret interrogation centre during the conflict (Conlon 2016, 59). The Gough Barracks site was closed in 1976.
- 32.
Unlike the Armagh Gaol, Maghaberry Prison was constructed intentionally to police the conflict. For example, its hallways were intentionally built to the width of two prison shields (McBride 2017b).
- 33.
For a short time, public tours of the gaol were arranged through members of the Armagh City Council and permits were granted for special activities and film sets (McLaughlin 2017, 4). However, the building is now deemed structurally unsound and is inaccessible.
- 34.
On photographic iconicity in Northern Ireland’s conflict, see Side (2018).
- 35.
The Executive, Northern Ireland Assembly was dissolved on 16 January, 2017.
- 36.
The building was purchased by the Trevor Osbourne Property Group, from the former Armagh and District Council for an undisclosed sum in 1997 (Armagh I 2018). Armagh City Council and the Prince’s Regeneration Trust signed an agreement for the building’s renovation and conversion in 2009. With planning permission set to expire in July, 2018, a Trevor Osbourne Property Group spokesperson indicated that preparatory work under the existing planning consent was intended (Armagh I 2018).
- 37.
- 38.
The event was reportedly held instead in Sinn Féin’s conference rooms at Stormont (An Phoblacht 2008).
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Acknowledgements
This paper was presented at the Colloque, Irish Prisons: Perspectives on the History and Representation of Irish Forms of Containment, Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast, in October 2017. I am grateful to participants for their thoughtful engagement and to Chris Hamill for permission to include his photograph of the Armagh Gaol and his willingness to share his knowledge of the building and its architectural history.
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Side, K. (2020). Mairéad Farrell in the Armagh Gaol. In: McCann, F. (eds) The Carceral Network in Ireland. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42184-7_8
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