Carlo Gébler unlocks the story of the biggest jailbreak in British or Irish history.
Her Majesty’s Prison Maze. A high security prison outside Belfast. Said to be the most secure prison in Europe, possibly even the world. The prisoners are all either Republican or Loyalist paramilitaries, and serving long sentences for crimes including murder, kidnap, arson, planting bombs, weapons possession and conspiracy to kill.It’s September, 1983, a Sunday, early afternoon. Quiet. A Republican IRA prisoner approaches the officer in charge of the block where he’s serving his sentence.
I’m Carlo Gébler and once upon a time I worked in HMP Maze as a teacher. Not at the time of the escape, but 12 years later. The escape is still remembered, though, when I’m there. I hear it discussed, a lot, lauded by prisoners, disparaged by staff. I’m fascinated and the conversations make an impression.
For the Republican movement, on the other hand, the escape’s a coup which, to this this day, deliberately echoing the 1963 film The Great Escape about allied POWs escaping from a German camp in the Second World War, they like to term their own ‘Great Escape’ and continue to celebrate as one of their finest achievements, although the list of staff killed and injured during the escape suggests otherwise.
Traditionally, the escape is spun as a story of Republican guile and cunning, but that is only half the story. Government policy is also a big part of the story and that needs to be better known. State dereliction, sadly, plays a huge part in this story.
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