Blanket Protest

The blanket protest was part of a campaign of detained in prison Maze Prison members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army to regain their status as political prisoners.

Announced in 1976, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees the phased abolition of linked to the status as a political prisoner privileges. This reduction provided inter alia that inmates who had been convicted for terrorist activities in the future as common criminals to wear prison uniforms and participate also in work services within the prison had. On the impending loss of these privileges responded inmates by refusing to wear the prescribed prison uniforms, and instead ( blanket german) in the ceiling of their beds enveloped or naked put on the floor of their cells.

The background of this measure was also that in 1976, the H-Blocks were overcrowded and the British Labour government under Wilson wanted to change this status. As Kieran Nugent, a 19 year old Republican, was arrested in September 1976, changing the special status category should be completed first scheduling him. He steadfastly refused to wear the prison uniform, and his reply was passed as follows: " They'd have to nail it to my back" ( German: " it would have to [= these clothes ] pinned down on my back "). When he took this attitude, this was the beginning of the blanket protest. Then he moved naked and covered herself with the blankets provided.

Prison conditions were exacerbated when the prisoners refused to leave their cells and to visit the washrooms because they were abused regularly by the guards on the way there. As a result, the prisoners were moved to cells without toilets and washing facilities, where they were prevented from any way to dispose of their droppings, so the only solution is often only the smearing on the walls of their cells remained.

This form of protest was soon known as a dirty protest, but led as well as the blanket protest is not the desired success of the prisoners. Subsequently, the protest in the two Irish hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981 was continued. Where the hunger strike of 1981, which claimed the lives of 10 men, including Bobby Sands, was successful in so far as the essential requirement to wear their own civilian clothes, was enforced.