Oh, there’s 19 men a-missing,
And they didn’t use the door.
Just blew a little hole,
Where there wasn’t one before.
Now the army and the gardai
Are searching high and low.
For the men from Portlaoise prison,
Who have vanished like the snow
It was a story that got headlines everywhere from the Leinster Express to the New York Times, a story that gripped the nation and a saga that inspired a chart-topping song.
Over the three decades of The Troubles, there was an endless procession of bloodshed and atrocities on both sides of the divide.
There are countless dark moments from those dark years, events and personalities given catchy titles that help to mark them neatly into history. Bloody Sunday, the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings, the Miami Showband Massacre, the Hunger Strikes, the Guildford Four, the Shankill Bombings, Omagh. It’s a list that goes on and on and on.
And for a long number of those terrible years, Portlaoise was very much a relevant location, the high security prison in the town being a home for the IRA prisoners.
Many areas close by were very involved too and sympathetic to those at the centre of it. Former Sinn Féin vice-president Phil Flynn wrote about The Heath: “Through the most difficult stages of the struggle this was a a hive of activity, a centre of action … of general logistical support, supply lines, prison escapes, shelter, sustenance and active service volunteers.”
In August of 1974, 50 years ago this week, 19 prisoners escaped from Portlaoise on a Sunday afternoon after overpowering prison officers, jumping from the roof and then blowing holes in the wall – using explosives that had been smuggled in.
Once they got out onto the Borris Road, they hi-jacked cars and scattered in every direction. Though some of the 19 were later arrested for different offences, none of them were caught on that occasion, despite a nationwide manhunt and an operation that was costing the state about £20,000 a day.
The escape had been meticulously planned and then carried out in a matter of minutes.
Within no time, the news was being broadcast on radio bulletins and checkpoints were set up on all of the approach roads out of the town.
By that stage it was too late. In the days that followed, the national media descended on Portlaoise and it dominated the newspaper headlines, locally, nationally and internationally.
Background
The Troubles were an ethnic nationalist conflict that began in the late 1960s and ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement.
In 1969, a largely Catholic civil rights protest was met with violence by both Ulster Royalists and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
This culminated in the August 1969 riots and deployment of British soldiers in Ireland. Initially the IRA solely defended Catholic areas but began an offensive campaign in 1970, using guerilla tactics against the British Army and RUC.
This campaign resulted in the arrests of many IRA soldiers who believed they were prisoners of war and had a responsibility to break out.
Most of these prisoners were sent to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. One of them was Kevin Mallon, from Tyrone, who was jailed in 1973 after being found guilty of IRA membership.
But by October of that year, Mallon was at the centre of a famous breakout from Mountjoy, when he was lifted by helicopter from the prison yard along with fellow IRA leaders Seamus Twomey and JB O’Hagan on Haloween, October 31.
The backdrop to that particular story has a strong Laois link also.
Getting their hands on a helicopter in the early 1970s wasn’t a particularly straight-forward ordeal but the IRA were nothing if not industrious and one of their men posed as a wealthy US film-maker who needed the helicopter for a photoshoot.
They hired the helicopter and pilot under this fake name, directed it to a field in Stradbally owned by an IRA sympathiser. There it was hijacked with the pilot ordered to fly to Mountjoy.
As it hovered over Mountjoy, the prison officers initially took no action as they believed it was Minister for Defence Paddy Donegan landing for a visit.
By the time it became clear it wasn’t a ministerial visit, the officers on duty were surrounded and the prisoners were rioting. Mallon, Twomey and O’Hagan all got away with the helicopter then dropping them at a disused racecourse in Baldoyle where the pilot was released unharmed and the escapees were whisked away in getaway cars.
It was an incident that was a cause of major embarrassment for the Fine Gael-Labour government led by Liam Cosgrave.
In an emergency debate in the Dáil, the following day, Fianna Fáil leader Jack Lynch criticised the government for their “incompetence in security matters”.
Within a couple of weeks, the Wolfe Tones were making hay out of the escape. Their song ‘Up and Away’ – though banned from the airwaves – sold 12,000 copies and was top of the charts for four weeks.
In the same period of time, in early December, Kevin Mallon was recaptured in the Montague Hotel, at one of the famous Sunday night dances. He was jailed again and this time he was sent to Portlaoise Prison, where the Mountjoy IRA prisoners had been transferred to.
It has been speculated upon that Mallon got himself re-arrested on purpose in order to help co-ordinate the subsequent breakout from Portlaoise.
Portlaoise was higher security and the IRA prisoners had their own wing.
One prison officer from the time recalls how Mallon was the main focus of their attention.
“One morning Mallon came out of his cell and shouted down (to the officer in charge), ‘how come you’re always looking at me?'”
The prison officer’s response was to the point.
“Because I know if I can see you that the rest of them are here too.”
But plans were already well underway to break out again – and this time they were intent on escaping in far greater numbers than they had from Mountjoy.
In May of 1974, gardaí uncovered a network of underground tunnels. It’s believed the tunnels had been constructed by men from outside the prison, aimed at breaking out those on the inside.
But with that plan scuppered, thoughts moved elsewhere.
Preparation
‘Up Like a Bird – the rise and fall of an IRA commander’, a memoir by Brendan Hughes with journalist Douglas Dalby was published in 2021.
Hughes was a key man in the organisation of both the Mountjoy and Portlaoise breakouts. Indeed he was jailed for his role in Mountjoy, and was initially excluded by Mallon from being part of the plans for the Portlaoise escape.
“Anywhere you went in the prison, you had to negotiate double, and sometimes, treble gates,” wrote Hughes in his book.
“Razor wire was also strung along the top of the fence that enclosed the two exercise yards that ran down either side of our block. On the far side there were more rolls unfurled on the ground.
“Anti-helicopter wires strung from the roof to the top of the outside wall … these had been wrapped with razor wire to prevent anyone being able to climb up on them.
“At night floodlights bathed the entire compound … they were designed to cast no shadow. There would be no hiding place within the walls of Portlaoise Prison.”
When the plan for the underground breakout was derailed, Hughes describes in the book how he was brought on to the “escape committee” and their plan centred on getting out through the governor’s residence.
“If you look at the security and how it’s structured, you’ll see it is designed to cover the main and back gates,” he wrote in the book as to how he outlined his plan.
“Whoever built this place never considered the possibility that someone might use the governor’s personal gate to escape.”
The men spent weeks prepping for the breakout. Plastic explosives (known as Semtex) were smuggled into the prison via blocks of timber disguised as woodworking material. So too were detonators.
Plates and cutlery were stolen from the kitchen, to be used as a distraction on the day of the breakout.
They chose a Sunday as they reasoned security was at its most lax after mass when many of the prison officers headed home for dinner.
They also decided to come up with a code word to begin the breakout, eventually settling on ‘Mickey Do’, the nickname of a fellow prisoner. On top of that, they made fake prison officer hats, as the army wouldn’t shoot where prison officers were.
Information about the breakout was kept from most of the prisoners until the final moments before the escape.
Fearing that if prisoners knew too much they would change their behaviour and arouse suspicion.
“I had high expectations. I really did intend to empty the entire prison of everyone who wanted to leave and didn’t see anything to prevent it happening,” added Hughes in the book.
“I wasn’t giving anyone priority. Prisoners serving long sentences had plenty of motivation to escape.
“The first prisoners off the roof would set the pace over the open ground. As long as they kept running, we would get to that crucial inner gate. Most of the prisoners would only be told about the escape a few hours beforehand.
“It was a calculated risk but one we believed would give us the best chance of getting the maximum number of men out.”
The breakout
The appointed day arrived on August 18, 1974, and “Mickey Do” echoed down the corridors of Portlaoise Prison.
Chaos ensued, the cutlery and crockery was dropped from the third and fourth floors, crashing to the ground.
The prisoners, wrestled the prisoner officers into the laundry room, barricaded the door, relieved them of their keys before moving on to the second phase of their plan.
With their newly acquired keys, they were able to gain access to an adjoining roof before jumping to the ground of the prison yard.
Alert of an attempted escape was sounded as the men dashed 50 yards to the wall of the Governor’s residence where they placed the first explosive.
Four of the prisoners blasted the wall from the inside and the escapees vaulted across the garden of the home to a heavy oak door on the perimeter.
A second explosive was planted, the door was blasted open and the prisoners made their escape to a housing estate, dodging bullets through a back lane and down through the gardens of nearby homes.
With the gaping hole in the prison’s wall other prisoners began rushing toward the new escape route.
However, sentry guards on the roof of the prison laid fire upon the onrushing men as they were consequently halted. In all, 19 got out.
One prisoner badly damaged his ankle jumping from the roof. His escape was over. But for the 19, it was well and truly on.
The escapees split into three separate groups and hijacked three separate cars on the Borris Road.
One of whom was Aidan Lynch who later told RTE News: “They told me that there had been explosions and while I was stopped this group of men pushed me and got into the car and drove up the Borris Road.
“It was all over in a matter of seconds: they forcibly dragged me out of the car.”
On the run
As the men evaded, escape information on their whereabouts immediately after the escape were hard to come by, unreliable and largely anecdotal accounts. The various groups scattered in every direction.
Hughes’ book sheds some light on the situation as he gave personal accounts of his group’s whereabouts after the breakout.
They were initially looked after by a family in Emo, before getting as far as Newbridge and then to Gorey on the Wexford-Wicklow border and eventually on to Dublin. Hughes’ recollection of his journey over that six days is peppered with anecdotes of safe houses, close encounters with the Army and the Gardaí and of driving through checkpoints.
In the immediate aftermath of the breakout, severe restrictions were placed on what could be brought into prisoners. But despite a massive manhunt, involving hundreds of Gardai and the Army, the search was stood down about a week later.
Hughes recalls in his book how he later fell foul of the IRA leadership, ended up back in Portlaoise Prison in the 1990s and was eventually released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The news coverage
The event attracted media interest far and wide as it was published as local to national papers and as far as America.
The various news outlets took different angles on the story and unsurprisingly had conflicting information.
Irish Independent
The Independent commented with a headline that the event ‘must’ve been an inside job’ on the morning after it.
They stated that sentry guards on the roof of the prison laid fire upon the men as they dodged their way through a series of lanes and back gardens before hijacking cars and making their escape.
New York Times
The New York Times stated that two of the men had actually been struck with bullets and were helped by their fellow escapees.
However no other publication or the Department of Justice aligns with this version of events.
Irish Times
The Irish Times appear to have given the prisoners more credit than the Independent for the preparation and execution of the escape as they reported it as a ‘carefully executed escape’.
They described the overturn of keys and uniforms as a ‘short severe struggle’ before they placed the ‘explosive charge’ and ‘dashed towards freedom’
Irish Press
The Irish Press was the only publication to name all 19 prisoners. They also stated that no prisoners were struck by army troop bullets.
The paper reported that one group of fugitives hijacked a car driven by a Department for Agriculture official.
Other Publications
Various reporters and journalists were arrested in the aftermath of the breakout. Press and photographers were banned from the Prison.
Two newspaper photographers and a TV cameraman were detained for taking pictures of the prison and had their film confiscated and subsequently destroyed.
The aftermath
Given the atrocities of The Troubles, the Portlaoise Prison breakout holds a different place in Irish history and local lore. Nobody was killed. Nobody was badly hurt.
1974 was a significant year in The Troubles. Senator Billy Fox was killed in Monaghan in March of that year – some of those charged with his killing escaped from Portlaoise.
The Loyalist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan were in May. The Birmingham bombing was in November. That, in particular, is seen as a key moment when support in the broader public dissipated for the IRA.
Other events that followed with a local connection to the Troubles also had horror endings.
On St Patrick’s Day in 1975, there was another breakout attempt when all the electricity in the town in Portlaoise was cut out in a bid to break prisoners out from the prison. On that occasion, an IRA member from Dublin, Tom Smith, was killed.
In October 1976, Garda Michael Clerkin was killed in the Garryhinch bombings which also seriously wounded four other Gardai.
In 1983, Brian Stack, the chief prison officer, was shot leaving the National Boxing Stadium. He died 18 months later from the injuries sustained. The IRA initially denied involvement before stating in a statement in 2013 that some of their members had carried out the shooting.
There was another breakout attempt in 1985 which failed. Prison officer Patrick Powell was honoured with a bravery award for his role in foiling that breakout.
The song
Music was again used to poke fun at the authorities and by September, song-writer Dermot Hegarty had penned 19 Men a Missing.
Again banned from the airwaves, it went to Number 1 in the charts where it spent three weeks before being replaced by Kung Fu Fighting.
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