PRISONERS at the Maze were digging almost a tunnel a month and even getting beyond the compound – during a period of the 1970s – it has been revealed.
The extent to which tunnelling was a problem is apparent in Northern Ireland Office secret files from 1978.
The documents include material from 1973 and 1974 (only made available now as part of the 1978 classified files).
And it was in a 15-mon
th period from May 1973 to September 1974 that 12 tunnels were discovered.
The first tunnel found – on May 1, 1973 – was five feet deep but just 16 feet long.
But the elaborate excavations got deeper and longer in the months ahead.
The last tunnel discovered in that timeframe was the longest of the tunnels.
Uncovered on September 27, 1974, it was 64 feet (with just a two feet drop below ground and its wall shored with timber) and it stretched seven feet outside the compound’s perimeter fence, when it was found.
It appears inmates had either not realised they were out or were awaiting the right moment to try an escape.
Yet, while the internal prisons and government papers focus on attempts to prevent an escape, they also – almost humorously – relate that tunnelling had therapeutic, fitness and morale-boosting values which could not be dismissed.
An NIO report, dated January 12, 1978 – compiled after another fresh tunnel find at the Maze – concluded that tunnelling had a wide range of benefits for prisoners, even when there was no escape.
It was not just popular because it had a high chance of success, an official wrote.
“But because it offers prisoners a form of group exercise, involving much planning and effort – thus providing a boost to morale and so also offering a certain therapeutic value.”
The official wrote after a partially completed escape tunnel was discovered.
It was 36 feet long and excavated within just four days. Another 16 feet would have reached the compound fence.
Issue blankets had been cut up and made into small bags to carry the soil and it was dumped in the roof skins of the dining hall.
Basket ball hoops were used to make a makeshift 18-feet metal extension ladder.
And the tunnel entrance concealed under floor tiles and discovered after “the detection of an excess of carbon dioxide” in area of the hut.
A report on the 1978 tunnel concluded that prisoners burrowing like rats could, in some cases, tunnel from a compound hut and beyond the fence within just seven days, if undetected.
