The Republican Sinn Fein centre on Belfast’s Falls Road looks very much like what Sinn Fein centres looked like years ago. An absence of airs and graces; no suits or suave talkers. There was none of the city-centre shop-front look of the Sinn Fein office just down the road at Sevastopol Street. Right-wing corporate American money has not yet reached RSF. It is unlikely that it will. ‘What do you want to eat?’ I was asked as one of the office staff phoned the local chip shop. ‘Keep the pasties separate from the chips and put the fish in a different bag’ the unfortunate chippie worker was informed. I declined the hospitable offer as I had eaten already. But the thought struck me that this was no $1,000 dollars a plate venture and there were no tuxedos in sight.

Sitting facing me were Ann and Michelle, the wife and sister of Tommy Crossan who is at present in Maghaberry prison fighting for recognition as a political prisoner. They had agreed to be interviewed by the Republican Writers Group. It was hardly a surprise - members of the group had stood with them on picket lines supporting Tommy’s demands. Republican Sinn Fein allowed their offices to be used for the interview. What party officials floated in and out as the interview was in progress made no attempt to shape it or tinge it with the RSF perspective. No sign of a Stalinist adherence to a party line there. People were free to say what they liked. A welcome ventilation in a wider republican enclosure where alternative thoughts are considered a contagious disease. I am not a supporter of Republican Sinn Fein but I liked the place and those in it all the same. They were the type of people I felt I could easily have been ‘on the blanket’ with. Rugged, ready and decent. Whereas, Sevastopol Street republicans, for the most part these days, look and behave more like prison governors.

Ann and Michelle must have felt likewise. They expressed no support for Republican Sinn Fein’s politics but felt that the party was pulling its weight in relation to the prison issue. Sinn Fein for its part had ignored both Tommy’s family and the prison problem. When asked if they had benefited from the supposed inclusiveness of the Good Friday Agreement they responded with a very definite ‘no’. They had experienced no change. Michelle was more direct. ‘People measure it in their own daily lives. Before it, there were husbands and brothers in jail. After it, there are still husbands and brothers in jail. Where is the "good" in the Good Friday Agreement?’

Ann said:If Sinn Fein’s prisoners were still in we would have plenty of support. Now I find my house hit with eggs in the early hours of the morning. Tommy’s car was also done. No other house was hit. I sent my kids up to The St James Forum which is supposed to deal with this type of problem but I got no response. If I had been a Sinn Fein supporter I would have been treated differently. Some people have even stopped speaking to me because of the stand I have taken. Tommy is my husband and I shall support him. I don’t follow the politics of it all. I am not calling on anybody to support anything other than my husband and people like him. What they believe politically is up to them. Republican Sinn Fein is the only party doing something about Tommy’s situation and because they opened an office which I go to, as it helps my husband, some Sinn Fein supporters have stopped speaking to me.

I put it to her that this was hardly in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement - such people had no trouble talking to the Unionists.

Michelle spoke of a similar experience in Poleglass where she lives. She referred to being demonised. Some Sinn Fein supporters allege that she must be a supporter of those who bombed Omagh. ‘In their minds there only two categories - Sinn Fein or Omagh bombers. No wives, families, mothers or sisters. Family is family as far as I am concerned. I don’t argue for bombs or anything of the sort.’

When asked do they not feel isolated from everyone, that people just could not care any more and are just glad that it all seems to be over, the two women point out that it is not just republicans who offer support and sympathy. Others have expressed concern. Indeed, if the support the white line pickets get from passing motorists is an index of wider sympathy then the relatives of Tommy Crossan are by no means being left to stand alone. The two women also point out that despite the vindictive attitudes of some, many close to Sinn Fein are also sympathetic but are afraid to speak out. Such claims are always hard to substantiate but the Writers Group has found that some on the white line picket were ‘growled at’ by members of Sinn Fein for having participated in the protest. So at the very least, within Sinn Fein there are elements who are intent on making it hard for those who might wish to express solidarity with Tommy Crossan’s plight.

In Michelle’s mind there are those within Sinn Fein who are used to having the respect of many within the nationalist community. But it was a respect gained by their support for the type of activity, which led to Tommy Crossan being sent to jail.

Clearly, there are problems for Sinn Fein in all of this. Many grassroots members, while not sympathetic to the Continuity IRA or any IRA other than the Provisional one, are nevertheless even more hostile to the British brutalising or criminalising republican prisoners whatever their hue. Danny Morrison in a recent article called for the British government to wise up and stop its tactics of confronting prisoners if it wished to avoid a catastrophe.

With the protest clearly growing in size, what impact does the family think it has made? Michelle feels that it has helped alert people to the fact that there remains a problem in the prisons; that the Good Friday Agreement has not solved all that it promised to.

And for those close to republicans still inside their major fear has not been addressed at all. Ann said of her husband:

If the main republican political party is indifferent to their plight has the family not gone to the many ex-prisoner groups which are subsidiaries of Sinn Fein? Staffed by many who underwent experiences similar to Tommy, a kindred spirit would surely be found there? The family know little about these groups. No one from any of them has made contact or offered advice. Could it be that the groups are unaware of the family’s needs? Hardly, respond the women. At a recent film about the history of Long Kesh, showing in the Kennedy Centre, those holding a picket at the entrance in support of the prisoners were allegedly glared at by Gerry Kelly.

Ann, at this point seems resigned to the fatalistic belief that no help will come from any quarter other than that of ordinary people and bodies like Republican Sinn Fein who have no new masters in the political establishment to please and are therefore not embarrassed by identifying with Tommy Crossan and his comrades.

Ann Crossan’s struggle to maintain family cohesion and self-identity at a time when her children are moving rapidly through the various phases of their development is admirable and should be reinforced through a more benign prison system. Whatever the British state may think of Tommy Crossan it can hardly justify even to itself a punitive approach to his family. The Crossans as a family unit cannot see their father at the one time due to restrictive prison rules. And as if this were not enough, Ann and Michelle now fear that new harassment measures are about to be introduced. Reports coming out of the prison refer to visitors having to submit a photograph and agree to be fingerprinted in order to receive a visit. A new form of electronic ID.

Tommy Crossan’s imprisonment has disrupted their lives. Ann speaks of her young son as if the future is marked out for him independent of the family’s control or wishes. He is growing up in an area in which some are intent on victimising the family because of the political activities of the father. The child can no longer concentrate and has difficulties settling in school. The children have been threatened along with their mother in and around the visiting area of Maghaberry prison by loyalists. Ann claims her Limerick accent does not help as it is like a green flag to an orange bull. On one occasion her car just avoided being rammed by loyalists as she left the prison. ‘The prison staff are all too eager to identify us to loyalist visitors’. Not much had changed, I concluded, since my days in prison. It was often said amongst republican prisoners that we were only in jail to keep the screws off the streets. If so, society should find a much more humane way of dealing with its screw problem so that ordinary people can get on with their lives.

The interview draws to a close. For myself it was a lesson in understanding. I had been taken back over the years to the era of the H Block struggle. Only this time I stood with those protesting on the outside rather than in the cells and wings of H Block 4. I could see the mixture of tiredness and determination on their faces. My mind drifted back over other women who had made the long journey. A sort of pilgrimage in pursuit of progress which wore them down and shortened their lives. Women, who have a special resting place in the minds of those who either knew them or were witness to their struggle. The mothers of friends such as Laurence McKeown and Jackie and Micky McMullan who tried so hard yet never lived to see their sons emerge from a penal Hades.