‘Mad Scotsman’ Norval was a serial deserter and was soon back in Scotland, ending up on one occasion back in the Bar-L. There were dramatic scenes at the main gate at Barlinnie when his sentence ended and the military lay in wait for his exit. The army knew Walter Norval would not step quietly back into their arms so a jeep, with a corporal and three soldiers armed with rifles, was sent to collect him. Pushed out into the real world through the fearsome gates of the prison, he immediately threw himself on the ground and announced to the assembled military personnel, the prison officers and any of the good folk of Riddrie who happened to be around: ‘I’m no’ going’. The prison officers were convulsed with laughter at this bizarre street scene. The army swiftly started their manoeuvres, the military police unfazed by this somewhat ludicrous confrontation, and Norval was dragged at gunpoint into the jeep and driven to Central Station.
There the pantomime continued and the reluctant soldier had to be dragged onto a handy mail cart and wheeled the length of Platform One to the train for the south. It was a sight the douce Glasgow commuters who witnessed it are unlikely to forget. Back in the army, before his final discharge, Norval did the rounds of many infamous prisons including Shepton Mallet which, like Barlinnie, was once a place of execution. As in many such places there was talk of haunting by the criminals put to death.
One of the weapons that those in jail who protest their innocence use is the threat of hunger strikes. Barlinnie has had its share. When writing the life of Walter Norval, I spent months with him discussing his prison experience – which included years in Peterhead as well as incarceration in Barlinnie and spells in less arduous surroundings such as Dungavel and Penninghame. One morning as he supped his porridge – he had developed a lifelong taste for the prisoner’s traditional breakfast – we talked, ironically in the circumstances, of hunger strikers. In one of the many military jails he spent time he gave it a try himself. According to him it is not as dramatic as it seems.
Apparently the torment of not eating is gradually replaced by a strange kind of mental state in which the desire to eat has been replaced with the overriding, even stronger, desire to prove that you have been wronged. When he tried it, Walter was once again taking on a force even more determined than himself, the British Army. The solution was as simple as it was cruel and horrific. Force feeding. Norval was pinioned by a couple of soldiers, a tube was put down his throat and a life-sustaining fluid poured down it with all the finesse of someone pouring petrol into a car that has run out of fuel. A realist like Walter soon went back to the knife and fork.
No matter that Walter played down the experience of force feeding. After all, even in his seventies and still fighting fit, he had a hard man image to burnish and maintain – it was a pretty grim affair. And if the person being force fed resisted and struggled it became downright dangerous and there are tales of victims choking to death. Incidentally, Norval credits one reason for his longevity and health to many years in prison. He points out that the food, however unexciting, was nutritious enough and, of course, there was no access to the demon drink. Sleep and rest was part of a regular routine. And in his day drugs behind prison bars was not the problem that it is now. There was also the bonus of regular workouts in the gym and on the prison football field. Inside for long years, he picked up the exercise habit and to this day likes a daily workout with the weights.
Even in the toughest of jails there is a humour that helps make doing time slightly less mindnumbingly boring. Walter Norval, widely acknowledged as Glasgow’s first Godfather of Crime, once shared a sojourn in Barlinnie with Arthur Thompson Snr, his successor and the man labelled by noted crime writer Reg McKay as ‘The Last Godfather’.
Thompson, always a scary figure to meet outside in any circumstance, indulged his cruel sense of humour in one prank. The grapevine informed him that a fellow inmate had an Achilles heel. This guy was a bully, adept with the ‘chib’, who could hold his own with the toughest blade merchants of the slums. Even a gun pointing at his head would probably have been swatted aside. But he had a paranoid fear of rats and mice. And he was sure that Barlinnie was full of fearsome rodents hungry for a nibble at him. In fact, mice and rats, despite the desperate conditions the prisoners endured in the late forties, were not a problem. If there had been any rats in the place they would have thought they were in paradise because in those days the inmates slept on mattresses on wooden frames just a few inches off the floor. Ideal for a rodent wanting to chew on a two-legged rat.
This guy’s obvious fear of rats gave Thompson – perhaps feeling deprived of the pleasure of scaring anyone he met as was his wont on the outside – the chance of a little evil-minded power play. One day a bit of an old scrubbing brush was found. With a length of cord attached to it, the brush was inserted into a bit of piping near the cell of the Man Who Hated Rats. A careful tug or two on the cord produced a nice little scratching sound that had the victim leaping onto the table in his cell and screaming blue murder for the warders to rescue him from the rats obviously bent on invading his cell. It provided splendid entertainment for the hardhearted cons, some of whom, you suspect, would have eaten a rat sandwich with relish.
Despite the occasional prank and a rough and ready make-the-most-of-it sense of humour, a deep sadness pervades the atmosphere in any penal establishment. The humour, such as it is, has to be put into context. If you spend 168 hours a week behind bars the time passed in a humorous way is tiny. But it is there and it is inventive. One expert on the subject was Robbie Glen, an ex-deputy governor who is a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Robbie once had an altercation with a tabloid which was surprisingly touchy about some of his humorous tales of life in the jail. But Robbie in my view was always laughing with the prisoners rather than at them. As is the case with most prison humour.
Incidentally William McIlvanney based his story ‘The Prisoner’ in his book of short stories entitled The Walking Wounded on him after he visited Robbie at Dungavel. Robbie’s humour is illustrated in a little flyer publicising his second career as an after-dinner speaker when he points out, referring to himself, that: ‘In his youth he played junior football professionally but his career was cut short tragically at an early age due to lack of ability. He still holds the Lanarkshire Schoolboy 440 yards record, because it’s now gone metric!’ Robbie got many cracking reviews for his speechmaking, the Sunday Times going so far as to say of Robbie, ‘this man should carry a government health warning, he is seriously funny’. Robbie has a profoundly handicapped daughter and he developed a walking aid for her with his staff and prisoners in 1981 which is now being used in 41 hospitals and schools in Scotland to teach handicapped children how to walk.
All prisoners endure hour after hour of boredom and almost endless thoughts of nothing but your current predicament and, perhaps, for the more thoughtful, how you ended up in a tough prison. The perception of some of those on the outside is that prisoners live in a kind of cosseted atmosphere with regular meals, flat-screen TVs in a sort of home from home. That is a fantasy. Even in modern Barlinnie in 2011 it would be fairer to make a comparison with the Bangkok Hilton rather than the Glasgow Hilton.
A fairly usual way for prisoners to ease the endless boredom of confinement is to let their mind wander into complex plans for escape. And escapes can happen in any prison, no matter how efficient. But they are the exception rather than the rule. And they usually end up in a swift recapture. Glasgow can be a hard place to hide and the reappearance of a villain on his own patch gets the underworld talking. Les Brown, one of Glasgow’s most legendary and successful detectives, told me of an amusing escape and recapture he was involved in. Les always had top contacts in the underworld and was often in a position to predict what would happen before it did. Such was the case with John ‘Mad Dog’ Duggan in the eighties. Les learned from a man in police custody that Duggan was going to escape from the Bar-L with the help of an Andy Steele. As any detective would do, he phoned to warn the Governor of the time, Mr McKenzie, about t
he planned escape. The Governor took it calmly – he seemed to have more faith in his prison’s security than Duggan had.
But at three in the morning Les got a message to call the prison. The ‘Mad Dog’ – a nickname that never seems to go out of fashion – had somehow removed the bars from his cell window, climbed on to the roof, and then, moving hand over hand, had used telephone and other wires to climb on to the gatehouse roof. But he had a surprise when he jumped to the ground outside the prison. There was no sight or sound of the pre-arranged getaway car – his friends had given him a dizzy. There was nothing for it but simply to leg it away from the scene as fast as he could.
Mr McKenzie may have taken the original warning calmly, but now he was angry and he wanted Duggan back. About a week later Les got a call from Duggan’s wife. Hiding from the cops seemed not much better than being in the jail. Duggan now wanted to give himself up to Les and so the detective went with a colleague, Detective Sergeant Jim Montgomery, to the Duggan house in Possilpark. Mrs Duggan established that no one had had breakfast and the cops and their quarry sat down to a hefty fry up of bacon and eggs and all the trimmings. Inner man satisfied, the cuffs were snapped on Duggan and he was on his way back behind bars where, for sure, the breakfasts would not be of the same quality. Duggan went on to sample life in other Scottish jails including Peterhead where he caught a headline or two in one of the many rooftop riots in that troubled place. He was once seen holding a placard which read: ‘Fuck Nelson Mandela – free me’.
Escapes are always in the back of the mind of everyone in the prison service. Sometimes bad luck and bad timing are important. Barlinnie’s record is undoubtedly first class with regard to escapes, but there are always vulnerable points in any system. Once inside, even the most resourceful prisoner is hard put to beat the system. The danger time is when prisoners are moved around from court to prison or one prison to another. This was highlighted in October 1998 when the then governor, Roger Houchin, came under fire when two prisoners were mistakenly released in a two-week period.
This, of course, unleashed the twin attack packs of press and politicians. Mr Houchin had to react to aggressive questioning from the newspapers and reject any suggestion he should resign. He pointed out that the jail at that time had 75,000 movements in and out in a year. He said: ‘It just happens that two quite unrelated incidents occurred in two weeks and I don’t make excuses for that – they should not have happened.’ And he pointed out that over the years the jail had maintained an enviable record with regard to security. One of the ‘escapers’ – though that adjective is a bit dramatic for an incident that did not involve an escape tunnel or even a picked lock – was rearrested by the police after a few days and the other, who was liberated ‘in error’, later gave himself up to the authorities. A pretty minor event in the Barlinnie Story though it was enough for the then Scottish Home Affairs minister Henry McLeish to tell all and sundry that he ‘was very angry’. When you are dealing with the detention of criminals you are only a tiny slip away from the front pages! Resign? Absolutely not, said Roger Houchin, and he stayed in the post for another three years.
Trips to the Bar-L were not infrequent for Les Brown and sometimes had a surprising twist. A criminal pal of Walter Norval’s was being held there on one occasion and was a suspect in a killing in the Coventry area. The con was John McDuff and an English murder squad wanted to come north to interview him. It resulted in one of those little legal contretemps that can happen in any police force. Les went with his immediate boss at the time, a detective chief superintendent, to meet the English detective at the airport. In the car on the way to the prison Les learned for the first time that the murder squad man wanted to interview McDuff as a suspect. Les, a man with a good knowledge of the law, then announced to his boss and their passenger that the English officer would not be allowed to question the Bar-L inmate as a suspect. ‘What a load of crap,’ said the chief super, ‘just drive the car.’
In the prison, and in the Governor’s office, Bob Hendry greeted Les as an old friend. The detective from the south said without delay that he wanted to interview a prisoner, John McDuff, ‘who is the main suspect in a murder I am investigating’. Les took a deep breath – he knew what was coming next. Governor Hendry said: ‘Not in this prison, you’re not. Under the Prisons Scotland Act it is not permissible. You can interview him as a witness, or you can parade him as a suspect, and you can charge him. But that is all.’ Mr Hendry then offered the group a coffee and I have no reason to disbelieve that, as Les told me, it was his most enjoyable jolt of Java for a long long time. As they sipped, Les suggested that since McDuff had relations in England he could be moved there. That’s what happened and in the end McDuff was eliminated from the murder inquiry.
The intelligent, literate lawbreaker can use his time inside for education or even turn to writing himself. The Barlinnie Special Unit, which is dealt with in its full complexity later in this book, at one stage had a magazine produced by the prisoners and it is interesting how much poetry it included, mostly raw, biting and sometimes bitter verse reflecting the anger against society of those locked away. This is not ten thousand golden daffodils stuff. Sometimes the urge to express yourself showed itself in song. Walter Norval, in mellow mood, once entertained me with a little ditty called ‘Barlinnie Hotel’ (the comparison with hotels sometimes seems as deeply seated in the cons as it does to those on the outside!). It went like this…
BARLINNIE HOTEL
In Glasgow’s fair city,
There’s flashy hotels,
They give board and lodgings,
To all the big swells,
But the greatest of all now,
Is still in full swing,
Five beautiful mansions,
Controlled by the King.
There’s bars on the windows,
And bells on the door,
Dirty big guard beds,
Attached to the floor,
I know ‘cause I’ve been there,
And sure I can tell,
There’s no place on earth like
Barlinnie Hotel.
I was driven from the Sheriff,
And driven by bus,
Drove through the streets,
With a terrible fuss,
Drove through the streets,
Like a gangster at state,
And they never slowed up,
Till they got to the gate.
As we entered reception,
They asked me my name,
And asked me my address,
And the reason I came,
As I answered these questions,
A screw rang the bell,
It was time for my bath,
In the Barlinnie Hotel.
After my bath, I was dressed like a doll,
The screw said, ‘Quick march,
Right into E-Hall’
As I entered my flowery, [flowery dell = cell]
I looked round in vain,
To think that three years here,
I had to remain.
At breakfast next morning, I asked for an egg,
The screw must have thought,
I was pulling his leg,
For when he recovered, he let out a yell,
‘Jailbirds don’t lay eggs,
In the Barlinnie Hotel!’
The day came for me,
When I had to depart,
I was as sick as a dog,
With joy in my heart,
For the comfort was good,
And the service was swell,
But I’ll never return
To Barlinnie Hotel.
The only possible retort to such a sentiment is – IF ONLY! Sadly the Barlinnie Hotel does a considerable degree of repeat business. Even with the same families. Former Governor Bill McKinlay told me of fathers, grandfathers and sons who were regular clients.
Barlinnie at one time held youngsters in the untried areas who, on conviction, would be sentenced to Polmont Borstal, near Fal
kirk. Some observers thought of Borstals as finishing schools for young criminals, academies for training for a life of crime. There, too, the urge to burst into poignant verse surfaced in ‘The Borstal Song’. Interestingly, too, it touches on the idea of going straight when the doors finally open and an inmate is marched back on to the streets:
THE BORSTAL SONG
I’m a lad who done wrong,
Very wrong in his time,
It was company that led me astray.
And, like many a youth,
I was led into crime,
And to Borstal they sent me away.
I once got a job in a dockyard,
Beside some old pals that I know,
But while working one day,
My foreman did say,
‘My lad you must pack up and go.
You’re a jailbird I know,
So pack up and go,
For jailbirds we do not employ.’
I said, ‘Give me a chance to be honest,
Give me a chance, won’t you, please?
For if luck’s in my way,
I may find it some day,
Cause I am out on my Ticket of Leave!’
As I observed in Glasgow’s Godfather, such a ditty echoing round the walls in darkened dorms would bring a tear to a glass eye, to use the old Glasgow phrase. But it seems the poignancy and emotion such songs engendered was pretty transitory. Out of the cells it was not long before old ways returned. Repeat business was guaranteed whether it was Borstal or Barlinnie.
Incidentally these two prison songs are far from the only musical references to the Bar-L. Cambuslang Folk Band Piggery Brae raise a laugh from time to time on their travels with a little ditty that goes:
It’s murder, michty murder, in the jail
Where they feed you bread and water
If you ask them fae a pail for a tinnie
They’ll send ye tae Barlinnie
Oh, it’s murder, michty murder in the jail
Talking to old lags you get all sorts of different reactions to the penal system and it seems the older they are the more they accept the way society treats lawbreakers. You will not hear many young yobs giving out that previously mentioned old mantra: ‘If you do the crime, you do the time’. But in the past many doing a stretch in Barlinnie had no difficulty believing in that concept. I have even heard of career criminals doing a stretch for a crime they did not commit and accepting it with a degree of resignation, balancing it against the crimes they got away with! That sort of thinking fits in with the hierarchical system in prisons. The old lag likes to stay out of trouble and milk the system for any privileges that may be going.
The Barlinnie Story Page 6