Bathing in the glory
By Eoghan MacCormaic
For many years the greatest fear of people in Ireland was The
Bloodbath. Talk of the bloodbath would make your hair stand on
end, the mention of it was enough to send right thinking people
to the front of meetings to raise their hand in voting down
anything that might have smacked of radical change.
Now the bloodbath theory may have had its day, to be replaced by
a more deadly bath, one that should be decomissioned immediately
and that's the H Block bath. The new H Block bath.
Ah, I have fond memories of the old H Block bath. Well, maybe
fond would be too kind a word, but I have memories. The bath used
to be a weapon of great terror during the Blanket Protest when
the screws would select POWs to be forcibly bathed and the aptly
nicknamed prison doctor, Mengele, would sign the order to
legitimise the ensuing brutality.
Like many many other POWs I remember being tossed into a bath
while two screws scrubbed and tore my skin with deck-scrubbers,
buckets of painfully hot and mercifully cold and numbing water
being thrown round me and the bath water a curious mix of green
disinfectant and the tell tale signs of blood clouds blushing
outwards.
Mind you, that blood bath was no match for an earlier prison
bloodletting, when the screws of Winston Green almost murdered
the Birmingham Six, beating them mercilessly and leaving what one
witness was later to tell the court were `baths of blood' in the
prison reception area. The real imagery of that is almost more
gruesome than the metaphor of a `bloodbath'.
Today's H Block bath is a more sinister tub of course, and it too
is a bloodbath of sorts. A `Washed in the Blood of the Lamb'
bath. I was reading this week that Torrens Knight has become a
born-again Pastor, ministering mainly to a flock of wolves in the
wings of Maghaberry. Knight, better known for his role in killing
innocent nationalists in Greysteel and Castlerock has joined a
celebrated list of loyalist converts, the more famous of which
includes Pastor Kenny McClinton and which once included Billy
Wright.
Pastor McClinton is probably the role model for prison converts.
Many disciples have followed his example, and he has made much of
his `baptism' as a reborn Christian on that fateful day when a
sinner climbed into a bath in H7 and a Christian climbed back
out. Symbolically, if you know what I mean.
I met McClinton once, on a visit to the prison dentist, and he
told me the whole story. For most people a visit to the dentist
holds its own terror but for me climbing into the chair was
relief; anything to escape Clinton's evangelical assault. The
12th of August 1978, was when his conversion by immersion took
place and not long after that Kenny coaxed Basher Bates the
Shankill Butcher to join him in the dip. With a collar like Bates
under his belt McClinton had it made and in the years since then,
before and after his release, the H Block baths have been busier
than the pools in Salt Lake City. The title `Pastor' appeared
somewhere along the way to give credentials to the convert.
Some people remain sceptical of the whole procedure, however, and
dismiss it as gate-fevered baloney. In fact, the timing of some
of the conversions to Christianity lends more to the political
situation outside than to any rebirth inside and it's that fact
which is worrying observers. Can a community cope with so many
pastors? What will they do when they run out of converts? Is
Kenny McClinton going to be head of his own church just like Ian
Paisley? What is the end result of this huge con-job? Born again
Christian Militias? The whole scene doesn't bear thinking about.
Decommission them, that's what I say, and replace them with
showers. It's the H Block baths that are to blame.
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