Limerick man behind spy jailbreak

One of the most audacious jailbreaks in British penal history was masterminded by a Limerick man, who spent the final year of his life living in a caravan in Kilkee.
In fact, Sean Bourke, the man who sprang double agent George Blake from London’s Wormwood Scrubs in 1966, was just 49 when he collapsed and died in the West Clare resort.
This remarkable incident, which made world headlines, is recounted in the first episode of a new TG4 series, 6 escapees, 6 plans, 1 objective: Éalú (Escape). 
Bourke and Blake – A Pal in Prison, which will air at 10.30pm on Thursday, February 16, will set the tone for what should be an intriguing series. The documentary features archive conversations with Bourke as well as interviews with his fellow escape conspirators.
“Britain’s most wanted man came up to me in D wing and said, ‘Sean, will you help me escape’,” Bourke once said matter-of-factly in an interview.
The jailbreak occurred against the backdrop of 1960s Cold War paranoia. Armed only with a pot of pink chrysanthemums and a set of walkie-talkies, Bourke set up the break to freedom by Blake.
George Blake, a British spy working as a double agent for the KGB, was sentenced in 1961 to 42 years, the longest sentence ever handed down by a British court.
Bourke was serving a seven-year sentence for sending a letter bomb to a policeman, on which he engraved the words, “Rest in Peace”.
In the Scrubs, as weeks turned into years, it became clear to Blake that the KGB was not going to swap him for the release of a Western spy and so it was that the spy and the anarchist started to plot his escape. Bourke had become editor of the prison magazine and established a friendship with Blake due their shared interest in literature.
Driven by a desire to strike a blow against the establishment, Bourke signed up. He saw it as an act of vengeance for his lost childhood spent in the notorious Daingean Reformatory School.
In the 1980s, former Clare Champion journalist Frank Hamilton wrote in a magazine article how, “In a searing document of painful and raw recollections, Daingean Days, the Limerick writer described in harrowing detail punishments meted out to boys by the Oblate Brothers.”
Bourke recalled, “It was the middle of October 1947 when I arrived at Daingean and I was twelve-and-a-half years of age. Absolute silence had to be maintained at all times. There was no heating in the wash house and the ice was about a quarter inch thick in the basins. I copied the other boys and broke the ice with a quick jab of the elbow before having a wash in the freezing water.”
Brother Ahern was supervising the washhouse. He did this by standing on a wooden box. He was nicknamed ‘The Killer’. I found out why on that very first morning in Daingean. Someboy was heard to whisper to another at the end of the wash house. Brother Ahern went red in the face. ‘If I catch the fella that’s talkin’, he won’t be able to talk for a long time’, he shouted.
Suddenly he seemed to notice something. He jumped down and ran to where the whisper had come from. He caught hold of a boy about 17 and proceeded to beat him with his fists. He punched the boy in the face repeatedly until his lip split and his nose spurted blood. In his frenzy Brother Ahern’s crucifix worked its way loose from the belt of his cassock and, dangling from its neck cord, jumped about in a grotesque dance as he carried out his attack on the terrified boy.
“Brother Ahern then resumed his position on the wooden box and glared up and down the washhouse. ‘Ye scum of the earth’, he screamed, addressing the inmates in general. ‘Ye dirty filthy good for nothing scum of the earth. Ye dirty pack of robbers. Ye will be no loss to anyone when ye go back to the filthy dirty hovels and the ignorant illiterate fathers and mothers that ye come from’.
“From the wash house we were marched once more through the snow and the darkness to the chapel for mass.”
Once Bourke was released from Wormwood Scrubs he began a six-month planning mission. Using smuggled walkie-talkies, he communicated covertly with George Blake on a nightly basis and even recorded their conversations, which feature in the programme. He also enlisted the help of another former inmate, Michael Randle, who reveals in the programme all the astounding details of the escape plan.
“Seán Bourke was a total maverick,” said Randle.
In October 1966, against all the odds and in spite of Bourke’s chaotic nature, he sprang his pal, and while ports and airports were being scoured by the police, the pair were holed up in a bedsit half a mile from the prison.
What ensued was weeks of chaos where Bourke’s erratic and drunken behaviour threatened to blow their cover. The conspirators finally managed to smuggle Blake in a campervan to Russia, where he still lives today.
In his magazine article of almost 30 years ago, Frank Hamilton recalled various meeting with Bourke.
“I was fortunate to be one of the few Limerick journalists whom Sean did not attack, fight or fall out with over the years. We shared many memories: the thatched cottage in Kilfinane, complete with sugan chair piled high with newspapers; the night in the old National Hotel when his gun kept falling out of his jacket…”
“Sometimes we talked about serious topics. Did he really organise Blake’s escape or did the KGB carry out the operation? How did he smuggle Blake to Moscow? What did he feel about Limerick? “‘All this will come out’”, he would say. “‘My second book will reveal everything’”.
“So The Scrubbers was to be his major work. His money was gone and a return to writing assumed a new, pressing importance in early 1981.
“Sean Bourke made his last move: he packed his typewriter, left Limerick and moved into a caravan in Kilkee to finally complete his second novel. The booze behind him, bracing sea air and long country walks restored his strength.
“One summer’s day, when I was a press officer for the Shannon Development Company, I had to visit Kilkee to write an industrial story. I spotted Sean strolling, nay, swaggering along the promenade exuding the air of a man at peace with himself. I remember we talked about Limerick writer David Hanly and his book In Guilt and in Glory.
“‘Hanly took a few jabs at your profession’,” he said. “‘No one escaped his knife’,” he added. ‘What a marvelous bloody way to get everything off your chest.’
“So he headed off, waving his walking stick, setting out on the path to George’s Head.
“On the morning of 26 January, 1982, Sean Bourke went for his regular walk along the Kilrush Road. Only a few hundred yards from Kilkee, he was seen to stagger, clutch his chest and fall dying on to the grass margin. In the vital hours between word of his death reaching Limerick and relatives, the manuscript that Sean Bourke had been working on somehow disappeared.
“When Sean’s brother, who travelled from Scotland, reached the caravan, there was no sign of any papers. Instead, all that greeted him was the remains of a meagre breakfast: part of a loaf of bread, and a half empty carton of milk.
“In a final, symbolic gesture, his brother took the money found on Bourke’s body, one pound and four pence, and deposited it in the poorbox at the county hospital, Ennis, where the body had been carried. Sean would have approved.”