A COMPLAINT by the prominent human rights campaigner and prison chaplain Monsignor Raymond Murray that he had been ordered to stop speaking in Irish during a pastoral visit to the Maze Prison in 1985, had reverberations on the Anglo-Irish front.
State papers reveal that on November 22 1985 – just a week after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement – the then Fr Murray complained to the Secretary of State Tom King about the incident from the Parochial House in Armagh.
He described how, while ‘making a spiritual visit to a parishioner’ in the visiting-box of the Maze Prison, their private meeting was interrupted by a prison officer who told them to stop speaking Irish. The officer claimed he was acting on the orders of his superiors.
Fr Murray told King: "Both priest and parishioner were astounded," and opted to continue the visit in English". When Fr Murray protested that he regarded the ban on Irish "as an infringement of freedom of conscience and cultural rights", he was informed that the Prison Governor had instructed that his spiritual visit must be conducted in English.
The officer had also referred to Irish as "a foreign language".
The priest asked King to confirm whether visits in Irish were permissible and, if so, to make this clear to the staff. "Otherwise", he added, "it leaves the situation open to accusations of pure bigotry against Catholics."
Fr Murray ended his letter with the Gaelic greeting, ‘Beir beannacht’ (‘Every blessing’)
At the same time the priest sent a similar letter to Peter Barry, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Conference under the Anglo Irish Agreement.
He asked Mr Barry: "In the case of the Maze has this been a horrible mistake or pure bigotry?"
The kernel of Fr Murray’s complaint was confirmed in a note from the Maze Governor to the Director of Prison Security at the NIO, John (now Sir John) Semple: "Fr Murray was overheard in the corridor and this caused staff to intervene and advise him that a foreign language visit is not permitted."
The Governor admitted that, although the cubicles were used for legal visits, they were not sound-proof and conversations could be overheard. He told Semple that he was taking steps to bring the visiting cubicles up to an acceptable standard to meet the criteria, "in sight but not in hearing".
As the sound-proofing of the visiting cubicles got under way, the NIO prison regime’s official wrote to Fr Murray apologising for the incident on December 16, 1985.
