Dispute Over H-Block Future

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Irish Voice News

Dispute Over H-Block Future

July 12, 2007

By Barry McCaffrey

AN infamous landmark synonymous with the North’s bloodied Troubles threatens to split the embryonic power-sharing government between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party.

Even its very name has caused divisions throughout the last 30 years, with Unionists insisting that it should be called the Maze Prison while Repub-licans referred to it as Long Kesh or the H Blocks.

Since its gates first opened in 1976 some 10,000 Loyalists and Republicans have been incarcerated inside the walls of the controversial prison, situated 10 miles outside Belfast.

The Maze/ Long Kesh became recognized around the world in 1981 when 10 Republican prisoners died on hunger strike inside the jail at the culmination of a protest over the withdrawal of political status.

The world’s media watched more than a quarter of a century ago as Bobby Sands and the nine other hunger strikers died in the tiny hospital inside the walls of the infamous prison.

In September 1983 37 IRA prisoners took part in the biggest jail break in British penal history when they escaped from the Maze/Long Kesh in a food lorry. One prison officer, Jack Ferris, died during the break-out.

Throughout the Troubles 29 prison officers were killed.

In 1997 the Maze/Long Kesh was back in the headlines again when LVF leader Billy “King Rat” Wright was shot dead by INLA prisoners inside the jail.

In 1998 then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Mo Mowlam famously went into the prison for talks with loyalist and republican prisoners at a time when the peace process was in crisis.

The prison was finally shut in 2000 after hundreds of Loyalist and Republican prisoners were released as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

In January 2003 an all-party working group was established to decide what the 360-acre prison site might be used for in the future.

Privately it was hoped that the inclusion of Sinn Fein and DUP representatives on the working group would ensure that it’s final recommendations would be guaranteed cross-community support.

Two years later the Maze/Long Kesh Consultation Panel published proposals including a 35,000 seater sports stadium, an international conflict transformation center as well as a hotel, leisure village, equestrian center and a section of land for industrial development.

The sports stadium was to be shared by soccer, Gaelic football and rugby authorities. Those plans were later endorsed by the Northern Ireland Office.

Planners ruled that the prison’s hospital, administration block, church, a section of its walls and one H Block, should all be given preservation status as having “special architectural or historic interest.”

It was hoped that the center could become something similar to sites such as Robben Island in South Africa and Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland which attract tens of thousands of foreign visitors each year.

However, the multi-million pound plans for the redevelopment of the prison site soon hit the first obstacle. A vociferous element of Northern Ireland football fans began a high profile campaign to oppose any sports stadium being built on the prison site.

Unionist politicians on Belfast City Council also insisted that any new sports stadium should be built in Belfast rather than at the Maze.

While opposition to the prison redevelopment has become increasingly vocal, it was thought unlikely to succeed, mainly because the government had already indicated that it would only fund the Maze/Long Kesh site.

More importantly, Edwin Poots, the Stormont minister who will ultimately decide on the future of the prison redevelopment, was previously chairman of the Maze Consultation Panel.

Last month Poots publicly stated that there was no viable alternative to the Maze/Long Kesh site.

However in recent weeks series divisions have also begun to appear within Poots’ own DUP party over the future of the Maze/Long Kesh.

Poots’ DUP ministerial colleague Nigel Dodds is one a group of influential party hardliners opposed to plans for a conflict transformation center on the prison site, claiming it would be turned into a “shrine to IRA terrorism.”

Dodds accused Repub-licans of holding Unionists to hostage, claiming that Repub-licans were insisting on guarantees that a H Block and the prison hospital had to be retained in exchange for their support for any sports stadiums at the Maze/Long Kesh.

“It is quite clear now the price for Sinn Fein support for the Maze project including the stadium is a shrine to IRA terrorism,” he said.

“However it is dressed up, whatever spin is deployed, the preservation of a section of the H-Blocks, including the hospital wing, would become a shrine to the terrorists who committed suicide in the Maze in the 1980s.

“That would be obnoxious to the vast majority of people and is something Unionist people cannot accept. But that appears to be the prerequisite as far as Sinn Fein is concerned if a stadium is to be built at the Maze.”

DUP hardliners increased the pressure this week by calling for the removal of the special preservation orders currently protecting the H Block and prison hospital.

As the government minister with responsibility for the site Poots found himself in the unusual position of having to reject his party colleagues’ demands.

The row threatened to deepen when Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness warned against any attempt to withdraw the preservation status for the H Block and prison hospital.

McGuinness dismissed the claim that a conflict transformation center would be turned into a shrine for IRA hunger strikers and insisted that the prison site was a “project of international importance.

“I would be shocked if any minister in the Executive thought it was a good idea to de-list the buildings,” McGuinness said.

“It would run totally contrary to everything that we are trying to do in terms of attracting people to our country to learn from what is clearly a whole new experience for us.

“Many people looked at this place as a place where there was no future and there was just perpetual conflict. Now we have come out of all of that, we have a lot to offer the world.”

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