Robert "Big Bobby" Storey[1] is an Irish republican from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He spent in total 20 years in jail, almost all on remand charges. He also played a key role in the Maze (HM Prison) prison escape, which was the biggest prison break in British penal history.[2]
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The family was originally from the Marrowbone area, on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast. The family had to move when Bobby was very young due to loyalist attacks on the district, moving to Manor Street, an interface area also in north Belfast. Bobby’s father, also Bobby, along with Sam O’Hanlon, were involved in the defence of their area in the 1970s.[3]
Bobby was one of four children, two brothers, Seamus and Brian, and Geraldine, his sister. Seamus escaped from Crumlin Road Jail in 1971. Seamus and Bobby’s father had been arrested after a raid on their home which uncovered a rifle and a pistol. His father was later released but Seamus was charged, escaping a couple of months later.[4]
On his mother Peggy’s side of the family there was also a history of republicanism, but Bobby, according to An Phoblacht, says “the dominant influences on” him “were the events that were happening around” him. These included the McGurk's Bar bombing in the New Lodge, some of those killed being people who knew his family, and also Bloody Sunday 1972. This then lead to his attempts to join the IRA.[5]
Bobby left school when he was fifteen and went to work with his father selling fruit. At sixteen, he became a member of the IRA.[6]
On his seventeenth birthday, he was interned and held in Long Kesh for two years, having been arrested 20 times previous to this but being too young for internment. He was in the “Cages” as they were called in October, 1974 when republican prisoners burnt them down. He was released in 1975 but in 1976 was arrested again, charged with blowing up the Skyways Hotel. Held on remand for thirteen months, he was released but was arrested on the day of his trial leaving the court house and charged with a shooting related incident.[7]
As the authorities were unable to convict him, he was released in March 1977, but was arrested again that August, charged with the shooting of two British soldiers. The charges were dropped however that December. Charged again in 1978 with shooting a soldier, he was again placed on remand but again was released in May 1979. Bobby was later arrested in London and charged with conspiring to hijack a helicopter to help Brian Keenan escape from Brixton Prison, but was released in April 1981. That August he was arrested in possession of a rifle after a soldier was shot and sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment.[8]
He was involved in the Maze Prison escape known as the “Great escape” in 1983, when 38 republican prisoners broke out of the H Blocks. Captured,[9] Storey was given an additional seven years. Released in 1994, he was again arrested in 1996 and charged with having information on the Lord Chief Justice. Having spent over twenty years in prison, almost all of it on remand, his final release came in 1998, and he again became involved in developing republican politics and strategy.[10]
On January 11, 2005, Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for South Antrim David Burnside told the British House of Commons under Parliamentary privilege that Storey was head of intelligence for the Irish Republican Army.[11][12][13]