The Barlinnie Story

by Robert Jeffrey

  The release of Andrew Smith was followed late on the Thursday with a second hostage, David Flanagan, being handed back to the authorities as a ‘gesture of goodwill’ and this was followed some hours later with the final hostage, John Kearney, being allowed to join his colleagues outside the beleaguered B-Hall. This happened after supplies of hot food and drink had been sent into the prison for the remaining rioters, now reduced to eleven, as four had left their redoubt earlier.

  The riot was over, ending peacefully ‘with a cuppa’ as the papers said. After five days of drama and violence the end was remarkably low key with comforting words shared over a cup of tea with Father John McGinley. The prisoners had asked to see a chaplain. The authorities had agreed that the protesters would be examined medically, given access to their lawyers and visits from their families. But there was to be one final act of defiance – shortly after nine on the Friday morning, the last rump of the rioters clambered back on to the roof for the last time to sing ‘We shall overcome’ before returning to the wrecked hall to effectively surrender.

  The wonder of it was that no one had died; no one was seriously hurt. No doubt chaplains, prison officers, some of the prisoners, and the public, who had been watching the drama play out for almost a week, thanked God for that.

  2

  BULLY BOYS, COLD CUSTARD AND A POWDER KEG

  The end of Scotland’s longest siege of its kind (110 hours as opposed to 92 the previous year in Peterhead) posed the inevitable question: why did it happen? The public perception was largely that it was all down to the alleged brutality of warders dealing with difficult prisoners. It was a popular pub-talk theory. Everyone was airing his or her thoughts on the cause, especially folk who had never seen the inside of a prison other than on television. In the aftermath of an infamous episode in the history of the great prison everyone was suddenly an expert on penal matters.

  In the days immediately after the surrender of the rioters, an ‘insider’ effectively knocked on the head the notion that it was all down to brutality by officers by saying that it was not as simple as a few rogue officers, the bad apples of the prison service, attacking some of the wild men in their charge. Tom Brown, one of the most respected commentators on current affairs in Scotland, then working for the Record, interviewed a man with another take on what caused the riot in Barlinnie and the previous, similar, disturbances in Peterhead and Saughton. The interviewee was described as an old lag, but it was said you could never tell that to look at him. This was an expert in the penal system, a man now successfully going straight who had done time in Scotland’s toughest jails and also in Wandsworth and Albany in England. The Record called him ‘Steve’ and he minced no words: ‘The riots were not caused by brutality from warders or the harsh regime. They were caused by men who live by violence in or out of prison.’

  It was a well reasoned piece by a man with front line experience of the penal system. He must have surprised many who want prison regimes liberalised when he said: ‘Of all the prisons I was in, those with the most liberal regime – where prisoners were not closely supervised and where you might not see an officer for hours – were by far the worst to serve time in.’

  Most prisoners keep their head down when inside, some will console themselves with the old mantra of the lawbreaker, ‘if you do the crime, you do the time’. When career criminals embarked on a life of villainy they knew the risks. Many old lags have told me that this is the most effective way to do your ‘porridge’, keep your nose clean and take advantage of every chance of education and entertainment you get when in the nick. Aim at the earliest possible release. Steve seemed to share this philosophy. According to him the jails with the easy going regimes were where what he called the bully boys ruled and the weakest of the prisoners go to the wall.

  He also pointed out that prisons have areas set aside for inmates seeking ‘protection’ under Rule 43, which is designed to give safe haven to prisoners who feel threatened by their companions behind bars. Under Rule 43 he claimed he had never seen such a section empty. He added, ‘It says something about life in jail that prisoners have to seek protection from their own kind. But I have never yet heard of a prisoner having to seek protection from the staff. I have seen and heard a lot of violent behaviour. Often I have seen prisoners assault other prisoners for no good reason. But I have never heard of staff making an UNPROVOKED attack on a prisoner.’

  His view was that most prison officers are ordinary men doing a thankless job with the best of intentions. He said that in every case he had heard of, where prisoners and staff were in physical conflict, there was always a reason. He told of officers being drenched by the contents of a prisoner’s chamber pot – ‘and you can hardly blame them for being a bit tough with a guy who does that.’

  Steve had also seen first hand how difficult it is for staff to restrain an inmate bent on mayhem, going ‘bersie’ as they say. People get hurt – on both sides of the dispute. A prison chaplain confirmed that to me with memories of seeing prison ‘incidents’ where, say half a dozen officers were trying to control a couple of guys running wild. In such a melee officers could hurt each other. These days officers are much better trained in restraint techniques, to the benefit of prisoner and officer.

  Steve introduced what some might say was a racial element. He claimed that life was easier in English prisons because the inmates there had mostly committed crimes for profit while in Scotland many inmates were simply classic hard men who fought for the hell of it. Sometimes these hard men would coerce fellow inmates to join them in a violent struggle against authority. Especially if the hard man was in for years and had little to lose. Steve’s verdict on the cause of the riot of ’87 was simple. Blame the prison bully boys.

  It was a pertinent point, but it shared the media attention with some rather complacent political views from people who ought to have known better. No one, not even the pub experts, believed that overcrowding in jails was the only reason for the tension and unrest. But it seems odd, at this distance in time, to suggest that overcrowding was not a contributory factor, especially since this was still in the era of the hideous practice of slopping out. John Renton, the respected long-time head of the Scottish Prison Officers Association, had told the media that overcrowding and undermanning were largely to blame for the riot. It was a view dismissed in a radio interview by Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind who said he thought it unlikely that the spark that started the incident was overcrowding. Politicians of all stripes like a little spin, and Malcolm Rifkind pointed out on the airwaves that out of a Scottish prison population of around 5,000 or so, only around 50 were involved in trouble; the rest were behaving responsibly. But it has to be said that the 50 or so were doing a good job in grabbing headlines and wrecking jails. And terrifying their captors.

  Another Tory to claim that Barlinnie was not overcrowded was Scottish Office Minster Ian Lang and he, too, was taken to task by John Renton who said, ‘Overcrowding is a problem that will not go away and it is wrong of Mr Lang to say B-Hall is not overcrowded. The mixture of short and long term and remand inmates in Barlinnie is dangerous and can be damaging. Frankly if the inmates are trying to demonstrate they can take over prisons, they do not have to show us that. It is obvious that institutions cannot be run without the co-operation of prisoners.’ Incidentally, the mix of convicted prisoners and untried men played a major role in a riot in Barlinnie in the thirties, a tale told later in this book. Another serious concern in the prison service was over the inadequacy of training for the country’s 2,700 officers. It was said they were being denied ‘in service’ training because of pressure of work. Disturbingly Mr Renton said that the caring aspects of the job were being overshadowed by the custodial ones.

  This argy-bargy and blaming began to obscure the fact that the crisis in the prisons had not just jumped up and grabbed the front pages. A Prison Inspectorate report on visits made to Barlinnie before the riot bore out John Renton’s observations on training. It said that staff trainin
g was almost non-existent and staff facilities barely adequate though it did say the staff continued to carry out their duties conscientiously. But the danger to the morale of the officers was pointed out. This report was also highly critical of the number held on remand (35% of the prison population at that time) and the fact that these prisoners were held in conditions inferior to the convicted inmates. It stated categorically that there was overcrowding, little recreation and no opportunity of work for remand prisoners. The report also said that the overcrowding was restricted to doubling up, which was felt by many staff and governors to be preferable to trebling up, in cells designed in the 1880s to hold just one prisoner.

  All the signs of a build-up of tension were in place. Little wonder then that when the lid finally blew off the pressure cooker, the cause was that trivial incident in a dining hall. Incidentally the inspectors were not impressed by that dining area and criticized the cleanliness of the place, tables not properly washed, dirt encrusted Formica and hot food being brought out too soon. It was said that soup and custard was seen stacked on hot plates up to two hours before meal time. The food serving system was primitive and ‘hygiene was suspect’. Another problem that would contribute to the tension in the jail was the question of visiting. All visits were in closed conditions with a permanent transparent screen between visitor and prisoner. It was said that ‘such arrangements have now been superseded in most prisons by open visiting and it is regrettable that no progress has yet been possible in Barlinnie owing to lack of facilities’. Another ingredient in the recipe for a prison powder keg.

  Little wonder that the staff were as overwrought as the prisoners. This was a hellish place to work at that time. No surprise then that at one stage in the actual riot an angry prison officer confronted the press corps, who were covering the event with millions of pounds worth of technology, and screamed, ‘This would never have happened if you had not been here. Why don’t you all fuck off?’ This loss of temper was perhaps justifiable in the circumstances – at the time the angry officer said it, three colleagues had knives at their throat. They could have died. But did his outburst have any validity? It was a concern that engaged the attention of Herald writer Allan Laing and there was no doubt there was a media circus on Barlinnie’s doorstep (including the Glasgow Herald it must be said).

  The logistics of covering such a riot are formidable. For example, the newspapers, radio and television had deployed hundreds of journalists to the site of the action. The television crews from down south, reporting back to the national networks, had ‘scanner’ trucks each worth around a million pounds. And some of the English hacks did not take full account of the fact that they were in the east end of Glasgow. One left a £25,000 camera in the back seat of his car covered with a jacket. It walked, no doubt something that some of the inmates across the road behind the walls would have found delightfully ironic. In the previous sieges at Peterhead and Saughton, intervention by tabloid journalists had helped break the deadlock. This time the Scottish Office and the prison authorities seemed determined to talk themselves out of this problem on their own. In the early days, the press circus was assembled just 100 yards outside the walls and the prisoners could play to the crowd asking the hacks to wave if they could hear them. And men shouting from the rooftops politely referred to the media pack as ‘ladies and gentlemen’. But on the second full day of unrest the press and cameramen were moved back by the authorities further away from the walls, and the protestors, ‘for their own safety’. It was not a comfortable story to cover. For some in the coldest week of a cold winter it was takeaway sandwiches and coffee as they waited shivering as events unfolded. ITN, up from London, aroused some envy with their big spending – they booked their entire entourage into an exclusive suite in a local pub. It was an exciting time for Glasgow newspaper people, and to this day when snappers and scribblers meet to reminisce over a pint or ten, old memories flood back and tales, both serious and amusing, are told.

  Glasgow photographer Alastair Devine, much lauded internationally for his studies of celebrities (everyone from Gordon Ramsey to Jane Russell) was in his twenties and working for the Daily Record at the time. He remembers it well. The fiery tabloid, even then, was the ideal place for a photographer to learn the wrinkles of the trade from the hard life and hard graft on the streets of this tough city. When news of the rooftop riot broke he was phoned at home and told by Martin Gilfeather of the Record picture desk to pitch up at Barlinnie at six a.m.. It was completely dark when he arrived and there were just one or two other frozen photo­graphers there, colleagues from the Glasgow press and a few curious Glasgow punters wondering what was going on. Alastair Devine remembers one such who enquired, ‘Hey, big man, any chance of a look through your camera?’ Alastair, always sympathetic to the punter, ignored the irony of the appellation ‘big man’, a typical Glasgow form of address, being used about him, as he drew himself up to his full five feet eight inches and stood back while the guy took a squint through the telephoto lens at the roof and the masked and caped figures there. He was impressed. ‘Fucking magic,’ he remarked as he stepped back from the tripod. Even the cops on occasion asked for a look through the powerful telescopic lenses to see if they could recognise any rioters. One raised a laugh with his colleagues when he spotted someone he had nicked in the past remarking: ‘Aye it’s him right enough, Clint Easterhouse’. Another cop recognised a prisoner nick-named ‘The Pigeon’ after the amount of time he had spent on rooftops.

  Available light is always a real concern for any news photographer. The light during the siege was, of course, winterish and poor as you would expect in Glasgow in a grim January and only lasted from around nine until four. Alastair remembers it as giving a curious grainy ‘middle east’ feel to the pictures, though some of the best photos were taken on the odd dry cold day with clear blue skies. In particular the minutes around sunrise as the light slowly wrapped itself around the tall chimneys and the grey stone of the jail and the bizarre shapes of the rioters were silhouetted on the roof were productive for photographers of an arty state of mind. The snappers were largely dressed in woolly hats, warm duffel coats or full newspaper issue foul weather gear with layer upon layer of sweaters and knitwear, necessary since most of the time they were standing still watching the rooftop protesters for any movement that would make a picture. Unlike the cosseted ITN hacks, coffee in plastic cups, curled sandwiches and greasy mutton pies were the order of the day.

  Alastair Devine makes a wry observation that the prison full of hard men had on its roof the hardest of the hard. How they survived long hours up there in the winter winds, rain and chill is a testimony to their anger at what was going on in the prison and their street-hard Glasgow toughness. Alastair Devine remembers the reporters and photographers covering the riot postulating that the current protest was part of some sort of organised unrest in Scottish jails suggesting that the demos at Saughton and Peterhead were part of the same plot. There was, however, no real link between the three riots. The photographers were also of the opinion that the Barlinnie hard men might have done better to wait for warmer weather before taking to the roof.

  The five-day vigil of the photographers was not without laughs. One hack turned up with a football one day and with the cameras still trained on the roof the snappers had a quick game of five-a-side. The long hours of waiting and watching gave life to a lot of banter and joke telling.

  The rioters knew full well how the pictures and the publicity were helping their cause and publicising the alleged brutality they were demonstrating against. This was helpful to the photographers. When one prisoner posed precariously on top of a high chimney pot hundreds of feet up and raised his hands wide in a crucifixion gesture, the photographers realised the significance, though the move had slightly taken them by surprise. Several of the camera men immediately stood up mimicking the arms apart gesture and the prisoner took the hint, repeated his ‘crucifixion’ pose and a great picture went into the papers and photo archives.

>   However over the top the media attention was at times, the question of whether or not it contributed to the troubles at the prison is easily answered. As Allan Laing said in a perceptive piece: ‘Perhaps we should leave the prison service, the police – and why not the Government – to deal with everything and our performing circus will turn a blind eye. Do that and we destroy accountability and eventually freedom of speech and democracy. Maybe then in 20 years or so we would all be standing on prison rooftops in protest. And the circus would have disappeared for ever.’

  All this was when the papers were still hot off the press, as it were, and tempers still high. And the various court cases that were a product of the riot were still to happen. In the end nine men stood trial for their part in the riot and three – Allan McLeish, William Marshall and Hugh Twigg – were found guilty and sentenced to a total of 22 years. Sammy Ralston also had a sentence increased. So it is interesting to read of the official reaction which came in a report on the prison in 1990. The actual riot and hostage taking was covered in the previously mentioned brief official factual description of what had happened. But nonetheless the full report was peppered with criticisms, some echoing negative comments made down the years in official reports and others that had been raised in Parliament before the practice of regular reporting on individual prisons had been started.