Read Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland Online
Authors: Ed Moloney
Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland (22 page)
24
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/publicrecords/1972/index.html#210672
25
Peter Taylor,
Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein
, pp. 143–4.
26
Sidney Elliott and W. D. Flackes,
Northern Ireland: A Political Directory
, 1968–1999, p. 184.
27
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/perus-ex-president-convicted-landmark-case-20090407
28
Author’s meeting with Linskey family members, May 2009.
29
Gerry Adams,
Before the Dawn: An Autobiography
, p. 213.
30
Operation Banner:
An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern
Ireland
, paragraph 308.
31
Ibid.
32
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1994/mar/15/ military-reaction-force
33
Washington Post
, 5 October 2008.
34
McKittrick et al.,
Lost Lives
, p. 274.
35
PSNI Ombudsman report, August 2006.
36
The Sunday Times
, 26 November 2000.
37
Belfast News Letter
, 4 June 1973.
38
Father Denis Faul, Letter to the
Guardian
, [undated], June 1973.
39
‘Long Kesh Camp staff reply to allegations’,
Irish News
, 25 June 1973.
40
Irish Times
, 12 June 1973.
41
Irish News
, 5 June 1973.
42
Irish Times
, 5 June 1973.
43
Interview with Anthony McIntyre, former IRA internee, 22 July 2009.
44
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton
45
Correspondence from Dr Peter Hughes, Archivist, Sisters of Nazareth, Hammersmith, London, 9 May 2009.
46
Sunday Mirror
, 7 October 2001.
47
Frances Reilly,
Suffer the Little Children
.
48
Interview with former Sinn Fein activist, April 2009.
49
Redacted copy of inquest documents in death of Patrick Crawford, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, released 1 July 2009.
50
Telephone interview, 15 July 2009.
51
Hansard, 11 January 2005, column 197.
52
Telephone interview, 16 July 2009.
*
Ballymurphy IRA leader shot dead in disputed circumstances, 22 September 1973.
†
Ballymurphy IRA leader shot dead during a feud with the Official IRA, 27 July 1977.
‡
Former Brigade Intelligence Officer from Turf Lodge in West Belfast.
§
On 1 July 1976, a thirty-nine-year-old Catholic, Brian Palmer, was shot dead in a bar by the IRA, which claimed that he was working for the MRF. By 1976, the MRF had ceased operations in Northern Ireland for three years, meaning that if Mr Palmer had worked for the MRF, it would have been in the same era as the Four Square Laundry operation.
¶
In 1993 most of Divis Flats was demolished. Only Divis Tower, where Brendan Hughes lived at the time of his death, remained standing.
||
Former Belfast Brigade Quarter Master shot dead as an informer in July 1975. His body was the first of the disappeared to be produced by the IRA in May 1999.
**
IRA prison protest to restore political status.
††
‘Orangees’ is Belfast Catholic slang for hardline Protestants or Loyalists, as in members of the Orange Order.
6
All three Belfast leaders, Gerry Adams, Ivor Bell and Brendan Hughes, would try to escape from Long Kesh over the next few years but only two of them ever did. Adams had the most dismal performance – two tries, two failures – whereas Hughes and Bell succeeded first time and, of the two, Brendan Hughes stayed free the longest. Adams’s first effort was on Christmas Eve 1973 as the other inmates were attending Midnight Mass. He and three IRA men from his old Ballymurphy unit had acquired wire-cutters and, as darkness fell, they tried to creep towards what they thought was, from the vantage of the prison guards, a blind spot in the wire fence and the plan was to cut their way through. But a light fog descended on the camp and, far from assisting the would-be escapers, this persuaded the British to increase their patrolling. They were caught. In July 1974, Adams tried again, and this time the results were almost comic. A ‘look-alike’ had agreed to make a visit to the jail and to swap places with Adams, who had arranged his own visitor for the same time. But the ‘look-alike’ turned out to be several inches shorter and the former Brigade Commander was, as he put it himself, ‘copped’ by an alert warder as he tried to walk past him out of the jail.
53
After the arrest of Adams and Hughes, Ivor Bell had taken over as Belfast Commander and he lasted for another seven months until February 1974, when he too was arrested, caught during a sweep of Andersonstown by British soldiers. Within two months Bell had broken out of Long Kesh using a variant of Adams’s plan to make good his escape. Another internee who resembled Bell had been given parole to attend his own wedding but Bell took his place. He lasted just eleven days on the outside and by the end of April he was back in British hands, betrayed, it seems, by a girlfriend. Brendan Hughes’s escape was in a league of its own, a getaway that
was both ingenious and clichéd. Offered to a Hollywood screenwriter, the story line might well have been rejected on ‘I’m-sure-I’ve-seen-that-in-another-movie’ grounds. But that’s probably why it worked.
It is a measure of how hurried the British decision to introduce internment without trial was in August 1971 that few preparations worthy of the name were made to accommodate the hundreds of people who were on the lists to be arrested. Operation Demetrius, as the British called it, scooped up 342 men, all Nationalists, in the early hours of 9 August but only a small number – one estimate suggests around eighty
54
– were Provisional IRA activists. The IRA had been tipped off and had ordered its members to go on the run to avoid arrest. The rest were mostly peaceful political opponents of the Unionist government or elderly, long-retired IRA veterans. Even so, the internees had to be housed somewhere. C Wing of Crumlin Road jail in North Belfast was emptied of its criminal inmates to make room for the new prisoners while HMS
Maidstone
, a former submarine depot ship of the Royal Navy, initially commissioned in 1937 and used first to house British troops in October 1969, was turned into a floating jail. Eventually, the British improved their knowledge of the IRA and starting arresting the right people in larger numbers. By 1972, the number interned had risen to over nine hundred and that is when the need for a place such as Long Kesh arose. Situated on the outskirts of Lisburn, County Antrim, about nine miles from Belfast, Long Kesh had been an RAF base during the Second World War; in August 1969 it was used to house British troops sent over when the riots in Derry and Belfast broke out. It was the perfect site for an internment camp and that’s what it was reopened as in early 1972. Complete with barbed-wire fences and watchtowers, it could have been the set for
The Great Escape
, except both jailers and inmates, who certainly regarded themselves as prisoners of war, spoke the same language, at least most of the time.
Prisoners were housed in distinctive RAF-style Nissen huts grouped in compounds – the IRA called them cages for obvious
reasons – that were spread across a large area. As many as twenty-two cages, each holding up to a hundred and twenty men, were constructed. It was a damp, miserable place with too few facilities for too many people. John McGuffin described living conditions in his 1973 book
Internment
:
Overcrowding was, perhaps, the worst feature. Each cage … measured 70 yards by 30, and was surrounded by a 12-foot-high wire fence with coils of meshed barbed-wire on top. Each cage had four Nissen huts and one washroom. Three huts acted as sleeping quarters, the fourth as a canteen. Each hut was 120 feet by 24 feet and had to house 40 men. There was not an inch of space between the bunk beds, the roofs leaked, the wind whistled in and everyone spent the nights huddled in heavy pullovers beneath the two thin blankets. The ‘central heating’ was a small electric heater, fixed high up on the wall. Those fortunate enough to be within two yards of it got some heat. Everyone else froze. Rats appeared. The separate ‘wash hut’ contained ten wash-hand basins, eight toilets, and eight showers. It had to serve 120 men, and because of the length of the queues many just gave up shaving. Besides, traditionally, ‘revolutionaries’ are bearded. The other hut served as canteen, workshop, ‘library’ … recreation room … writing room, classroom, place of worship and music room. For all 120 men.
55
Thanks to its geography, and the distance from what the IRA would regard as safe territory, Long Kesh was a difficult place to escape from. If anyone managed to cut through the wire fences or burrow a tunnel under them and actually got outside the perimeter, they would find themselves in strongly Protestant countryside where no friendly doors would be opened to a Republican, least of all an escaped IRA man. Any decent escape plan therefore needed outside help and pre-arranged transport to pick up the fugitive, which added to the danger of the enterprise. By the end of 1973, the prisoners in Hughes’s section had identified the bin or garbage lorry as a weak link in security. The lorry made two daily runs
through the camp picking up rubbish which it would deliver to a dump outside the jail. If a prisoner could somehow hitch a lift on the lorry and stay undetected, he might make it out. The first idea was to attach a harness to the underside of the lorry which would hold the escaper until he was outside the main gate. Hughes practised under his bunk bed to see how long he could hold on for, but he discovered that he was too weak from the beating he had received at the time of his arrest and gave up that idea. Another prisoner called Mark Graham was in better condition and volunteered to go in his place. When the lorry hit a ramp on the way out, Graham was crushed and broke his back. Then someone had the idea of sewing Hughes into an old mattress and then tossing the mattress into the lorry.
…
we had a person working with the lorry, Wee Buck Valliday,
who helped in the escape. He was what they called an ODC, an
Ordinary Decent Criminal. And he was a trusted orderly. The
arrangements were made for me to be put into the mattress and left
at the gate of the cage. Wee Buck would lift me and just throw me
into the back of the lorry, which is what happened. Our Intelligence
Officers had told us that before the lorry left the prison the back
would be speared by British soldiers. But our information was that
they had stopped doing this. So Wee Buck threw me into the back of
the lorry; off it went and then it stopped. He was able to whisper to
me that the lorry wasn’t leaving the prison straight away, that the
workers were going for their lunch … up into the sentenced end of
the jail [where non-internees, the tried and convicted were held],
and he advised me to get out of the lorry; he didn’t think I could stay
in it that long. But I decided to stay … I couldn’t see what was
going on but I could hear all the voices of the British soldiers all
around the lorry. About an hour later they came back to the lorry
and Wee Buck again said to me that there’s loads more rubbish
going on top of me. I told him, ‘Just try and keep as much off me as
you can’, whispering to him, which he did. And the lorry went back
into the jail, so I was right back where I started from, only at a
different end of the camp. At this stage we were actually in the
British Army compound. Back in and more rubbish came on top of
me. Wee Buck tried his best to keep as much away as possible. Eventually
they finished the run and the lorry was heading out and I
knew the routine – it went over two sets of ramps and then it turned
right out of the camp. Well, once that happened, I was out of the
camp. The lorry stopped and – fuck I/O officers who didn’t do their
intelligence – the spear came. I heard the soldiers and I knew exactly
what was coming, I had a picture in my mind of what they were
doing … I was on the point of jumping up because if the spear had
hit me, it would have gone right through me but, by pure chance, it
missed me, both sides of me, once up the left, once up the right, and
that was it, and I was a split second away from jumping up and surrendering,
but I didn’t. And the lorry went over the next two sets of
ramps and turned right and I knew I was out of the camp
.
…
I had a penknife in my hand the whole time and an orange
slice stuck in my mouth, just for fluid. I tried to cut the mattress but
the knife was small and just bent back, so I began to panic. I was
covered in rubbish, all sorts of stuff, and I started to kick the mattress
cover open. I got my head out and I’ll never forget that breath
of fresh air. I looked back and saw that thanks to my struggling with
the mattress, rubbish was falling on the road, the old Hillsborough
Road. I thought the driver would have stopped when he saw this,
but he didn’t. I knew at the top of the Hillsborough Road there’s a
sharp right turn, then a sharp left turn and I jumped out just before
it turned left, onto the footpath, stood up and the lorry was driving
away up the Hillsborough Road. I was covered in dirt and sawdust,
one of my eyes had closed up. I didn’t know it at the time [but]
someone had seen me jumping out of the lorry and had reported it.
I was in a terrible state, mucky and dirty. Gerry had organised a car
to meet me but the lorry had taken so long to leave the camp it had
gone. So I started walking. I had some money. I had the equipment
to steal a car, jump wires, and immediately I began to look for a car.
I was nervous, I was scared. I was stuck in the middle of Hills-borough,
a predominantly Loyalist town. No one there to pick me
up, so I just started walking. I tried to thumb a lift but, because of
the state I was in, nobody was stopping. There was a garage just on
the other side of Hillsborough and a van parked there. I went over
…
and they were travelling people, Gypsies. I asked them for a lift,
but they said no. So I hit the road again and I started to thumb a lift
again; the travelling people came by and picked me up. They were
only going as far as Dromore. So they dropped me there and I began
to hitchhike again. As I was walking along the road thumbing a lift
I turned round and there was a British Army jeep coming and I
thought the game was up, but they drove on by. I was still thumbing
a lift and another car pulled up and an Englishman was in the
driving seat, and a child sleeping in the back. I got into the back of
the car beside the child who slept on. I believe to this day that the
driver was a screw, a prison officer, but he drove me to Newry. I
talked away to him and told him I worked in a sawmill and I was
heading back to Newry, back home early, because of the injury to my
eye. So he dropped me in Newry and I thanked him and he drove off
.
…
I knew I had about a half an hour before the alarm was
sounded. The head count took place at four o’clock. This bit is a little
complicated but I could not get to the bin lorry from the cage I was
being held in. I was in what they called the ‘Generals’ Cage’, and
there was more security there. Davy Long
*
was the PO [prison
officer] on the cage. At that time you were allowed cage visits and
so I left Cage 6 to visit Cage 9 which was less secure than Cage 6. So,
I put my name down that morning for a cage visit to Cage 9 as
Brendan Hughes. There was a guy in the cage who resembled me. At
twelve o’clock, Brendan Hughes had to be back in his own cage. So
when I got to Cage 9, I took my clothes off, gave them to this guy who
had the same big moustache as me and black hair. And at twelve
o’clock the screws came to Cage 9, to take ‘Brendan Hughes’ back to
Cage 6. This guy went back as me, wearing my clothes … and I was
wearing a cap that morning as well. He went back into Cage 6 as
Brendan Hughes, and the screws never caught on. At four o’clock
,
the screws would do a head count and he would have to be back in
his own cage. His name was Piggy O’Neill from the New Lodge Road
.
So he’s back in his own cage, I’m sitting in Newry and it’s coming
up to four o’clock when they would discover that I had escaped so I
went to a taxi rank, jumped into a cab and asked the driver to take
me to Dundalk. All the while I’m counting the minutes before the
alarm bells go off. At that time there was a twenty-four-hour-
a-
day
roadblock on the Newry to Dundalk road. And this guy is driving
me along and we’re stopped. The British Army halts us at the roadblock,
which I expected anyway, and asked him for ID and he had
no problem. He had his licence. Then they came round and asked
me. It was dark by this time so the soldier shone the torch in my
face. All I had was a receipt for the leather that was brought into the
jail, you know, for handiwork. I had a receipt for that with the
name of the supplier on it. And I gave him that and I says, ‘That’s
all I have, I was at work there and my eye …’, pointing to the closed
eye, I says, ‘I’m going home, I was working in the wood factory.’ And
he shone and had another look at me and I thought, ‘They know
damn well, they’ve got me.’ But they waved us on and I was waiting,
just waiting for one in the back of the head. I was pretty sure that
they were going to take me out. From that roadblock to the other
side of the border was the longest couple of minutes of my life. I was
just waiting on the shots; well, you don’t hear a shot, if you’re dead,
but I was just sitting waiting and this poor taxi driver hadn’t a clue
…
the hairs on the back of my head were standing. I didn’t know
whether we were across the border or not, it was pitch black on that
stretch of road, and I asked the taxi driver, ‘Are we across the border
yet?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, we just crossed, just passed that garage
there, that’s us, we’re in the twenty-six counties now.’ I says, ‘Have
you a smoke? Give us a smoke.’ And he says, ‘What’s wrong with
you?’ So I told him, ‘I just escaped from Long Kesh and I need a
smoke.’ ‘Oh fuck!’ he shouts. He lifted his hands off the wheel and
started to thump me on the back, he was so excited. But ten seconds
later, we hit another roadblock, the Gardai [Irish police], and this
guy is now shitting himself, he’s really nervous. He was more nervous
than I was by this stage. Once I knew I was across the border, I knew
I was OK. They let us through. It was no problem. They just asked
for his ID, and didn’t ask for mine, and he drove on. And all he kept
talking about – and this is the God’s honest truth – he says to me,
‘There’s people in Newry that keep hijacking my car. Can you do
anything about it?’ I said, ‘No problem, aye, just give me the names.’
And he gave the name of the people in Newry, two IRA men
.
…
I didn’t want him to know where I was headed. I was going
to a pub called the Jolly Ploughboy in Greenore; it’s a place I used
pretty regularly. An old IRA man, a friend of my father, owned this
pub, called the Jolly Ploughboy, so I asked the taxi man to drop me
at the top of the road. I had money on me, about £10 which we had
smuggled into the jail and I tried to pay him but he wouldn’t take it.
I gave him the money anyway, and we parted company … I was
jubilant. I had done it, I was across the border, I had escaped. So I
trekked the half-mile to the Jolly Ploughboy, walked into the bar and
there [are] two guys standing at the bar. One of them was an auld
fella called Gerry McCrudden who actually lives in this building
[Divis Tower] now and the other was a guy called Patsy Brown who
was a barman. I’ll never forget the expressions on their faces when
I walked in. I was well known round the bar and around that area.
Patsy immediately set me up with a double whiskey. And I then
went round the back and someone made me something to eat;
they’d a big kitchen there. It was a very popular bar for Republicans,
for bus runs and so forth. By this time the news had broken that I
had escaped from the jail, and Joe Kearney, who owned the bar,
cooked a massive steak to celebrate. I got cleaned up, had a bath;
they got me new clothes. My eye was still closed and they worked on
that to get the sawdust out. The problem was there was a bus run
that night to the bar, for traditional music, a bus full of Republicans
from Portadown. And I asked Joe not to say that I was in the bar.
And, of course, once the music started and Joe got a few drinks in
him, it came on the news again that I had escaped and a big cheer
went up. And Joe got up on the stage after the cheering had died
down and announced that I was here and brought me out of the
kitchen. It was a fantastic feeling. But now the whole fucking country
knew where I was. So I slept on a settee in the bar and when I woke
up I knew I had to get out of the place. Joe made a couple of phone
calls. The next morning, Brian Keenan turned up and took me away,
brought me to Dublin, to a guy called Harry White’s house. Harry
was a well-known IRA man. We went to his house; his daughter
was a hairdresser … and she dyed my hair a shade of auburn
.
