It was situated at the former Royal Air Force station of Long Kesh, on the outskirts of Lisburn. This was in the townland of Maze, about nine miles (14 km) southwest of Belfast. The prison and its inmates played a prominent role in recent Irish history, notably in the 1981 hunger strike. The prison was closed in 2000 and demolition began on 30 October 2006, but on 18 April 2013 it was announced by the Northern Ireland Executive that the remaining buildings would be redeveloped into a peace centre.
Following the introduction of internment in 1971, "Operation Demetrius" was implemented by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army with raids for 452 suspects on 9 August 1971. The RUC and army arrested 342 Irish nationalists, but key Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members had been tipped off and 104 of those arrested were released when it emerged they had no paramilitary connections. Those behind Operation Demetrius were accused of bungling, by arresting many of the wrong people and using out-of-date information. Following nationalist protests, some Ulster loyalists were also arrested. By 1972, there were 924 internees and by the end of internment on 5 December 1975, 1,981 people had been detained; 1,874 (94.6%) of whom were Catholic/Irish nationalist and 107 (5.4%) Ulster Protestants/loyalists.
Prisoners convicted of scheduled offences after 1 March 1976 were housed in the "H-Blocks" that had been constructed. Prisoners without Special Category Status began protesting for its return immediately after they were transferred to the H-Blocks. Their first act of defiance, initiated by Kieran Nugent, was to refuse to wear the prison uniforms, stating that convicted criminals, and not political prisoners, wear uniforms. Not allowed their own clothes, they wrapped themselves in bedsheets. Prisoners participating in the protest were "on the blanket". By 1978, more than 300 men had joined the protest. The British government refused to back down. In March 1978, some prisoners refused to leave their cells to shower or use the lavatory, and were provided with wash-hand basins in their cells. The prisoners requested that showers be installed in their cells; and when this request was turned down, they refused to use the wash-hand basins. At the end of April 1978, a fight occurred between a prisoner and a prison officer in H-Block 6. The prisoner was taken away to solitary confinement, and rumours spread across the wing that the prisoner had been badly beaten. The prisoners responded by smashing the furniture in their cells, forcing the prison authorities to remove the remaining furniture from the cells, leaving only blankets and mattresses. The prisoners responded by refusing to leave their cells and, as a result, the prison officers were unable to clear them. This resulted in the blanket protest escalating into the dirty protest, as the prisoners could not leave their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), and started smearing excrement on the walls of their cells to mitigate the spread of maggots.
Republicans outside the prison took the battle to the media and both sides fought for public support. Inside the prison, the prisoners took another step and organized a hunger strike.
The prisoners also played a significant role in the Northern Ireland peace process. On 9 January 1998, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, paid a surprise visit to the prison to talk to members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) including Johnny Adair, Sam McCrory and Michael Stone. They had voted for their political representatives to pull out of talks. Shortly after Mowlam's visit, they changed their minds, allowing their representatives to continue talks that would lead to the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998. Afterwards, the prison was emptied of its paramilitary prisoners as the groups they represented agreed to the ceasefire. In the two years following the agreement, 428 prisoners were released. On 29 September 2000, the remaining four prisoners at the Maze were transferred to other prisons in Northern Ireland and the Maze Prison was closed.
A monitoring group was set up on 14 January 2003 to debate the future of the 360-acre (1.5 km2) site. With close motorway and rail links, there were many proposals, including a museum, a multi-purpose sports stadium and an office, hotel and leisure village. In January 2006, the government unveiled a masterplan  for the site incorporating many of these proposals, including a 45,000 seat national multi-sport stadium for football, rugby and Gaelic games. The Government's infrastructure organisation, the Strategic Investment Board (SIB), was tasked with taking forward the proposed Stadium idea and appointed one of its senior advisers, Tony Whitehead, to manage the project. The capacity of the proposed Stadium was later adjusted to first 35,000 and then 38,000 and the organising bodies of all three sports - Irish FA, Ulster Rugby and Ulster GAA - agreed in principle to support the integrated scheme.
In January 2009, plans to build the new £300 million multi-purpose stadium on the site of The Maze were cancelled, with politicians saying that plans to start the construction of the stadium would not be reconsidered until at least 2012.
↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 The Provisional IRA, p. 351.
This page was last modified on 23 December 2015, at 17:01.