I recently visited the derelict site of The Maze prison. Nothing I had previously known prepared me for the intensity of the experience. Firstly there was the size of the place, occupying hundreds of acres of flat and boggy land beside the M1 motorway, whose traffic hummed serenely past whilst we made our way around the site, under a leaden sky, in a minibus belonging to the republican ex-prisoners' organisation, Coiste. There was also the sheer, dehumanising greyness and starkness of the place, with its tall watchtowers, its bleak exercise yards, its rusted razor wire fencing and the tiny, functional cells in the grim H blocks, where the 'dirty' and 'blanket' protests and the infamous hunger strikes all occurred.

Nowhere in this vast and empty gaol is so disturbing as the derelict prison hospital. Our group walked around the wards where hunger strikers such as Bobby Sands, Martin Hurson and Kieran Doherty died. Our tour guide spoke of a recent memorial service, which had been held for the relatives, in which candles had been placed on the narrow window-ledges and lilies on the metal bed-frames that still stand in each of the rooms. One member of our party mentioned five members of his family who had been imprisoned here. Another had been asked that morning to say a prayer in the hospital block, by Kieran Doherty's mother; nearby, amidst the weeds and overgrown bushes, some roses were growing and she picked a posy to take home, in memory of one young Republican martyr from twenty-five years ago.

During the 'Troubles' of the 1980's, I was living in middle-class, protestant comfort in nearby Hillsborough. The Maze was a tall stockade glimpsed on the way to work each morning or a glow of artificial lighting that brightened the night sky, just two miles away from my home. If I knew any people behind those prison walls, they were prison officers who attended the same church as me. The IRA was the organisation who bombed pubs and trains, left booby traps under policemen's cars and appeared, on an almost daily basis, to be my mortal enemy. Standing in The Maze hospital block, two decades later, old moral and military certainties no longer seemed to be in place.

Our group heard about the new conflict transformation centre, which is due to be built at The Maze. Coiste is gathering anecdotal narratives from visitors to the prison who can help the ex-prisoners' organisation fill out the story of the thousands of men who passed through the gates of 'The Kesh' into short or long-term custody. What I wanted to say as I walked around the ghostly compounds was that another plot-line needs integrated into their narrative, which deals with lives damaged by the men once incarcerated here. However, in thinking, as I did back then in the 1980's, that the men behind the Long Kesh wire were evil criminals, I now feel that I was wrong. And in making this kind of recognition, I find the beginning of an understanding of the things they did. And from that understanding may come - with God's help - release from the captivity of spirit that can neither forget nor forgive.

Philip Orr

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