Sean Aloyisious Bourke was my uncle. He was born in Limerick in 1934 just minutes after his twin brother Kevin, sixth of seven boys to Agnes, into an extended family of poets, drunks, misers, bare knuckle fighters and wild rovers and second cousin to actor Richard Harris and poet Desmond O’Grady.
Times were hard in 1930’s Limerick – you only have to read Frank McCourt’s book ‘Angela’s Ashes’ to see that. Some of Sean’s brothers were in the same Confraternity of Mary as Frank so they were all it in together. Sean’s father died just after the war and the young boys had to fend for themselves. All were born and lived their early lives in and around an ancient grain store in Little Gerald Griffin St just off Limerick’s main thoroughfare. From there they regularly attended the local Roman Catholic cathedral St John’s, and were taught / indoctrinated, like so many Irishmen have been, by the order of the Christian Brothers.
In May 1961 a Foreign Office man named George Blake was tried at the Old Bailey on five counts of spying for the Soviet Union. He was found guilty and sentenced to the longest term of imprisonment ever imposed under English Law – 42 years. On 22 October 1966 Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. There was an immediate international furore. Every port, airport and landing strip throughout the British Isles was put under strict round-the-clock surveillance. Watch was kept on every Eastern European embassy and consulate in London. The authorities believed that high-level KGB agents had engineered the daring coup. But, while the hue and cry mounted, Blake was living quietly in a flat in Highlever Road, a few minutes’ walk from Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
In fact, the springing of George Blake was the work not of foreign agents but of a single Irishman named Sean Bourke, who had been a fellow prisoner of Blake’s at Wormwood Scrubs. Nor was this astonishing coup carried out for monetary reward: it was actually achieved on a borrowed £700. Sean then assisted with spiriting Blake out of England then to Moscow, a few weeks later he followed him to Moscow by way of Paris. He then spent an extraordinary two years in Russia until his return to Ireland on 22 October 1968, the second anniversary of the jail break.
These are my recollections of Sean based on interview transcripts and personal recommendations.
Interview Transcript…
“…and so of course, I’m terribly relieved, but at the same time I’d say this, that I’m not at all surprised by the verdict…if they had decided otherwise and sent me back to England, the in my view the extradition treaty that exists between Ireland and England would be meaningless because it expressly provides protection for a person accused of a political offence…and if rescuing a spy from prison is not political then I don’t know what is”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Well I’ve…the story of the escape has been written in book form and my agent is coming over from London in two weeks time and I understand that he is taking the manuscript to New York to have it published in America first. On the strength of reading this manuscript he has urged me to continue writing and in fact I have finished a second book and I have plans for a third one…I hope to make a career in writing”
Sean Bourke in Dublin in February 1969 after the high court hearing which disallowed the application by the British authorities to have him extradited to Britain to face charges in connection with the escape of George Blake. Bourke had arrived back from Moscow to Ireland to Shannon airport on the twenty-second of October 1968, the second anniversary of the escape of George Blake.
“When I arrived a Shannon airport yesterday I had in my wallet precisely forty American dollars, given to me in Moscow by the KGB to cover my traveling expenses to Shannon, apart from that absolutely nothing…and if any suggestion had been made to me that some secret account in a Swiss bank might be arranged for me, and this has been hinted earlier on, I would have turned it down flat, because I have no desire to put myself on the road of a paid Soviet agent”
So what do you do, you come back to Ireland with no obvious prospects.
“I desire to be in the one country where I know I shall be happy, and certainly safe. If an Irishman is not safe and secure in Ireland, the for heavens sake, where is he safe?”
Where indeed, but from himself and his own. This is the story of a boy who grew up in a tough part of a city. The boy became an adolescent with quick wits; the adolescent became a man who turns the borstal behind him; and the man, while a prisoner in Wormwood Scurbs, and editor of the prison magazine, organised the escape of George Blake, then a senior officer in the British intelligence services - Blake was jailed for forty-two years for treason, having in his time betrayed crucial western security information to the Russian KGB. The boy who became the man was never a Communist as such, or part of any system which cushioned his own welfare. The boy who became the ‘great escaper, afterwards went to Russia and found it more oppressive than an English jail, returned home, but could never quite shake off that early wound - not with drink, or money or notoriety or being a hero in his own place, could shake off the would of whatever happened growing up.
His later life, after his return to this country was one of despair and disintegration - he squandered one hundred thousand pounds, in his own words 'I drank every penny' - a curving back to that murky, twilight world he cast away which had been his earliest excitement. He died on a lonely country road under the open sky with less than two pounds in his pocket. What ever else may be said about him, his life and his death were his own.
“This is fox michael calling Baker Charlie, fox michael calling Baker Charlie, come in please - over”
“Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, can you hear me - come in please”
These recordings were made by Sean Bourke in the course of communicating with George Blake, over the twenty foot high wall of Wormwood Scrubs in October 1966, by walkie talkie radio. The recording reveals the arrangements being made to effect the escape while Bourke was outside the prison, having been released from there some months previously. Bourke does not refer to that recording in his book ‘The Springing of George Blake” - he kept it as evidence of his own part in the escape and to refute critics after his death who may have claimed that he did not do what he claimed that he did. The tool referred to is a small car jack Bourke had caused to be smuggled in to Blake, to break the struts of the window on the prison landing - in the event Blake broke the struts with a kick, scaled the wall and was spirited away by Bourke. You will read Blake’s references to ‘Stone walls, do not a prison make’ are from an English poet which both of them were studying while in prison…..:
“This is fox michael calling Baker Charlie, fox michael calling Baker Charlie, come in please - over”“Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, can you hear me - come in please”“Stone walls, do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage - over”“I am innocent and required to take these for a Hermitage - over”“We could love less than a pool.. - over”“I may be just a dreamer - over”“Well now my friend, obviously the first question I must ask you is this - did you receive the tools, and if so are they suitable? - over”“I did not receive it - only the hand iron and the croppers, but not the jack itself it wasn’t there - a difficult position at the moment - over”“Well..this is very regrettable, I’m meeting him again tomorrow night at seven o’clock - that’s the earliest I can discover why you haven’t had them - over”“Do you know where he put the jack - because it wasn’t with the other stuff”
Sean tried to settle in Dublin but found the pull of his own notoriety and the push of his own inner demons too much to cope with. After several incidents, involving on one occasion the possession of a gun - which he said he needed for protection from some un-named people, and after many forays of drunken excess, he returned to Limerick - to the city where he had grown up, to that formative place where his deviant energies had first flowered.
Joe Malone knew him:“We were about twelve years of age in John the Baptist - I would be a little bit older than Sean but that didn’t make any great difference because in the school each schoolteacher (our teacher then was of course John Swift - George Swift was his correct name, he taught two classes, fourth and fifth - Sean was in the lower class than me). Because Sean you see came from the Christian Brothers in Sexton Street, he didn’t go to school there - he was a problem child like myself. I went to Cray Lane and I didn’t go to school in Cray Lane…actually John the Baptist was a school for bad boys, for troublesome street urchins”.
“Were Sean and yourself both convicted of offences at that age?”
“No. Sean was convicted of a very minor offence…I think it was a couple of bananas or so. I was actually never actually seriously convicted. I was brought to court for the stealing of eleven apples - I remember the exact amount, because there were four of us there and we could not share the eleven apples equally. But we were caught outside the Borma Road, of course I know we have two Borma Roads in Limerick, but there was one uptown and one in the Ennis Road. We were actually caught in the Borma Road with the eleven apples. We were brought to court and brought in front of District Justice Mary Flood - we’ll not forget his name - and only for the people we stole the apples from who were actually a Protestant Minister ( a Church of Ireland Minister) - he spoke for us - we would have been sent away. My other three pals with me were eventually sent away.”
“So you knew Sean Bourke then in John the Baptist. What kind of young fella’ was he?”
“He was a big, soft young man then. Of course the school was full of characters, and it was very difficult to stick out. Everybody was a character. You came in late and you went home and you didn’t go. Sometimes we may only go to school once a week. And they didn’t pay much attention to us y’see. But Sean didn’t really stick out, except for his big head of curly hair, his broad smile - he was a very soft young man then. He never showed any sign of aggression or arrogance, and stayed very much by himself…he was just about twelve years of age then. We had a little band in the school and we would march in and out of the school at lunch breaks and single file and we had pladulettes, a little drum and the symbols and a clapper. Sean would lead the band in playing the clappers. He was a big hefty young man and he led the class in every day. That’s when I first met Sean Bourke. I didn’t meet Sean Bourke then until I had read about him.”
“What number of years passed?”
“Oh…I suppose, nigh on thirty-six years I would say near enough to it. This I remember well because Sean Bourke had difficulty getting a flat you know in Limerick. I know estate agent he went into, and when Sean Bourke’s name was mentioned, as the occupier, Sean Bourke didn’t get a flat, they would not give him a flat…well his name of course y’see, he had appeared on television and radio and the newspapers, and this famous man who sprang George Blake, so ‘twas at that time that he went to live in the country, in the Irish cottages. I had a pub in Limerick as you know and Sean was one of my best customers and he was always very entertaining - a lovely singer and he had a marvellous sense of humour. He drank a lot, gave away a lot of money of course and unfortunately he befriended (I would imagine) the wrong type of person for his own good. But he was always very colourful, very gregarious except of course in his more depressing moments when the drink would be too much. By and large he had a great sense of humour and he was quite colourful. He was a bit depressed for a while in Limerick city until the great news came in one Monday morning that Alfred Hitchcock took an interest in his book - the book he had written - and Alfred Hitchcock, or his agent, placed ten thousand pounds in a northern bank - I know this because came in and presented me with a cheque for a hundred pounds, now he didn’t quite owe me a hundred pounds but he was very generous with money of course - but he swore that day (this is my connection with Sean) that he would never again handle a cheque book - that he would draw the money as he wanted it. Because he had gone through, roughly I think, between forty and fifty thousand pounds then - in a very short time.”
Jim Kemmy: “One story amuses me and I often think about it - it shows you Sean’s fixation with some happening. His spiritual home in Limerick, his local pub, was the Munster Fair Tavern - its still there mind you - just across the road from St Laurences graveyard where the roads fork from Waterford and Tipperary…Toddy Long, a childhood friend of the Bourkes, was banned from this pub for some minor infraction - now this was tantamount to excommunication and Sean made it the be all and end all of Sean Bourke’s life to get Toddy allowed back in to that pub. He tried as best he could, every kind of blandishment to Pat Carle to soften the line to let Toddy back, but no. But eventually Sean’s perseverance won the day and after some months Pat Carle allowed Toddy back to the pub. But that wasn’t good enough for Sean at all. He wanted to celebrate the occasion in fitting style and he hired a pipe band and a photographer. He got Toddy and the band to assemble in the centre of Limerick (it only had one set of traffic lights), it was by the traffic lights at Todds and Rocher stores corner. And Mulgrove Street is a continuation of Williams Street (that’s the longest street in Limerick - it was a mile long walk) and they set off. The band playing with Toddy at the head of the band - Sean and friends marching behind the band and the played away, along Williams Street up to the top of Mulgrove Street into the pub and the photographer taking pictures the whole way - they came into the pub then and it was drinks on the house all night long. It was the very same with Sean and in one sweep he won the world title.”
Joe Malone: “And then he would go off the booze and he would take long walks along [meelik…] he would walk for ten or fifteen miles a day but then he’d go back on the booze again. I think as a result, except for a few very colourful articles he had written for Jim Kemmys magazines, he didn’t write a whole lot anyway. He did keep in contact at first with people in England because I often went to his flat in Gerald-Griffin Street - his old warehouse - and one evening we were having great fun, we actually tried him in a mock trial for murder. When it was over - we all got very drunk - Sean rang Scotland Yard and the people in Scotland Yard - whoever we got onto - apparently knew him quite well - they were on first name terms anyway and the asked Sean would he like to call over and collect his old Rover - it was still in the yard. So he had the great sense of humour also.”
“Of course if he had put his foot inside the jurisdiction he would have been charged, tried and probably jailed for aiding and abetting the release of ….”
Joe Malone: “Well he checked that out he told me, and certainly he would have got seven years - he wasn’t always hazy from the booze, he always kept a very fine active brain…”
Jim Kemmy: “He could be mischevious, he could be very boyish in his pranks, but he could also be a deep complex man. He was a many-sided figure, Sean. Anti-establishment, difficult, morose, perverse, truculant. He was menacing without being violent - he was never physically violent, he was never a fighting man at all in that sense. He was driven on by demons, he had demons inside him that he couldn’t control, and sometimes those demons got the better of him.”
“What was the nature of those demons?”
Jim Kemmy: “I often tried to work that out myself because I was friend of his, very proud to have known Sean Bourke - sometimes our relationship was stormy as well and Sean Bourke, he made friends slowly but fell out very quickly, very easily. So our relationship was often touchy, often delecate, and fragile but still it persisted till the very end. I’m glad of that too because I remember Sean with affection and often try to analyse him. I suppose it was his childhood really, his poverty in his childhood - the fact he was locked up for eleven years, behind bars of one kind or another. He was in Dangean first of all, then borstal, and then in Wormwood Scrubs - about eleven years in all. That had an effect on his personality and it was deeper than that too - perhaps he had some kind of mental disorders as well within him. And as a result of that, he couldn’t live in peace with himself. A very talented man - he was a good writer, a masterly writer at times - the best typist I ever saw! He was a bricklayer (trained by Her Majesty), electrician as well he was and learned other skills in prison - a highly intelligent man, good editor as well of the prison magazine, but unfortunately unhappy, tortured, tormented figure. Couldn’t come to terms with himself.”
Sean (with a drink in him): “I was born in Limerick by accident. Because when my father and mother were going together and got married there was no television in Limerick (thanks be to Christ!). As a result of which I was born. If Limerick City tomorrow, capsized under the weight of its own dirty, filthy hypocracy into the River Shannon and was never heard of again I wouldn’t shed a tear Mr Chariman….and the WORLD would have lost nothing!!!!”
Joe Malone: “This big front that he put up, basically he was a very kind person and he wouldn’t put a word wrong when he was sober. But he was very frustrated and very very confused towards the end. He could write, and write quite well and he had a mind, a gift of course, gift of the gab of course. I feel that he knew deep down….remember that Sean Bourke used to, after a bout of drink, would stick his head into a toilet bowl, very often for an hour in the morning-time. You know he would get a dry retching, every morning and he did tell me at one stage that he would rather cut his right hand off than ever drink again. Eventually of course he broke out. But to my mind this was laying heavily on him - he realised that he had a lot to offer, but he could not shake off the old booze.”
“What was the torment that was deep in his nature…what was the source of that torment, did you ever ponder..?”
Joe Malone: “Well….I would imagine, you know, knowing some people a bit like Sean, that it was certainly being sent away to reform school for a couple of banannas I think is was… and he swears that he did not send a bomb in the post to the policeman in England. But I would imagine, even before that …. He came from a large family, his father was fond of the jar as well, and they lived in this old warehouse in Gerald Griffin Street and I would imagine it all began there.”
“It was in the middle of October 1947 when I arrived at Dangean, 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 washouse and the ice was about a quarter of an 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 Ahearn was supervising the wash-house, he did this by standing on a wooden box - he was nicknamed ‘The Killer’. I found out why on that very first morning in Dangean. Some boy was heard to whisper to another at the end of the wash-house, Brother Ahearn went red in the face. ‘If I catch the fella that’s talkin’ he won’t be able to talk for a long time’. Then he seemed to notice something, he jumped down off the box and ran to where the whisper had come from, caught hold of a boy and proceeded to beat him methodically with his fist. He punched the boy in the face repeatedly until the boys lip was split and his nose spurted blood, in his frenzy Brother Ahearn’s crusifix 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 Ahearn then resumed his position on the wooden box and glared up and down the wash-houses ‘Ye scum of the earth, ye dirty, fildy good for nothing, scum of de eart’, ye pack of rotters. Ye will be no loss to anyone when ye go back to the filthy, dirty hovels and the ignorant, illeterate 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.”
Jim Kemmy: “He didn’t like somebody who was perhaps his match in intelligence and wouldn’t perhaps take some of his assertions and some if his statements - which were forthright always, but sometimes would be wrong and perverse. He didn’t like that, you could fall out with him easily in drink - he would drink an awful lot. Sometimes he would drink two and three bottles of whisky a day and my abiding memory of Sean is of the markets area of Limerick. Sean would be up early in the morning. You would see him perhaps at times going to work, and you might meet him again later on that day and sometimes he would be the worse for wear after a bout of drinking all day - and that’s where he got into trouble - with himself, with the law and with other people. Because the drink had a bad effect on him - when he was sober he was a different person.”
Q: “When you were a fledgling politician in Limerick and hardly known nationally, Sean Bourke threw in his lot, so to speak, with you?”
Jim Kemmy: “He did. Way back in 1977 when I stood for the Dail for the first time Sean Bourke gave me the biggest financial contribution I ever got to my campaign fund. He gave me two hundred pounds. I gave it back a month afterwards. I would certainly say one thing, Sean Bourke was a very proud man. Sean Bourke gave away a fortune - he spent the best part of one hundred thousand pounds in Limerick. He paid light bills, he paid rent, he paid all sorts of other accounts for people, but he didn’t ever borrow money from anybody. He was very careful about who he would ask for money, I can assure you of that. And he gave me two hundred pounds then, and he also put his typing skills at my disposal in a number of elections, and was very helpful to me and very generous. Well, he was not a socialist by any means - he was anti-establishment, he was a radical, he was a wayward maverick in society, but nevertheless he had a tender feeling of spirit with me”.
Q: “How did he feel when you went into the Dail?”
Jim Kemmy: “Well he was proud of that mind you, he was very proud of the fact that I got to the Dail - he didn’t think I’d ever do it mind you, he didn’t think I’d ever do it, he thought I was wasting my time and said so as well in some of his blacker moments, he thought I was wasting my time; perhaps the people of Limerick didn’t deserve all his great hard work.”
Q: “What would he say to you?”
Jim Kemmy: “Ah he’d say, ‘you’ll never get to the Dail, the people will not respond to what you’re talking about - you’re right of course, I agree with you, but I don’t think you’ll succeed in what you’re doing; you’re better off not to get too involved, you’re wasting you’re time, you’d be better off picking up some other pursuits.’ He would discourage me gently and very half heartadly as well - he knew he was wasting his time. He was a bit cynical perhaps sometimes about people even though he spent his time amongst the down-and-outs, the down-trodden, nevertheless, he had a kind of love hate relationship for them, for the people of Limerick. He hated journalists of course, he hated journalists very much, and he didn’t like the police either. Mind you one of the saddest things I ever saw: Sean was in hospital for a while, St Josephs hospital, he had some sort of breakdown, he was trying to get off the drink and he broke out one day. Instead of going back to the hospital he went up outside the prison directing traffic in the middle of the street - he often did this. He was naturally arrested by the police because it was a high security prison in Limerick and there are squad cars going around all the time, so Sean was bundled unceremoniously into the squad car. He was taken up to Edwards Street Police Station. It was a lovely Saturday evening, and I got word of this at about seven o’clock, that Sean was inside in the Police Station. So I was very unhappy about this - I was going off to have a few drinks that night after the weeks work, and I thought of Sean lying down in a dirty, filthy cell - it was more than I could stand. So I up I went to the station and I went in and the Sergeant on duty wasn’t very cordial towards me - he was reluctant to let Sean out and into my care, he said could I guarantee that Sean wouldn’t get into trouble again which was rather a tall order for me. I told him that I couldn’t guarantee that I would be alive in the morning but I would guarantee him that if he left Sean go into my care I would see he was taken back to hospital again and I we would escort him back personally. So after some argy-bargy he agreed to let him into my care, rather reluctantly. So I went down to the cell to get him out and I was very sad to see him thrown down like that, and also it struck me that Sean had become institutionalised, because he was thrown down in a filthy cell, terrible surroundings, and it really wounded me terribly, pained me terribly. I couldn’t tell you how deeply I felt, and how shocked I was to see poor Sean thrown down on the ground, in vomit, filth of all indescribable sort. So ‘come on Sean’, I said ‘cheer up, we’re going out of here’. So he perked up immediately and came with me and cheerful to the Police leaving as well. Passed a few wise-cracks. I managed him down again, into St Joe’s hospital and he went in in a very docile way - he didn’t make any protest at all - he went straight into the hospital, into an observation unit ward. And then I felt terribly sorry about that to see poor Sean. I went off for the night and there he was locked away from one institution to another. That was the kind of fellow Sean was - he had been burned like that and he didn’t really care too much, he was irresponsible, he had been steeled in the fires of life”.
Kevin O’Conner a local Limerick Journalist suggest the following: “From the fire to the sea, his options narrowing yet again, with no sign of the promised second book being delivered, with five years of dissipation in Limerick and in the grip of something that none of his friends could really understand, Bourke went to Kilkee out on the Atlantic coast. Limerick’s watering hole, but a place he had never had a holiday in, unlike most Limerick people. Why? To attempt a childhood he never had? To try and write? because he was too proud to stay on in Limerick moneyless?, because the weight of his own contradictions were bowing him down. The socialist who was unable to live in Russia, the Anglophile who had dealt a blow to the British establishment, the man of action who has now sunk into sloth … Who can tell what the contradictions were, who knows. In the run of his life the water was rising to close the eyes of the bridge”.
Larry Collins: “My name is Larry Collins, I’m a native of Kilkee although I spent many years overseas. I first came home from the States I had a bar and then I opened a caravan park and I sold the bar. So in the afternoons I used to go for a walk around the beach in Kilkee, stop off at the Royal Marine hotel for a drink on my way home. Nearly every evening when I went to the Marine Sean Bourke was always sitting at the counter. So after a few evenings we got to say hello, or hi, and that’s how I got to know Sean Bourke. To me he was always very polite, very pleasant, he never was rough - just never interfered with anybody. If you spoke to Sean, he spoke to you, otherwise he did not speak to you. Very very civilised, very well mannered. Sean lived in a mobile home at the old Railway station in Kilkee. I’d say when Sean had not money he went walking every day. He walked to Kilrush about eight miles to Kilrush and eight miles back. And sometimes he’d go to Querm. So I often ask him who he used to meet on the road and he used to tell me that he was writing a book at the time. He used to say the passages out loud and he used to have a great laugh, because he thought the people, local people would think he was crazy. But he was reciting the passages to the new book, about his prison in England. I often passed Sean, many many times on the road - he always had a walking stick and he borrowed a neighbour’s brown dog for company. The only time Sean went for a walk was when he was short of money, otherwise he would be in the pub. But he was a very expensive man in a pub. I never had a drink with Sean because his drinks were too expensive for me. Sean never had anything less than a ‘large one’. Well of course when Sean was leaving the pub to go home at night he’d always bring his quart with him. Sean would say he’d wake up at about three in the morning and he’d have to have a drop, not the horrors at three in the morning, probably lonliness”.
“It was about ten past five in the evening. I was going for a walk. And I saw my friend Paddy Stapleton, he’s a mechanic in Kilkee at a local garage - called me. He was leaning over a body on the side of the road. I just went over to have a look and then I discovered it was Sean Bourke. And then a few more neighbours gathered around and somebody asked was there a Doctor called. So I went into my own house and I called the Doctor. Which I think somebody else had already phoned. A short time afterwards, Doctor Manghan arrived and he worked on him at the corner for around five or six minutes and then he decided he’d be better to remove him to a house. So I decided to leave him into my house. So they got some kind of a board and put him on it and took him into the house. And a short time afterwards Doctor Nolan arrived and the two Doctors, well until Sean died at around ten past seven that evening the two of them worked non-stop on him. They pumped his chest, shoved needles here on him but to me Sean never opened his eyes. Oh Sean was breathing very, very heavy and fighting very very heavy, fighting very very heavy. But I don’t think he knew what was happening. He was just muttering, just muttering, just fighting very very hard. And about ten minutes before he died the local ambulance arrived and they just went in, the nurse came in, the attendant came in. So Sean died, so they just…that was the end”.
Q: “When you went to the Caravan, the mobile home, what did you see?”
Larry Collins: “Well the local Garda were also present when Sean died, or during the two hours, in the house with me. So they said, they just wanted to see, was there any valuables on him. So I was a witness, being a civillian. So we just searched Sean and all we got on him was the keys of the mobile home and just a few pence. Then they asked me would I go to his mobile home with them to see was there any valuables in the mobile. So we proceeded to the mobile, and in the mobile we just could find nothing. There was a canvas cover to keep out the rain in half of it. His own little cubical was tidy, very small and nothing in it, just clean clothes, clean underwear, couple of clean shirts. A few papers thrown around, a few books in different languages, his own book in different languages, but to me there was nothing else.”
Q: “Did you ever know him to have a manuscript, or to be working on a manuscript?”
Larry Collins: “Well Sean always said that he was writing one, because he used to spend a lot of his time in one of the beach shelters with his typewriter, typing. So I believe he did have one. But there was no sign of it in the mobile home, definitely not!”
Q: “Could anybody else have gotten into the mobile home that morning?”
Larry Collins: “No, nobody. I doubt it very much because why would anybody want to break into a mobile with just a padlock that was on the door of the mobile. With the Garda, they opened it and I went in to be a witness that they did not take anything from it - and there was nothing in the mobile, there was nothing to take.”
Joe Malone: “Well I was at the inquest you know and I was expecting some very dramatic things from the Coroner you see. When all the evidence was held, there was a jury of five men I think and four women, the evidence was very simple. He collapsed in Kilkee and he died on his way to Ennis Hospital. The coroner definitely said that there were no great traces of alcohol in his blood, certainly no trace of drugs. He spoke to the body of the court and directed his remarks to the journalists to take note of that, in view of all the rumour on the paper on the death of Sean Bourke, and the possibility that he was seen to by the CIA or the KGB. Certainly they found nothing in him except that his lungs gave him trouble. He had bronchitis, his lungs were in a bad state - he didn’t smoke of course. He didn’t drink for days before he died because I know this for a fact, he didn’t have any money. Sean Bourke didn’t drink for four or five days before he died. The drink may have contributed a certain amount, and there was a mention of a lack of food, you know that he hadn’t eaten. I do know this for a fact because when some people went to visit the caravan in Kilkee there was nothing there, except a half loaf of dried bread and a few tea bags. Sean of course didn’t have hot water in the Caravan and he was just living a sleeping bag and one blanket. It was winter, and very cold in Kilkee. So I would imagine that contributed to Sean’s….”
Q: “Why was there this question mark over his death, why did people say or assume that he may have been ‘exterminated with extreme prejudice’ by either the KGB or….”
Joe Malone: “Well, there was always the hint that Sean knew a little more than he pretended to know and some think that he was knocked off because…he had some correspondence with somebody in England anyway, and it was suspect. Sean knew a lot of course, but he didn’t talk a lot. He must have mentioned in some pubs, occasionally he would…he never said a lot about the springing of Blake or some of the people in England but occasionally he did mention some high-ranking people in England he had known. So maybe that’s where the suspicion came from”.
Q: “High-ranking people who where involved in the backup group….was it said locally, at all, in his later years, and in the depths of the dispair he plummeted that he was writing to England asking for money and threatening that if he didn’t get paid a certain amount to keep him going, he would reveal the names of people in the British establishment who were involved in the springing of Blake?”
Joe Malone: “That was a rumour that I heard anyway, I heard that rumour myself, but how valid it is I don’t know. Although I do know that he was in a bad state at the end, but he was quite discreet as well. I would imagine he would have waited for a while, you know before he would have revealed anything.”
We raise that hair only to lay it. Sean Bourke died from natural causes, that is the view of the two Doctors who attended him at his death. It is the view of another specialist at Barringtons Hospital in Limerick who performed an autopsy, which is detailed examination of the internal organs. And is also the view of the Claire Coroner Doctor Daley. For ethical reasons these doctors are unable to give their testimony on tape but that is there considered judgement. For the record, Sean Bourke’s death certificate reads, for January 26th, 1982:
‘Cause of death: acute pneumenory odema, Coronary thrombosis, certified’
Jim Kemmy: “I don’t agree with the theory that he was got at down there, I think he died of natural causes. Because, don’t forget that even though he was only forty-seven years of age, he had wrecked himself. He’d never taken any precautions with his health and he got a stroke of sorts, he died fairly soon afterwards. And he had one pound and four pennies in his pocket. And when his brother came from Scotland to see him, he had the clothes he stood up in only, that’s all he had. And also inside the caravan there was a third of a bottle of milk, and about half a loaf of bread, nothing else. And one pound, four pennies in his pocket of his trousers. When he died of course we had a drink with his friends in the Munster Fare Tavern in his memory. And I did that, I went into the Munster Fare Tavern, it was during a general election, and I would never forget it, it was the day the Government came down, in January of 1982, and I got the news that morning that Sean had died - it cast an omen over the whole proceedings that were to follow. I had never forgotten Sean’s wish that I should honour it by having a drink in the Munster Fare Tavern on that day, so I came down from Dublin, even though it was during the campaign, we took time off to bury Sean - we all went in afterwards to the Munster Fare Tavern and we drank to Sean’s health.”
In May 1961 a Foreign Office man named George Blake was tried at the Old Bailey on five counts of spying for the Soviet Union. He was found guilty and sentenced to the longest term of imprisonment ever imposed under English Law – 42 years. On 22 October 1966 Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. There was an immediate international furore. Every port, airport and landing strip throughout the British Isles was put under strict round-the-clock surveillance. Watch was kept on every Eastern European embassy and consulate in London. The authorities believed that high-level KGB agents had engineered the daring coup. But, while the hue and cry mounted, Blake was living quietly in a flat in Highlever Road, a few minutes’ walk from Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
In fact, the springing of George Blake was the work not of foreign agents but of a single Irishman named Sean Bourke, who had been a fellow prisoner of Blake’s at Wormwood Scrubs. Nor was this astonishing coup carried out for monetary reward: it was actually achieved on a borrowed £700. Sean then assisted with spiriting Blake out of England then to Moscow, a few weeks later he followed him to Moscow by way of Paris. He then spent an extraordinary two years in Russia until his return to Ireland on 22 October 1968, the second anniversary of the jail break.
These are my recollections of Sean based on interview transcripts and personal recommendations.
Interview Transcript…
“…and so of course, I’m terribly relieved, but at the same time I’d say this, that I’m not at all surprised by the verdict…if they had decided otherwise and sent me back to England, the in my view the extradition treaty that exists between Ireland and England would be meaningless because it expressly provides protection for a person accused of a political offence…and if rescuing a spy from prison is not political then I don’t know what is”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Well I’ve…the story of the escape has been written in book form and my agent is coming over from London in two weeks time and I understand that he is taking the manuscript to New York to have it published in America first. On the strength of reading this manuscript he has urged me to continue writing and in fact I have finished a second book and I have plans for a third one…I hope to make a career in writing”
Sean Bourke in Dublin in February 1969 after the high court hearing which disallowed the application by the British authorities to have him extradited to Britain to face charges in connection with the escape of George Blake. Bourke had arrived back from Moscow to Ireland to Shannon airport on the twenty-second of October 1968, the second anniversary of the escape of George Blake.
“When I arrived a Shannon airport yesterday I had in my wallet precisely forty American dollars, given to me in Moscow by the KGB to cover my traveling expenses to Shannon, apart from that absolutely nothing…and if any suggestion had been made to me that some secret account in a Swiss bank might be arranged for me, and this has been hinted earlier on, I would have turned it down flat, because I have no desire to put myself on the road of a paid Soviet agent”
So what do you do, you come back to Ireland with no obvious prospects.
“I desire to be in the one country where I know I shall be happy, and certainly safe. If an Irishman is not safe and secure in Ireland, the for heavens sake, where is he safe?”
Where indeed, but from himself and his own. This is the story of a boy who grew up in a tough part of a city. The boy became an adolescent with quick wits; the adolescent became a man who turns the borstal behind him; and the man, while a prisoner in Wormwood Scurbs, and editor of the prison magazine, organised the escape of George Blake, then a senior officer in the British intelligence services - Blake was jailed for forty-two years for treason, having in his time betrayed crucial western security information to the Russian KGB. The boy who became the man was never a Communist as such, or part of any system which cushioned his own welfare. The boy who became the ‘great escaper, afterwards went to Russia and found it more oppressive than an English jail, returned home, but could never quite shake off that early wound - not with drink, or money or notoriety or being a hero in his own place, could shake off the would of whatever happened growing up.
His later life, after his return to this country was one of despair and disintegration - he squandered one hundred thousand pounds, in his own words 'I drank every penny' - a curving back to that murky, twilight world he cast away which had been his earliest excitement. He died on a lonely country road under the open sky with less than two pounds in his pocket. What ever else may be said about him, his life and his death were his own.
“This is fox michael calling Baker Charlie, fox michael calling Baker Charlie, come in please - over”
“Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, can you hear me - come in please”
These recordings were made by Sean Bourke in the course of communicating with George Blake, over the twenty foot high wall of Wormwood Scrubs in October 1966, by walkie talkie radio. The recording reveals the arrangements being made to effect the escape while Bourke was outside the prison, having been released from there some months previously. Bourke does not refer to that recording in his book ‘The Springing of George Blake” - he kept it as evidence of his own part in the escape and to refute critics after his death who may have claimed that he did not do what he claimed that he did. The tool referred to is a small car jack Bourke had caused to be smuggled in to Blake, to break the struts of the window on the prison landing - in the event Blake broke the struts with a kick, scaled the wall and was spirited away by Bourke. You will read Blake’s references to ‘Stone walls, do not a prison make’ are from an English poet which both of them were studying while in prison…..:
“This is fox michael calling Baker Charlie, fox michael calling Baker Charlie, come in please - over”“Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, Baker Charlie calling Fox Michael, can you hear me - come in please”“Stone walls, do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage - over”“I am innocent and required to take these for a Hermitage - over”“We could love less than a pool.. - over”“I may be just a dreamer - over”“Well now my friend, obviously the first question I must ask you is this - did you receive the tools, and if so are they suitable? - over”“I did not receive it - only the hand iron and the croppers, but not the jack itself it wasn’t there - a difficult position at the moment - over”“Well..this is very regrettable, I’m meeting him again tomorrow night at seven o’clock - that’s the earliest I can discover why you haven’t had them - over”“Do you know where he put the jack - because it wasn’t with the other stuff”
Sean tried to settle in Dublin but found the pull of his own notoriety and the push of his own inner demons too much to cope with. After several incidents, involving on one occasion the possession of a gun - which he said he needed for protection from some un-named people, and after many forays of drunken excess, he returned to Limerick - to the city where he had grown up, to that formative place where his deviant energies had first flowered.
Joe Malone knew him:“We were about twelve years of age in John the Baptist - I would be a little bit older than Sean but that didn’t make any great difference because in the school each schoolteacher (our teacher then was of course John Swift - George Swift was his correct name, he taught two classes, fourth and fifth - Sean was in the lower class than me). Because Sean you see came from the Christian Brothers in Sexton Street, he didn’t go to school there - he was a problem child like myself. I went to Cray Lane and I didn’t go to school in Cray Lane…actually John the Baptist was a school for bad boys, for troublesome street urchins”.
“Were Sean and yourself both convicted of offences at that age?”
“No. Sean was convicted of a very minor offence…I think it was a couple of bananas or so. I was actually never actually seriously convicted. I was brought to court for the stealing of eleven apples - I remember the exact amount, because there were four of us there and we could not share the eleven apples equally. But we were caught outside the Borma Road, of course I know we have two Borma Roads in Limerick, but there was one uptown and one in the Ennis Road. We were actually caught in the Borma Road with the eleven apples. We were brought to court and brought in front of District Justice Mary Flood - we’ll not forget his name - and only for the people we stole the apples from who were actually a Protestant Minister ( a Church of Ireland Minister) - he spoke for us - we would have been sent away. My other three pals with me were eventually sent away.”
“So you knew Sean Bourke then in John the Baptist. What kind of young fella’ was he?”
“He was a big, soft young man then. Of course the school was full of characters, and it was very difficult to stick out. Everybody was a character. You came in late and you went home and you didn’t go. Sometimes we may only go to school once a week. And they didn’t pay much attention to us y’see. But Sean didn’t really stick out, except for his big head of curly hair, his broad smile - he was a very soft young man then. He never showed any sign of aggression or arrogance, and stayed very much by himself…he was just about twelve years of age then. We had a little band in the school and we would march in and out of the school at lunch breaks and single file and we had pladulettes, a little drum and the symbols and a clapper. Sean would lead the band in playing the clappers. He was a big hefty young man and he led the class in every day. That’s when I first met Sean Bourke. I didn’t meet Sean Bourke then until I had read about him.”
“What number of years passed?”
“Oh…I suppose, nigh on thirty-six years I would say near enough to it. This I remember well because Sean Bourke had difficulty getting a flat you know in Limerick. I know estate agent he went into, and when Sean Bourke’s name was mentioned, as the occupier, Sean Bourke didn’t get a flat, they would not give him a flat…well his name of course y’see, he had appeared on television and radio and the newspapers, and this famous man who sprang George Blake, so ‘twas at that time that he went to live in the country, in the Irish cottages. I had a pub in Limerick as you know and Sean was one of my best customers and he was always very entertaining - a lovely singer and he had a marvellous sense of humour. He drank a lot, gave away a lot of money of course and unfortunately he befriended (I would imagine) the wrong type of person for his own good. But he was always very colourful, very gregarious except of course in his more depressing moments when the drink would be too much. By and large he had a great sense of humour and he was quite colourful. He was a bit depressed for a while in Limerick city until the great news came in one Monday morning that Alfred Hitchcock took an interest in his book - the book he had written - and Alfred Hitchcock, or his agent, placed ten thousand pounds in a northern bank - I know this because came in and presented me with a cheque for a hundred pounds, now he didn’t quite owe me a hundred pounds but he was very generous with money of course - but he swore that day (this is my connection with Sean) that he would never again handle a cheque book - that he would draw the money as he wanted it. Because he had gone through, roughly I think, between forty and fifty thousand pounds then - in a very short time.”
Jim Kemmy: “One story amuses me and I often think about it - it shows you Sean’s fixation with some happening. His spiritual home in Limerick, his local pub, was the Munster Fair Tavern - its still there mind you - just across the road from St Laurences graveyard where the roads fork from Waterford and Tipperary…Toddy Long, a childhood friend of the Bourkes, was banned from this pub for some minor infraction - now this was tantamount to excommunication and Sean made it the be all and end all of Sean Bourke’s life to get Toddy allowed back in to that pub. He tried as best he could, every kind of blandishment to Pat Carle to soften the line to let Toddy back, but no. But eventually Sean’s perseverance won the day and after some months Pat Carle allowed Toddy back to the pub. But that wasn’t good enough for Sean at all. He wanted to celebrate the occasion in fitting style and he hired a pipe band and a photographer. He got Toddy and the band to assemble in the centre of Limerick (it only had one set of traffic lights), it was by the traffic lights at Todds and Rocher stores corner. And Mulgrove Street is a continuation of Williams Street (that’s the longest street in Limerick - it was a mile long walk) and they set off. The band playing with Toddy at the head of the band - Sean and friends marching behind the band and the played away, along Williams Street up to the top of Mulgrove Street into the pub and the photographer taking pictures the whole way - they came into the pub then and it was drinks on the house all night long. It was the very same with Sean and in one sweep he won the world title.”
Joe Malone: “And then he would go off the booze and he would take long walks along [meelik…] he would walk for ten or fifteen miles a day but then he’d go back on the booze again. I think as a result, except for a few very colourful articles he had written for Jim Kemmys magazines, he didn’t write a whole lot anyway. He did keep in contact at first with people in England because I often went to his flat in Gerald-Griffin Street - his old warehouse - and one evening we were having great fun, we actually tried him in a mock trial for murder. When it was over - we all got very drunk - Sean rang Scotland Yard and the people in Scotland Yard - whoever we got onto - apparently knew him quite well - they were on first name terms anyway and the asked Sean would he like to call over and collect his old Rover - it was still in the yard. So he had the great sense of humour also.”
“Of course if he had put his foot inside the jurisdiction he would have been charged, tried and probably jailed for aiding and abetting the release of ….”
Joe Malone: “Well he checked that out he told me, and certainly he would have got seven years - he wasn’t always hazy from the booze, he always kept a very fine active brain…”
Jim Kemmy: “He could be mischevious, he could be very boyish in his pranks, but he could also be a deep complex man. He was a many-sided figure, Sean. Anti-establishment, difficult, morose, perverse, truculant. He was menacing without being violent - he was never physically violent, he was never a fighting man at all in that sense. He was driven on by demons, he had demons inside him that he couldn’t control, and sometimes those demons got the better of him.”
“What was the nature of those demons?”
Jim Kemmy: “I often tried to work that out myself because I was friend of his, very proud to have known Sean Bourke - sometimes our relationship was stormy as well and Sean Bourke, he made friends slowly but fell out very quickly, very easily. So our relationship was often touchy, often delecate, and fragile but still it persisted till the very end. I’m glad of that too because I remember Sean with affection and often try to analyse him. I suppose it was his childhood really, his poverty in his childhood - the fact he was locked up for eleven years, behind bars of one kind or another. He was in Dangean first of all, then borstal, and then in Wormwood Scrubs - about eleven years in all. That had an effect on his personality and it was deeper than that too - perhaps he had some kind of mental disorders as well within him. And as a result of that, he couldn’t live in peace with himself. A very talented man - he was a good writer, a masterly writer at times - the best typist I ever saw! He was a bricklayer (trained by Her Majesty), electrician as well he was and learned other skills in prison - a highly intelligent man, good editor as well of the prison magazine, but unfortunately unhappy, tortured, tormented figure. Couldn’t come to terms with himself.”
Sean (with a drink in him): “I was born in Limerick by accident. Because when my father and mother were going together and got married there was no television in Limerick (thanks be to Christ!). As a result of which I was born. If Limerick City tomorrow, capsized under the weight of its own dirty, filthy hypocracy into the River Shannon and was never heard of again I wouldn’t shed a tear Mr Chariman….and the WORLD would have lost nothing!!!!”
Joe Malone: “This big front that he put up, basically he was a very kind person and he wouldn’t put a word wrong when he was sober. But he was very frustrated and very very confused towards the end. He could write, and write quite well and he had a mind, a gift of course, gift of the gab of course. I feel that he knew deep down….remember that Sean Bourke used to, after a bout of drink, would stick his head into a toilet bowl, very often for an hour in the morning-time. You know he would get a dry retching, every morning and he did tell me at one stage that he would rather cut his right hand off than ever drink again. Eventually of course he broke out. But to my mind this was laying heavily on him - he realised that he had a lot to offer, but he could not shake off the old booze.”
“What was the torment that was deep in his nature…what was the source of that torment, did you ever ponder..?”
Joe Malone: “Well….I would imagine, you know, knowing some people a bit like Sean, that it was certainly being sent away to reform school for a couple of banannas I think is was… and he swears that he did not send a bomb in the post to the policeman in England. But I would imagine, even before that …. He came from a large family, his father was fond of the jar as well, and they lived in this old warehouse in Gerald Griffin Street and I would imagine it all began there.”
“It was in the middle of October 1947 when I arrived at Dangean, 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 washouse and the ice was about a quarter of an 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 Ahearn was supervising the wash-house, he did this by standing on a wooden box - he was nicknamed ‘The Killer’. I found out why on that very first morning in Dangean. Some boy was heard to whisper to another at the end of the wash-house, Brother Ahearn went red in the face. ‘If I catch the fella that’s talkin’ he won’t be able to talk for a long time’. Then he seemed to notice something, he jumped down off the box and ran to where the whisper had come from, caught hold of a boy and proceeded to beat him methodically with his fist. He punched the boy in the face repeatedly until the boys lip was split and his nose spurted blood, in his frenzy Brother Ahearn’s crusifix 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 Ahearn then resumed his position on the wooden box and glared up and down the wash-houses ‘Ye scum of the earth, ye dirty, fildy good for nothing, scum of de eart’, ye pack of rotters. Ye will be no loss to anyone when ye go back to the filthy, dirty hovels and the ignorant, illeterate 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.”
Jim Kemmy: “He didn’t like somebody who was perhaps his match in intelligence and wouldn’t perhaps take some of his assertions and some if his statements - which were forthright always, but sometimes would be wrong and perverse. He didn’t like that, you could fall out with him easily in drink - he would drink an awful lot. Sometimes he would drink two and three bottles of whisky a day and my abiding memory of Sean is of the markets area of Limerick. Sean would be up early in the morning. You would see him perhaps at times going to work, and you might meet him again later on that day and sometimes he would be the worse for wear after a bout of drinking all day - and that’s where he got into trouble - with himself, with the law and with other people. Because the drink had a bad effect on him - when he was sober he was a different person.”
Q: “When you were a fledgling politician in Limerick and hardly known nationally, Sean Bourke threw in his lot, so to speak, with you?”
Jim Kemmy: “He did. Way back in 1977 when I stood for the Dail for the first time Sean Bourke gave me the biggest financial contribution I ever got to my campaign fund. He gave me two hundred pounds. I gave it back a month afterwards. I would certainly say one thing, Sean Bourke was a very proud man. Sean Bourke gave away a fortune - he spent the best part of one hundred thousand pounds in Limerick. He paid light bills, he paid rent, he paid all sorts of other accounts for people, but he didn’t ever borrow money from anybody. He was very careful about who he would ask for money, I can assure you of that. And he gave me two hundred pounds then, and he also put his typing skills at my disposal in a number of elections, and was very helpful to me and very generous. Well, he was not a socialist by any means - he was anti-establishment, he was a radical, he was a wayward maverick in society, but nevertheless he had a tender feeling of spirit with me”.
Q: “How did he feel when you went into the Dail?”
Jim Kemmy: “Well he was proud of that mind you, he was very proud of the fact that I got to the Dail - he didn’t think I’d ever do it mind you, he didn’t think I’d ever do it, he thought I was wasting my time and said so as well in some of his blacker moments, he thought I was wasting my time; perhaps the people of Limerick didn’t deserve all his great hard work.”
Q: “What would he say to you?”
Jim Kemmy: “Ah he’d say, ‘you’ll never get to the Dail, the people will not respond to what you’re talking about - you’re right of course, I agree with you, but I don’t think you’ll succeed in what you’re doing; you’re better off not to get too involved, you’re wasting you’re time, you’d be better off picking up some other pursuits.’ He would discourage me gently and very half heartadly as well - he knew he was wasting his time. He was a bit cynical perhaps sometimes about people even though he spent his time amongst the down-and-outs, the down-trodden, nevertheless, he had a kind of love hate relationship for them, for the people of Limerick. He hated journalists of course, he hated journalists very much, and he didn’t like the police either. Mind you one of the saddest things I ever saw: Sean was in hospital for a while, St Josephs hospital, he had some sort of breakdown, he was trying to get off the drink and he broke out one day. Instead of going back to the hospital he went up outside the prison directing traffic in the middle of the street - he often did this. He was naturally arrested by the police because it was a high security prison in Limerick and there are squad cars going around all the time, so Sean was bundled unceremoniously into the squad car. He was taken up to Edwards Street Police Station. It was a lovely Saturday evening, and I got word of this at about seven o’clock, that Sean was inside in the Police Station. So I was very unhappy about this - I was going off to have a few drinks that night after the weeks work, and I thought of Sean lying down in a dirty, filthy cell - it was more than I could stand. So I up I went to the station and I went in and the Sergeant on duty wasn’t very cordial towards me - he was reluctant to let Sean out and into my care, he said could I guarantee that Sean wouldn’t get into trouble again which was rather a tall order for me. I told him that I couldn’t guarantee that I would be alive in the morning but I would guarantee him that if he left Sean go into my care I would see he was taken back to hospital again and I we would escort him back personally. So after some argy-bargy he agreed to let him into my care, rather reluctantly. So I went down to the cell to get him out and I was very sad to see him thrown down like that, and also it struck me that Sean had become institutionalised, because he was thrown down in a filthy cell, terrible surroundings, and it really wounded me terribly, pained me terribly. I couldn’t tell you how deeply I felt, and how shocked I was to see poor Sean thrown down on the ground, in vomit, filth of all indescribable sort. So ‘come on Sean’, I said ‘cheer up, we’re going out of here’. So he perked up immediately and came with me and cheerful to the Police leaving as well. Passed a few wise-cracks. I managed him down again, into St Joe’s hospital and he went in in a very docile way - he didn’t make any protest at all - he went straight into the hospital, into an observation unit ward. And then I felt terribly sorry about that to see poor Sean. I went off for the night and there he was locked away from one institution to another. That was the kind of fellow Sean was - he had been burned like that and he didn’t really care too much, he was irresponsible, he had been steeled in the fires of life”.
Kevin O’Conner a local Limerick Journalist suggest the following: “From the fire to the sea, his options narrowing yet again, with no sign of the promised second book being delivered, with five years of dissipation in Limerick and in the grip of something that none of his friends could really understand, Bourke went to Kilkee out on the Atlantic coast. Limerick’s watering hole, but a place he had never had a holiday in, unlike most Limerick people. Why? To attempt a childhood he never had? To try and write? because he was too proud to stay on in Limerick moneyless?, because the weight of his own contradictions were bowing him down. The socialist who was unable to live in Russia, the Anglophile who had dealt a blow to the British establishment, the man of action who has now sunk into sloth … Who can tell what the contradictions were, who knows. In the run of his life the water was rising to close the eyes of the bridge”.
Larry Collins: “My name is Larry Collins, I’m a native of Kilkee although I spent many years overseas. I first came home from the States I had a bar and then I opened a caravan park and I sold the bar. So in the afternoons I used to go for a walk around the beach in Kilkee, stop off at the Royal Marine hotel for a drink on my way home. Nearly every evening when I went to the Marine Sean Bourke was always sitting at the counter. So after a few evenings we got to say hello, or hi, and that’s how I got to know Sean Bourke. To me he was always very polite, very pleasant, he never was rough - just never interfered with anybody. If you spoke to Sean, he spoke to you, otherwise he did not speak to you. Very very civilised, very well mannered. Sean lived in a mobile home at the old Railway station in Kilkee. I’d say when Sean had not money he went walking every day. He walked to Kilrush about eight miles to Kilrush and eight miles back. And sometimes he’d go to Querm. So I often ask him who he used to meet on the road and he used to tell me that he was writing a book at the time. He used to say the passages out loud and he used to have a great laugh, because he thought the people, local people would think he was crazy. But he was reciting the passages to the new book, about his prison in England. I often passed Sean, many many times on the road - he always had a walking stick and he borrowed a neighbour’s brown dog for company. The only time Sean went for a walk was when he was short of money, otherwise he would be in the pub. But he was a very expensive man in a pub. I never had a drink with Sean because his drinks were too expensive for me. Sean never had anything less than a ‘large one’. Well of course when Sean was leaving the pub to go home at night he’d always bring his quart with him. Sean would say he’d wake up at about three in the morning and he’d have to have a drop, not the horrors at three in the morning, probably lonliness”.
“It was about ten past five in the evening. I was going for a walk. And I saw my friend Paddy Stapleton, he’s a mechanic in Kilkee at a local garage - called me. He was leaning over a body on the side of the road. I just went over to have a look and then I discovered it was Sean Bourke. And then a few more neighbours gathered around and somebody asked was there a Doctor called. So I went into my own house and I called the Doctor. Which I think somebody else had already phoned. A short time afterwards, Doctor Manghan arrived and he worked on him at the corner for around five or six minutes and then he decided he’d be better to remove him to a house. So I decided to leave him into my house. So they got some kind of a board and put him on it and took him into the house. And a short time afterwards Doctor Nolan arrived and the two Doctors, well until Sean died at around ten past seven that evening the two of them worked non-stop on him. They pumped his chest, shoved needles here on him but to me Sean never opened his eyes. Oh Sean was breathing very, very heavy and fighting very very heavy, fighting very very heavy. But I don’t think he knew what was happening. He was just muttering, just muttering, just fighting very very hard. And about ten minutes before he died the local ambulance arrived and they just went in, the nurse came in, the attendant came in. So Sean died, so they just…that was the end”.
Q: “When you went to the Caravan, the mobile home, what did you see?”
Larry Collins: “Well the local Garda were also present when Sean died, or during the two hours, in the house with me. So they said, they just wanted to see, was there any valuables on him. So I was a witness, being a civillian. So we just searched Sean and all we got on him was the keys of the mobile home and just a few pence. Then they asked me would I go to his mobile home with them to see was there any valuables in the mobile. So we proceeded to the mobile, and in the mobile we just could find nothing. There was a canvas cover to keep out the rain in half of it. His own little cubical was tidy, very small and nothing in it, just clean clothes, clean underwear, couple of clean shirts. A few papers thrown around, a few books in different languages, his own book in different languages, but to me there was nothing else.”
Q: “Did you ever know him to have a manuscript, or to be working on a manuscript?”
Larry Collins: “Well Sean always said that he was writing one, because he used to spend a lot of his time in one of the beach shelters with his typewriter, typing. So I believe he did have one. But there was no sign of it in the mobile home, definitely not!”
Q: “Could anybody else have gotten into the mobile home that morning?”
Larry Collins: “No, nobody. I doubt it very much because why would anybody want to break into a mobile with just a padlock that was on the door of the mobile. With the Garda, they opened it and I went in to be a witness that they did not take anything from it - and there was nothing in the mobile, there was nothing to take.”
Joe Malone: “Well I was at the inquest you know and I was expecting some very dramatic things from the Coroner you see. When all the evidence was held, there was a jury of five men I think and four women, the evidence was very simple. He collapsed in Kilkee and he died on his way to Ennis Hospital. The coroner definitely said that there were no great traces of alcohol in his blood, certainly no trace of drugs. He spoke to the body of the court and directed his remarks to the journalists to take note of that, in view of all the rumour on the paper on the death of Sean Bourke, and the possibility that he was seen to by the CIA or the KGB. Certainly they found nothing in him except that his lungs gave him trouble. He had bronchitis, his lungs were in a bad state - he didn’t smoke of course. He didn’t drink for days before he died because I know this for a fact, he didn’t have any money. Sean Bourke didn’t drink for four or five days before he died. The drink may have contributed a certain amount, and there was a mention of a lack of food, you know that he hadn’t eaten. I do know this for a fact because when some people went to visit the caravan in Kilkee there was nothing there, except a half loaf of dried bread and a few tea bags. Sean of course didn’t have hot water in the Caravan and he was just living a sleeping bag and one blanket. It was winter, and very cold in Kilkee. So I would imagine that contributed to Sean’s….”
Q: “Why was there this question mark over his death, why did people say or assume that he may have been ‘exterminated with extreme prejudice’ by either the KGB or….”
Joe Malone: “Well, there was always the hint that Sean knew a little more than he pretended to know and some think that he was knocked off because…he had some correspondence with somebody in England anyway, and it was suspect. Sean knew a lot of course, but he didn’t talk a lot. He must have mentioned in some pubs, occasionally he would…he never said a lot about the springing of Blake or some of the people in England but occasionally he did mention some high-ranking people in England he had known. So maybe that’s where the suspicion came from”.
Q: “High-ranking people who where involved in the backup group….was it said locally, at all, in his later years, and in the depths of the dispair he plummeted that he was writing to England asking for money and threatening that if he didn’t get paid a certain amount to keep him going, he would reveal the names of people in the British establishment who were involved in the springing of Blake?”
Joe Malone: “That was a rumour that I heard anyway, I heard that rumour myself, but how valid it is I don’t know. Although I do know that he was in a bad state at the end, but he was quite discreet as well. I would imagine he would have waited for a while, you know before he would have revealed anything.”
We raise that hair only to lay it. Sean Bourke died from natural causes, that is the view of the two Doctors who attended him at his death. It is the view of another specialist at Barringtons Hospital in Limerick who performed an autopsy, which is detailed examination of the internal organs. And is also the view of the Claire Coroner Doctor Daley. For ethical reasons these doctors are unable to give their testimony on tape but that is there considered judgement. For the record, Sean Bourke’s death certificate reads, for January 26th, 1982:
‘Cause of death: acute pneumenory odema, Coronary thrombosis, certified’
Jim Kemmy: “I don’t agree with the theory that he was got at down there, I think he died of natural causes. Because, don’t forget that even though he was only forty-seven years of age, he had wrecked himself. He’d never taken any precautions with his health and he got a stroke of sorts, he died fairly soon afterwards. And he had one pound and four pennies in his pocket. And when his brother came from Scotland to see him, he had the clothes he stood up in only, that’s all he had. And also inside the caravan there was a third of a bottle of milk, and about half a loaf of bread, nothing else. And one pound, four pennies in his pocket of his trousers. When he died of course we had a drink with his friends in the Munster Fare Tavern in his memory. And I did that, I went into the Munster Fare Tavern, it was during a general election, and I would never forget it, it was the day the Government came down, in January of 1982, and I got the news that morning that Sean had died - it cast an omen over the whole proceedings that were to follow. I had never forgotten Sean’s wish that I should honour it by having a drink in the Munster Fare Tavern on that day, so I came down from Dublin, even though it was during the campaign, we took time off to bury Sean - we all went in afterwards to the Munster Fare Tavern and we drank to Sean’s health.”
Fascinating stuff! Thanks a million for sharing it. I met Seán many times when I was a child walking home from school, usually near Crosagalla, beyond Bengal Terrace (Seán would be coming back from his long walk out the Old Cork Road, at that time of the day). One day, when he heard that I had got a slap at school, he offered to come to my aid by offering 'to put a little bomb under the teacher's desk the next day!' Needless to say, I was thrilled with the offer, but also terrified, at the same time! Seán was a relation of my father's and they often met in the Munster Fair Tavern. In fact, Seán brought his famous tape recordings to our house one evening and played them for my parents. Unfortunately, I was too young to understand the significance of this, at the time. I would love to figure out how he was related to my father. The relationship was on my father's mother's side. She was O'Brien from the Prospect area of Limerick. I think the name Garvey was connected somehow too. Any info sent to: info@thegreenandwhite.com would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.
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