Veronica's Bird

by Veronica Bird

  As Governor, I was obliged to visit the punishment cells each day to check on prisoners’ welfare. From there, I would move on to one particular arrival whose reputation went before him. Charles Bronson had been sent to us to give Wakefield, where he normally resided, a four-week break. Other prisons would help out as well. As he had proved so difficult to contain, he was circulated many times through those prisons which had the facilities and staffing to hold him securely. We had lodged him in the segregation unit.

  If the name is familiar think of the American film actor. Charlie had adopted the name, changing it from Peterson. He had been a bare-knuckle boxer, an author and an artist, apart from building up a string of offences for armed robbery – he was already doing seven years for armed robbery by the time he was 22, wounding with intent, false imprisonment and blackmail. Being incarcerated for life, he was nonetheless a successful publicist. Charlie attracted a film producer who made a documentary on his mad, chaotic time in prison. Later, books would be written – in short, a celebrity was beginning to emerge from the character. He became famous as only the cheap magazines can deal with, and in full colour front page stuff, but he was still an extraordinarily dangerous and fearsome celebrity at that. He changed his name again to Charles Salvador in 2014 after the artist he most admired.

  Charlie had known the inside of Rampton, Broadmoor and Ashworth, all high-security psychiatric hospitals. He has spent more time in prison than Myra Hindley. And now, here he was with me.

  Charlie was quite a character though very unsafe to be close to, despite his demeanour towards me. Each time I sent for him he was accompanied by a considerable number of my burliest officers for he was reputed to carry out two thousand press-ups each day in his cell (he has written a book about exercising in small spaces). I never counted but his sheer bulk was daunting (he was like a bigger version of Jonah Lomo) and the impression he gave me was he was as broad as he was tall. He wasn’t especially tall, five feet nine inches in his socks but the sheer menace of the man, some radiant force made him appear much taller than he was.

  As I had to visit him daily, I got to know him quite well. He could never be allowed out of his cell with anyone else for fear of him taking another hostage (he already had three charges of kidnapping against him). To speak to him in his cell I was obliged to wait outside and I never got close to him physically. I was flanked by two officers standing on the balls of their feet. Yet, Charlie was ever the gentleman with me. He was calm and collected and never showed his other side, when he could go berserk as ‘…demons took hold of me.’ And he never swore. He was a man of extraordinary contrasts; on the one hand, he had spent forty years in prison. On the other side of the coin he has raised cash for a disabled mugging victim and sells his artwork to help sick children.

  We had decided to hold him on the ground floor as we would never have got him down the staircase from one landing above. Instead, he kept his cell spotless, not that there was any furniture inside save his bed. Anything else could have been broken up and used as a weapon. It was thus time-consuming to have him at Armley with the constant fear of hostage-taking but we had to give Wakefield a break from time to time.

  One day when his cell was opened as usual to check how he was, he was found covered from head to toe in black shoe polish. They called me down.

  ‘What on earth are you doing Charlie?’ the officer asked, mystified.

  ‘These blacks, they get everything they want, when they want, so I thought I would join them. They get more than I do.’

  Very funny Charlie.

  The idea of covering himself in boot-polish led to smearing himself in Lurpak butter when he attacked twelve guards after hearing Arsenal, who he hates, had won the FA Cup. The butter prevented the officers from grabbing hold of him.

  The Press always wanted to write stories about his latest antics, painting him in the blackest light (sorry). But with me, he was a gentleman in both meanings of the word. Charlie represented all that was wrong with the prison system. As he said himself: ‘I’m a nice guy but sometimes I lose all my senses and become nasty. That doesn’t make me evil, just confused.’

  There was no doubt he was extremely dangerous in particular environments or with certain officers. But, I was convinced he could be reached if only there was the time, the money and, above all, the patience to help him. I learned recently he is now contained in a Close Supervision Centre where he could be seen all the time. That is very sad.

  Charlie Salvador has set up The Charles Salvador Art Foundation to help promote his art and ‘…help those in positions even less fortunate than his own.’ The emphasis is on the word ‘even’. I recall a time at my first interview saying almost the identical words.

  *

  Sometimes, coincidences can be useful. I had determined to reappraise our contingency plans for hostage-taking in the light of our time with Charlie. I had attended a ‘Hostage Course’ recently and was full of the new ideas safely stored in my head. The current plans were out-of-date and would not work in Armley so I put quite some time into getting a workable document together for my staff to read up and practice. Hostage-taking was always serious, always dangerous and here, it was complicated, due to the layout of our prison and the nature of our prisoners. What helped moving prisoners from one section to another also helped the hostage-taker. It was a Catch-22 situation.

  One sunny day, approaching lunch-time, the busiest time of the day with prisoners returning from their places of work, I was told by an officer, ‘Miss Bird, we have a hostage incident. Three prisoners have taken another prisoner hostage.’ Shock and horror. One of the prisoners had killed previously and was serving life, while the other two were also extremely violent. They were now, enraged, frustrated and dangerous. Threats were being issued.

  No testing of the new contingency plans had been carried out which now left me in a serious dilemma. I set up a command suite as soon as I could, while thinking about prisoners being fed, let alone my own staff. My team were the best there were, as they swung into action using both negotiators and an intervention squad while prisoners in the area were transferred out of the scene. Headquarters was updated. One prisoner said he would cut the frightened hostage to pieces if his demands were not met. The aggression in the man was palpable and he had nothing to lose as he was in prison for murder…and to hell with remission if you are that angry so you cannot think straight. There was, and is, an incredibly fine line between getting this right (that is, saving a man’s life) and screwing it up completely. We also, as I have described, had to keep the prison calm and operating as if normal.

  Robin arrived in the Command Suite and we worked back to back. The incident ran down to a stale-mate, so at five that evening I went home for some sleep and returned at nine to relieve Robin. It became a long, nervous night until Robin entered with the Chief of Police who had been in attendance observing the situation as a last resort provider. We sat down to consider what to do. I pulled out my plans which, after some discussion, were adopted with little change. We moved immediately from the academic to the reality, the latter which was developing worryingly as information was fed back from our team. Time was running out.

  A crisis arose eventually as the hostage-taker declared he was not prepared to wait any longer and began to move his knife about as he prepared to move to the next stage of his plan. Without further reflection, Robin sent in the intervention team who were there on stand-by, and in the nick of time rescued the terrified man who had been cut, though not badly. The police had been in attendance as a last resort but my staff were, by now, so well-trained and equipped they did not need the extra support.

  This incident (curious term which originally meant ‘occasion’) ended my first eventful year.

  *

  We had the inevitable but nonetheless important visit from another Home Secretary, this time Kenneth Clarke. I could measure the Parliaments and the passing years by the Home Secretaries I met and entertained. Without exception, it was not diffic
ult to understand how and why they had been appointed to one of the three highest government’s positions of power. Kenneth Clarke was just such a man, reaffirming even with his easy, laid-back persona, his razor-sharp intellect which continued to throw out a non-stop stream of questions. These were not queries listed by his PPS as an aide memoire for his boss but on the spot interrogations based on what he was seeing. He padded along in his ponderous, very unfit (seemingly), fashion, shod in his famous suede shoes and a ready smile. Surprisingly, his reputation had gone before him, so the prisoners he met were well behaved, some even polite. It was easy to understand why he was so popular with the public, well underlined when it came to the buffet lunch we had arranged. He moved along the dishes on the table with his plate piled high. It was a successful visit setting us up for Princess Anne.

  You will, hopefully, recall the earlier escape from the half-finished hospital and Education wing. This had now been completed and Anne had agreed in her well-established position as patron of the Butler Trust (forty years) and long-serving Royal member to many prisons, to open the building.

  By now, Robin had been promoted to Northern Ireland where he was to serve with distinction as Director-General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service. A new Governor 1 arrived in his place to take overall charge of us. He was, though, quite green when it came to his knowledge of the layouts of the prison complex so I arranged to have a whole series of discreet arrows placed along the route. Royals prefer a loop and do not like to go back on themselves, so it needed careful planning. This Princess was well-informed when it came to prisons and the prison way of life and she was quite willing to throw out awkward questions at awkward times.

  An incident occurred that day which endeared me to her, a belief which has not changed in the many times I have had the considerable pleasure of my work coming into contact with her own.

  I had learnt that one of my cleaners, not a prisoner, had terminal cancer. She was in the last stages of her life but was determined to attend the event, if only to catch a glimpse of Royalty. Her pale, shaky face hovered in the background press of people, anxious also to be seen. I was unaware her case had been passed on to Princess Anne. Making her way directly to the cleaner, she stopped to chat, taking her time to ease at least, some of the pain from the poor woman. The delight and sheer joy that this unscheduled stop brought was worth every penny. She died a week later but as a happy person leaving me having a large lump in my throat. That such a small effort could bring such pleasure. I was to see it again and again as I began to move into a very different world to Doncaster Road.

  It wasn’t all a bed of roses that day. Princess Anne and her entourage had been delayed in their arrival for reasons I have forgotten. So late, we had to lock up the prisoners as a result to maintain the absolute routine of the day. When she did arrive, the prisoners had been inside for some time and began to shout out ‘comments.’ They started to call out through their doors, which rose to a clamour at one time. One of the more reasonable commentaries which I picked up while standing to one side of the main party ‘heavies’ was, ‘you’re a fookin’ whore Anne.’

  I died, naturally there and then, seeking a black hole deep enough to make Professor Brian Cox happy. But Princess Anne sailed on, deep in conversation, oblivious to the comments as if they had been a murmuration of starlings passing overhead. Later on, one prisoner began to become a real pain, shouting and screaming at the top of his head. Tony made an eye at me.

  ‘Sort him out Veronica.’

  How do you sort a prisoner out – big and male – when all of your staff are lining the route or are otherwise engaged on security detail?

  I went over to the cell door. ‘What do you want, Alan? Can’t you see we are busy?’

  ‘No, I can’t Miss Bird. I can’t see through a fookin’ locked door. We need to get out.’

  ‘Tell you what. If you shut up now, I’ll give you an extra five minutes on your next visitors. How about that?’

  The prisoner subsided into a reasonable state of placidity. He had won and he knew Miss Bird would keep her word. It was how things worked.

  The rest of the tour went smoothly. It turned out to be a memorable day. One would have thought it would have been the female staff who would have shown the most enthusiasm but it was to be the men who twittered like those overhead starlings. Morale throughout Armley was lifted for weeks to follow, whether it was staff who rose to the occasion with their professionalism, or the prisoners having the crushing boredom shoved into the background for a few hours. By such incidental and seemingly insignificant events can we change people’s lives. By such acts of kindness can the charge by the anti-Royalist brigade be dismissed. There is undoubtedly, gloom and despair in Armley but on that day a light shone brightly in the corridors.

  *

  As part of the promotion process I was told I would need to go on secondment. It was a wise move by Headquarters to farm out those Governors climbing the ladder, for we all needed to get outside our stone walls and experience how alternative management systems worked, and could work for us. We did live in ivory towers, in an environment which could live with the term, hot house. Few influences forced their way into our lives from the parallel universe of the ‘free’ world. It was not a healthy way to expand our own ideas and Headquarters at Victoria had long recognised this weakness.

  ‘In six months’ time, Veronica you will be at the stage in your career whereby you can take the fullest responsibility. So, we are sending you to Yorkshire Health Authority where you will be based. From there, you can choose companies which you believe are looking at the same issues as you. Smoking, drinking, drugs and stress management. Think you are up to it?’

  ‘Yes Sir,’ I was able to reply confidently. Six months away from the clamour and stench of prison life had to be good. ’Oh,’ continued my advisor, ‘and at the end of it all you will be required to write and present a report on your findings.’

  Good-oh! ‘Comfort zone’ and ‘right out of’ crossed my mind, balancing, to some degree the fresh air and sunlight.

  Yorkshire Health Authority opened my eyes wide, though not as you might imagine because of the information I gained which was, nonetheless, of value. What I did find, was that my own particular world of Armley was way ahead of this colossal organisation. I had long ago made up my mind on how to save time and money, remembering the time of removing a tomato from the bag to save a penny.

  I worked with senior managers and statisticians and had a deep discussion on those subjects we had listed. It became clear, there were many links between hospitals outside the Service and prisons with these four big problems in all our lives. Smokers, drug takers and alcoholics might steal to exist and end up in Armley. The converse was equally true, for when prisoners came to the end of their sentences, they became a charge again upon the NHS with built-in drugs issues which demanded continuing care.

  At the end of what I considered was a satisfactory meeting with top professionals in the Health Service, one of the statisticians thanked me.

  ‘When is the next meeting Veronica? ‘Pad and pens were poised, expectantly.

  ‘Er, another?’ I had not planned on any more meetings. There was no need. ‘I hadn’t planned another meeting John.’

  ‘But, we always have meetings. We can’t work without meetings.’ He was confused, no doubt about it. I smiled, somewhat ruefully with the professional meeting-maker. ‘It would be a waste of my, our time, and of office space. Think of the coffee saved. And paper. We would just be repeating ourselves.’

  John nodded his head acknowledging the sense in what I had said, but was now in a vacuum, completely out of his depth. No more meetings? Wow!

  I returned to my desk to plan out the remaining time. I had been given a list of about two hundred companies which had agreed to work with me on the survey. There was a need to send these out and ask them to return them as quickly as possible, so I could analyse the information and put it down in some sort of coherent order. To
be truthful to myself I would have to admit that the size of the form I had designed was somewhat daunting – well, perhaps twenty pages in all. Probably for that reason alone, I did not receive back nearly the number required to make sense of the statistics. The form had been sent out with the title ‘Look after your health’ for I wanted to find out what the private sector companies were doing about it with their employees. Some bubbled to the surface almost straight away. Fox’s Biscuits of Batley and an amazing construction company, Shepherd Construction. They really taught me how it should be done. Fox’s had a policy of employing young mothers. Their children were looked after professionally including the school holidays for the older ones and provided a mini-supermarket at discounted prices. Who on earth would want to leave such a job?

  But, many companies had not responded at all. So, there was no option but to ring them one by one and go on ringing them until all the questionnaires had been returned. They proved only too happy to answer the questions with my help on the phone…if only to get rid of me and allow me to fill in their form.

  At the end of my secondment, came the bit where I had to step outside my comfort zone and present my findings to a panel. One member stared at my returns with slight disbelief.

  ‘How, Miss Bird, did you get so many responses? This is far higher than anyone else has achieved.’ I definitely got the feeling he believed I had just made the answers up.

  ‘When I didn’t hear back, Sir, from companies which had agreed to be involved, I rang them and, if they still were not there, I rang them again. In the end, they were only too pleased to get me off their back by answering the questions there and then so they could get rid of me, so to speak.’