I Pulled the Largest Prison Break in UK History
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
this is a real gun it's an IRA operation if you do exactly what you're told there's no problem but if you don't I will use this gun
What they wanted was a mass escape. They wanted a propaganda coup. First, they have to get themselves into uniforms that they've stolen off the guards. Second, they have to hijack the kitchen truck or the lorry when it turns up. They have to drive this lorry out through the front gate like it's a normal Sunday afternoon. But, of course, the lorry was running late and they've missed their window. And he opens up the back of the truck where everyone is still waiting for the front gates to open and he starts yelling.
It's everybody for themselves. Take the fields.
Take the fields, which means the plan is dead. Run. Hey, I'm Julian Morgans, and you're listening to What It Was Like, the show that asks people who have lived through big, dramatic events what it was like.
Hey everyone, welcome back. So this week we're going to do something that we've never done before. It's a prison break story. And it's actually a story on the biggest prison break in UK history. And it took place in Northern Ireland in 1983. What happened is that 38 imprisoned members of the Irish Republican Army, you probably know them as the IRA... They escaped by smuggling in guns, which they used to take the prison officers hostage, and then they swapped into the officer clothing, they hijacked a truck, and they managed to drive this truck through multiple security gates to freedom. At the time, the escape was great propaganda for the IRA and a huge embarrassment for the British government. People actually got fired.
But for our purposes, it's just a really fun prison break story. And we've actually got two of them because for subscribers, I'm going to speak to an Australian man who escaped prison in a helicopter. This is a very cool, sexy story. His girlfriend hijacked a helicopter, landed it in the prison yard. He jumped in and the two of them flew off to safety. That's our subscriber-only episode this week. But for the rest of you, gather around. Please come this way because I'm going to give you a very short, hopefully accessible one-minute lesson in Irish history. So I told you before that this episode, this story, takes place in Ireland in the 1980s. Now, this was during a time that we call the Troubles. And before working on this story, I didn't know anything about the Troubles.
I'd heard the phrase, I knew that it was something about you too. You know, like, I know that song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. I knew that it was somehow related to this period of history, the Troubles. But here's what you need to know to make sense of this story and that song. So about a thousand years ago, in the year 1169, the English arrived in Ireland and they just kind of never left. And Ireland basically became England's very first colony in a collection that would later include India, Canada, and yes, Australia. But this was never a peaceful arrangement. There was tension, tension for centuries, and particularly between those who saw themselves as ethnically Irish, and those people were mostly Catholic, and anyone who was British, or just kind of loyal to the British crown, and keep in mind, those people were mostly Protestant.
And this friction was hottest in Northern Ireland, where from 1969, British troops were deployed into streets to try to keep the peace, or reinforce the status quo. And big brick walls got built to separate British loyalist neighborhoods from Republican neighborhoods. And then, in 1972, the situation escalated again when British soldiers opened fire on a peaceful protest and killed 13 people. And this event became known as Bloody Sunday, which gave the world my favorite U2 song. And after that, if you're young and living in Northern Ireland, you kind of had to pick a side. Were you going to align yourself with the local Catholics or align yourself with the bullies, the interlopers, the intruders and the Protestants from England?
And our guest decided to fight for Irish independence.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:38
2
What was the Maze Prison breakout and why is it significant?
6:38–10:49
3
How did the historical context of the Troubles shape prisoners' motivations?
10:49–19:00
4
Who is Gerry Kelly and how did he become involved with the IRA?
19:00–23:39
5
What were prison conditions like in Long Kesh that led to protest and escape planning?
23:39–37:38