Michael Randle says he and a handful of friends who were supporters of nuclear disarmament were involved but that CND as an organisation was not. Plus Quentin Falk says his father, who was Blake’s official prison visitor, was disappointed to miss out on fascinating conversation

Zoe Williams, in her review of the revival of Simon Gray’s Cell Mates at Hampstead Theatre (Review, 9 December), makes an important point about the consequences for penal reform of George Blake’s escape from Wormword Scrubs prison in October 1966. She points out that the Mountbatten report into the escape led directly to the establishment of the parole system in England and Wales.

But she also quotes, and thus appears to give credence to, a statement by the documentary film-maker, George Carey, that “There were also quite a lot of people from CND who sprang him. Some … for idiosyncratic reasons, but mostly because his sentence was considered inhumane.”

The first statement is simply untrue. A handful of personal friends of Pat Pottle or myself were involved, mostly after the escape had taken place, when we needed help harbouring him and getting him out of the country. Yes, they were supporters of nuclear disarmament – almost all our friends were. But CND as an organisation was not involved. Indeed initially – and understandably – its leadership reacted with consternation when the news broke.

Carey is also in no position to say that some CND people acted “for idiosyncratic reasons” or indeed to make any judgment about their motivation. He never met any of them, with the exception, I believe, of the Rev John Papworth, who had publicly acknowledged his role in harbouring Blake for several days after the escape, and whose humanitarian motives are beyond question.

It was to scotch speculation that CND or the KGB or prominent individuals named in the press were involved in the escape that Pat and I published our book in 1987 – The Blake Escape: How We Freed George Blake and Why. We did so knowing it would almost certainly result in our arrest and a long spell of imprisonment.

Fortunately, despite the fact that Pat and I acknowledged that everything the prosecution accused us of was true and based on our book, the jury listened to our argument that the 42-year sentence on Blake was inhuman, and that the police had known about our involvement more than 20 years earlier but had taken no action at the time, and acquitted us on all counts.

Michael Randle

Shipley, West Yorkshire

• Zoe Williams’ thoughtful article and a visit earlier in the week to see Simon Gray’s Cell Mates for the first time provoked poignant memories of my late father, who was George Blake’s official prison visitor at Wormwood Scrubs right up until his escape over the wall in October 1966.

The almost farcical flit, with its distinctly Carry On elements, took Dad, who had visited him 50 times between April 1965 and 16 October 1966 (less than a week before the escape), hugely by surprise and left him hugely disappointed because Blake had been a useful antidote to the usual prison visitor diet of self-obsessed killers and robbers.

“We had nearly two years of fascinating conversation,” Dad once recalled, though “never the ‘politics’ of his crime. I used to take him on each visit a small packet of Bournville plain chocolate and this modest if illegal offering (he didn’t smoke) seemed to trigger off dialogues of – at least to me – far-ranging interest.”

Quentin Falk

Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire

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