Exhibition: Time to Think

The impact of Gusty Spence's leadership was seen in the number of people involved in education in the UVF Compounds. In Compound 21, OU students formed a close group who still maintain contact with each other today. John Wallace is pictured in this page reading his OU book in Compound 21 in a painting by Steven Elliot, a fellow prisoner.

In the audio clip on this page Tommy, also from Compound 21, describes study arrangements and how, while the OU worked through the prison education department, students saw the OU as distinct, "it was ours."

Almost half of the thirty-five OU students in prisons in 1982 were in the Compounds, the rest being in the H Blocks except for one in Crumlin Road and one in Magilligan Prison. Gerard Murray, a Republican Socialist student, described the difficulties of studying in the H Blocks in 1981 and the impact on his Open University studies of (having to share a cell and then) being moved without warning to Magilligan Prison.

So then, through all this hullaballoo and upheaval the Screws [Prison Officers] came one day and said, "Right, you are all going to Magilligan" And up we went that night about three o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning and they put us all into these big meat wagons and handcuffed us and drove us up to Magilligan and that was the end of [Open University study] in the Kesh [H Blocks of the Maze and Long Kesh Prison] because Magilligan was only a new prison. And then we went up, we all went into a brand new block which hadn't been opened before - H3 - and there were no facilities there for education; for handicrafts even. There was nothing there at the time. And I lost a lot of stuff that I had gathered up regarding education in the Kesh because when we were moved to Magilligan as I say, they came to you that day, "you are moving that night, there's a bag fill it" and the only thing that I could think of at that time was that I was making this big doll's house for my daughter, so that was priority. So once I had that and a couple of wee bits of clothing, everything else was all left behind and it was probably all destroyed.

Gerard Murray

Three students graduated in 1982, two from the UVF Compound and one from the H Blocks. From the early 1980s a number of prison officers also studied OU courses and their fees were paid by the Northern Ireland Office.