Prisoners added time to their sentences
News Letter
30 December 2008
Records were kept of prisoners who were protesting and how much remission they were losing, because of their involvement in the campaign.
In the government files, every prisoner – from the first man on protest, Keiran Nugent – is listed.
Details of how long prisoners had been on the blanket, their jail sentence, estimated time of release and how much remission they had lost was updated fortnightly.
Among the names, is one Robert (Bobby) Sands. Sentenced to 14 years in September 1977.
His time on protest had added 168 days to his sentence by April 1978.
Also among the names was Kevin Lynch an INLA Man who, like Sands would later take the campaign to the end, and die on hunger strike in 1981.
Brendan (Darky) Hughes an IRA boss, is on the list, as is Mairead Farrell, later killed while planning to kill British soldiers in Girbraltar in 1988, and Terence Clarke who became a driver for Gerry Adams and is also now dead.
'So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin lá eigin. Sealadaigh abú.'
--Bobby Sands