‘One brother would carry another’: Emotions, political imprisonment, and the prison memoirs of the ‘blanketmen’

This article critically examines how the emotive experience of political imprisonment is represented in prison memoirs. Using the memoirs of former Irish Republican Army (IRA) members who were involved in prison-related protest in the 1970s and 80s as an empirical basis, it goes beyond surface level cultural reproductions (i.e. murals, songs, and posters) to explore how lived experience of political imprisonment is defined by a complex interplay between loyalty and guilt. The article identifies how the memoirists’ competing roles as IRA volunteers, comrades, sons, husbands, and brothers shaped their lived experience of political imprisonment. Establishing that loyalty and guilt are multi-faceted emotions that emerge out of different relationships, in different contexts and for different reasons, the article argues that nuanced conceptual differences must be acknowledged within, as well as between, these emotions. The article identifies how, for political prisoners at least, loyalty means dedication to collective action, the relegation of self-interest, and fidelity to dead comrades, whereas guilt manifest itself as feelings of benefiting from the sacrifice of dead comrades, recognising their capacity to hurt others, and attempts to belatedly repair past hurt. These insights are instructive in understanding both the historical legacy of political imprisonment and its contemporaneous impact in a global climate of increasing political polarisation and violent unrest.