Prisoner 1082 Read online

  INTRODUCTION

  This book tells the tale of a dramatic incident during the 1956–′62 campaign of resistance to British rule in Ireland. The story told is much more than that. It places the author and the campaign in its proper historical setting. Many young men throughout Ireland were persuaded that only by taking up arms could justice be achieved. The social, political and historical influences that convinced them are set out here. In that context the personal and family history is also included to explain why two young men found themselves on the top of a prison wall on a bitterly cold winter’s night at risk of being shot dead by police marksmen stationed in the prison’s gun turrets. The story is one of success but also failure. One of the success stories centres on ‘the one that got away’. I did not achieve it on my own; courageous people in Belfast, Tyrone and Monaghan contributed to my escape against all the odds. They placed themselves and their families in danger by providing shelter, transport and cover for a fugitive most of them had never met. But why did they take such risks for no benefit to themselves? The reason is explained in this book and, as a result, begs the question: why did the British government ignore all the warning signals?

  In the mid-1950s thousands of respectable people in Mid-Ulster voted not once, not twice, but three times for a ‘convicted felon’ in Crumlin Road Gaol. This should have told the government that there was, to paraphrase the Bard, ‘something rotten in the state of Northern Ireland’. The people were convinced that no one was listening, least of all the government, who claimed that the six-county state was ‘an integral part of the United Kingdom’. The government served only one section of its own citizens. If it had acted then, it is quite possible that not only would the campaign of resistance – known as ‘Operation Harvest’ –never have taken place but neither would the thirty years′ war between 1968 and 1998. There was also a responsibility on the Unionist parliament in Stormont to deal promptly and transparently with the fundamental issues of ‘one man, one vote’ and other forms of discrimination. The politicians did not rise to the challenge and were humiliated throughout the world in later years by having their parliament prorogued by their own allies, a Tory government in London, as not being fit to govern. The lesson is universal – take care of your minorities and do not let injustices fester.

  The book also provides a unique record of the British penal system in the mid-twentieth century by someone who experienced it at first hand. I spent my eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first birthdays in Crumlin Road Gaol. I describe in detail the nineteenth-century layout of the prison and the modus operandi of the Governor and his staff. Two men were executed in the prison in 1961, a year after my escape. These were the last executions to take place in Northern Ireland. The book describes the conditions and the daily routine, making an important contribution to the penal history of the last century.

  Many of my fellow prisoners were among the leadership of the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA, none more prominent than my fellow escapee, John Kelly, the Belfast republican who featured so often in the events that have shaped the ‘new dispensation’ in the Six Counties. The narrative provides part of the genesis of the rise of the northern republicans in the years following my incarceration.

  Finally, the book follows my move from participation in physical force solutions to involvement in highlighting injustices elsewhere in Irish life. My escape was a severe embarrassment to the British but also to a minority among the IRA leadership within the prison, as it was not authorised by them. Consequently, the event has been practically airbrushed out of Northern Ireland history and, amazingly, out of authorised republican history also. Down the years a common question was: ‘Whatever happened to the man from Gallows Hill?’ This book tells that story. This is my memoir.

  A SHORT CHRONOLOGY OF IRISH HISTORY

  Included here is a thumbnail sketch of Irish history for readers who may not be familiar with the context. Very early dates are approximate. History is often popularly discussed in simplistic terms but behind apparently straightforward facts lies a mound of complexity. This summary is no exception.

  BC (Before Christ) There is no record that the Romans ever invaded Ireland.

  AD 432 St Patrick arrives to convert Ireland to Christianity.

  800 Vikings come to colonise Ireland.

  1014 Brian Boru defeats the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf.

  1155 English Pope (Adrian IV) issues the Bull Laudabiliter granting King Henry II of England permission to reform the Church in Ireland.

  1169 Anglo-Norman forces invade the Irish province of Leinster.

  1172 The English occupation of Ireland begins with a royal charter establishing overlordship. Ireland remained for many years a land of tribal chiefs who governed their own specific areas and only came together to fight a common foe. From this year onwards England was the main enemy and skirmishes, campaigns and wars were fought continuously, with occasional seminal events which changed the course of Irish history.

  1536 Henry VIII’s Reformation Laws applied to parts of Ireland, with the suppression of Catholic monasteries. During the reign of Henry VIII the split with Rome created the Protestant and Catholic divide. While England, for the most part, acquiesced with Henry and his new religion, the Irish did not.

  1558–1603 The rule of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, causes much hardship in Ireland, resulting in several uprisings against English rule.

  1586 Large plantations begin and continue in later decades as English people are given the lands of the native Irish. Thousands of English and Scottish settlers usurp the good lands of the native Irish and bring to the country their new religion.

  1592 Red Hugh O’Donnell escapes from Dublin Castle and later joins in the Ulster rebellion against the English.

  1598 The forces of O’Donnell and O’Neill defeat the English at the Battle of the Yellow Ford.

  1601 Defeat for the Ulster chieftains at the Battle of Kinsale when the Spanish Armada, which comes to their aid, is also defeated. The ‘Flight of the Earls’ takes place in 1607.

  1641 Irish Catholics fight back and rebellion spreads.

  1646 Owen Roe O’Neill defeats the English in the famous Battle of Benburb.

  1649 Owen Roe O’Neill is poisoned and dies. Oliver Cromwell arrives in Ireland and begins his campaign of massacre. While claiming to be a republican in England (he executed King Charles I in 1649), his name will forever be vilified in Ireland.

  1650–9 The Act for Settling Ireland sets out draconian punishments for the Irish, including forfeiture of their land and banishment to the West Indies and to the province of Connaught, where the land is very poor.

  1658 Oliver Cromwell dies.

  1690 A war between two English kings, the Catholic James II and the Protestant Dutch William of Orange, culminates in victory for William at the Battle of the Boyne, an event celebrated on 12 July each year by the Orange Order in Northern Ireland.

  1697 & ′98 Additional Penal Laws forbid Catholic graveyards and banishes Catholic clergy. Penal Laws were aimed at reducing the Irish to the condition of slaves.

  1798 Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen, most of whom are Presbyterian, rebel against English rule with the slogan ‘Break the connection with England’. They are defeated and the French navy, which had sailed to support the rebellion, scattered in Donegal Bay.

  1800 The great betrayal. The Act of Union between Ireland and England is approved by means of threats and bribery.

  1803 Robert Emmet’s rebellion is defeated and its leaders hanged.

  1829 Catholic Emancipation is enacted and Daniel O’Connell, ‘The Liberator’, takes his seat in Westminster parliament the following year.

  1836 The Royal Irish Constabulary police force is formed. (It was diss
olved in 1923.)

  1845–50 Famine results from the potato crop failure, while grain is exported. One million people die of hunger and plague and another million emigrate to America. Neglect by the British authorities is blamed for the Famine, which leaves an indelible scar on the Irish psyche.

  1867 The Fenian uprising is defeated. Catholics in the North were forever after called ‘Fenians’ by loyalists using it as a derogatory term.

  1879 The Land League is formed seeking the ‘Three Fs’: Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale. The country is mobilised, with Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell as leaders.

  1884 The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is formed in Thurles, County Tipperary. The association has grown to become the largest amateur sporting organisation in the world.

  1889 The Pioneer Total Abstinence Association is formed by Fr James Cullen. It leads to thousands of Irish people leading sober lives.

  1893 The Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) is founded in an effort to encourage the speaking of Irish. (The Land League, the GAA, the Pioneer Association and the Gaelic League were the harbingers of a more confident Ireland, and all contributed to the eventual 1916 Rising and the War of Independence, 1918–22.)

  1916 An uprising with its headquarters in the General Post Office, O’Connell Street, Dublin ends in failure. However, the execution of the leaders galvanises the people in support of a bloody conflict with the British, known as the Black and Tan War or War of Independence (1918–21).

  1921 Treaty with England gives independence to twenty-six counties of Ireland while creating a border between them and the six northeastern counties known as Northern Ireland. Stormont government is introduced in the North, described as a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people. (It was dissolved in 1972 by the British government.)

  1922–23 Civil War among republicans results in victory for the pro-Treaty forces and the formation of the two competing political parties that between them have ruled the twenty-six counties for most of the past eighty-six years – Fianna Fáil (anti-Treaty) and Fine Gael (pro-Treaty).

  1937 New constitution adopted by the Irish people.

  1939 Second World War begins, during which the twenty-six counties remain nominally neutral. The IRA begins a bombing campaign in Britain during the war.

  1949 The twenty-six counties officially become the Republic of Ireland.

  1956–62 Another IRA ‘resistance campaign’ begins – Operation Harvest.

  1968 The Civil Rights campaign begins in Northern Ireland. Its aims are universal suffrage in local government elections, an end to religious discrimination in housing and jobs and the disbanding of the B Special constabulary.

  1969–98 Provisional IRA ‘armed struggle’ against British rule in Ireland.

  1998 IRA ceasefire in 1997 is followed by the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement) which was validated by the people on both sides of the border – by over 94 per cent in the Republic and over 70 per cent in Northern Ireland. For the first time since 1972 the Stormont government is restored, but under very different conditions.

  1

  EUROPE’S ALCATRAZ

  Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast was famed as the most impregnable in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. The recommendations of a special security committee had just been implemented, including new wall lighting outside individual cells on A Wing, new fluorescent lighting within the prison and the closing off of A Wing by raising the wall 6 feet. Gun turrets on each corner of the outer walls, manned twenty-four hours a day, were already a feature. The high-security A Wing housed political prisoners as well as ‘ordinary’ criminals, many of whom had death sentences for murder reprieved.

  Despite all this security, two of us had a plan, and on a cold winter’s evening in 1960 we were on top of the outer wall of Crumlin Road Gaol. Conscious of the marksmen who manned the two gun turrets we eased our way along the slippery connecting wall towards the outer wall. We had to stop to draw breath as sleet and wind hampered our progress. Our clothes were totally inadequate for the weather – shirt, trousers, heavy woollen socks and light rubber slippers. We heard armed officers in the inner yard as they good-humouredly jostled one another to keep themselves warm. Because of an unfortunate incident with our long rope, the only plan left was a hastily concocted one fraught with danger. One of us would hold the remains of the rope as an anchor while the other lowered himself down the 25-foot wall. I went first while John Kelly from Belfast held the rope. As the rope received my full weight, it broke. I fell outside the wall on to a concrete base while John fell back inside the prison. I was free, but could not move.

  It was St Stephen’s Day, 26 December, also known as Boxing Day. Earlier that evening we had all watched a film in the common room, which was also used as a church, chapel and concert hall. After tea we were allowed two hours’ recreation in the dining hall. In A Wing dining hall prisoners played table tennis, snooker, cards or just chatted, under the watchful eye of three warders. The mood was relaxed and there was an air of relief as Christmas Day had now passed – Christmas can be a sad time for those in prison, away from family and friends. At 5 p.m. John Kelly from Adela Street in Belfast and myself had separately raised an excuse to go to our cells to fetch a table tennis ball and, for my part, a table tennis bat. Prisoners could only leave one locked area for another under supervision. The warder was very reluctant to let us out at all, especially at the same time, but eventually allowed John out and after a few minutes called to the warder in A Wing that he was sending me out there. This was the vital access we needed. ‘One off,’ they would call, and the receiving officer would reply ‘One on.’ Instead of going to my own cell on A3, on the third storey of the wing, I went to John’s cell on A2. Prisoners were not allowed to go into other prisoners’ cells and the warder was already shouting, ‘Donnelly, where are you going?’ I answered, moving quickly, that I was collecting a table tennis bat. He followed me up the stairs but got distracted, which left the coast clear to John’s cell. The cell was in darkness and John was still attempting to finish the work we began on Christmas Eve – cutting the bars. Standing by was our good friend Séamus McRory from Ballymena whose task was to throw our coats into the yard when we dropped from the second storey. We had cut the bars with hacksaw blades but the biggest obstacle was the steel frame that acted as a weather barrier with inserts of small rectangular panes of glass. It was particularly difficult to cut as the surface was thin and uneven, and cutting it produced a sound akin to a cat in pain. We had determined that four cuts on the bars and window frame would allow sufficient room for us to squeeze out one by one.

  The authorities were always delighted when a prisoner washed his cell out. So just before Christmas John and I had put our names down with our individual class officers for such permission. My cell was located directly above John’s, and when John began to cut the bars I began cleaning my table in the corridor outside my cell with a borrowed scrubbing brush, making sure my scrubbing drowned out the sound of the cutting below.

  On St Stephen’s Day we had to finish cutting the window frame to facilitate our exit. This created some noise, which could not be prevented. John pulled the cut section of the bars into the cell and forced the frame back with a large bumper handle. I climbed on top of the bedstead which stood against the wall and on to the slanting window sill. Many aspects of the prison architecture – including the slanted window sills – made escape almost impossible. But we were both young and physically very fit – John was twenty-four and I had just ‘celebrated’ my twenty-first birthday three months earlier. Now with my head and shoulders outside the bars I could feel the exhilarating tingle of sleet on my face. We had done it.

  My satisfaction was short lived, however, as by now the warder was in full pursuit of me, bawling out ‘Donnelly, Donnelly, where are you? Back to the dining hall immediately.’ We knew we had the element of surprise and the three of us could have easily overpowered him. But it was not in our plan and no thought h
ad been given as to how we could secure him after we quietened him, so I crawled back into the darkened cell. ‘Leave it to me,’ I said, as we heard the warder approach. I placed my hand on the peep hole in the door to prevent him from seeing the hole in the window silhouetted by the outside lights. At the same time I pulled the door open slightly and had the nerve to say ‘Boo!’, letting on that I was only hiding on him. But he was not so easily fooled. He demanded to know why I was there and my excuse was that we were having an Irish class; we had placed books on the table to create that impression. He insisted that we either go to the dining hall or choose to be locked in our separate cells. I knew that if we returned to the dining hall the warder there would not let me back up the stairs. Jails are mostly fussy, busy places, but when the warders are attempting to secure their exact numbers they can be very tense. I made a decision, telling the warder that I would prefer to be locked up in my cell. A quick, unnoticed consultation with John agreed a plan that both of us should seek to be unlocked in a few minutes to go to the dining hall. The situation was excruciating, as we would be separated with no chance of communication.

  As we sat in our individual cells we could hear the noise in the wing, with bells ringing, and knew there was no guarantee that the warder would respond to our call to be released or agree to do so. After what seemed an eternity (it was about fifteen minutes) I heard John’s bell ringing below. Prisoners were discouraged from ringing the bells, since at night time the warder needed to be accompanied by another officer, which upset their timetable. It was used, therefore, only when someone became seriously ill. That St Stephen’s Day seems to have been an exception, however, as several other bells sounded apart from ours.

  As soon as I heard John’s door being opened I assumed that he had been allowed to return to recreation, and so pressed my own bell. My hope was that it would distract the warder, Mr Rampf, and that John could sneak back into his cell while the officer came to see what I wanted. That is how it panned out. The warder came to my cell a bit frustrated. ‘First you want to be locked up and now you want to go to recreation. Do you think I have nothing to do but run around after you?’ He kept a constant watch on me as I descended the two flights of stairs on my way to the dining hall. When satisfied that the recreation hall warder had me in his sights he stopped looking and continued with another task.