A Way Out of the Maze.

(Northern Ireland's Maze Prison

closes)

Anthony McIntyre and Steven Rogan first met in the 1970s. They were young men on H-Block 1
of Northern Ireland's Maze Prison, the top- security home for the province's Protestant and
Catholic paramilitary prisoners. McIntyre, a Catholic, was an IRA man serving a life sentence for
murder. Rogan, a Protestant, was a prison guard just two years on the job. Ostensibly the men
were enemies; over the years the IRA would assassinate more than two dozen prison guards.
And yet inside the Maze, corralled by concrete and steel, McIntyre and Rogan developed a
friendship. They talked about mundane things--politics, the news of the day, the prison regime--
and about their own upbringings and personal lives. Then, in the early '90s, they both left:
McIntyre because he had done his time, Rogan because he moved on to a new job at a
detention centre for young offenders. They returned to their own, very separate communities.
This being Northern Ireland, they didn't see each other again.

Until a few weeks ago--when they bumped into each other on Fountain Street in the centre of
Belfast. McIntyre now has a PhD in politics and runs a program for ex-prisoners. Rogan, who
still works at the detention centre, is studying for a psychology degree. On Fountain Street, the
two men, both now 43, exchanged pleasantries and reminisced about their lives at the institution
that brought them together. "It's funny how life works out," Rogan said later. "I guess it just
shows how things are changing. In a way, it was fascinating to see [in prison] the consequences
of what was happening on the street. I would be talking to inmates the same age as me. There
was their side and our side. But for the grace of God, I used to think, I am on this side." McIntyre
is more laconically philosophical about his 16 years behind bars: "It is not a wasted life. It is a
life lived differently."

There may be more impromptu reunions like McIntyre and Rogan's in coming months. By the
end of this week, the last of the Maze prisoners- -52 republicans and 36 loyalists--will have been
released under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement; the Maze will close for good later
this year. But the demise of the Maze is not just about putting ex-cons out on the streets. Her
Majesty's Maze Prison--with its historic strikes, its martyrs to different causes, its famous alumni
like Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, and David Ervine, chief
spokesman for the Progressive Unionist Party-- stands as a stark symbol of Ulster's sectarian
conflict. It served as an incubator of political thought for those who were held there (next
article)--so much so that some people believe the peace process as we know it was born at the
Maze. "Many of the amateur architects of the peace process graduated from there," says
Ervine, an ex-Maze prisoner whose support helped make the 1998 accord possible. "There are
few places where you will go through more reflection and self-examination. I would not be the
man I am today were it not for prison."

The turning point, in this view, came on March 1, 1981. Republican prisoners began a hunger
strike that would end in the death of 10 inmates over the next seven months. The strike was the
culmination of protests that began in 1976 when the inmates lost their special status as political
prisoners. At the centre of the struggle was Bobby Sands, the IRA's leader in the Maze. Sands
would be remembered by most people as a martyr; in May of that year he died of starvation
after 66 days without food. But it was his extraordinary election to the British Parliament a month
earlier that showed that the republican cause might be better served by politics than terror.
Danny Morrison, then Sinn Fein publicity director, says, "It changed the situation totally. If Bobby
Sands had not won that election, we would never have convinced the grass roots to get
involved in politics. It showed that [Sinn Fein] had support. It gave us confidence."

From its inception in 1971, the Maze was in effect the very first monument to what came to be
known as "the Troubles." Civil unrest turned to terrorist violence in 1969, and within just a few
years the Northern Ireland prison population quadrupled to 3,000. In their protests over the
political-prisoner issue, republican prisoners refused to work, didn't bathe (in some cases for
years), went "on the blanket" (that is, wore bed sheets instead of official prison garb) and
smeared excrement on the walls of their cells. "My God, the stench of urine and excrement
would turn you physically sick," recalls Rogan.

In 1981, after the prisoners agreed to end the hunger strike, they got their political status back.
But the troubles inside the walls were not over. In September 1983, just days after watching
Clint Eastwood in "Escape From Alcatraz," 38 republican prisoners, many dressed as guards,
staged the biggest prison breakout in British history. Half were quickly rounded up. All but four of
the rest were eventually recaptured, some after rejoining the IRA and committing new acts of
terror. There was another escape attempt in 1994. It was foiled by a prison dog handler, who
discovered a 40-foot tunnel leading to an IRA prison wing.

Even if the guards controlled the perimeter, there was by the time of the Good Friday Agreement
plenty of evidence that the prisoners ran things inside the prison. That was the conclusion of an
official inspection report in November 1998, coinciding with the announcement that the Maze
would be mothballed by the end of 2000. The report said that basic prison rules could not be
enforced and that guards lived in a state of fear and humiliation. The Maze, it said, was "not
safe for prisoners or staff."

Nobody has figured out just what to do with the Maze after it closes. If it is a monument to
anything anymore, says Anthony McIntyre, it's to the fact that nothing has changed in Northern
Ireland since he landed in the Maze in 1977. "We fought," McIntyre says bitterly, "all the way
back to round one." David Ervine, who sits in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, is more
sanguine. He says of the Maze, where he served five years after being stopped in a car
containing a bomb: "We realized that a futile war is an immoral war, but it took the soldiers like
us to draw back. The politicians were not giving any guidance. It is easy for people to blame 30
years of violence on a handful of prisoners, but approximately 30,000 people in a population of
1.6 million went through those doors. They might have been part of the problem, but they have
to be part of the solution." For all his bitterness, McIntyre is one soldier who drew back. And
despite the divide that separates communities in Northern Ireland, Rogan found a friend, for a
while, in McIntyre. If they can be part of the solution, the Maze will at least not be a monument
to hopelessness.