The Barlinnie Story

by Robert Jeffrey

  To the visitor now the first impression is how small it was and how impossible it must have been to have had any real comfort in it, never mind so-called luxury. The officer-to-inmate rate was much higher than in a normal nick. But the food was not much different from prison fare, no Gordon Ramsay stuff, despite the talk on the streets. Though the freedom to do a little cooking did give the Special Unit an occasional touch of experimental cuisine. I remember Stuart McCartney, one time of the Express and the legendary doyen of crime reporters in a city with hundreds of scribblers who specialise in following the doings of the bad guys, returning from a visit to the Special Unit and telling me how he was invited to taste curried porridge. It was not an experiment that ‘Bullet’, as McCartney was known, voted a success.

  From the day it opened the Unit was a test bed. A small group of long-term prisoners, generally serving 15 years or more, were held together in a separate secure area inside the main prison, but given a much more relaxed regime than that of prisoners held in normal cells. Prisoners in the Unit wore their own clothes, had record players and their own personally owned books rather than the prison library’s tattered paperbacks. Freedom, responsibility and a degree of personal choice were all watchwords in an experiment that bucked the thinking of most of the people at the top of the conventional prison hierarchy. Even mail was uncensored. It is not rocket science to predict that no matter how successful it would be in reforming individual villains that elsewhere in the prison system there would be serious resentment and the belief that if you wanted to share in this new regime then the worse your crime the better your chance was. It is understandable that some officers in the mainstream saw what was going on in the Bar-L as an invitation to prisoners to become so disruptive that they had to be moved out of the rigid mainstream regime to the new experimental ‘cushy’ Unit.

  And, of course, rumour and exaggeration prompted some folk to start questioning what was really going on. Even the police found some of the results of this experiment hard to take. And hard to understand. Les Brown, who went on to become one of Glasgow’s most famous detectives, told me what, to the cops, was a maddening incident souring any positive thoughts they had about the Unit. He arrested a guy for shoplifting and this villain, when asked where a TV he had stolen was, calmly remarked that he had handed the stolen property in to the Special Unit. You couldn’t make it up, says Les. Brown however was not easily put off and despite warnings from his superiors in the CID to let it go, he asked the then governor of Barlinnie to give him the make and number of the set to help identify it. He got a call back from the then top man Mr Hendry to inform him that a) the set was no more as it had been smashed, and b) he had no control over the Special Unit anyway! Hints of what was to happen over the years.

  The BSU, as it was formally called, was the result of the thinking of many people in the prison service or with a particular interest in penal matters. The official report on its closure in 1994 comments: The Barlinnie Special Unit opened in February 1973 on the recommendation of a Scottish Home and Health Department Working Party, which was charged with considering ‘what arrangements should be made for the treatment of certain inmates likely to be detained in custody for very long periods or with the propensities to violence towards staff.’ The recommendation said that: ‘A Special Unit should be provided within the Scottish penal system for the treatment of known violent inmates, those considered potentially violent and selected long-term inmates’ and ‘the traditional officer/inmate relationship should be modified more closely to a therapist/patient basis, while retaining a firm but fair discipline system.’ Optimism of a high standard.

  Incidentally that final report plucked a couple of quotes from the hundreds of academic investigations to show the diversity of opinion on the BSU. They included: ‘One of the most imaginative and enlightened experiments in penal history’ (Kennedy, 1982) and ‘… the easiest, plushest prison unit that has ever existed’ (Conlin and Boag, 1986). The latter quote seems a bit over the top and also seems not to have taken account of the country house hotel ambience of some of England’s open prisons. Indeed all the academic comments on the achievements of the Unit can create a little head-scratching to the outsider: it was so successful they closed it down.

  It was intended right from the start that the Unit would operate as a ‘therapeutic milieu’, staffed by a combination of Discipline and Nurse officers and where the emphasis was on ‘treating’ those who had behaved, or were suspected likely to behave, in a violent manner. The final report in 1994 acerbically noted that at no time did the 1971 working party suggest that the Unit should function as a ‘community’ and that ‘it would seem that this element of the Unit’s ethos came about more by accident than design’. All this came at the end of the experiment, though the use of the description ‘experiment’ for something that lasted around 20 years seems a bit odd.

  The frequent use of the word ‘treatment’ in the BSU story is interesting in the context of Barlinnie’s history. At one time treatment was breaking rocks in the nearby quarry. Mind you, looking at penal conditions worldwide, Barlinnie, even in the bad old days, wasn’t as harsh as what went on in America. I remember in Florida just a few years ago watching prisoners in a chain gang cleaning out roadside ditches that were the habitat of ‘gators – watched over by prison officers with rifles – a bit more tough treatment than making baskets in the warmth of the Bar-L work sheds! Incidentally this chain gang in the States was working out of a prison called Copland Road, a name with an affinity for any Rangers fans doing time in Barlinnie.

  One of the early brains behind the visionary concept of the BSU by the prison service was a small, quiet Aberdonian called Ian Stephen (not to be confused with Alex Stephen, a high-ranking civil servant who had much to do with the nuts and bolts of setting the Unit up). Ian Stephen went on to become one of Scotland’s leading forensic psychologists. Indeed he worked as a consultant on the highly praised TV series Cracker, starring Robbie Coltrane. Ian Stephen is on record as acknowledging the difference between TV crime and the reality. Fans of the series will be interested to know that: ‘The Cracker character was really nothing like what real forensics is all about. You could not survive in the extreme way he did – the police would not use you.’ He went on to point out that the series, which attracted 14 million viewers at its peak, brought forensics to the public attention and that of the press.

  Ian Stephen studied psychology at Aberdeen University and after leaving found himself teaching languages at a Borders school. The experience re-ignited his interest in psychology and he began working with young offenders in Glasgow – no shortage of interesting cases there. Interviewed on his work he told one reporter: ‘If you can work with these kids you can work with violent men. The kids are far worse.’

  Stephen is proud of the work he did in the BSU. He was the only psychologist working in the Scottish prison service at the time. There was genuine concern that the removal of the death penalty had inflicted desperate men on the prison community. Often without the slightest chink of hope in their lives they were attacking prison officers and each other, taking any and every opportunity to break out onto prison roofs to throw tiles at the warders below. They had nothing to lose. Cells were smeared with excrement and mattresses set ablaze. Prison officers were subjected to repeated attacks.

  Stephen and others thought there must be a better way and the seed that started the BSU experiment was planted. The man who some say was the prime mover in turning the idea that ‘something must be done’ into reality was Ken Murray, who died in 2007 aged 76. Former Labour cabinet minister Brian Wilson described him as ‘one of the most significant advocates of penal reform in the latter part of the twentieth century’. And Murray was no ivory tower theorist – he spent 28 years in the prison service. Even in the early days of his career he was of the belief that there must be better ways of treating violent offenders than punitive incarceration.

  For years the Special Unit was at the receiving end of public ho
stility and regarded as a soft home from home for evil men, generously provided by the taxpayer. There were lurid stories of sex and drugs behind the walls of the BSU but Ken Murray was its most public face, defending the experiment against a massed army of armchair critics. And there were plenty, especially since the famous inmates like Boyle, Collins, and Larry Winters were seldom off the front pages of the tabloids. Boyle and Collins are still high profile but the Larry Winters story has less resonance these days, his sordid death in the BSU now largely forgotten by the general public. But it is as intriguing as any tale to come out of Barlinnie.

  Winters and Boyle both sparked films, Silent Scream and A Sense of Freedom which involved Glasgow actor David Hayman: he directed the Winters story and played Boyle in A Sense of Freedom. Powerful work from the Citizens Theatre star who went on to become one of the biggest names in television. While Boyle and Collins enjoyed a measure of fame as sculptors, inside and outside Barlinnie, and as the perfect examples of the redeeming nature of the Unit and then went on to productive lives outside of prison bars, Larry Winters never left Barlinnie alive. He was found naked and dead on a chamber pot in the Special Unit in 1977. Winters, like Boyle and Collins, had a rough childhood and criminality was involved from an early age. It ran in the family. It is interesting that so many of the young men who ended up in the Nutcracker Suite had such violent childhood backgrounds. Winters went down the usual road of many brought up in his milieu – assaults and minor crime and violence leading to the act that finally put them behind bars for long sentences. His career is a useful case study in the ongoing nature versus nurture argument that keeps academics interested in the penal system busy.

  Larry Winters shot a barman in Soho in 1963. He was caught, tried and, as the tabloids say, caged. The use of the word caged, a favourite of headline writers, has resonance with cause and effect in criminality. This is underlined by Jimmy Boyle’s claim that he was ‘animalized’ by the prison system before he was moved from ‘the cages’ in Inverness to the Special Unit. The description gives us some insight into the mind of the long-term prisoner and why some fight their depression, and the feeling of being ‘animalized’, by fighting everything around them, even behind bars. Boyle concedes that such as he, Larry Winters and Ben Conroy ended up in the BSU as a result of ‘being difficult to control’, which is a masterly understatement. In P-head and Inverness they and such as TC Campbell were a nightmare. Desperate men inside do desperate things, but many confined themselves to throwing the odd cup of boiling water at the inmates they call the ‘beasts’ – the criminals in for child assault and other crimes of a sexual nature. But in Peterhead there was a hard core of guys who would attack anything that moved. Their lives were a shocking mix of stabbing warders, riots, and ‘dirty protests’ – as the practice of urinating and defecating everywhere and anywhere was called. As mentioned earlier, this ‘hopeless aggression’, shared by a handful destined to spend long years without hope of release, was one of the reasons for the BSU in the first place.

  There is still controversy around the drugs that killed Winters and allegations that he had become addicted to anti-depressants fed to him by the prison system to wipe out the ‘difficult to control’ side of his character are still made. But perhaps it should not be forgotten that allegations of illegal use of recreational drugs smuggled into the Unit have never been totally dismissed. Whatever the truth, his end was as sordid a tale as you can get. The London barman had been killed to get a fiver by a man with a proven IQ way above average. In Peterhead, where Winters spent time, his obvious intelligence went unnoticed, its potential ignored.

  It was a different story when he was transported down south to the then new BSU. There he met Bill Beech, a member of the so-called creative-artistic caucus who regularly trudged through the uninspiring surroundings of Riddrie to 71 Lee Avenue to go through the rigours of security – at times the visitor might think it as hard to get in as get out – and on to the Special Unit, there to dispense artistic advice and that rare ingredient in prison life – hope. As was intended, the Unit gave Winters a sense of purpose unknown in his life up to that point and he began to write. Beech was quoted as saying: ‘If Larry had lived I think the writing would have flourished. That’s the marvellous thing about the Unit. It was just a relief that he could actually sit down and write and relate to things. But the drugs he took masked all that. He was still in prison and facing the rest of his life there.’

  As far as drugs are concerned, Winters certainly had an extensive knowledge of the subject but it is something of a mystery how a man who knew all about tolerance levels became so careless that he killed himself. Not surprisingly his death led to a public frenzy about the notoriously liberal regime in the Unit at that time. And there is no doubt that the use by inmates of drugs brought in from the streets played a role in the eventual decision to close the Unit. No matter the argument and the blame shifting, the fact is that in the case of Larry Winters a human life had been snuffed out.

  But amid tragedy there was hope and progress unthinkable in a normal prison unit. For a spell the BSU even had its own little newspaper produced by the inmates. It was called, aptly, The Key, a title with all sorts of connotations – the key to freedom, the key to artistic fulfillment, and the key to keep you locked away or to unlock you. Sprinkled among the longer articles were short poems, little pearls of wisdom. Many were moving. And one, unsigned, would have made a poignant final end piece to the Larry Winters story:

  Mentally and physically alert

  How long must I writhe

  In this house of tormented souls.

  I have read of writers comparing life in jail with that of a boarding school. I most certainly don’t see it myself, but I suppose there are some vague similarities if you look hard enough. Certainly The Key had the look of a school magazine, typed on a battered machine and the pages run off on a copier that could have used more ink. No colour spreads, no dramatic typography. No adverts for holidays in the Seychelles, of course. The content itself was far removed from school mag stuff. There was some moving writing on the plight of long-termers and bits and pieces of comment on prison life gathered from publications from around the world. Much writing on the evil of capital punishment was featured, not surprising since within the walls that contained the Special Unit ten men had died at the end of a rope. Plenty, too, to interest those studying the effect of long-term confinement on the human condition. Lots of poetry, of course, and much brain wringing about how each particular writer had ended up in the BSU. Many of the pieces gave insight into the thinking of prisoners in the Unit taking part in the groundbreaking experiment in prison reform. It is very moving to read in The Key of Boyle’s first encounter with a lump of clay and the reward of sculpting it into a work of art.

  From Issue One there was agreement from the prisoners who produced it to invite contributions from non-prisoners. One of the first was from Father Anthony Ross, a former Chaplain of Edinburgh University who at one time was vice-chairman of the Parole Board in Scotland. Ross had been raised as a Free Presbyterian, but converted to Catholicism and went on to become something of a controversialist. A hugely charismatic intellectual, he had a lifetime interest in crime and punishment. His contribution to the first issue of The Key was a wide-ranging piece discussing the role of the clergy in prison, acknowledging that some prisoners liked to receive the sacrament while others were more interested in debate with social workers.

  The first issue also featured what was to become a constant hobbyhorse, allegedly irresponsible and inaccurate reporting of the Unit in the press. Another major theme was to repeatedly emphasize the belief that if an offender is treated like a person rather than a piece of trash rejected by society, then the offender will reciprocate. It was a serious nod in the direction of accepting the thinking of the founders of the Unit. It is interesting that long before the Unit came into being and long after it had been closed, similar thoughts were around, notably in the thirties at the time of the tobacco
riots and more recently when Paul Ferris, as recounted earlier, made similar comments about a more relaxed regime in the Bar-L segregation area.

  David Scott, one of Scotland’s most lauded journalists who often worked on crime stories, knew the Glasgow scene better than most. He was part of the team, including Joe Beltrami and Ludovic Kennedy, that fought for years to overthrow the wrongful conviction of Paddy Meehan. He was a natural choice to be asked to write for The Key and was told that he could be as blunt as he liked. Right at the start of his piece, in November 1974, he said: ‘It was with some dubiety that I agreed to write an article for The Key. Not because I believe the magazine is a bad idea. Quite the contrary. I think it was because as a former “hard liner” who once advocated capital punishment for certain offences, my ideas are now less well defined and I am not exactly certain of what I believe in.’ As honest and blunt a statement as the little magazine’s editors could have wanted.

  He went on to point out that if capital punishment had not been abolished, some of the six men then in the Unit would not be alive. ‘There are some I know who would say “so what?” to that. But it is a fact that the law, as defined by politicians in the House of Commons, has to be carried out far away from that somewhat cosy atmosphere. And it has to be carried out by people who often have little or no say in what the law should be. It is easy for those who live and work outside prisons to ignore the problems within. It is also simple for us to recognize the problems and just leave it at that. After all, we can walk away from them at any time. But officers and prisoners cannot. They have to live with the situation created by the abolition of capital punishment and the fact that many long-term prisoners may well be there, if not for the rest of their lives, at least for many years ahead.’