Menstruation as a Weapon of War: The Politics of the Bleeding Body for Women on Political Protest at Armagh Prison, Northern Ireland
Author | Azrini Wahidin |
Published date | 01 January 2019 |
Date | 01 January 2019 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032885518814730 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
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Article
The Prison Journal
2019, Vol. 99(1) 112 –131
Menstruation as a
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Politics of the Bleeding
Body for Women
on Political Protest
at Armagh Prison,
Northern Ireland
Azrini Wahidin1
Abstract
This article draws on the voices of women political prisoners who were
detained at Armagh Prison during the period of the Troubles or the
Conflict in Northern Ireland. It focuses on women who undertook an
extraordinary form of protest against the prison authorities during the
1980s, known as the No Wash Protest. As the prisoners were prevented
from leaving their cells by prison officer either to wash or to use the toilet,
the women, living in the midst of their own dirt and body waste, added
menstrual blood as a form of protest.
Keywords
Armagh prison, women, political protest, the No Wash Protest, menstruation,
Northern Ireland, Irish Republican Army
1The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Corresponding Author:
Azrini Wahidin, Department of Sociology, The University of Warwick, Social Sciences
Building, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: Azrini.Wahidin@warwick.ac.uk
Wahidin
113
Introduction
The aim of this article is to draw on the voices of women political prisoners
who were detained at Armagh Prison during the period of the Troubles or the
Conflict in Northern Ireland.1 It focuses on women who undertook an extraor-
dinary form of protest against the prison authorities: the No Wash Protest. To
punish the women for the events that took place on February 7, 1980, the
women were prevented from leaving their cells by the prison officers either
to wash or to use the toilets, resulting in the women living in the midst of their
own dirt, body waste, and adding to the protest, menstrual blood. This article
draws on 28 qualitative interviews with women who had experienced impris-
onment and who participated in the No Wash protest at Armagh prison during
the 1980s.2 Ethical approval was obtained from Queen’s University, Belfast,
and is part of a larger study examining the experiences of women and male
ex-combatants/volunteers in the Irish Republican Army.
In 1980, the male political prisoners held at Long Kesh3 were joined by
their female comrades who remained on the No Wash protest until December
of the same year. Unlike the hunger strike of 1981, the No Wash Protest had
no precedent in the existing political culture. The article will address how
women’s bodies were utilized and deployed as a weapon of war and will
question why women’s involvement in the No Wash protest led to a reaction
that was gender differentiated.
Much has been written about strategies adopted by prisoners to cope
with the routine of incarceration, to retain personal dignity, and to resist
brutalization (see Bosworth, 1999). Bosworth and Carrabine (2001) have
pointed out that “prison life is characterised by ongoing negotiations of
power” (p. 501). Although Goffman (1961, p. 42) did not distinguish
between political prisoners and “ordinary decent criminals,” he wrote that
prisoners occupy the lowest rung in “echelon” society. He illustrated their
lack of power by pointing out that any prison officer can inflict social harm
and instigate disciplinary procedures. Prisoners, particularly political pris-
oners, relate incidents of extreme cruelty, violence, and threatening isola-
tion while reflecting that whatever the assault on the body or the restriction
on movement, their freedom to think, reason, and project remain intact
(see McKeown, 2001). The conscious rejection of victimhood, the refusal
to be cowed, and the commitment to question and disobey authority
together contribute to an often formidable, oppositional, and collectivized
force. Yet, the fear and reality of physical harm and the awareness of the
destructive potential of long periods in isolation diminished and, occasion-
ally, destroyed self-esteem (see Moore & Scraton, 2014; Scraton, 1987;
Scraton & McCulloch, 2009).
114
The Prison Journal 99(1)
The use of excreta and menstruation as a weapon of resistance against the
prison was not, however, the only bodily weapon available to the prisoners.
The No Wash protest was by any standard of political culture, and certainly
by that of Ireland, an unusual political action for women to initiate. However,
the British national press, upon visiting Long Kesh and the men on the No
Wash protest for the first time, called it “the most bizarre protest by prisoners
in revolt against their gaolers” and “self-inflicted degradation” (The Guardian
and Daily Telegraph, March 16, 1979). It was an incomprehensible act to the
general public as it was to prison officers and the British government admin-
istration. The No Wash protest failed to attract international sympathy.
Amnesty international, for example, concluded upon examination of the case
that the prisoners’ conditions were self-inflicted.4 The questionable character
of the violent searches was voiced by the British press. The British National
Union of Students, with a membership of 1.2 million, positioned itself against
giving political status to prisoners. Yet, they voted to organize a national cam-
paign “against the inhuman treatment of women prisoners in Armagh jail”
(Hodges, The Times, March 19, 1980, p. 3). However, the close vote—296
against 214—hinted at the polemical and ambivalent quality of the No Wash
protest outside of Ireland. The Labor Party also expressed concern about
reports: “that women in Armagh jail were being attended by male wardens,
were locked up for 23 hours a day, and were being denied proper sanitary and
medical facilities”—going on to say, “while the national executive should
oppose terrorism, it should also oppose repression and torture in Northern
Ireland” (The Times, June 10, 1980, p. 2).
The No Wash protest provoked an inexpressible level of horror. During this
period, a rising spiral of violence inside and outside of the jails became more
marked (Wahidin, Moore & Convery, 2012). If the men’s No Wash protest
was incomprehensible, for women, it was unthinkable, generating, in many
men, even among the ranks of supporting Republicans, reactions of denial. It
was no doubt a form of warfare, a violent contest of power, as Feldman (1991)
has noted. But why this form and not another? Excrement was used as a direct
critique of the State’s pretensions of homogenizing the women and the “civi-
lizing process” happening within the prisons.5 As Elias (1998) has argued,
there is a link between the development of manners and “toilette etiquette”
regarding the removal of bodily functions from a private to a visible public
space (Edwards & McKie, 1996) and the evolution of the modern State. As in
other closed institutions, in a context of limited options, prisoners fell back on
using their own waste products as symbolic weapons against the assumed
civilization of the prison authorities and that of the British State.
As Aretxaga (1995, p. 135) suggests, the image of the prisoners living
among their own excrement, menstrual blood, and bloodied sanitary
Wahidin
115
towels created an image of the “other,” the “uncivilised,” the fluid, leaky,
unruly deviant female body whose bodies became dangerous, dirty, and in
need of control. In the women’s accounts, this movement from the hidden
to public was not one of choice but became interpolated as the movement
away from the “civilising process” (Elias, 1978/1994). Although menstru-
ation is an element of women’s lives, it remains hidden, and not talked
about (Scrambler & Scrambler, 1993). Menstrual blood was no longer a
marginal filthy substance, but was central to political protest, politicizing
their existence in prison.
Socialized to see menstruation as “unpleasant” and in some cultures as
“unclean” and polluting (Weideger, 1975), the discourse of dirt was used to
support anti-Catholic sentiments. Although McEvoy (2001, p. 243) focuses
on the experiences of male Republicans at Long Kesh, his argument can be
applied to how the women of Armagh on the No Wash protest was con-
structed in that “it resonated with sectarian anti-Catholic discourses concern-
ing dirtiness and immorality” (p. 245). Peter Robinson (1981), Deputy leader
of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, wrote in a Democratic Unionist
Party pamphlet published at the time stating “if cleanliness is next to
Godliness, then to whom are these men [or women] close?” (p. 40).6
The Power to Punish: The Body as a Weapon of
War
The first sentence in McCafferty’s (1981) Irish Times article reads, “There is
menstrual blood on the walls of Armagh prison in Northern Ireland.” Prisoner
Shirley Devlin, a Republican from Newington who was 20 years old when
the No Wash protest began in Armagh, explained this particular issue: “A few
extra towels a month would help to combat the risk of infection. But no.
Criminalisation and sanitary towels go together. Criminal means clean.
Political means dirty, that is what they try to tell us” (McCafferty, 1981, p. 6).
By rationing the number of sanitary towels allowed to each woman (some
reports indicated that they were allowed a maximum of two per day), the
male-dominated prison system was abusing the prisoners in an exclusively
female way. As Fairweather, McDonough, and...
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