Parkhurst escape attempt, 24 February 1978
An IRA escape attempt from Parkhurst’s A Wing at 7.15 p.m. on 24 February 1978 revealed the strengths and weaknesses of the grouping at the time. In this instance, friendly relations built up over time between the republicans and black prisoners proved instrumental. Whereas the IRA cells were searched once or twice daily, Category B prisoners received far fewer checks for contraband.82 Compton Finnlader, a black South African, allowed the Irishmen to cut a hole through the planking of his cell floor and then breach the outer wall over a period of almost six months.83 While the IRA and Sinn Féin had close connections to the armed MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe) established by Nelson Mandela and the broader African National Congress to the extent of providing weapons training, direct assistance and specialist equipment, Finnlader was not imprisoned for political offences in England.84 Stanley knives were used to cut through the wooden floor of Finnlader’s cell, A4/ 30, where a cavity separated the bottom of the top-landing tier from the arched ceiling of the accommodation below. Andy Mulryan and Noel Gibson then worked on dislodging the brickwork of the wall. This painstaking methodology ensured that much less effort had to be made to conceal the progressive damage once the floor entryway was adequately disguised.85
Gibson was an exceptionally militant prisoner from the outset. Following arrest after the shooting of a plain-clothed policeman in Manchester on 1 July 1975, he was plunged into what he recalled as a ‘very emotive and charged atmosphere’, during which ‘everyone got a hiding. It was all part of the hysteria and excitement, and probably fear on their part as well’. His detention was not without incident: ‘When I was arrested I had two teeth knocked out, my nose was broken, I was hospitalized afterwards’.86 Walsh had been punished for attacking a staff member in Wormwood Scrubs on 26 June 1975, and then for joining two other IRA prisoners, Martin Coughlan and Stevie Blake, in a highly destructive roof-top protest on 14–15 November 1975. His BOV adjudication recorded the men had damaged ‘90 per cent of the roof tile on the east side of ‘D’ Hall and 100 per cent of the glass in the roof of the same wall’, in addition to considerable ancillary acts of sabotage. This entailed contravention of Rule 47 (11) as well as Rule 47 (7), (18) and (20).87 The London incidents pertained to the assertion of political status, whereas Walsh and his comrades intended to escape from Parkhurst.
Andy Mulryan, Sean Kinsella, Noel Gibson, John Higgins, Gerry Small and Roy Walsh were aided by Tony Madigan prior to his move to Albany.88 Madigan never set foot in Finnlader’s cell but assisted in the sewing of small bags from curtain material which were used to distribute the ‘rubbish and the rubble’.89 Other discrete preparations went undetected. Walsh persuaded an unconvinced UVF prisoner of the merits of doing him a ‘right favour’ by exchanging his A Wing cell for that of his own on B Wing.90 He otherwise could not participate. Gibson and Mulyran did much of the physical work on the basis that their known friendships with black prisoners provided cover for an otherwise suspicious presence on the top landing. Mulryan was compromised one day when an unexpected check of ‘bars, bolts and locks’ by prison staff trapped him in the cell. Although shirtless and sweating profusely from the labour, no comment was made.91 Gibson recalled: ‘Every night I went up there and chiselled out, worked on the things. Played music [to cover the noise]. After about two months, I got through to the last brick and we could see a little chink out. That was it’.92 Dirt and minor debris was scattered in the yard from the workshop-produced bags and the damage covered nightly by Finnlader’s numerous reggae music posters.93
The IRA men gathered in Finnlader’s cell on the evening of the bid with parts to assemble a twenty-foot ladder made from bolted Formica tabletops. It had been donated by a respected English gangster formerly associated with the Kray twins.94 The men also possessed ropes made from sheets and various items of useful paraphernalia. When the last few bricks were prised away, Walsh and Gibson descended the precarious thirty-foot drop to the ground. They were in the act of receiving the equipment needed to scale the walls from Mulryan when they were noticed by two alert warders who had braved heavy rain to mount a night patrol.95 A prisoner lookout positioned at the far end of the wing had not seen the staff members return towards the busy exit point.96 Walsh, a renowned fighter, spotted the prison officers radioing for assistance while staring transfixed at the extended knotted sheet rope, realised that physical resistance was futile. Within seconds ‘alarms [were] ringing everywhere. We were outside the building and the [inner] fence was about twenty yards away’. The plan had been to climb the two fences, and lacking outside harbourers and transport away from the island, to simply ‘hope for the best’. The men believed the fence line was not properly alarmed and that external help could have made the high-risk effort a viable prospect. As matters stood, ‘bad luck’ doomed it to failure.97
All aspirant escapers still inside the building managed to get away from the scene of the wall breach and avoided detection. They were surprised to be neither punished nor moved, a strong indication that informers on the wing had remained silent if not oblivious. Speculation that men were waiting to assist the group if they got over the exterior wall was not confirmed.98 Walsh and Gibson were seized in the open and punished with eighty-six days in solitary and were placed on the ‘E[scape] List’. Finnlader’s selfless aid to the republicans resulted in fifty-six days in solitary confinement and the loss of six months, remission.99 The Prison Department was undoubtedly relieved that the IRA men had been contained, not least in that it maintained its impressive record of just three Category A absconders between 1975 and 1978.100 Walsh was held in Wormwood Scrubs until 6 September 1979, followed by a month in solitary in Wandsworth before being shifted to Hull where deleterious ‘conditions’ induced him to refuse family visitors.101
Shane Paul O’Doherty
Shane Paul O’Doherty had been regarded as vulnerable prior to his transfer until he ended his blanket protest in solitary and was moved into D Wing of Wormwood Scrubs in November 1977. D Wing was the maximum-security part of the large London complex, parts of which dated from 1874. By February 1978, the Derryman, a close friend of Martin McGuinness, was a potentially problematic prisoner due to his public distancing from the Republican Movement. His refusal to wear prison uniform had been intended to secure repatriation to the Six Counties and succeeded