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Exhibition to 'bust myth' about loyalist prisoners

Robbie MeredithEducation and arts correspondent, BBC News NI
BBC William Mitchell, a man with short, grey hair and a matching beard, looks directly at the camera. He is wearing a white shirt with an open collar. He is standing in front of a black corrugated Nissen hut in an exhibition space. BBC
William Mitchell is an ex-prisoner who was 17 when he was jailed at Long Kesh

A new exhibition aims to "bust the myth" that loyalist prisoners during the Troubles were poorly educated and without political thinking, an ex-prisoner turned community worker and academic has said.

Long Kesh: Inside Out, on Belfast's Shankill Road, tells the story of loyalist prisoners held in Long Kesh - later the Maze - prison.

William Mitchell said the exhibition does not seek to "condone, excuse or glorify any of their experiences. Quite the opposite. What we're doing is trying to create a new understanding of them," he added.

Mitchell said "anybody and everybody" was welcome to come to see the exhibition and that some republican ex-prisoners had already visited.

The exhibition is being run by Action for Community Transformation (ACT) Initiative, which is run by and works with former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) prisoners.

Mitchell is himself an ex-prisoner who was convicted and sent to Long Kesh in 1975, aged 17.

Following his release in 1987, he became a youth and community worker and achieved a PhD.

The Long Kesh: Inside Out exhibition is based on the experiences and memorabilia of prisoners from the UVF and Red Hand Commando paramilitary groups.

The two organisations murdered more than 500 people during the Troubles.

When the UVF leader Gusty Spence declared a ceasefire in 1994, he offered "true and abject remorse" to the families of all innocent victims of the Troubles.

Spence was a founding member of the modern UVF and its leader in the prison.

The exhibits include a recreation of a prison library and also a 1970s Nissen hut where prisoners were held, complete with sleeping quarters.

A single, metal-framed camp bed, made up with pillows and thin blankets, is sited up against the curved, corrugated interior wall of a Nissen hut. The bed forms part of a prison-themed exhibition. There is a brown patterned mat on the floor beside the bed. An information poster on the wall behind is entitled "Personal hygiene and the ablutions" and includes an image of a white sink attached to a wall with peeling paint.
The exhibition aims to portray what daily life was like for Troubles-era prisoners

Mitchell said the exhibition was "sensitive to others who may visit it".

He said that it had had international and local visitors alike, and not just from the Protestant, unionist, loyalist (PUL) community.

But does he think that republicans and nationalists will come to the Shankill Road to see it?

"Without doubt, they've been here already," Mitchell replied.

"Some of the people that came had been republican prisoners themselves."

A wide view of the interior of a decorated Nissen hut which is being used to house part of a prison-themed exhibition. There is antique sewing machine on a table in the foreground. Above this display is an information poster entitled "Cultural expressions and artistic creativity".
The displays include artifacts which illustrate how inmates passed their time

'The history's unbelievable'

The cross-community Black Mountain Shared Space women's group from west Belfast are among those to have visited.

Lily Brannan from Black Mountain Shared Space told BBC News NI that friends from the group were separated by so-called peace walls.

"We run at the chance to come here, so we did," she said.

"The history's unbelievable. I've learnt things here today that I'd probably never learn if I hadn't have came here.

"I thought they just came in and lay about and played cards or something, but it was actually run like a military camp.

"I think it's important for us to know what happened and why it happened.

"Same with republican prisoners, both sides.

"We have to learn and hopefully move on from the past and hope it's never repeated again."

Lily Brannan - a woman with short, blonde, bobbed hair - looks at the camera while standing in a prison exhibition space. She is wearing pink lipstick and blusher, an olive green jacket and her glasses are resting on top of her head. A black Nissen hut is partially in view behind her and there are several information boards in the background.
Visitor Lily Brannan said she learned how the loyalist wing was "run like a military camp"

But while he has helped curate the exhibition, does Mitchell regret his own past?

"Every single death needs to be regrettable," he replied.

"If I was the 15-year-old boy that engaged in the armed conflict while still at school, if I had the experiences I currently have now as a 68-year-old, of course I would have thought differently about the conflict.

"I would argue that particularly the political elite at the time from both ideologies were systematic in not bringing the conflict to an end."

And Mitchell hopes that Long Kesh: Inside Out can help to teach today's young people about the past.

He said that the school curriculum "ignores a whole lot of the complexities and the intricacies and the nuances of the conflict and people's role in it".

"The only way of drilling down into those big headline themes like Home Rule, partition, the Good Friday Agreement - the only way to drill down into understanding the complexities and the origins of why they happened in the first place, I would claim - is to bring young people to places like this.

"There's no such thing, as we all know, as an agreed narrative about this place but until we understand the duality of the narratives that people share day and daily we'll make no sense of the origins of why we had a conflict in the first place."

A close-up of an illustrated information board in a prison-themed exhibition. It is entitled: "The Troubles in Northern Ireland." Other captions in large text include "Political tensions at fever pitch" and "Turbulent 1960s, UVF reformed".
The exhibition runs until April 2027