On March 8th 1973 a massive car bomb exploded outside the Central Criminal Court, commonly known as the Old Bailey, in central London. Shortly afterwards a second bomb exploded outside government offices just off Whitehall. The police found and defused a third car-bomb parked outside Scotland Yard. Although telephone warnings had been given, one person was killed, 214 injured and massive damage was done to property.
The attack bore all the hallmarks of the IRA. There had been near-simultaneous bombings in Belfast and Dublin, and it came on the eve of an Ulster ‘Border Referendum’. Some kind of symbolic act on the part of the IRA had been expected. The telephone warning, complete with an identification code, came as confirmation, if that had been needed.
Shortly afterwards, the police arrested ten members of the IRA unit responsible, as they sat on a plane at Gatwick, waiting to fly to Dublin. Mostly, they were young and inexperienced ex-students. Gerry Kelly, their leader, was 20, the Price sisters both 19 and there was a girl of 16. At their trial later however, the judge remarked that it was one of the gravest crimes ever committed in this country and handed down life sentences to all involved.
I had noticed the bombings, but only to worry if family and friends had been caught up in them. Even then, it stayed at the periphery of my attention. I was three years into my own life sentence and my full concentration was on trying to escape. That, together with a natural rebelliousness, had ensured many long months in punishment blocks in solitary confinement and often on a bread and water diet too. I lived in a world of pain.
Following an unsuccessful escape attempt and the ensuing riot at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, I was transferred to Wormwood Scrubs. The latter was a comparatively easy prison, with plenty of facilities and lots of time allowed out of cell. Mostly, it was a jail for ‘model’ prisoners, first offenders and those who were no trouble to the prison authorities.
If it seemed a strange move for a man like myself, who had so recently been involved in so much trouble, then there was a method in the Home Office’s madness. Sometimes they located a troublesome prisoner in an easy jail like the Scrubs to isolate him from other troublesome prisoners and so minimize his disruptive potential. Further, they hoped that the troublesome inmate would take to the good conditions and behave accordingly.
In my case, I decided to let the authorities think that I was settling down. However, although the Scrubs was a top-security, Category A jail, there were weaknesses in its security that I had not seen in other top security jails. I resolved to bide my time and plan an escape.
A major problem was that, in a jail full of model prisoners, virtually no one wanted to go. This is despite some extremely long sentences ranging from four years right up to 30 years and life. That isn’t to say that I couldn’t have found someone willing to have a go, but they were either thoroughly untrustworthy and may have told the authorities, or they were naïve and weak. I secretly schemed away whilst waiting for someone more reliable to arrive.
If ‘the chaps’ are a self-defined group of criminals who are stronger, more professional in their approach to crime and more trustworthy, then there were very few ‘chaps’ at the Scrubs. Most of these worked in the prison laundry. I knew or was known to most of them. I too got a job in the laundry.
A year passed and suddenly Ian, a close friend of mine, arrived. He too had recently been in escape attempts and riots and the authorities were trying out exactly the same approach with him as they had with me.
I got him a job in the laundry with me and explained how far I had got with my planning. Through a corrupt civilian worker I had managed to get my hands on an impression of a gate key. I sent this outside and had the finished key smuggled back in again. Now I could pass through any gate in the jail.
I had noticed that the prison Works Department sometimes left an extending ladder in the locked laundry over the weekend, chained and padlocked to a wall inside a store. The laundry was a one-storied building that lay across a yard, barely 20 yards from the long- term wing where Ian and myself were housed. It would be possible to let ourselves out of the wing using the key and cross the yard to the laundry. There was a padlock that secured the laundry gate, which could be easily knocked off. Then it was just a matter of letting ourselves through the gate with the key.
Once inside it would take seconds to knock the padlock off the chain that secured the ladder. Wormwood Scrubs however, had two layers of perimeter security. First, there was a 20 feet high, wire-mesh fence. This had barbed wire at the top and trembler bells that sounded the alarm if they were shaken. Then there was an outside wall of similar height. Both were liberally festooned with CCTV cameras that were monitored in a central control room.
Quite clearly, once the ladder hit the first fence it would sound the alarm and we would have only a very short time to get over. It would be optimistic in the extreme to expect that the two of us could climb the ladder and have time to pull it up to use again on the outside wall. Patrolling guards with dogs would be on the scene too soon and would grab the bottom of the ladder.
However, the outside wall could be climbed with a rope and hook. There was abundant material to make the rope out of. This could be done beforehand and the rope hidden away in the laundry. The Work’s Department also had a locked store located in the laundry. This could be easily broken into and the tools used to make some sort of hook. In theory, it was an entirely feasible plan.
Ian immediately pointed out that the two of us would have more chance of getting away if we had two more people in on the escape. My reply to that was to ask where we would find two such people. Ian was much more gregarious than I, and mixed more extensively on the wing. He suggested a young guy called Malcolm and Gerry Kelly.
I knew something of Malcolm, but only because of all the trouble he had been in at other jails. Still only 20, he had done many months of punishment for rebelling against the warders. Criminally though, he was very naïve and had never stolen anything in his life. He was fanatical about politics though, and was a libertarian. He was sentenced to ten years for fire-bombing his local town hall. Malcolm was brave enough and certainly trustworthy.
Gerry Kelly was another kettle of fish entirely. Physically unimposing, he still had the slim, be-spectacled, owlish look of the student he had so recently been. However, I had to agree with Ian that he was probably brave enough and could definitely be trusted not to betray us to the authorities. As far as the criminal pecking order on the long-term wing was concerned, both were virtual nobodies. But as Ian pointed out, you didn’t have to be one of ‘the chaps’ to qualify for a place on our escape. They were friends of Ian’s rather than friends of mine, so I told him to ask them if they were interested.
Early planning meetings immediately revealed a gulf between our respective ideologies. Apart from organising the escape, Ian and I had agreed to provide a hiding place in London until we could leave the country. As this latter move would take a couple of weeks to organize, we would have to spend this period in London.
Ian mentioned that, before he had been arrested, he had been looking at a ‘bit of work’ involving the armed robbery of a main Post Office sorting depot. He said that the prize could be as much as £100,000. Ian suggested that the four of us rob the depot to provide us with much-needed money to go ‘on the run’ with.
There was an embarrassed silence. Malcolm spoke first, stating quite unequivocally that it was against his principles to steal. Probably encouraged by this, Gerry added that this was also his position, He went on to say that he was just a bomber and that others did the robbing. Temporarily confused by this concise definition of the division of labour within the IRA, I could only mutter that he could always give his share to the organisation, but he wasn’t to be swayed. They were both on board for only the escape.
As things turned out, I was overtaken by events. A prisoner had been killed in the punishment block and there were allegations that the warders had done it. Questions were raised in the local press. To keep up the pressure, many of the inmates of the long-term wing took part in a sit-down protest. I was a leading organiser of the protest. For my pains I was shipped out to another prison, as was Malcolm. Ian and Gerry though carried on with the escape.
Over the years I had occasionally seen references to Gerry in the press. I was aware that, on release from prison, he had joined Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA and was currently an elected member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the devolved government involving all parties to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
So, just as I had transformed myself from a violent gangster into a writer and journalist, so, it would seem, had Gerry turned from a ‘man of war’ to a ‘man of peace’. I thought that it would make for a good story for me to go to Belfast and do an interview with him, picking up where we had left off some quarter of a century earlier.
Eoin, who came from the Republic of Ireland himself and most probably had considerable Republican sympathies, thought it was a great idea. He commissioned me to do the piece for ‘Front’.
There were a couple of immediate problems. Firstly, I hadn’t been in touch with Gerry for nearly 25 years. I would have to find a way of doing so. Secondly, how would he remember me? We had been comrades rather than close friends and he most certainly hadn’t agreed with my professional pursuit of crime. Lastly, there was the ‘Front’ factor. How would he react to doing an interview for a ‘lad’s mag’?
The first problem I solved by phoning the Sinn Fein office in Belfast. I was soon put through to Gerry Kelly’s secretary, Margaret. I explained who I was and what I wanted to do. I said that I wrote for an English men’s life-style magazine with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. I added that the theme of the article would be that we had both transformed ourselves into ‘men of peace’.
All this was perfectly true. What I didn’t mention was ‘Front’s’ name, in the hope that the ‘lads mag’ phenomenon hadn’t yet reached Belfast. Margaret asked me to phone back the following day.
When I did so, Margaret told me that, of course, Gerry remembered me and would be pleased to do an interview. I would have to come to Belfast though, as none of Sinn Fein’s elected MPs had taken up their right to sit in the House of Commons.
I came in to land at Belfast International Airport late in the evening and it was nearing midnight as my taxi pulled up outside the Community Centre in the Falls Road that I had been directed to by Margaret. The articulate young Irishman who was manning the upstairs reception desk was obviously expecting me. He informed me that certain members of the community put guests up for bed and breakfast. It was relatively cheap and provided an opportunity for the visitor to get a feel for the local community. This is what had been organised for me.
It was a five-minute taxi ride to a street half a mile further up the Falls Road. As we pulled up at the gate of a terraced house, a short, middle-aged woman hurried down the path to meet me. She introduced herself as Anne and, grabbing my bag, bustled me into the house.
The house was spotlessly clean, if unostentatiously furnished. Anne made me a cup of tea and we sat at a kitchen table together. Even sitting down, she was filled with a boundless energy. Over the next hour she regaled me with stories from ‘the troubles’, in many of which she had played an active role. She emphasised that she had never been a member of the IRA or taken part in any ‘terrorist’ activity. But there had been many other ways the local community had supported their men and women who had been members.
Anne was a great talker and funny with it too. With a liberal use of expletives she made even dramatic incidents sound humourous, without ever once sounding crude. It became clear to me that women like Anne had been the backbone of the fight for justice in Northern Ireland. Without her and thousands like her, the IRA could never have reached the point they had now.
All of a sudden I was dead tired. The traveling and the lateness of the hour had combined to make me nod as I sat at the table. “Come on, off to bed with you now” barked Anne, startling me awake. She ushered me upstairs to my bedroom and, promising me breakfast when I arose in the morning, wished me ‘goodnight’.
Breakfast with Anne was a case of more of the same, but it was never boring. Her fund of interesting stories seemed endless. From time to time, neighboring women and their children popped in and out. Anne was a virtual surrogate mother to several kids. I had noticed that she had no children of her own and there seemed to be no trace of a man about the house. Also, there was a carefully disguised sadness about her that she put on a brave face to hide. But I didn’t pry. No doubt she would tell me her circumstances if she thought it relevant.
My appointment with Gerry Kelly was for the following day. The Press Office sent their apologies, but explained that there were important meetings scheduled for today. So I had a whole day to kill. Anne indicated that I could accompany her on her daily round if I so desired. It seemed a great way to learn more about the local Catholic community and Republicanism in general. That would help me to put people like Gerry Kelly in context.
Half way up her street there was a small community centre and gardens. These had been built from a grant from the European Community Fund. Anne mentioned that, as peace began to break out, every household had also received a £10,000 grant for improvements from the same fund.
The community centre performed a multitude of functions, from serving as a simple meeting place to sorting out local people’s problem. It was all done on an informal basis, using volunteers. So there was none of the antagonism common to such places in mainland England, where the local authority was viewed as the ‘them’ as opposed to ‘us’.
In fact, the whole phenomenon of the local community spirit was amazing, especially to a Londoner like myself, where one might never speak to a neighbour although living next door to them for ten years.
Walking down the street with Anne, people would call out and come over to talk. People were forever popping in and out of each others houses. She invariably introduced me as ‘Gerry’s friend from England.’
Gable ends decorated with Republican wall-art leapt out of their gloomy, working class surroundings. Here a gigantic mural celebrating the life and death of hunger striker Bobby Sands: there a roll call of IRA men and women killed in ‘the troubles’. I reflected that, in most communities, the dead stayed only in the graveyard. Here, in Republican West Belfast, they were alive and living in the community.
Republican graffiti though, wasn’t the only kind. I noticed several instances of ‘Fuck the IRA’ and other less-than-complimentary slogans painted on walls. I thought that it had been done by the Loyalists. “No, it’s the fucking yobboes”, corrected Anne. Like any other urban community, it seemed that West Belfast suffered at the hands of teenaged joy-riders, vandals and their ilk.
As the organisation responsible for policing their community, this problem had become the responsibility of the IRA. Some of their methods had been very direct. Generally, they were supported in this by the majority, however, some yobboes and their families obviously felt otherwise.
I had intimated to Anne that I would like to meet Roy, another old IRA friend from prison, whilst I was here. Roy was much more in the ‘Irish rascal’ mode than Gerry and I could expect a more gritty low-down on what it was really like on ‘the street’ from him.
Within half an hour I was given the address of an old warehouse several streets away.
Roy was expecting me and we hugged each other warmly. We had shared some tough times in jail. Now though, we were both out on the street and very pleased to be so. We had both weathered the experience well.
The first 20 minutes was spent asking about old friends. Then we got around to talking about the peace process. Although he spoke positively about it, he was quite cynical. “The Loyalists know we’ve won, because we’re out-breeding the bastards”, he laughed. I took this to be a reference to the fact that the Catholic community, where contraception was largely eschewed, had a much higher birthrate than the Protestant community, where it wasn’t.
On the subject of the ‘yobboes’, Roy was quite matter of fact about it. “Some of them are a fucking nuisance and make people’s lives a misery”, he said. He also added that many of them were on drugs which they bought off the Loyalist gangs in East Belfast.
“Some people say that the IRA deal in drugs”, I said, looking Roy right in the eye.
“We shoot drug dealers”, replied Roy quite deadpan and staring straight back. It was ‘point taken’. The idea of the IRA selling drugs in their own communities was never really accepted by me. Knowing the strong principles of people like Gerry Kelly, I knew it would never be allowed.
TO BE CONTINUED......