Now let’s honour the IRA’s prison staff victims?

THERE was massive publicity recently about the free choice of 10 convicted prisoners from two secret armed revolutionary gangs — INLA and PIRA — to use the emotional blackmail of a hunger strike to enforce their will within Northern Ireland’s prison system in 1981.

Why not a single word about 29 public servants who are on the NI Prison Service roll of honour — two retired men, two women, three governors, a hospital officer, a chief instructor, three clerks, and 17 male officers of various levels?

And most significantly, although 21 died from 1974 to 1980, averaging three per year, and 10 in 1979 alone, not one died in 1981, or until October 7, 1982. One woman and five male officers, the hospital officer and chief instructor — eight in all — died from then to 1993.