Sounds like a girlie version of Guantanamo bay :shrug:
HAHA I dont think the staff at Gitmo or there familys were being intimidated, How many staff at Gitmo lost there lifes for working there?.
At Gitmo the staff ran the place...not the prisoners.
A official report of what was going on at the Maze
Long Kesh earned its reputation as a POW camp: it had watchtowers, floodlights, wire fences and soldiers patrolling the perimeter with guard dogs. For one British Army chaplain it was more than a matter of appearances: 'Long Kesh internment camp was really a prisoner of war camp.'19 A former prison officer explains less emotively that the compound system 'afforded a great deal of autonomy to paramilitary groups in the prison system.'20 Four prison officers were allocated to each compound: one at the sentry box, two patrolled the fence around the compound with another in reserve. They entered the compounds to carry out head counts, collect prisoners in order to escort them for visits and carry out searches
but they were often refused entry. Prisoners were able to operate without much interference from prison authorities as the fifty-six successful escapes that took place between 1971 and 1975 clearly show.21 They were able to sustain what Gardiner identified as 'self-contained communities' because they used and developed the political and military structures that existed outside the prison. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA hereafter just IRA), the Official Irish Republican (OIRA), the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) had their own compounds as did the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) when it was formed in 1974. The UVF leader Gusty Spence has told how he ran the UVF 'on British army lines with made-up beds, highly polished boots, pressed uniforms etcetera'. He described how:
There was a daily regime. Reveille was at eight o'clock in the morning, followed by showers, breakfast then a parade. Then the day was laid out. Initially
we relied happily on military matters, field craft and all those things. There weren't that many fields in the compound, you know, but we practised all those things that made a person a more proficient soldier.22
Life in Long Kesh was shaped by prisoners' organizations rather than prison authorities, which did not even decide where those on special category should be placed. An early study of prison routines and structures revealed how sentenced prisoners were offered to the compounds and 'which ever accepted him got him'.23
There was some occasional contact between the compounds belonging to opposing groups as Billy McKee, IRA prisoners Officer Commanding (OC) in the early 1970s recalls: The loyalists were in the next Cage to us and we got on alright with them. They were always asking for books, James Connolly books, socialism and things like that. I used to give them extra copies of any books I had. They were more hostile with each other than with us, the UVF and the UDA.24
In the spring of 1974, OCs from all the various republican and loyalist compounds presented a joint list of grievances about poor living conditions to the Governor. When nothing changed, food protests began. Meals were dumped over the compound wire. Republican compounds were also being subjected to increasingly punitive British Army searches and beatings. In October, republicans set fire to the prison. 'Right, up she goes' went the order, apparently.25 Eighteen compounds, the interior of the hospital plus some offices were 'wrecked', the kitchen and one of the visiting areas were 'destroyed'.26 Jim Scullion, a sentenced republican prisoner remembers:
It was rough afterwards. The first night the Brits didn't come in, they let us run about. They surrounded the perimeter though. At day-break the next they came in. They beat us into the ground. We fought for a good while but they drove us back with the gas onto the football field, which was the only place we could get fresh air. The UVF and the UDA set up field hospitals for us in their Cages. They actually abandoned some of their Cages.27
The field hospitals had been created with supplies that loyalists had taken from the prison hospital as the fire got underway. They vacated three of their five compounds grouped together in two, 'Cages'
