Feminist punk fan mail from the Maze Prison

Irish Times

7 hours ago

Political resistance has a long and varied history among the Irish people, from artistic defiance through WB Yeats's The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1888) and Seamus Heaney's poetry collection
North
(1975), to armed and carceral insurrection during the Easter Rising in 1916 or the 1981 hunger strike led by Bobby Sands and fellow Irish republican prisoners.
Like other left-leaning and politically active Londoners, the women who comprised feminist punk band The Raincoats were keenly aware of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland known broadly at the Troubles. Some members of the band were involved in anti-colonial demonstrations as part of the Troops Out Movement, or TOM for short, established in 1973 with the aim of ending British rule in Northern Ireland.
Others had their own experiential knowledge of government oppression, migrating from fascist regimes in Portugal and Spain to the relative democracy of England. Yet nothing quite prepared the band for a handwritten piece of fan mail they'd receive upon the release of their first LP, a letter that would tether their own sonic history to one of fierce political struggle in Northern Ireland.
The following excerpt from my new biography of the band,
Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats
, chronicles that moment in which feminist punk became unexpectedly linked to the bloodshed of the Troubles.
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Audrey Golden
In 1979, The Raincoats received a piece of fan mail at Rough Trade from a writer named Jim Kyle. The return address at the top read 'Compound 19, H.M.P. Maze' – the H-Blocks near Lisburn. The letter had been sent from the feared institution that held political prisoners sentenced for acts of violence during the Troubles:
Dear Raincoats,
After repeated plays of the new album I just have to write and offer some praise, especially after reading the panning that bigot McCullough gave it when reviewing it in Sounds. I hope his article didn't discourage you too much as I'm sure anyone who reads Sounds regularly knows by now that he allows personality clashes etc. to influence his honesty. Stiff Little Fingers were another among many to incur his juvenile attitudes. As Ana said when replying in Sounds it makes one angry to think that someone like him has the power to influence people's choices.
Anyway back to the album itself, which I think is brilliant. When I ordered it from Rough Trade a couple of weeks ago I also bought the new Jam, Fall, and Banshee L. P.s as they are among my favourites. However although they are very good it has been your album which has dominated the turntable and is what I'm listening to as I write this. A lot of things impress me. The actual music itself is first class especially on the Void and No Looking but I think it is the brilliantly structured vocals that makes it all so special. It's hard to explain in words what I feel impresses me in the album the highest accolade I can give it is that I really enjoy it. The standout for me is the excellent Off Duty Trip. Also your version of Lola would make a great single.
I hope it's not too long before you release something else. In the meantime I think I'll be playing The Raincoats a lot.
Cheerio,
Jim
The Maze prison was designated for prisoners during the Troubles and held detainees from 1971 to 2000. The Maze, as it was sometimes simply described, began as a series of compounds or cages making up an area known as Long Kesh, which was opened in 1976, replaced later by eight H-Blocks, named for their shape. It was a maximum-security prison that became known globally as a result of the protests occurring there, including the blanket protest and the 1981 hunger strike led by Bobby Sands. The prison was separated into 'cages,' as they were called by republicans, or 'compounds,' as they were called by loyalists.
There's very little written information about the names of the prisoners who were held in the H-Blocks, unless they appeared in the media or have since given testimony to the Prisons Memory Archive. The 'Jim Kyle' who mailed the handwritten letter to Rough Trade in London identified his location as 'Compound 19', a loyalist area of the prison.
On Shankill Road in West Belfast, a predominantly loyalist area, the ACT Initiative was established in 2008 as a conflict transformation program designed 'to facilitate the civilianisation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).' Dr. William Mitchell, its director, remains in touch with many of those who were once imprisoned in Compound 19, where he himself was incarcerated for murder at the age of 17. He knows Jim Kyle well, and Jim agreed to Mitchell telling his story, centring on his abiding love of music and The Raincoats.
'Jim and I were actually in the same cell,' William explains. 'And my own personal development, musically, was initiated by Jim Kyle. Because as a 17-year-old, in 1976, he lent me an album by Bob Dylan,
Desire
.' From that point onward, Jim opened up the musical minds of many prisoners in Compound 19. It's a story, William explains, about difficult stereotypes of young people involved in the stark violence of the Troubles. Like many of their same-age counterparts, the young imprisoned loyalists were beginning to come of age as punk happened, and many saw themselves as part of the cultural revolution taking place in music, despite the very different sides of the conflict on which they committed acts of violence.
'I'd only been in prison about six months, same as Jim, we were arrested the same month in 1975,' William says. 'Both teenagers. I was 17, he was 18. We didn't know each other until we'd come into prison.' Thanks to Jim, William came to understand the deep politics and significance of Dylan's music, 'this protest singer who, as soon as I dropped the needle on Desire, sang, pistol shots rang out in a barroom, enter Paddy Valentine from the end of the hall. It was an epiphany moment, and it literally changed my world, changed my life. Through his music, I developed an interest in the characters in the songs and became introduced to William Burroughs, TS Eliot, Shakespeare, Arthur Rimbaud, all of these people who, as a young man, really fascinated me.'
How was anyone listening to records in the H-Blocks?
William explains, 'You were literally caged,' but they could roam freely within the compound and had access to study and educational facilities. There was a markedly large population of very young men, teenagers, and otherwise very young adults, like William and Jim, who'd been recruited during what William describes as 'the worst years of the conflict,' from 1972 to 1975. And those prisoners in Compound 19 together, around the same age, 'were drawn to the punk movement as a subculture, and we looked at it from afar with the disappointment that we couldn't engage in it. But we could listen to it and hear it on albums,' William says.
Vicky Aspinall on violin, Palmolive on drums and Gina Birch on bass of The Raincoats performing at Alexandra Palace, London, UK, 16th June 1980. (Photo by David Corio/Redferns)
Jim loved punk and post-punk, but he was also a well-rounded lover of music. William describes it, warmly, as a 'quite eclectic taste,' explaining, 'Jim used to religiously get the
NME
and
Melody Maker
and look for mail order opportunities, but of course, Rough Trade was his big focus. And we had this camaraderie, this group of young men. So any time someone got an album, they shared it. That record player was the only one we had between 80 prisoners,' he says as he points at a small suitcase record player behind him on a shelf. The record player 'lived' in the study area of Compound 19, and there was a hardback book that sat beside it. If you wanted to listen to a record, you'd put your name in the book and the hour you wanted it.
Jim introduced the sounds of 'alternative music,' and music that was making a political impact in the UK, 'including, of course, The Raincoats,' William says. Jim recently reminded William of playing him The Raincoats' cover of Lola, but he emphasised that what drew him to The Raincoats initially was the
Fairytale
EP, 'their first single.' But he loved it all, and he sent the fan letter after receiving the self-titled LP from Rough Trade. Throughout his time in the Maze, he kept in direct contact with Sue Donne, who handled Rough Trade mail order. He gratefully recalls how Sue began sending him 'freebies' and discounting records for Jim to give a listen to.
Did the records get censored?
All the records would be opened and examined, and some things would be censored. But if there wasn't anything obvious – thank goodness for the subtlety of The Raincoats' political interventions – the records would be delivered to the prisoner who ordered them. But not before they'd been desecrated. William holds up some examples of records that had come into the Maze. There are large black redaction marks where the guards essentially made scribbles to damage the records. The prisoner's number would also be written largely on the front. 'But it actually gives them a kind of authenticity now,' he reflects.
Jim would sometimes put on The Raincoats in the evening for everyone– 'And you can just imagine some of the criticism he would have got from the older folk,' William says. But it didn't deter Jim. The music was that important. He was imprisoned for about four years in total. During that time, he brought the world of Rough Trade to the prison, and he opened the sonic and political minds of many young prisoners in the larger compound with him.
Jim loved music so much, and learned so much about it from the records he ordered and shared with fellow prisoners in the H-Blocks, that he opened a record shop in Smithfield Market in Belfast after he was released from the Maze. The market 'was a hard place,' William explains, with a long and violent history during the Troubles. 'It would get bombed every other month during the conflict,' he says, but after the Good Friday Agreement, it became a space of peace. And, thanks to Jim, of music. William used to visit the shop regularly until it closed, and he bought a fair amount of his current record collection from Jim.
What was the shop called?
'Jim's Records.'
That piece of fan mail, housed carefully in The Raincoats' archive for nearly 50 years, is a reminder of the stark power, and often unpredictable political resonances, that music can have. Had many tried to guess the identity of a Raincoats fan imprisoned in Long Kesh in 1979, they'd likely have made the assumption the writer had been a member of the IRA, whose politics seemed to align most closely to their own. Yet the truth is much more complex, and it reveals both the strengths and limitations of political ideology – and the assumptions we make – in moments of great unrest.
Shouting Out Loud
Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats is published by White Rabbit