There were around 59 prisoners in D-Hall at the time including 11 ‘Passmen’ who were normally well-behaved prisoners with a little more freedom than the run of the mill con. Forty-five cells were badly damaged in the stramash and 41 prisoners treated by the doctor. A handful of warders were also hurt but no one was hospitalized, which seems remarkable given the level of the violence. In the court case that followed, it was claimed that the prisoners in the dock had ‘been marked and extremely knocked about’. But it was found that there was no ground to censure the warders who quelled this riot by meeting violence with violence.
But it was no complete whitewash. Sir George C Rankin had been appointed by the government to hold an inquiry into the administration and discipline in the prison. This he seems to have done with remarkable diligence. Governor James Murray and his deputy Captain M P Lothian were officially interviewed as were seven of the prison officers (warders in those days). There were frank discussions with Dr George Scott, the medical officer, the Rev John Hart, the chaplain and Peter Morrison the Catholic visiting clergyman. This was informal stuff with no shorthand notes. John McSporran, the lawyer who represented the 20 prisoners who ended up in court, was also interviewed at length. The 20 who were charged appeared in Glasgow Sheriff Court in January 1935 pled guilty. Mr McSporran, in mitigation, made much of the claim that the untried prisoners had flaunted their privilege of smoking while exercising and stirred up much of the violence. This was not totally accepted by the inquiry which found that the ordinary prisoners would have had difficulty in seeing the untried prisoners smoking. But in fairness to Mr McSporran it was pointed out that on one occasion when he was at the prison there was an incident where this did apparently happen. The inquiry found it not to be the norm.
In court, two of the inmates got six months with hard labour and 18 got three months with hard labour. Seventeen other cons had remission removed. The governor did not escape Scot-free either. His bravery on the first day was highly praised but it was observed by Sir George: ‘I regret to say the Governor’s behaviour was as bad on the Saturday as it had been good on the Friday.’ Captain Murray had not got back on duty on the Saturday until around two, by which time the battle of the cells was over. Likewise Head Warder Peddie was said to have come to D-Hall on his arrival back at the prison but then went elsewhere and did not see what was happening! Looking back, it is not unduly cynical to wonder if it is just possible that there was a touch of the Nelson eye here as it seemed Warder Bates and his boys were crushing skulls and quelling the riot with violent efficiency. And the governor who had acted so bravely the day before was not around to witness what was going on. Was his absence a ploy? The official report, though critical of Murray and Peddie, did not postulate such a stark interpretation.
Indeed Bates came in for praise and was said to have handled the incident most competently. But Sir George was clear when he said that it was obvious that such an incident would lead to claims of the use of undue force and that the Governor should have been there. Instead it was all left to Bates’ ‘initiative, courage and discretion’. The use of the word discretion in this context is interesting. Murray’s excuse for not being on the front line on the Saturday was that he did not think batons would be used. He believed that the men could be calmed without them, a somewhat naive observation considering the level of the violence which, unlike what happened on the Friday, was in full flow when Bates and his men arrived. Batons were indeed used and no one can deny that they were powerfully used – the inquiry heard that twelve of the batons used by the warders broke in their hands. Weak batons, hard skulls.
Sir George made much of the fact that the batons were ‘light’: 16 inches long and one and a half inches by one and a half, light ash and weighing six and a half ounces. He recommended the introduction of a heavier weapon to crack harder on the skull of any future rioters. There was, however, some sombre logic behind this thinking. The ash batons that broke so easily left the owner wielding a more dangerous jagged bit of wood, and a weapon like that old Glasgow favourite, the broken bottle, was capable of inflicting horrific injury. It was a tough life in the prison service in the thirties.
The quelling of the riot did not lead to an instant solution to all the problems of the Bar-L in those hard days. The prison was back in the headlines in a week or two when one of the rioters tried to cut his own throat with a fragment of crockery. He was patched up and returned to the misery of the cells and stone breaking. But Governor Murray who had, as they say, ‘mixed reviews’ on his behaviour, got on with the job.
In the early weeks of 1935 he pounded his way round his prison, speaking, it is said, to every one of the prisoners, not an easy task. If the rioters had intended to get their voice heard it seems to have worked. As for the inquiry, it came to the conclusion that smoking inside the prison was largely a red herring and that although the tobacco smuggling was a factor, the pandemonium was created partly by trouble makers and the hard core of gangster inmates partly for its own sake and partly as a plea for sympathy from those outside the walls who could hear what was going on. In fact, it seems the trouble was caused by the same sort of reckless, mindless violent mindset that put the prisoners inside in the first place. It seems the same ‘bully boys’ who played a role in the 1987 riot had their counterparts back in the thirties.
9
TROUBLE IN THE CELLS, TROUBLE IN WESTMINSTER
Back in the 1880s the satirical magazine Private Eye was around a hundred years away from the attention of the reading public. Indeed had the scurrilous fruit of Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard’s contempt for politicians and the pompous been around then it would no doubt have been sued, and pursued by those of a censorious instinct, even more than it was in the latter part of the twentieth century. Its editors and writers, London orientated, would not have been sent down to Barlinnie. But as sure as satire is satire they would have ended up in Newgate. There is another certainty – if Glasgow Victorian author James Nicol had been around now he would have starred in one of Private Eye’s most popular features. He would have been James Nicol OBN. The Order of the Brown Nose is not awarded lightly, but James Nicol would have been a shoe-in for this honour.
In the early days of Barlinnie, Nicol had been ‘by order of the town council’ commissioned to produce a book, Vital, Social and Economic Statistics of the City of Glasgow 1886–1891. This he did with some serious and meticulously detailed application and produced a volume that was at the time an accurate picture of the city. Reprinted a few years ago by the Grimsay Press it contains some fascinating statistics on the city in general, including a look at the newly built Barlinnie. It points out that the cost of keeping each prisoner was twenty-one pounds eight shillings and eightpence. You couldn’t provide much methadone for that! But the Victorian work ethic came into play with the calculation that the profit on work done by the prisoners in a year was one hundred and forty–eight pounds one shilling and ninepence.
Of the prison itself, Nicol wrote, ‘It was considered that they [the cell blocks] would suffice for the male criminal population “thirled” to Barlinnie for many years, but already they have been found inadequate, and to ease the pressure, transfers have been made to the general prison at Perth.’ That old Barlinnie bugbear again: the doors hardly open and over-crowding is an issue.
This fact was followed by a sentence or two of brown-nosing to the Lord Provost Sir John Muir and his success in a war against crime. Nicol wrote: ‘Happily the general record of crime, especially of serious crime, diminishes with the spread of education and the great voluntary labours of our philanthropists amongst the young. Glasgow per se is improving every year.’
Nicol would have ensured his OBN with an introduction to his book, addressed to Sir John Muir and the councillors. It pointed out that his book contained ‘statistical facts illustrative of the progress of the city, under various aspects, in the last six years, and particularly the results of some of the important work carried out by you.’
It
is easy to have some harmless fun with what might be seen as the false optimism, and pomposity, of the Victorians, but the fact remains that at this early stage in the development of penal attitudes there was some positive thinking going on. More recent and less esoteric reports on the prison and the politicians’ attitudes to it are less encouraging. For example I doubt if there is a prison in the country that has had more questions asked about it in Parliament. And with the introduction of official inspections, in 1981, and the release of their contents to the media, and the subsequent features and news articles galore, it is all the more surprising that the prison that was a disaster as regards overcrowding more than 100 years ago is still a major problem today. So much so that the files of the city’s newspapers are brimming with calls for the place to be demolished. It is still there, however, and will be so for some time.
The sheer volume of criticism of Barlinnie year after year in Parliament and elsewhere makes you despair. And it is not just the conditions in which the prisoners were kept that is of concern. Some of the dangers and difficulties of the staff are also highlighted.
The controversies that frequently pepper the history of Barlinnie have regularly spilled over into debates in the House of Commons, often because of the adversarial attitude of your typical West of Scotland MP. These local firebrands take very seriously their remit to look after the interest of all their constituents, even those, perhaps especially those, who do time in Scotland’s largest prison. Any whiff of false imprisonment, any suggestion of bad treatment, has the politicians thirsting, if not for blood, at least for the truth however unpalatable that might be to the authorities. And no bad thing either.
Down the years a frequent thorn in the flesh of ministers was Tom Clarke, a Lanarkshire man through and through, born in Coatbridge and educated in Airdrie and the powerful possessor of both a social conscience and massive Labour majority. When in July 1988 the legendary Speaker Betty Boothroyd announced to the Commons: ‘This discussion is coming out of a private member’s time, I call Mr Tom Clarke,’ a remarkable story of life in Barlinnie 20 years or so ago emerged. Tom Clarke was deeply affected by the fate of a man called Bahadur Singh.
It is worth quoting the exact words of Tom Clarke to show how much the fate of Mr Singh had affected him: ‘This debate concerns the treatment of the late Bahadur Singh in Barlinnie Prison. Even as I speak these words, I find it difficult to contemplate that a man of 26 years of age, who lived for a short time in Coatbridge in my constituency and for whom I had been making representations from midwinter until spring this year died on 12 May – the day after his release following six months in Barlinnie Prison. Time after time, as his solicitor took up the case, his friends the Banga family in Coatbridge came to see me and I can still hear them saying, as they frequently did, “they will kill him”. Throughout, they had a lack of faith in the administration of British justice which many now think proved chillingly perceptive.’
Mr Clarke went on to pay tribute to the Under Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, as a most humane man with a fine record and an interest in penal reform issues. The member for Monklands West then dramatically increased the pressure on him by saying that ‘despite a number of representations and warnings, I can not regard Mr Singh’s death on a bus on the way home to the Punjab as a coincidence. There are far wider implications – of civil liberties, of basic human rights, of racism in Scottish prisons and until recent times a lack of Scottish Office concern about the problem. And I believe that these should be urgently addressed.’ There was nothing remarkable about how Bahadur Singh had ended up behind bars. No matter what happened to him there – and there emerged two conflicting stories – the tale of how he got there could be repeated in counties the length and breadth of Britain. Illegal immigration has been a problem for many years and indeed it still is.
There is no dispute that Mr Singh was in Scotland without proper documentation. He had come to work with restaurant owners Autar Banga and Jasbir Banga, but he was reported to the authorities and arrested. At his appearance at Airdrie Sheriff Court he pleaded guilty to a contravention of the Immigration Act and was fined £120. As he had no money on his person he was sentenced to 28 days and sent to Barlinnie pending the outcome of an appeal. Tom Clarke first took up his case in November 1987 as Mr Singh had sought political asylum. The MP was angry both that his constituent was kept in prison while his application for asylum was processed and that the Home Office was dragging its feet, in his opinion, in coming to a decision. But he told the Commons: ‘These matters are diminished in importance by the most basic question of all: how was Bahadur Singh treated while he was in Barlinnie Prison?’
Tom Clarke went on to tell the Commons that he had first drawn the Government’s attention to allegations of violence against Mr Singh in February (twice in letters to the Minister of State in the Home Office who took a month to reply). During his incarceration Bahadur Singh changed his mind about his appeal from time to time, but the MP said this indecision was due to bullying and abuse in the prison which caused him very great distress. The authorities decided to maintain his imprisonment in view of his previous disregard for immigration control and more allegations of violence and racism were made. The case was then dropped into the Scottish Office in-tray. Mr Clarke said he had written to the Governor, Alan Walker, saying that he had had reports from visitors to Mr Singh of cruel physical and verbal abuse.
Alan Walker had the allegations investigated by a senior manager and his findings were in conflict with Mr Clarke and the Bangas. The governor wrote back to Tom Clarke with words to the effect that Mr Singh speaks virtually no English and it was necessary to interview him through another inmate who acted as an interpreter. In that interview, according to the governor’s letter, Mr Singh apparently stated that he had no particular problems at that time and no real fears for his safety although a few slogans had been daubed on his cell door. Mr Clarke disputed that, and remarked he thought the governor himself should have dealt with the problem. He was also unhappy that Mr Walker had implied to the Strathclyde community relations council that there had been no problems with ethnic minority prisoners.
The MP’s next step was a letter to the Secretary of State for Scotland which took a month to merit a reply. And the day Tom Clarke got it was 2 June – the same day that in a remarkable coincidence the Evening Times had broken the news to his office that Mr Singh had died several weeks before.
Tom Clarke was emotional as he told all this to the Commons. He said he had spoken to the man who had acted as interpreter, Mohammad Sattar, who insisted that in the presence of the governor’s representative that Mr Singh had complained about beatings and racist behavior. It was all a bit of a Mexican stand-off. Who to believe? Mr Clarke called for an official inquiry into racism in jails and James Douglas-Hamilton insisted, ‘It would be fair to say I have received no evidence that there is any widespread problem of abuse against inmates of ethnic origin in Scottish prisons.’
Tom Clarke wanted lessons to be learned from the death of Bahadur Singh. Maybe no one would ever know now whether on his release he was fit to travel home, or, if he wasn’t, had that been the result of what happened to him in prison. But at least in the future there might be better understanding of the problems of ethnic minorities in prisons, regardless of whether or not their incarceration had political overtones.
One swift and successful result of this Westminster spat was that James Douglas-Hamilton was able to report that after the allegations of abuse on Mr Singh, the governor, Alan Walker, held constructive discussions with representatives of the Asian community and had taken a number of immediate measures to help ease the problems which might be encountered by members of the ethnic community in jail. In particular the governor introduced a practice of locating inmates from ethnic communities together for mutual support and companionship and invited the community groups to undertake the translation of the prison’s rule book into the four major Asian languages. He also discussed w
ith the community groups visiting arrangements for members of ethnic communities; discussed the special diet requirements of ethnic groups; discussed the need for provision of newspapers and reading material in ethnic languages. All of this was pace-setting stuff at the time and put Barlinnie at the forefront of how the penal establishment should deal with the growing number of ethnic inmates. Even today, this can cause problems.
In Britain, Barlinnie probably has the dubious distinction of having been the subject of more questions asked in the House of Commons than any other prison in Britain. One of the earliest mentions of the prison breaking into the national consciousness concerned not conditions in the prison, but the method of discharge. In 1908 an MP, JG Swift MacNeill, asked the Scottish secretary Archibald Sinclair ‘whether he is aware that prisoners, on expiration of their terms of imprisonment in Barlinnie, are not liberated at the gates of the prison, but are conveyed in company in Corporation trams to Cathedral Square, in the charge of warders, and there liberated in view of a curious crowd of men, women and children.’ The questioner seemed a man of sensitive disposition and he went on to ask whether prison officials have any legal control over prisoners when they leave the precincts of the prison on the day of their discharge.
The Barlinnie Story Page 13