None Shall Divide Us

by Michael Stone

  For nearly thirty years the Maze housed men convicted of killings and bombings. It was a unique prison because its entire population consisted of prisoners who had been found guilty of serious terrorist offences. There were eight H-Blocks, each with a capacity of 104 prisoners. Each block had four wings, A, B, C and D. Prisoners of five separate paramilitary groups were housed in the Maze. They were the UDA/UFF, UVF, LVF, PIRA and INLA. Although each paramilitary group had a separate wing, that wing was often opposite our political enemies. When Billy Wright, leader of the LVF, was murdered by the INLA in 1997, the LVF and INLA wings faced each other in H-Block 6.

  From 1994 inmates managed their own lives, running their own regimes, cleaning rosters and dining arrangements. Access to all facilities, showers, the gym, recreation and laundry was available twenty-four hours a day and prison officers could not search the wings without a day’s advance warning and clearance from the block’s Officer Commanding. An OC is the same rank as a paramilitary brigadier on the outside. During my first six years the screws ran the show and made all our lives hell.

  At the height of the Troubles, in the mid-1970s, the Maze housed seventeen hundred prisoners. In 2000, when it closed, it had just a handful of prisoners. I was one of them. The complex is still there; grey and drab like an old museum piece set against the County Antrim skyline. It occupied 270 acres with a perimeter fence that ran for 2.2 miles. There was nothing to look at except the exercise yard and the dull walls. The story went that, if you stared long enough, your eyesight would go, and if your eyesight didn’t go, your mind definitely would.

  H-Block 7, one of the three Loyalist blocks, was home to some of the hardest men in the UDA and the UFF. I started my sentence in H7 and also spent my last days in the Maze there. My prison life had gone full circle, even though I spent my eleven years constantly rotated around the Loyalist wings.

  The ghosts of hundreds of paramilitaries haunt the wings, of that I am certain. When you leave for the final time, a little part of you remains behind. The Maze was a turbulent place and violent and terrible things happened within its walls. There was death by the bucketful. Republican martyr Bobby Sands starved himself to death along with nine of his comrades in 1981 when Margaret Thatcher refused to give in to their demands for political status. Sixteen years later LVF leader Billy Wright was assassinated within the prison confines by an INLA death squad. Another Loyalist, David Keyes, was found hanged in his cell under mysterious circumstances. There were the Republican ‘blanket’ and ‘dirty’ protests, the mass escape of Republican prisoners, and protests by both the UDA and the LVF. The former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, said once, ‘I hope the Maze is razed to the ground as quickly as possible after it is finally emptied and confined to history.’ I hope it is bulldozed and erased from all our memories.

  On my first day as a Maze lifer I noticed that nothing had changed. I walked into the drab reception area and was told to sign the order papers lying on the desk. Like countless men before me, I signed my name and wrote ‘life’ in the sentence box. Maze prisoners were divided into low-, medium-and high-risk. I was classed as another level above that, ‘red-booked’, and this meant I would be treated as top-risk every second of every day for the next thirty years. The red book actually existed and contained my personal details, my photograph, details of distinguishing marks, my fingerprints and my sentence. It travelled everywhere with me whenever I moved from my cell. Red-bookers were rotated several times a month from cell to cell, cell to wing and wing to block. There were four Loyalist red-bookers: two Shankill Butchers, Basher Bates and Billy Moore, Sam McAlister and myself. Eighteen Republicans were red-bookers, including notorious IRA man Bik McFarlane.

  I was strip-searched and photographed and then taken to H7. As I walked into ‘the circle’ (the central administrative area which was housed in the link of the ‘H’ of the H-block – the prisoners were kept in the two ‘legs’ of the ‘H’) I was struck by the space and light. Then the noise hit me: the cheering and whooping from Loyalist inmates and the clapping and the whistling. It was a mixed bag of prisoners and included some Red Hand Commando, some UDA, the UVF and a couple from the Orange Volunteers. I heard flutes and pipes, a small band, the Maze First Flute, had honoured my arrival with a couple of tunes. They had improvised, using five-gallon plastic water containers as drums, although they did have proper flutes.

  Some prisoners didn’t recognise me with the shaved head. Others knew who I was straight away, and I was picked up shoulder high and carried through the wing. It was a verbal riot. My eardrums felt they were about to explode. I felt strange without my thick ponytail, but I’d shaved my head to eliminate a weak spot Republicans, and sadistic screws, could exploit had they got close to me. It took ten years for my hair to grow back. I looked like a convict from the Russian gulags and my scalp was a mass of tiny scars sustained in the motorway beating.

  UVF commander Billy Moore was the first to approach me. He said he knew I had been in solitary for a year and he knew I worked with UVF volunteers in Mid Ulster. He said the UVF leadership was willing to claim me. I thanked Moore, but told him I was loyal to the UDA. I was a UDA prisoner and doing life for a UFF-sanctioned operation. Moore was disappointed. He tried to persuade me, saying the UDA disowned me and one of their ranked men, Tucker Lyttle, said I was a psychopath with no UDA connections. Again I thanked Moore and said I wasn’t a UVF man. I was a UDA man and would be until I died. Moore was a quiet and intelligent man. He was a brilliant watercolour artist and he loved horse racing.

  John ‘Grugg’ Gregg, from south-east Antrim, the UDA’s second-in-command, was the first UDA man who spoke to me and it was a gesture I deeply appreciated. Grugg was doing time for the attempted murder of Gerry Adams. We got on well because we had a common history. We were honorary members of the ‘Gerry Club’ because we both tried to kill the Sinn Fein leader. There was another club member, a man called Gerry Welsh, who had an interesting personal background: his mother was a Catholic woman. Grugg outlined the typical Maze routine and I saw his humanity as a genuine move in the right direction. I knew that sooner or later the UDA would formally acknowledge me.

  John Gregg stepped into the breach left when Tommy Herron and John McMichael were killed. Although I had never met him before the day he introduced himself in the Maze, I felt I had found another true friend. We had a common history – both having made attempts on the life of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and both regretting that we were unsuccessful in our operation.

  On one occasion we discussed our mutual interest in the leadership of the Republican movement. He complimented me on my choice of weapons at Milltown, saying the Browning and the Ruger were ‘good handguns’ and it was ‘clever thinking for close-quarters work’.

  I asked him what he used and he said a Luger and a Browning. He said he was sick to the back teeth of young bucks coming up to him and saying he should have used an M60, a semi-automatic machine gun or a high-velocity rifle. Grugg told me he chose his weapons carefully and he chose them deliberately. He didn’t want to risk high-velocity rounds, such as a 7.62-calibre, passing clean through Adams, wounding and killing civilians. He said he wasn’t risking dead and wounded passers-by just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Grugg opened fire that day, he said he watched Adams rise out of the car seat and push his head and neck as far into the roof as was possible, leaving just his torso exposed. Even though Adams was wearing a bulletproof vest Grugg did strike him in the neck.

  Grugg’s choice of weapons saved Gerry Adams’s life that day, purely because he wanted to reduce civilian casualties.

  Another prisoner who was considerate was John Somerville. He was doing life for the Miami Showband incident. Two other men, Thomas Crozier and James McDowell, were also serving life for the 1975 attack. Somerville’s brother, Wesley, died at the scene when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely. The men, members of the UVF, ambushed a bus carrying members of the famous band, who attr
acted Beatle-like devotion wherever they went. Somerville said something to me within days of my arrival and I have never forgotten it. He said, ‘Prison is the most dangerous place you have ever been.’ Although he was a devout Christian, he never pushed his religious beliefs on anyone. ‘Brother John’, as he was nicknamed, was quiet, intelligent and well-versed in politics, literature and history.

  On my first day I circled the yard for hours on end. I was unnerved and unsettled. The space freaked me out and I returned indoors. After a full year in solitary, the openness of the wing and all those men wanting to chat to me made me feel uncomfortable. Everywhere I went my hand was shaken, my back was clapped and I got a playful fist on the face. Some men asked about my hair and why I shaved it off, but most wanted to hear about the Battle of Milltown. I had thirty years to get to know these guys. I had all the time in the world to adjust to my new life. For now, I just wanted to be by myself.

  The sun was shining and I thought about Lucy growing up without her father, who was a selfish bastard and put the Loyalist cause before her. I couldn’t have that time back and I couldn’t change anything. Or could I? I was certain that I didn’t want to turn into a geriatric in this place, so I started to think about escape.

  My new cell was in the middle of the wing. Red-bookers were not given end cells in case they tried to dig their way out. I had no intention of digging my way anywhere. If I was going out, I was going over the top. I looked at the fences and they didn’t look impossible. They were no higher than fifteen feet. I was fit. That was my trump card.

  The wings were mostly harmonious, but the old UVF regime, with one figurehead commandeering all Loyalist prisoners, had been in place since the 1970s and the time of Gusty Spence. That had to change. UDA/UFF prisoners resented the UVF being in command. The Maze had a set routine. Prisoners were let out of the cells between 8am and midday, locked up 12–2pm, free to move around 2–4pm, locked up 5–7pm, out 7–8pm, and nighttime lock-up was from 8pm to 8am. I spent every available minute getting my body fit. I had a good start. My year in solitary doing shadow boxing and martial arts had given me a good level of fitness, but I needed to push my body further. When I left the Maze, if I got out alive, I was going straight back to war.

  I had my eye on escape. It became my priority. I spent hours in the yard looking at fences, the armed security and the layout of the place. One prisoner approached me. He was a UVF lifer. He told me to give up my plans for escape. He said he was aware of me ‘eyeballing’ the fences and told me it would be better if I settled down and did my whack. I told him that if I could find a way out I was going for it.

  Within the week I was hauled before the Governor. He told me his name and explained that the meeting wasn’t unusual as all new arrivals were given a formal introduction to prison procedure. I listened half-heartedly. I wasn’t interested in what he had to say, but his closing comment made me sit up and take notice. He said, ‘Mr Stone, you will settle into your new life here. You will find your routine so long as you don’t harbour plans to try to escape and you keep your nose clean.’ He winked at me after he finished his speech. The UVF man had told tales to the Governor. He was institutionalised and looking for gold stars that could be traded in as good behaviour. The man had served just thirteen years of his life term and was grabbing at straws. Within two weeks the perimeter fence was raised by at least fifteen feet and security was stepped up.

  It was a valuable lesson. Men like this UVF lifer might be my fellow Loyalists, but some were working to their own agenda. Most of my fellow inmates were good men and good Loyalists. These were men like Grugg and Brother John. But even among our own there were rogues. Just like the career Loyalists on the outside who were bastardising the name of Loyalism, they had no interest in our collective cause. Once inside, they rewrote their personal history and created new personalities and they did it to advance their personal agenda. They were in-house informers, no better than touts.

  As a red-booker I was rotated around all three of the Loyalist blocks, and every three weeks I was on the move. I couldn’t get into a routine and I couldn’t settle. I didn’t have a ‘wing’ job to break the monotony as red-bookers were banned from working because of the security implications. I poured all my intellectual energy into finding an escape route. I was still war-focused and day after day my mantra was: ‘I’m in my prime, I have a lot still to do, people to see and people to kill.’

  It was Bill Gill, a prisoner from Loyalist Sandy Row, who helped me turn a corner in those early days. He got the name ‘Beastly Bill’ because he was bad-tempered in the morning, but he was a very philosophical and intelligent man. He was doing life for a ‘Romper Room’ murder committed in the 1970s. One afternoon, just four weeks into my sentence, he took me aside. He spoke calmly and clearly and ordered me to snap out of my quiet mood. ‘You have to look at your circumstances in a different way,’ he said. ‘I am not doing time in this place and you are not doing time in this place. I live here and you live here. Think of it as a new phase in your life. It is boring and it’s monotonous, but it is your life. You have been sentenced to a lifetime of boredom, but it is now your life and you have to learn to accept it. I don’t know if you are planning to go over the wire or top yourself, but if you are staying, accept it. You can’t fight it or change it.’

  I never said a word. I thanked him for his advice and went to my cell. I sat on the bed and turned his words over and over in my head. For a bad-tempered old fucker, he spoke a lot of sense. I didn’t like my prison life and I couldn’t change it. I could only change my circumstances by escaping.

  Beastly Bill came to my cell later that same day. He sat on the bed and asked me where I would go if I managed to escape. I told him I was going back to war. ‘If you escape you will make it unbearable for us left behind,’ he replied. His final words were: ‘The fool who knows he is a fool is on the road to wisdom. I’ll leave that with you.’

  I was very unsettled during my first year. I found it difficult to accept that this was my life for the next thirty years. In those early months I tried to knuckle down and do my whack, but some days I just didn’t give a damn. On those days I deliberately caused mayhem. I saw my reports during my regular ‘assessment’ meetings with the prison authorities, and they were constantly littered with references to prisoner A385 being ‘rebellious’ and ‘disruptive’. Several of the prison officers at the Maze were bullies, whose job was an outlet for their brutality and psychosis. I liked to play games with these men, and any chance I got to wreck the place, I grabbed it.

  I was a political prisoner and political prisoners had rules. That was the difference between us and ODCs and hoods. We had discipline. Discipline was rule number one on the wings. Loyalists shared the circle with Republicans, and we thought about killing a Republican if the opportunity ever arose, but we didn’t. Inside the prison walls there was a set of rules: no killing. Loyalists and Republicans shared a common bond – we were all political prisoners. But all rules went out the window the day the INLA shot dead Billy Wright within the Maze.

  It was not a nice place. The prison officers ruled the wings and they played games with us, picking on the quieter guys and knowing how to wind up the aggressive men. They would stride up and down the wing, rattling keys, running their batons up the grilles, creating noise and aggravation for men trying to sleep or read. Out of sheer frustration the screws got a thump or a lad would smash a snooker cue over a head, socks would be filled with a snooker ball or the galvanised slop-out buckets would be used to split open a skull or break a jaw. Then all hell would break loose, the Ninjas would storm in and the whole wing would be locked up as punishment.

  During the early weeks it was like stepping back in time. The guys were caught in a fashion timewarp. There were denims with a crease ironed down the front, multi-coloured beach shirts and shiny black shoes. These were men sentenced in the 1970s and nearly twenty years later they were still stuck in that era.

  The food was appalling. It was like
primary-school dinners. Every three days the prison was served casserole or stew. Every three days I starved. I hated one-pot meals. Anything and everything was possible in a one-pot dinner and I refused to touch them. I’d worked in the kitchens of this very jail when I was a teenager and seen first-hand what prisoners, mostly hoods, get up to with those giant cauldrons of food. Regardless of this, something had to be done about the terrible diet. We were served things like luncheon meat with one potato and a tiny glass of milk and the authorities called this our main meal. The guys would request food parcels from home and could be seen devouring whole barbecue chickens and packets of biscuits between meals. On a Sunday, the Governor thought it was a treat to have roast chicken. Great, we all thought, until we saw it. It was a chicken leg so small it looked like it came off a budgie.

  The men on my block asked me to speak to the Governor about the food. I requested a meeting and was granted one. I told the Governor the guys were starving, the meals weren’t big enough and the daily selections were a joke. I told him our diet was ridiculous. If there was a salmonella scare, we got hundreds of egg dishes, if it was a meat scare then we got meat products. I told him a sausage and a spoonful of beans, or corned beef and potato, wasn’t a proper dinner for grown men. I told him, just because we were in jail, that didn’t mean we would accept the terrible diet. His answer was laughable: ‘It’s procurement, Mr Stone. There is a pecking order, hospitals, the civil service, the police and then the prisons. Whatever is left over it comes here.’ I told him it was a pathetic answer and if he didn’t sort out the menus and the portions, then he had protest on his hands.