punishment, the loss of remission which reduced a prisoner's sentence by fifty percent in exchange for good behaviour. Prisoners were entitled to four visits from friends or family each month, three were in exchange for good behaviour and the fourth was statutory. Protesting prisoners automatically forfeited the three "privileged" visits, and their refusal to wear prison uniform even for visits meant they forfeited the fourth. This left one censored letter in and out of the prison each month as their only contact with the outside world, until after several months some prisoners compromised by agreeing to wear uniforms for visits to maintain contact with the paramilitary leaderships outside the prison. As a result of the IRA's assassination campaign against prison officers, relations between the prisoners and prison officers were tense. In March 1978 some prisoners refused to leave their cells to shower or use the lavatory because of attacks by prison officers, and were provided with wash-hand basins in their cells. The prisoners requested showers be installed in their cells and when this request was turned down they refused to use the wash-hand basins. Dirty protest and hunger strikes At the end of April 1978 a fight occurred between a prisoner and a prison officer in H-Block 6. The prisoner was taken away to solitary confinement, and news spread across the wing that the prisoner had been badly beaten. The prisoners responded by smashing the furniture in their cells, and the prison authorities responded by removing the remaining furniture from the cells leaving the prisoners in cells with just blankets and mattresses. The prisoners responded by refusing to leave their cells, and as a result the prison officers were unable to clear them. This resulted in the blanket protest escalating into the dirty protest, as the prisoners were unable to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots) so resorted to smearing excrement on the walls of their cells. On 27 October 1980, IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeeley, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon, began a hunger strike aimed at restoring political status for paramilitary prisoners by securing what were known as the "Five Demands": The right not to wear a prison uniform; The right not to do prison work; The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits; The right to one visit, one letter and