HM Prison Brixton

By the time Terence McSweeney died in Brixton Prison on 25 October 1920, the British government was facing a problem far greater than the activities of the IRA alone.

Across large parts of Ireland, British authority itself was beginning to break down.

Police barracks had been abandoned, ordinary courts were increasingly disrupted, and alongside them that other system was emerging, the system we discussed in the last episode.

Militant demonstrations, window-breaking, taxi turning over, protests in the highest quarters.

For this we need volunteers who are prepared to give up their liberty for a few months in Brixton Prison.

And to show how ready I am, how deeply I feel about our cause, I myself am willing, nay, proud, proud, to sacrifice my best friend, William Kerr.

I resign! I resign! Brother William has volunteered to lead our procession down Whitehall to Downing Street, where, in full view of the policeman on duty outside, he will hurl a brick through the window of No.

Terence MacSwiney had decided that if the British authorities claimed the power to imprison him, he would answer with the only weapon they could not easily control, his own body and his own willingness to suffer.

MacSwiney was then transferred to Brixton Prison in South London.

But a card you-- before we follow him there, I want to linger for a moment on the buildings that framed his last days in Cork.

Cork City Hall, the place from which he was arrested, the civic center of the corporation that had recognized Dáil Éireann, and the place where MacSwiney had served as Ard-Mhéara Chorcaí.

It no longer exists.

The only building that exists in Cork that has a physical connection to that last momentous week in MacSwiney's life in Cork is the Cork Military Detention Barracks, around which this series centers incredibly currently under the threat of a wrecking ball.

MacSwiney was transferred to Brixton Prison in London, and what had begun in Cork now became very much an international story.

At first, the reports were simply about the Lord Mayor of Cork refusing food in a British prison, but the days kept passing.

By the first anniversary of Eileen's murder, around 10,000 people had been interviewed or contacted during the wider inquiry, and approximately 3,000 formal statements had been taken.

A report published around the first anniversary said Gardaí were waiting to question an unnamed man being held in Brixton Prison in London.

The man had admitted one murder and an attempted murder.

He had also been linked to the death of a former girlfriend in Scotland and had been in Galway around the time Eileen was killed.

After a 17-day manhunt, on 2nd October 1990, both men were ambushed by the police in a lane close to Stonehenge.

Charged with conspiracy to murder Sir Charles Tidbury and to cause explosions, while awaiting trial at the Old Bailey, Quinlan and Macaulay were held at Brixton Prison in South London.

They were to be tried, convicted and imprisoned for a very long time.

on Sunday 7 July 1991, having been held for eight months.

As said, the other suspected killer was Pierce Gerald McCauley.

a ginger-haired, buck-toothed, five-foot-six-inch long-standing member of the Provisional IRA and a senior figure in Sinn Fein for 30 years.

Six years after the Litchfield shooting, the failed attack on Sir Charles Didbury, and five years after the breakout from Brixton Prison, on the morning of the 7th of June 1996, McCauley and his cohorts, Michael O'Neill, Jeremiah Sheedy and Kevin Walsh, robbed a security van, escorting 181,000 Irish pounds to a post office in Adair, County Limerick.

Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, Detective Jerry McCabe, a 53-year-old married father of three, was shot dead, and his partner, Ben O'Sullivan, injured, before either of them could draw their guns to defend themselves.

were you? Where were you for that five and a half months?

Funnily enough, I went to Brixton Prison.

And then they must have observed me and thought, this case is all right.

Sent them to an open, Nick.

You can watch the full exclusive interview with Andy Burnham on BBC iPlayer.

You will have heard that I reported from inside Brixton Prison.

We also had the last prisons minister calling for the removal of women from prison.

This is a conversation that we are not ending with the programme, although we are ending it now.

The year is 1916.

A tall, bearded, ruggedly handsome man sits heavily guarded in Brixton Prison.

He is about to go on trial for his life.

Round and round me the argument rages.