by Paul Simpson
Even if prisoners could get out from the H-Block, they were still encased within a large fence which had a couple of “airlock” security gates comprised of a gate on either side of a neutral area, and those leaving were checked on both sides before the outer gate was released. That was still within the main prison compound, and to get out from that you had to get past the Tally Lodge, where there was another airlock gate, and everyone – even prison warders – were searched as they went to and fro. And then there were British Army patrols everywhere once you got outside the Maze itself.
In March 1981, two and a half years before the mass breakout, which would be described by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as “a very grave incident, the most serious in our prison history”, members of the IRA had started to go on hunger strike demanding political status. An earlier hunger strike had not led to the concessions they believed they had won, so a new, staggered strike began, with Bobby Sands the first to refuse food. During the strike, Sands was elected as an anti-H-Block candidate to the British House of Commons, raising the profile of the strike considerably. Sands died after sixty-six days; nine other hunger strikers also died before the protest came to an end on 3 October. Mrs Thatcher’s government’s refusal to give in to the demands, and their hard line approach to the strikers (“If Mr Sands persisted in his wish to commit suicide, that was his choice. The Government would not force medical treatment upon him,” Northern Ireland Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins said shortly before Sands’ death) caused more unrest.
This made the actions of the men in block H7 over the next few months all the more surprising. Rather than taking on an equally hard line demeanour and trying to make life even more difficult for the hated British, they started to be almost pleasant. It wasn’t until that Sunday morning in September 1983 that the cause of their change became clear: the IRA were intending to take over H7. To do that they needed access to the circle at the heart of the prison, and to achieve that, they had to be trusted.
Although many odd ideas were suggested for breakouts from the Maze – from tunnels (which weren’t feasible, given that the blocks were built on concrete specifically to deal with such a threat), to hot-air balloons – the IRA realized that a proper coordinated response was the only way to combat all the various obstacles that sat in their way. Rather than have multiple people working on different strategies, one escape officer was appointed: Larry Marley, who had achieved fame for breaking out of a courtroom where he was on trial for an attempted escape. Marley and some colleagues had tried to get out from Long Kesh internment dressed as a British Army foot patrol, but had been arrested. When they were placed in a holding cell at Newry courthouse, they realized they could get through the bars of the cell toilet, and managed to not only negotiate that, but also the thirty-feet-high fence that surrounded the courthouse.
Marley was being held in H5, and became the clearing-house for all escape ideas. He realized that he needed as much information as he could get about the prison – which wasn’t easy, since whenever prisoners were moved in or out of the facility, they were kept from seeing the layout. Every little snippet was passed on to an intelligence officer in each block, who arranged for it to reach Marley. Maps and photos of the buildings were smuggled in so that they could work out the relative positions of each block to the gates.
If an escape attempt was to have any chance of success, then the warders needed to be taken unawares. If the prison authorities got wind of any sort of activity, then they would have no hesitation in cracking down. The IRA men knew they needed to get inside the warders’ heads, and create a softer environment where there wasn’t the daily tension. This didn’t go down well with some of the men inside the prison, who only a few short months before had been engaged in dirty protests against the Brits, but it achieved its aim. Larry Marley found out exactly how they could get out from the Maze. While most activities within the prison were regulated, the prison food lorry seemed to be a bit of a law unto itself. It was even allowed out of the main gate without anyone checking its contents. If the IRA men could somehow get hold of the lorry, and “persuade” its driver to take them to the main gate, then as many men as could fit in the back of it could escape. The only way that they could get hold of the lorry was to have control of one of the blocks which it visited. And the only way that could be achieved was if they had real weapons and ammunition with which to intimidate the guards into submission, so that they were aware that this was a proper IRA operation.
Firearms would need to be smuggled in from outside the prison, and it was also clear that if a large enough number of prisoners escaped (and the mantra of the escape was “think big”), then assistance would be required to spirit them across the border into Southern Ireland speedily, before the inevitable manhunt caught up with them. The plan was therefore worked out meticulously, written down, and smuggled out for approval by the IRA’s GHQ. Only those who absolutely needed to know what was going on were told of the plans within the prison, and those few were kept on a very tight leash. If any hint was dropped, even inadvertently, then the person responsible would not be included on the list of potential escapees.
H7 was designated as the block to take over. The block opposite it, H8, was empty, which meant there was less chance of the escapees’ activities being noticed quite as quickly. Within the group were three of the IRA’s top men: Bobby Storey, Gerry Kelly and Brendan “Bik” McFarlane. All three had played their part in getting to know the prison officer by becoming orderlies with access to the nerve centre in the circle. Grilles that should have always remained shut were left open because the prison warders knew the men would be passing through some tea and toast; the inmates were occasionally left on their own while a warder popped out to make himself a drink. Although none of the prison staff would probably have admitted it, a certain level of trust had been quite deliberately gained, and a complacency that was vital to the IRA plans was beginning to be felt.
The GHQ gave the go-ahead, and arranged the various logistical elements that were needed. Even now, nearly thirty years later, the IRA will not admit how they got the guns into the Maze – apparently just in case they need to do something similar again – but five handguns were somehow brought into the prison. (Prison officers speculated that they might have been smuggled in by female visitors concealing them very uncomfortably; certainly, visitors didn’t go through a metal detector – one of the elements of which the Hennessey Report on the escape was critical).
Once the list of escapees was sorted out, the escape committee worked out who could be dressed in the prison guard uniforms that they intended to take from the warders on duty. Larry Marley, still in H5, calculated exactly where everyone needed to be, so that they could maintain line of sight, and take out the prison officers on cue. He drilled the plan into the brain of another inmate on H5, Goose Russell, then persuaded the governor that the only way to keep the peace was to move Russell from H5 over onto H7. This was duly done, and Marley was also able to get the firearms across to H7 without a problem.
The date chosen was Sunday 25 September. Very little happened in the Maze on a Sunday: there weren’t any workshops or football games. It might not strictly have been a day of religious observance for the prisoners, but to all intents and purposes the Maze closed down. That meant that there were less prison officers than normal. The two previous Sundays, dry runs were carried out to ensure that everyone could get into position as they needed to, and even though some of the chosen men were unexpectedly moved out of H7 into other blocks, replacements were quickly found and briefed. An unexpected setback had been the breakdown of the food lorry, and its temporary replacement with an open-backed vehicle, but the original, covered wagon was soon in service again.
The only real potential hitch that the escape committee could see arose earlier in the day, when they learned that the senior officer in the control room was going to be John Adams, probably the last prison warder that they wanted there. Whereas most of his colleagues would b
e subdued by the presence of the weapons, and the aggressive shouting that would accompany the IRA demands, Adams was likely to try to do something. However, by the time they learned this it was really too late. Everything was in readiness.
At 2.15 p.m. everything was totally normal within H7. The majority of the 125 prisoners contained in the block were going about their usual routine, engaged in some form of recreational activity. The twenty-four orderlies were cleaning up and otherwise assisting as necessary. There were also twenty-four prison staff, keeping as watchful an eye on the situation as they deemed it demanded.
Fifteen minutes later, the breakout began. Bik McFarlane was the first to head towards the circle, his gun concealed. Kelly followed, along with Storey, and two other trusted lieutenants, Mead and McAllister, who were all tooled up. Mead ensured that two of the senior staff were in his sight; Storey and McAllister went into the officers’ tea room; Kelly positioned himself by officer Adams; and McFarlane gained entry to the lobby of the circle in order to sweep it.
The cue was the word “bumper”. When McFarlane called down for the bumper, everyone sprang into action. Storey and McAllister had to use a combination of threatened violence and harsh whispers to get the four officers in the tea room to obey them: the sight of the weapons, and the declaration, albeit softly, that this was an IRA operation, was sufficient to prevent the men from taking any action. At the same time, McFarlane overpowered the guard in the lobby, and Mead kept the two officers covered.
There was a gate between Gerry Kelly and John Adams in the ECR. Under no circumstances could Kelly allow Adams to use the panic button, the radio or the telephone, and he made it very clear to Adams that if anyone called him he was to say that everything was okay. His life relied on him being able to persuade them he was telling the truth.
As the men within the circle acted, so did the other IRA men down the wings, simultaneously attacking the guards there. All the guards were prevented from reaching the alarms, either by threats of violence, or actual assault – one officer in C-wing was hit over the head; another in D-wing was stabbed. It looked as if the IRA had taken control with minimal bloodshed and the need to fire the weapons.
However, they hadn’t had a chance to carry out a head-count of the guards, and didn’t realize that one of them was using the ladies’ toilet. As he came out, John Adams took advantage of the momentary confusion and tried to shut the door of the control room. Knowing that if this happened the escape was over, Gerry Kelly pushed the door as it closed, then fired two shots. One of them hit Adams above the eye, rendering him unconscious.
The shots had an immediate effect: the prison guards stopped any further attempts at resistance, and allowed themselves to be moved into the classrooms, where their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were bound together. Nine of them were stripped, and their uniforms donned by waiting prisoners. Then all of them had pillowcases slipped over their heads, and an IRA statement was read to them, informing them that the IRA had taken over the block, not out of revenge or to punish the men for their action during the hunger strikes, but in order to escape. However, if anyone tried to resist, they would be dealt with. “Allow common sense to prevail,” it concluded. “Do not be used as cannon fodder by the prison administration, nor the faceless bureaucrats at Stormont or Whitehall.”
However, the use of the firearm was what had concerned the GHQ and the escape committee about allowing the men to have weapons. If the Army knew that the prisoners were armed – and if any prison officer died – then they wouldn’t hesitate to fire at them. And had the shots been heard?
It seemed not, since there were no emergency calls from the prison central authorities. John Adams was told that he would receive medical attention once the escape was further under way. The guard at the main gate to H7 was overpowered and brought to join his colleagues. Now all the men had to do was wait.
The lorry was late. Although it wasn’t on a set timetable, it normally arrived at H7 about twenty-five minutes earlier; this was a delay that would cause the escapees major problems later. It finally turned up at 3.25 p.m., thirty-five minutes after the IRA had taken control of H7. The ersatz prison officers allowed driver David McLaughlin and prison orderly Dessie Armstrong to enter the block, but as soon as they started to unload the food from the back of the lorry, they were held up at gunpoint and taken inside the building.
McLaughlin was vital to the escapees’ plans: he was the person who the guard on the gate was expecting to see when they finally reached the main entrance. The presence of anyone else would have raised the alarm. It was therefore essential that he did exactly as he was told. He was shown the maps that Marley had prepared, and rather to the IRA men’s surprise, the prison warder started to point out some of the small but important errors on the diagrams. When they questioned his cooperation, he pointed out that he didn’t want them to think that he was deliberately misleading them with potentially fatal consequences.
Twenty-five minutes later, at 3.50 p.m., the IRA-controlled lorry was ready to leave. In the back were the escapers, some in prison uniform, while McLaughlin and Armstrong were in their usual positions in the cab. They had an extra person with them: Gerry Kelly was lying on the floor in the passenger side, aiming a gun at McLaughlin. The driver’s left foot was tied to the clutch, and his door lock jammed to prevent him trying to escape. A cord led from beneath his seat to what McLaughlin was informed was a grenade – in fact, the IRA men didn’t have such armament, but the driver wasn’t to know that. The cord was simply tied around the frame of the seat, but he acted as if he were sitting quite literally on a bomb. Storey had told McLaughlin that Kelly was a highly dangerous man with nothing to lose; Kelly grunted appropriately, although he would later engage McLaughlin in conversation (when he asked the driver how much he earned, McLaughlin told him it wasn’t f***ing enough, which Kelly later described as being quite sharp given the circumstances).
The other eighty-seven inmates of H7 remained behind, many of them armed with chisels and screwdrivers, to ensure that the prison warders didn’t escape and raise the alarm. Some of those left behind vented their frustration at not being part of the flight by trashing the furniture and fittings.
Ever conscious of the gun pointing at him, McLaughlin drove the lorry to the section gate, and was waved through without any sort of search by the guard on duty. Armstrong was then moved to the floor to join Kelly, since his presence in the cab at the administration gate would have raised questions that no one wanted asked at that point. And no one did say a word: the lorry was passed through this barrier without any problems.
Only one obstacle lay in the prisoners’ way: the main gate. However, to get access to this they had to go through the Tally Lodge. Although he was instructed to park out of sight, to allow the IRA men dressed as prison warders to exit the lorry, McLaughlin parked near the gate itself, telling Kelly that there wasn’t any room anywhere else. The eight fake warders then went about their business, capturing the officer at the gate to the airlock, which allowed the lorry to pass through, and then went into the Tally Lodge, where they quickly overpowered the guards there.
However, this was where the delay to the lorry’s arrival started to impact seriously on the carefully worked out IRA plan. They had expected to be at the lodge around 3.30, half an hour before officers started arriving for the shift change; instead, they had to deal with an ever-increasing number of captives as warders turned up for duty and were taken prisoner. Resistance from some of them was inevitable, and one of the warders managed to press a hidden alarm button.
Within seconds the phone went in the Tally Lodge. It was the Emergency Control Room querying what was going on. Storey and McFarlane ordered Senior Officer Wright to answer it, which he did with two IRA guns pointed at his temples. He told the ECR that no one there had triggered the alarm, but the ECR said that the one beneath the television had been activated. The prison officers near the TV started to move away from it surreptitiously, none of them wan
ting to be on the receiving end of IRA punishment. McFarlane and Storey weren’t as concerned about that as getting the ECR off the line, but Wright, seeing an opportunity to alert his colleagues, asked how he should reset the alarm. The IRA men knew full well what he had done – as McFarlane later pointed out, they knew how to reset it, let alone a senior prison officer – but the warder in the ECR didn’t get the message. Instead he told Wright to “push it back in, you stupid bastard” and rang off. Wright’s face drained of blood as he realized what was likely to happen to him.
The IRA had far more immediate problems. They didn’t have anywhere near sufficient firepower to keep the forty-plus guards under control if they decided to resist. (One of them who tried to encourage his colleagues to attack was told to shut up or be a dead hero by the IRA.) It was around now that prison officer Jim Ferris was stabbed: he had tried to run from the lodge to raise the alarm at the prison gate, but had been chased by one of the IRA men in prison warder uniform and attacked. Although the wound didn’t look that serious, combined with Ferris’ history of heart problems, it meant that he died later.
That attack had been seen by the British Army soldier in the watchtower who thought initially that there was some sort of scuffle going on between prison guards. He told his operations room what he had seen, and they contacted the ECR, only to be told that there had been a false alarm. But only a few minutes later – at 4.12 p.m. – one of the prison guards managed to get to a telephone and contact the ECR, who alerted the Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
