We were taken out into the loading yard and dragged into a big van in which each of us was locked inside individual little cubicles where we sat handcuffed and facing the front.

To my left side was a window which I could just see through. After sitting there for a few minutes I saw the big steel door of the Steelhouse Lane Compound roll up, and as the van drew out into the road I saw a massive crowd. They surged forward, banging on the sides of the van and spitting, shouting every name imaginable, and screaming for us to be hanged. I saw placards with gallows drawn on them, and others which read 'HANG THE IRA BASTARDS'. I could see the faces of people in the crowd, and every one was contorted with hatred. All I could think of was how they had got it so wrong.

Then we were through the crowd and were off at top speed with the van's lights flashing and sirens blaring as it raced along in the middle of a convoy of marked police cars, unmarked cars full of armed detectives, and half a dozen motorcycle outriders.

Within minutes we were at Winson Green Prison, pulling up at the reception block. Peering through my window I could see nothing but prison officers, cops with shotguns shouting out orders, and dogs barking and snarling. The door to my cubicle was unlocked and the cuffs were taken off. A big cop pulled me up from the seat by my shirt collar, and with a hefty push and a kick up the backside I was sent flying down the narrow little corridor along the middle of the van. I stumbled out of the back door and down the van steps. I was grabbed by the arms and frog-marched into the prison reception area. I was slammed against a wall and told to stay there, not moving a muscle, with my nose touching the brickwork.

One of the prison officers on duty who saw us arrive, Ivor Vincent, later said: 'There was a permanent banter from the police, clearly trying to frighten or intimidate the men. All of them appeared stiff and awkward and ungainly as they moved to the bottom of the van's steps as though they had been beaten about the body and/or legs. As they came out of the van they were visibly petrified to a man.'

He watched us being taken up a set of steps and through a door into the prison. He later recalled that as one of us went in he heard a noise 'which I immediately recognised as being similar to a head hitting a wall very hard indeed'.

Another prison officer, Patrick Murtagh, was later to describe our arrival in the reception area. 'They were petrified, like zombies. Walker ran blindly across in front of the desk and straight into a wall. He even kept running after he had run into the wall, as though trying to run up it.' Murtagh knew me from my previous stay in the Green. With a snarl of contempt he told me: 'The IRA must be pretty hard up for recruits to have picked you.'

The other lads were lined up against the wall alongside me and the cops started shouting to the screws (prison officers, that is) to come and look at us and discover who was who. John Walker was next to me. They said he was the brigadier, that he was in charge of us all. They pulled him back a foot or two, and then hurled him straight into the wall. I was next. They said that I was the explosives expert, that I had made the bombs, and that there was enough gelignite in our homes to blow up half of Birmingham. Because I hadn't signed a statement they told the screws I should be given extra special treatment, and a cop gave me a sharp kick between the legs as an example. They went along the line with each of the others, spouting all this nonsense about them holding various ranks in the IRA. When they got to the end of the line there was a cry of 'you bastards' and a general free-for-all began, with the cops and the screws laying into us, all kicking and punching and screaming.

After a few minutes the cops left and we were told to sit on some benches before being called into another room one at a time. I went in to find several screws who started hurling a stream of verbal abuse. They told me to remove all my clothes and gave me some prison gear to put on. I was given a number. From now on I was no longer Paddy Joe Hill, but Prisoner 509496.

The others were dragged in to join me and had their clothes taken. As the last of us changed, the screws, loads of them by now, just went completely crazy attacking us. I was punched and kicked across the room and ended up supporting myself against a small swing door which led into the bath area. It was made of wood, and only about four feet high, like a shower screen. Somebody grabbed me by the hair and smashed my face down on top of the door. My nose burst apart and the blood ran from it like a tap. There was blood everywhere, all over my shirt and soaking my chest and stomach. A screw told me to keep my head up because the blood was making a mess on the floor. My eyes were beginning to close because I had been punched so much and my whole face was puffing up.

I remember old Hughie collapsing on to the ground and Richard and I trying to help him up. But the screws told us to get away and started kicking him and screaming at him to get up. They told him there were poor kids who would never be able to get up after what he had done. Hughie struggled across to the guy shouting loudest at him, and he was crying and begging not to be beaten any more. But they carried on.

Prison officer Brian Sharp knew it was out of control. He admitted later that while he had not taken part in the violence he had turned to one of his colleagues and said, 'Let' s get these blokes away before they get killed.'

They told us to get up to a cell on the first-floor landing and as we made our way up the stairs we were punched and kicked. They threw us all in one cell and slammed the door shut. Nobody said a word as we sat trying to take in what was happening to us. I remember looking at each one of the others, horrified at the state of them. And I realised I must have looked the same. My shirt was saturated in blood and my face was swollen up like a balloon. John looked like a zombie, as if his mind had closed down altogether. Richard' s chin was split and he had a hollow look in his eyes. Gerry and Hughie and Billy were the same - cut, blood-spattered and stunned. Gerry was the first to break the silence.

'Much more of this fucking stuff and I'm going to top myself,' he said. 'I just can't take any more.'

He'd put into words what we were all feeling. We sat there together for maybe fifteen minutes, mumbling that if we didn't commit suicide we would end up being killed. Over and over we kept asking each other how this could be happening to us. Whatever happened to being innocent until proved guilty?

Then came the sound of boots in the corridor and the jangling of keys as the cell door was unlocked. A bunch of screws told us we would have to get our kit. We staggered off somewhere with them to be given a bedroll, a chamber pot and some other bits and pieces. Then we were thrown into separate cells on D-wing, with an empty cell between each of us so that we could not communicate. We'd been there some time when I heard one of the cells being opened and a bellow that seemed to bounce off the cell doors as it echoed along the wing: 'Send the first one down.'

Seconds later I heard screams and shouts and swearing and knew that one of the others must be getting beaten again. The screws sounded as though they were working themselves into a real frenzy once more. The screams of whichever of the lads they had got trailed off, and I realised he was being taken off the wing. Then after a while the noise and commotion increased again as he was brought back to his cell. There was a brief pause after the cell door was slammed shut. Then came a shout. 'Next.' And it started all over again. This time I heard them shouting something about 'washing you dirty bastards' and knew we were being sent down to the bath.

Each time somebody was brought back the shouting got nearer to my cell, and I knew my turn was coming. It' s impossible for words to describe the sheer terror I felt, cowering in a corner of my cell. I knew with every passing second that the moment when my door would be opened was growing closer. What the hell was going on out there?

I heard a cell door slam again, and then the footsteps coming towards me. I went absolutely cold. Frozen. I was rooted to the spot with fear, terrified about what they might have in store for me now. The terror was well founded. A screw later recalled that during the bathing one of us had pleaded: 'All I want to do is die. Let me die. Just let me alone.'

My cell door was flung open and I saw a screw I recognised from my previous stay at Winson. I'm sure he remembered me, but he just fixed me with a cold stare and whispered, 'Down the stairs for a bath.'

I could hardly get up because I was so frightened, so he and another screw dragged me out and pulled me along the landing to the staircase which was lined with their mates. I got to the top of the stairs where they shouted, 'Down you go you Irish bastard', and started punching and kicking.

I could only get down the first step or two because they were falling over each other to have a go at me, but the next thing I knew I had been flung down the iron stairs. There were another two flights to go, so I scrambled to my feet and half ran, half stumbled the rest of the way. From the bottom of the stairs to the bath house was a gauntlet of screws and I rushed through, being kicked and punched and spat on as I went. As I got to the bath some screws grabbed me and started to pull my clothes off, shouting: 'Get a fucking bath, you dirty animal.' Then before my clothes were all off they just picked me up and tipped me in. Gordon Willingham was one of the screws at the bath. In a statement later he said, 'I lost my temper as soon as the first one came down because the very sight of them confirmed my opinion that they were fucking animals.'

The water was icy cold, and red because there was so much blood in there. Big clumps of hair were floating around. There was blood in the water, blood down the side of the bath, blood down the walls, blood on the floor and blood on the clothes dumped by the others.

They grabbed me by the hair and forced my head under the water again and again until I was sure I would drown. I had to struggle to get my head up so that I could breathe, but the more I struggled the more they beat me. They screamed at me to take the rest of my clothes off, so with them pulling at me I somehow got out and stripped. Then they told me to get back in and wash all the blood off myself. I got in again but it was impossible to get clean because there was just so much blood in the water. They told me to get out and get back up the stairs and threw me a towel. I staggered and stumbled back through the gauntlet of kicks and punches and practically crawled back up the stairs to my cell. I dried off, then sat there shivering and trembling in the cold.

After a while alone in my cell with just the towel, a screw came and threw some clothes in and told me to get dressed, saying the prison doctor would be coming soon to examine me. For a fleeting moment I thought this might be the chance to put an end to the nightmare. But the screw must have caught a glimmer of hope in my eyes, for he warned, 'And if you say a fucking word we'll be back.'

Thirty minutes later I again heard the sound of boots outside the door. It was flung open, and there stood the screw with the doctor, Kenneth Harwood.

'Right Hill, on your feet. Name and number to the doctor.'

'My name is Hill, but I don't know my number.'

Not knowing your number is sacrilege in prison. 'What do you mean you don't know your number?' barked the screw. 'Don't think you're going to be like the rest of this IRA scum in here who think they're political prisoners. You're all criminals, murdering scumbags. You're 509496 Hill and you'd better remember it.'

As the doctor began checking me I was too terrified to mention a word of what had happened, but it was so obvious I'd been beaten up I didn't think I would need to say anything. I doubt whether anything I might have said would have made any difference. He just wasn't interested. He asked what had happened to me to cause the cuts, the bruises and the blood. I said I'd fallen getting out of the police van, and I'd fallen in the prison while going up the stairs, and I'd fallen again going down the stairs.

After a cursory examination in which he jotted down notes of a few of the more trivial injuries on a pad, he said, 'Well Hill, you'll have to be more careful how you get out of police vans and walk down stairs in future.' Then he walked out and the door slammed behind him.

I was alone again.