By Anthony McIntyre (for the Blanket)

The only thing promising to puncture the tedium of the last Monday of August 1979 was the visit I was expecting to receive from my mother. It was my first since Christmas eight months earlier. I felt the grip of the inevitable tension that so many others had experienced before they ventured outside the cell on that infrequent journey to see friends or family. It would be untrue to say that the cell was a safe place - it wasn’t. The screws on occasion often beat prisoners in their cells. But it was the only place during the blanket protest where a state of relaxation could be attained. There was anonymity or invisibility that came with being enclosed in the cell, a blending in with its greyness. There we were just like wildebeest: every body stood the same chance as the next when the predator came along sniffing prey. Once inside it, with the spy hatch smeared with dirt, we were out of view of the screws. It brought with it a certain comfort - out of sight out of mind. Unless they had a particular reason for coming to your cell you were left pretty much to your own devices behind its steel door. Stepping outside it always brought a prisoner to the immediate attention of the blanket screws. On the wing proper, or the walk to and from the visits, and in the visiting area itself, the panoptical gaze of the administration was permanently fixed upon us. It was no coincidence that most assaults occurred outside the cell.

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