Mikefule, it's not often I read a post I wish I'd written myself.

To clear up a misunderstanding that might arise from something Paddymac said, the phrase "on the blanket" did not refer to hunger strikers. It referred to all those who refused to wear prison-issue clothing, as described by Phil, and refused to slop out. They lived among their own excrement for many months in what must have been abominable conditions.

DtG, I don't know about your sense of humour but you plainly have no imagination or you would have no difficulty understanding how Eric's "joke" would go down in Twinbrook. The idea that your visit to Listowel gave you some kind of pointer is fatuous. For many in the Republic, especially those "beyond the Pale", the troubles were no more than a faraway nuisance that impinged on Ireland's tourism. Certainly a safe enough distance away for instances of the folksy banter you describe. I would put it on a par with memories that some in Belfast retain of earlier IRA campaigns. Indeed I have heard many hilarious anecdotes recounted from the present troubles. But in Belfast I've never heard jokes about the people who volunteered to starve themselves to death, though in protestant communities I've heard plenty of bile about them. (Just as I've heard bile about prods in catholic communities.) But then Eric's remark wasn't funny either, or even meant to be. It too was bile.

Apart from all that, the question of prisoner status is an interesting one. No British government ever accepted that there was a "war" in the north, and Thatcher - reasonably enough by her own lights - thought it was therefore contradictory to accord "special category" status to prisoners who, by any reckoning,had broken the law of the land.

There was some logic in this line, but it was too dogmatic for a situation that needed compromise. For instance, on the other side of the coin, as Den pointed out, Sands was serving 14 years for possessing a firearm - an utterly ludicrous sentence against the norms prevailing elsewhere in the UK. His sentence was a direct consequence of the special circumstances of Northern Ireland. Factors such as this, and the fact that convictions were secured without juries and sometimes on scant evidence, underpinned the arguments of those demanding a return to "special category" status.

In view of Thatcher's determination to criminalise the "terrorists" (of both sides), I was dumbfounded by Bush glorifying the fight against international terrorism as a war. But I hadn't foreseen that he would get round the pitfalls of this simply by breaking and bending laws at will and inventing new prisoner status (or non-status) at the drop of a hat.