Kieran Nugent

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Mural depicting Kieran Nugent.

Kieran "Header" Nugent (Irish: Ciarán Núinnseann^{[citation needed]}, 1958 - 4 May 2000) was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army and best known for being the first IRA 'blanket man' in the H-Blocks. When sentenced to 3 years Nugent refused to wear a prison uniform and said the prison guards would have to "...nail it to my back".^[1]^[2]

1 Life before prison
2 Prison life
3 Death
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Life before prison

Kieran Nugent's childhood came at a time when Northern Ireland was exploding into turmoil. On 20 March 1973 as a 15 year old he was standing with a friend on the corner of Merrion Street and Grosvenor Road, when a car pulled up beside them and one of the occupants asked them for directions. Another occupant of the vehicle then opened fire with a sub machine gun. Kieran was seriously wounded after being shot eight times in the chest, arms and back by loyalists. A friend Bernard McErlean, also aged 15, who was standing nearby was shot and killed. ^[3]

[edit] Prison life

In the coming years he joined the IRA as a young man. He was arrested, aged 16, by the British Army and spent five months on remand in Crumlin Road Prison. When he was eventually tried, the case against him was withdrawn and he was released. He became an active volunteer until his arrest and imprisonment, without trial, on 9 February 1975 under Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland He spent nine months in Cage 4 of Long Kesh prison camp until 12 November 1976. He was imprisoned again after his arrest on 12 May 1976, and sentenced to three years imprisonment on 14 September 1976 for hijacking a vehicle and, upon entering the Maze Prison, refused to wear a prison uniform. He was not provided with alternative clothing and wrapped himself in the blanket from his cell beginning the "Blanket Protest".

He was soon joined in his protest; Jackie McMullan was the next prisoner to don the blanket,^[4] followed by six more republican prisoners from the Beechmount area of Belfast. By Christmas 1976 the number had risen to over forty prisoners on protest. From this moment on republican prisoners emulated him and this started five years of prison protests in pursuit of political status, which ended in the 1981 Hunger Strike and the death of seven IRA and three INLA prisoners.^[5]