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<\/a>Over the next few weeks LKIO will serialise the story of how one young political prisoner made a dash for freedom from the confines of the Cages of Long Kesh.\u00a0 Awaiting the granting of political status he is detained in the Compound that holds ODC’s.\u00a0 He describes every day life here where prisoner abuse was rife and sectarian tensions were never far away.\u00a0 With a determination and a will to escape this environment he tells, often with a vivid sense of humour–from a seventeen year old’s perspective a story that is\u00a0profoundly relevant to the past conflict.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
THE NOT SO GREAT ESCAPE<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Six a.m. and the alarm goes off without warning\u2014like every other morning\u2014like the previous forty five mornings since coming here.\u00a0 Not an alarm clock <\/em>mind you\u2014No\u2014a screw\u2019s baton trailed against the corrugated iron sides of the Nissen hut that had been home for the preceding six weeks.\u00a0 A sound that had become so recognizable\u2014it was impossible to confuse it with anything else\u2014a cacophony of noise that jolted you\u2014if it was possible–into a rigid horizantalness in your bed.\u00a0 Instantly wide awake.\u00a0 The assault on the iron timbers lasted for the length of time it took some half wit of an excuse for a prison guard to run round the entire hut.\u00a0 Sometimes a fat fuck would have taken half the morning.\u00a0 But the likelihood of an extra few moments in bed was nil. TBC……<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAs soon as the baton trailing exercise was complete the end door was opened. Two or three screws entered.\u00a0 A head count was taken –primarily to ensure that the same number of poor bastards were there in the morning as were locked up at eight o\u2019clock the night before.\u00a0 On the odd occasion there may have been a need for the screws to remove an unfortunate soul who had done himself some damage during the night by means of a razor blade\/plastic knife\/fork\/spoon\u2014or by swallowing something he wasn\u2019t meant to\u2014bottle tops or bits of pens or needles or safety pins (opened)\u2014or ate a full tube of toothpaste, supposedly to bust your appendix\u2014or deliberately dropped something heavy on their foot\u2014or got a friend or fellow inmate to smash their fingers with a smoothing iron\u2014or by overdosing on large quantities of readily available tablets ( usually mild painkillers or antibiotics )\u2014or who had had a form of cage justice administered by way of a selection of work boots–or pillowcases filled with scrubbing brushes or bars of buttermilk soap\u2014whilst he was encased in a mattress cover.
\nNot everyone went to work at six but it was tough shit for those who didn\u2019t\u2014they were awake.\u00a0 Those of us who did had fifteen minutes to get washed and formed up in lines of two inside the Cage gate prior to being escorted to wherever your work stations where throughout the prison.\u00a0 No breakfast\u2014you got that later at whatever section you worked at. As soon as the screws had completed the head count and rattled a few ankles along the way with their trusty batons, the parting shot was for one of them to turn the hut radio on full blast in order to make it virtually impossible to doze off again.<\/p>\n