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.

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 had 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.

As I came to the end of the stairs which ran down from the centre of the wing, I turned and began running up again saying, ‘Oh, I forgot my table tennis bat.’ The warder shouted back, ‘Donnelly, come back here’, but I knew he was en route to another check and would hardly trouble me again for at least three or four minutes. That is all the time we needed. I ran immediately to John’s cell. ‘Let’s go,’ I said and climbed onto the slanting window sill again and, with the rope hanging loosely around my neck, secured one end to one of the solid bars. I abseiled down the two storeys to the ground, leaving the rope in place for John and holding the bottom end firm.

We were now in the yard nearest the outer wall, in the driving sleet. The temperature was a shock to us since, for the past four years, we had never been out in the dark during the winter. Séamus McRory was unable to throw out our coats as he was forced to create a diversion when the warder returned to the cell door. Séamus, a first cousin of the writer Frank McCourt, critically informed the warder that both John and I had already gone down to the recreation hall. We were unaware of what was going on in the cell we had just vacated, but quickly realised that we would have to do without our jackets.

Looking around, we saw that some cells had lights on, but there were no lights on in the administration block, our first target, apart from an illumination in the main corridor. There was no activity or movement anywhere in the yard, which meant that we were on our own. We did not wait long because we knew something had happened inside. We began to crawl along the open surface water drain towards the administration block, situated in the centre of the prison. The drain was cut deeply into the ground and the raised garden of grass and flower beds provided us with added protection. This was a crawl of some 200 metres. Wet, cold and bedraggled, we eventually reached the first window of the administration block which housed the Governor’s office, the common hall and the reception area which buzzed with activity during the day. Internally the administration block leads to the Circle, from which the four wings of the prison spread out. The building was in darkness except for an illumination in the main corridor.

With our rope made from torn blankets, sheets and electric flex we began the ascent of the three-storey building. First John climbed the bottom window, whose horizontal and vertical bars acted like a ladder. With John positioned on the top horizontal bar I climbed on to his shoulders like an acrobat to reach beyond the jutting-out ledge and grab the bottom bar of the second window before hauling myself precariously on to the second window ledge. We had identified this manoeuvre as critical to our plan. I then lowered my rope to allow John to join me at the second window. This window was the platform for our escape. In the authorities’ eagerness to make Crumlin Road Gaol the most impregnable in western Europe they had increased the height of the outer wall by a number of feet. They had also raised the inner semicircular wall which closed off A Wing from access to the front gate inner area. This new inner wall was raised to the same height as the outer wall. This actually worked to our advantage, as the window right beside the new wall which we were now on was the perfect launching pad for an escape. The armed police in the gun turrets could not see that part of the administration block because of the laundry, tailors’ workshop and cobblers’ workshop building, while the armed police in the D Wing turret, where the internees were held, could not see it since it was on their blind side.

The plan had gone very well up to now and our only concern was time – we knew that the continuous counting of prisoners which is a feature of all prisons would eventually highlight our absence. We had lost some valuable time because of the attention of the A Wing warder. Now as John caught the lowering rope to raise himself up, the first unplanned incident occurred – a portion of the 70-foot rope fell on to the wrought iron railing over the tunnel linking the prison to the courthouse across the road. The rope fell through the railing and became entangled. John and I pulled vigorously on the rope to free it, but it broke and we were left with the weaker portion in our hands. The original plan was to anchor the rope to the bars of the second-floor window where we were out of sight of the gun turrets and then, bringing the rope with us, move quickly across the linking inner wall to the outer wall and drop safely into the outside world.

One Out, One In

Every Christmas Day we were locked up for twenty hours out of the twenty-four. As the authorities said, the warders needed the time off to be with their families! On the evening of that Christmas Day I had begun to make the rope in my cell. It was a precarious activity as the warders checked the cells every half hour by looking in the peep hole and moving on quietly to the next cell. When the lights were out they shone their flashlamps through the second aperture in the door. Some warders wore slippers at night, possibly for comfort, which made it difficult to hear them. The new security lighting outside my window offered sufficient illumination for the task at hand. From midnight I sat on the floor intertwining the flex and blankets. But the constant checking of our cells and other noises prevented me from completing the job. In anticipation of each check I had to jump into bed and pretend to be asleep, and allow some time in case the warder returned, which sometimes he did.

The security pattern in the prison was impressive. There were daily unannounced searches of people and cells and contact between warders and prisoners was on a strictly professional basis; indeed many of the political prisoners avoided any unnecessary contact. The authorities had also installed fluorescent lighting within the prison and spotlights on the walls outside the A Wing cells. It was when that work was taking place that I acquired hundreds of feet of electric flex.

John and I knew before we set out that the tail end of the rope was weak, but this did not present a problem as we reckoned we could jump the last 10 feet. The rope had already proven robust as we had used it to drop from John’s cell to the yard. After the rope broke, however, things got even worse when the light went on in the stairway to the common room (the chapel). John was still on the first window and I was on the one above. We were silhouetted as we stood there, praying that whoever was going to climb the stairs was on a routine check. I held on to the bar with one hand and leaned out against the grey, wet wall in an effort to avoid detection. As I did, I looked out over the city and saw the illumination of City Hall and the City Hospital. It was an exhilarating experience and to this day I can still feel the buzz.

John and I had gone over our movements and their timing hundreds of times. There were some golden rules, one of which was ‘no talking’. The time allowed for this part of the plan was three minutes, which had already passed. With no sign of anyone climbing the stairs inside, I whispered to John to come up. He threw the rope up and I wrapped it around the bars in a double fashion and dropped the other end back to him, allowing him to climb up beside me. Although breaking our strict guidelines, we discussed briefly what to do. At this point I made what could have been a costly mistake. I decided to establish if we could drop down the outer wall without a rope. As I crawled towards the outer wall I noticed what appeared to be an electronic device; this caused me to stand upright, just at the point where the guards in the A and D Wing gun turrets had full view of the wall. Having stepped over the device I lowered myself to a crawl. I had to be careful that the cement debris left by the builders did not fall down and alert the guards below, who were having a bit of banter. It was a shock to see their guns and holsters as they did not wear these inside the prison. I recognised two of them. The sleet was falling in a typically slanting way and the new lights on the wall shone downwards so I reckoned that even if they did look up they would see very little, if anything. When I reached the outer wall I looked over to gauge the height, but the lights and the sleet meant I could not see the bottom.

Conscious that I was now in full view of the gun turrets to my left and right I decided to lower myself down the outside of the wall. Holding on with both hands I took another look down and reckoned that I would not survive a fall from such a height, and so decided to hoist myself back up. As I crawled back towards our anchor position at the window I had to stand up again to step over the suspicious device. Now I was really tearing up the golden rules we had set ourselves. Both John and I knew we faced a crisis, and our discussion was short and to the point. We decided to go back to the outer wall; John would hold the rope, such as it was, and I would go first; he would then drop without any aid and I would cushion his fall on the other side. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was our only option. We were quietly confident, despite the unfortunate turn of events. We knew that the authorities were not yet alerted and we were now at the outer wall.

We reverted to our code of silence and when I reached the outer wall I took the end of the rope from John who was going to hold it while I dropped. We estimated that the weakened rope would still allow me about 10 feet so that I could drop the remainder without too much pain. John lay flat on the wall holding on to the rope, but as I put my faith and weight on the rope it broke, sending me down to the tarmac outside with an almighty thud. As I lay there on the flat of my back I looked upwards for John, knowing I was unable to break his fall because I could not move. I called, as loudly as I could afford, for him to jump. But when he did not appear the thought occurred that he may have fallen back inside due to the reactive force of the rope breaking. This is exactly what happened. The small consolation was that he fell into a flower bed and sustained only a broken finger, which remained disfigured for the rest of his life.

I had fallen on to cement in an area close to houses provided for warders, which created the possibility that a warder or family member had heard the commotion. The pain was excruciating. ‘If I ever get to the top of that outer wall,’ I used to say, ‘I will fly!’ Now here I was and I couldn’t even move. I leaned over on my side and managed to stand up after several attempts. But I could not walk as my heel was broken. Several times I called out in a low voice to John but received no reply. Our agreed plan allowed for every eventuality, and this was one of them. If I was the one to escape, John had given me very detailed instructions on how to proceed. A native of Belfast, he came from a committed republican family. His house could not be classed as a ‘safe house’; it was regularly raided and his brother Billy had been interned without trial and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol for several years while John was in A Wing. Billy was released just a few weeks before the attempted escape. Their parents, Margaret and William, were unfailing supporters of those imprisoned in Belfast jails, no matter where they came from. They supplied fruit on a weekly basis free of charge to republican prisoners over many years.

I discovered that when I stood on tiptoes I could walk, and after a last look at the top of the wall and no sign of John I decided to head towards his home, 12 Adela Street. There was no time to lose as I knew that his house would the first call the police would make when the ‘balloon went up’. I was unaware of the fact that a police van from Derry had just arrived at the main prison gates, around the corner from where I was, to deliver a prisoner. Despite a broken heel, crushed cartilages in my vertebrae and a broken hand, I set off running through the large ornamental prison gates. It would be a week before I could rest again.

2

THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE

The Warders’ Story

Unknown to me at the time, there was tumult in the prison as the warders checked and rechecked their numbers. Our absence from the dining hall was the subject of intense scrutiny, and our names were being called in the wing and in the recreation hall. As I ran through the streets of Belfast, Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) chiefs in Glenravel Street Station were being advised of the breakout. The prison Governor was called at home and given the bad news. He arrived at the prison and eventually gave the order to sound the siren, which had not been heard in Belfast since the Second World War to signal an impending air raid. The siren sounded at 5.50 p.m., just twenty minutes after we had left A Wing. I was still close to the prison when the siren wailed. The acting Chief Officer, who lived just outside the A Wing wall in one of the cottages that housed prison employees, was enjoying his St Stephen’s Day evening, having finished work just an hour before. In his statement to the police he said that he immediately armed himself with his Webley revolver and ran up the side of the outer wall as far as Landscape Terrace, seeking me out. But I had just gone.

The warders’ story is told in the official enquiry, ordered by the Minister for Home Affairs. Some very interesting facts emerge from the story as told by the prison Governor and his prison officers who were on duty that night in A Wing. The first is that of a most secure prison with extraordinarily tight procedures. The second is how quickly they deduced that a breakout was in progress despite no previous recent experience (the last one had been seventeen years earlier in 1943). The third and probably the most dramatic is how little time John Kelly and I had to make our escape. It was just ten minutes – a very small window of opportunity! The details of the plan were examined very carefully, with the authorities keen to establish how we hid the electric flex and how we got hold of hacksaw blades. In general their story is very much in line with ours and, with a few exceptions, the truthfulness of their account astonished me. Although it was the most embarrassing moment of the Governor’s professional career, he did not seek a scapegoat.

The enquiry begins with a report from Sir Richard Pimm, Inspector General of the RUC. (The force was replaced in 2006 by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).) The report, sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs on 7 January 1961 (in fact Sir Richard Pimm retired that same month and was succeeded by Sir Albert Kennedy), states that one Principal Officer (PO) and six prison officers (also called warders) were ‘on duty strategically stationed within the division’. It continues that at 4.15 p.m. on Monday 26 December 1960 the prisoners in A Wing were ‘in association’, i.e. permitted to talk and move about under supervision. At 5.40 p.m. a buzzer sounded in the area known as the Circle indicating that someone was seeking to be let out from the laundry yard. This was the yard from which we climbed on to the administration block. It states: ‘Taking routine precautions to obviate an attack, the gate from the front of the laundry yard was opened and long-term “star” prisoner John Joseph Kelly was found there.’ (First-time offenders serving long-term sentences were known as ‘star’ prisoners as the tunics they wore featured a red star on the right sleeve.) They claimed that John was of the opinion that ‘Donnelly fell while endeavouring to descend to the ground outside and seemed in a grave condition’. According to the RUC, John had ‘abandoned his escape attempt so that the alarm could be raised and medical help got for Donnelly’. A search of the area took place but I had gone. They found the 24-yard length of ‘blanket material entwined with wire and strong cord in the laundry yard’ and described the weather as being very inclement. The two guards in the gun towers had taken up duty at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. respectively. Given the weather conditions, the report states that it was not surprising that the guards neither saw nor heard anything to arouse their suspicions.

The recently installed floodlights on the perimeter wall came in for criticism. RUC County Inspector Hopkins and District Inspector Landsdale carried out an examination two days after my escape and considered the intensity of the lighting poor. They concluded, as we had done, that ‘a person moving along the escape route would not at any time come under the direct illumination in sight of the Watch Towers.’ While this report was for the most part accurate, it was also self-serving as the gun towers were manned by RUC men and not by prison warders.

The exceptionally detailed and truthful report sent by Governor Lance Thompson to the Minister for Home Affairs in Stormont is probably reflective of the innate honesty of the underlying Presbyterian ethic. This report states that prisoner number 1082, D. I. Donnelly, was sentenced to ten years on 22 October 1957 for ‘being and remaining a member of an unlawful organisation’ and that prisoner number 4, J. J. Kelly, was given eight years for ‘possessing explosive (two counts) and being a member of an unlawful organisation on 11 April 1957’. On the escape the report states:

In fact, John had fallen from the wall at the same time as I fell on the outside. When he came to he had a serious dilemma: raise the alarm and get medical treatment for me or assume I had got away and just wait until discovered. He decided on a compromise. He would allow sufficient time for me to reach his parents’ house and then raise the alarm in case I was lying unconscious outside the walls. He need not have worried, of course, as the warders inside A Wing had realised the two of us were missing and his eventual alarm coincided with the independent action of the staff to alert the RUC.

The rest of the Governor’s seven-page report gives an account of the events of the evening and of the responsibilities of the warders. At approximately 5.30 p.m. Officer Rampf, while patrolling A Wing, answered John Kelly’s cell bell and also unlocked Donnelly some minutes later and ‘saw him proceed to the dining hall’. Amazingly, just ten minutes later the acting Chief Officer was alerted that there had been an escape. The report continues:

A quick search of John Kelly’s cell revealed one hacksaw blade on the floor. Padlocks were then placed on both our empty cells. The Governor remained in the prison with the Deputy Governor until 11 p.m. and directed that every person and cell in A Wing, as well as the workshops in that division, should be thoroughly searched the following morning. In John Kelly’s cell was found ‘a small piece of putty which had been obviously used to conceal the cuts in the bars and window frame, four pieces of blade each approximately 5 inches long in a specially made satchel and an improvised wooden handle for a hacksaw blade. The satchel was made from clothing similar to the clothing worn by long-term star prisoners.’ In Donnelly’s cell, ‘nothing of importance’ was found. The authorities concluded that the hacksaw blade satchel was made by Donnelly who was ‘employed in the tailors’ workshop and had access to the necessary materials. The satchel was so made as to be easily carried inside the trousers leg.’