Jailbreak of Russian spy

Time Line

This country has changed quite a lot over the past 40 to 50 years. In the 1960s, as we approached the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, we looked on the United Kingdom very much from a “them and us” perspective.

Those were the days before we won Eurovision, joined the EEC as it was then, qualified for World Cup Finals or won Triple Crowns and Heineken Cups.
In the true spirit of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, any embarrassment caused to England was quite often a cause of great mirth here, particularly so if an Irishman was some way involved.
So it was when the Russian agent, George Blake, escaped from Wormwood Scrubs on. Blake had been given the longest-ever sentence by a British court – 42 years – and the fact that he escaped with the help of Limerick man, Seán Bourke aroused great interest here.
Blake was in the British army in the Korean War, was captured and became a Communist while a prisoner of war. Afterwards, he spent nine years as a double agent.
He was particularly involved in the Middle East and is believed to have named over 40 British agents working in that area. Many disappeared and were thought to have been executed. When he was eventually exposed, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 years.
In prison, he became friends with two peace activists named Randle and Pottle and Limerick man Bourke, who was serving seven years for sending a post bomb to a policeman.
After their release they plotted on Blake’s escape. They rented a nearby flat to use as a safe house and gave Bourke £65 (those were the days) to buy a getaway car.
The escape itself was very straightforward. The bars on a landing window had been sawn away and replaced with pieces of timber. His helpers threw a rope ladder over the wall and Blake just climbed over.
They had miscalculated, however, he had a bigger drop than they had expected and broke his wrist. There was a certain amount of sympathy for Blake because the length of his sentence was clearly politically motivated so they were able to find a doctor who fixed the break and did not report him.
After that, it was a miracle that he was not caught. Bourke had bought the getaway car in his own name. The flat they rented was a bedsit and the landlady came in regularly. Bourke got carried away with himself.
He phoned the police about the car and sent photographs of himself to the newspapers. He had also mess of things that they decided that he should also go to Russia.
They got a campervan and had an extra compartment built into it. With Blake hidden in the compartment and his family sitting on top of them, Randle simply drove across the continent and into East Berlin.
The most bizarre and most successful prison escape took place when Russian spy George Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs on October 22, 1966 – 43 years ago this week.