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IRA Member Given Secret Pardon By Thatcher

IRA Member Given Secret Pardon By Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher's government issued a royal pardon for a convicted IRA member who escaped from prison more than 50 years ago, official records have revealed.

Donal Donnelly escaped from Belfast's Crumlin Road jail - known as Europe's Alcatraz - on Boxing Day 1960 while serving a 10-year sentence for membership of the IRA during its 1950s border campaign.

Former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hurd agreed to the use of a Royal Prerogative of Mercy in May 1985, at a time when Lady Thatcher's government was vehemently opposed to granting concessions to republicans.

The decision came less than two years after the biggest prison break-out in UK history by 38 republicans and just seven months after the IRA carried out the Brighton bombing, in which five people were killed during the Conservative Party conference.

A Northern Ireland Office (NIO) letter from the time said: "The Secretary of State has approved the recommendation... that the remainder of Mr Donnelly's sentence should be remitted."

Donnelly wrote a book - Escape From Crumlin Road, Europe's Alcatraz - in which he described using hacksaw blades, torn sheets and electric flex as tools during his escape.

The use of pardons after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was revealed earlier this year after the collapse of the trial of a man accused of the Hyde Park bombing.

Referring to Donnelly's case, an NIO official said: "I cannot help feeling that given the Northern Ireland situation, the time will never be exactly right.

"However the prisons are quiescent at the moment, the Maze escape is 18 months behind us and the trial of the recaptured escapers is some months ahead.

"If we hold off until the late summer we may well end up deferring action yet again rather than remit Donnelly's sentences during, or immediately after, that trial."

Lady Thatcher was known for her unflinching handling of the IRA prison hunger strike in 1981, in which 10 men died including Sinn Fein MP Bobby Sands.

Current Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers revealed the Royal Prerogative was exercised in Northern Ireland on at least 365 occasions between 1979 and 2002.

But the figure may well be higher because the NIO has been unable to locate records covering 1987 to 1997.

An NIO spokeswoman said: "The use of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy has changed significantly since 1985.

"The introduction of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, statutory provisions on sentence remission for assisting offenders, and other routes for cases to be reviewed by the courts, mean that use of the RPM is now far more rare. It has not been used in Northern Ireland since 2002."

Mr Donnelly, 75, said he applied for a pardon because he was a planning and procurement manager with a multinational firm in the Republic and wanted to work for the company in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

He said: "They knew that I was not involved with the Provisional or the Official IRA; effectively I was no threat to them."