My cell door is opened, and I’m told Ms Roberts wants to see me. I am accompanied to the Governor’s office by Mr Weedon. I don’t bother to ask him why, because he won’t know, and even if he does, he wouldn’t tell me. Only moments later I discover that Ms Roberts has nothing but bad news to impart and none of it caused by the staff at Belmarsh. My Category D status has been raised to C because the police say they have been left with no choice but to follow up Baroness Nicholson’s allegations, and open a full inquiry into what happened to the money raised for the Kurds. As if that wasn’t enough, the C-cat prison I’ve been allocated to is on the Isle of Wight. How much further away do they want me to be from my family?
The raising of my status, Ms Roberts explains, is based on the fear that while a further inquiry is going on I might try to escape. Scotland Yard obviously has a sense of humour. How far do they imagine I could get before someone spotted me?
Ms Roberts informs me that I can appeal against both decisions, and if I do, the authorities have agreed to make an assessment by Thursday. She points out that the Isle of Wight is a long way from my residence in Cambridge, and it’s the responsibility of the Home Office to house a prisoner as close to his home as possible. If that’s the case, I’m only surprised they’re not sending me to the Shetland Isles. She promises to have a word with my solicitor and explain my rights to them. If it were not for Ms Roberts and Ramona Mehta, I would probably be locked up in perpetual solitary confinement.
I cannot express forcibly enough my anger at Emma Nicholson, especially after my years of work for the Kurds. One call to Sir Nicholas Young at the Red Cross and all her questions as to the role I played in the Simple Truth campaign could have been answered. She preferred to contact the press.
Ms Roberts points out that as my lawyers are due to visit me at two o’clock, perhaps I should be making a move. I thank her. Baroness Nicholson could learn a great deal from this twenty-six-year-old woman.
2.00 pm
I join Alex Cameron and Ramona Mehta in the visitors’ area. This time we’ve been allocated a room not much bigger than my cell. But there is a difference – on three sides it has large windows. When you’re behind bars day and night, you notice windows.
Before they go on to my appeal against conviction and sentence, I raise three other subjects on which I require legal advice. First, whether the Baroness has stepped over the mark. The lawyers fear she may have worded everything so carefully as to guarantee maximum publicity for herself, without actually accusing me of anything in particular. I point out that I am only too happy to cooperate with any police inquiry, and the sooner the better. The Simple Truth campaign was organized by the Red Cross, and the Treasurer at the time will confirm that I had no involvement whatsoever with the collecting or distributing of any monies. Ramona points out that several Red Cross officials, past and present, have already come out publicly confirming this.
I then tell my lawyers the story of Ali (£28,000 stolen and returned, but now doing an eighteen-month sentence for breach of trust). I ask that the police be reminded that Mrs Peppiatt admitted in the witness box to double-billing, stealing a car, taking her children on a free holiday to Corfu, buying presents for mistresses that didn’t exist and claiming expenses for meals with phantom individuals. Can I hope that the CPS will treat her to the same rigorous inspection as Ali and I have been put through?
Third, I remind them that Ted Francis, the man who sold his story to the News of the World for fourteen thousand pounds, still owes me twelve thousand. I’d like it back.
The lawyers promise to follow up all these matters. However, they consider the reinstatement of my D-cat and making sure I don’t have to go to the Isle of Wight their first priorities.
I ask Ramona to take the next five days of what I’ve written and hand the script over to Alison for typing up. Ramona leaves our little room to ask the duty officer if he will allow this. He turns down her request. Alex suggests I hold onto the script until I’ve been transferred to a less security-conscious prison. He also advises me that it would be unwise to think of publishing anything until after my appeal has been considered. I warn them that if I lose my appeal and continue to keep up my present output for the entire sentence, I’ll end up writing a million words.
On the hour, an officer appears to warn us that our time is up. Ramona leaves, promising to deal with the problems of my D-cat and the Isle of Wight immediately.
While I’m waiting to be escorted back to Block One, I get into conversation with a Greek Cypriot called Nazraf who is on remand awaiting trial. He’s been charged with ‘detaining his wife in a motorcar’ – I had no idea there was such a charge. I repeat his story here with the usual government health warning. Nazraf tells me that he locked his wife in the car for her own safety because he was at the time transferring a large sum of cash from his place of work to a local bank. He’s in the restaurant business and for several years has been very successful, making an annual profit of around £200,000. He adds with some considerable passion that he still loves his wife, and would prefer a reconciliation, but she has already filed for divorce.
Nazraf comes across as a bright, intelligent man, so I have to ask him why he isn’t out on bail. He explains that the court demanded a sum of £40,000 to be put up by at least four different people, and he didn’t want his friends or business associates to know that he was in any trouble. He had always assumed that the moment he was sent to jail, his wife would come to her senses and drop the charges. That was five weeks ago and she hasn’t budged. The trial takes place in mid-September…
This is all I could find out before we were released from the waiting room to continue on our separate paths – I to Block One, Nazraf to Block Four. His final destination also puzzles me, because Block Four usually houses terrorists or extremely high-security risks. I’d like to meet Nazraf again, but I have a feeling I never will.
6.00 pm
Supper. Provisions have arrived from the canteen and been left in a plastic bag on the end of my bed. I settle down to a plate of tinned Spam, a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, two McVitie’s digestive biscuits and finally a mug of blackcurrant juice, topped up with Evian water. What more could a man ask for.
8.00 pm
Association. I am asked to join a group of ‘more mature’ prisoners – at sixty-one I am by far the oldest, if not the most mature – for their weekly committee meeting in Fletch’s cell. Other attendees include Tony (marijuana only), Billy (murder), Colin (GBH) and Paul (murder).
Like any well-run board meeting, we have a chairman, Fletch, and an agenda. First we discuss the hours we are permitted to be out of our cells, and how Mr Marsland has made conditions more bearable since he became the senior officer. Fletch considers that relations between the two parties who live on different sides of ‘the iron barrier’ are far more tenable – even amicable – than at any time in the past. Colin is still complaining about a particular warder, who I haven’t yet come across. According to Colin, he treats the prisoners like scum, and will put you on report if you as much as blink in front of him. He’s evidently proud of the fact that he’s put more people on report than any other officer, and that tells you all you need to know about him, Colin suggests.
I decide to observe this man from a distance and see if Colin’s complaint is justified. Most of the officers make an effort ‘to keep a lid on things’, preferring a calm atmosphere, only too aware that lifers’ moods swing from despair to hope and back to despair again in moments. This can, in the hands of an unthinking officer, lead to violence. Colin, I fear, is quick to wrath, and doesn’t need to take another step backwards, just as things are going a little better for him.
The next subject the committee discuss is prison finance. Tony reports that the Governor, Hazel Banks, has been given a bonus of £24,000 for bringing Belmarsh Prison costs down by four hundred thousand. Hardly something a free enterprise merchant like myself could grumble about. However, Paul feels the money would have been better spent on inmates’ e
ducation and putting electricity into the cells. I have no idea if these figures are accurate, but Tony confirms that he checked them in Sir David Ramsbotham’s (head of the prison service) annual review.
When the meeting breaks up, Derek Del Boy Bicknell (murder) – interesting that he has not been invited to join the committee meeting – asks if he could have a private word with me. ‘I’ve got something for you to read,’ he says. I walk across the ground floor from Cell 9 to Cell 6. After he’s offered me a selection of paperbacks, I discover the real reason he wishes to see me.
He wants to discuss his appeal, and produces a letter from his solicitor. The main grounds for his appeal appear to be that his former solicitor advised him not to go into the witness box when he wanted to. He subsequently sacked the solicitor and his QC. He has since appointed a new legal team to advise him, but he’s not yet chosen a QC. Imagine my surprise when I discover one of his grounds for appeal is that he is unable to read or write, and therefore never properly understood what his rights were. I look up at a shelf full of books above his bed.
‘You can’t read?’
‘No, but don’t tell anyone. You see, I’ve never really needed to as a car salesman.’
This is a prisoner who carries a great deal of responsibility on the spur. He’s a Listener and number one on the hotplate. I earlier described him as a man who could run a private company and I have not changed my mind. Del Boy brings to mind Somerset Maugham’s moving short story, ‘The Bell Ringer’. However, it’s still going to be a disadvantage for him not to be able to study his legal papers. I begin to wonder how many other prisoners fall into the same category, and worse, just won’t admit it. I go over the grounds of appeal with Del Boy line by line. He listens intently, but can’t make any notes.
8.45 pm
Lock-up is called so I return to my cell to face – delighted to face – another pile of letters left on my bed by Ray the censor. I realize the stack will be even greater tomorrow when the papers inform their readers that I will not be going to an open prison, after Emma Nicholson has dropped her ‘I was only doing my duty’ barb into an already boiling cauldron.
I’ve now fallen into a routine, much as I had in the outside world. The big difference is that I have little or no control over when I can and cannot write, so I fit my hours round the prison timetable. Immediately after evening lock-up is designated for reading letters, break, followed by going over my manuscript, break, reading the book of the week, break, undress, go to bed, break, try to ignore the inevitable rap music. Impossible.
Every time I finish the day’s script, I wonder if there will be anything new to say tomorrow. However, I’m still on such a steep learning curve, I’ve nowhere near reached that dizzy height. But I confess I now want to leave Belmarsh for pastures new, and pastures is the key word. I long to walk in green fields and taste fresh air.
Billy (lifer, writer, scholar) tells me it will be better once I’ve settled somewhere, and don’t have to spend my energy wondering when and where I will be for the rest of my sentence. He’s been at Belmarsh for two years and seven months, and still doesn’t know where he’s destined for. Tony (marijuana only, escaped from open prison) warns me that, wherever I go, I’ll be quickly bored if I don’t have a project to work on. Thankfully, writing these diaries has solved that problem. But for how long?
Day 14
Wednesday 1 August 2001
6.21 am
A long, hot, sleepless night. The rap music went on until about four in the morning, so I was only able to doze off for the odd few minutes. When it finally ceased, a row broke out between someone called Mitchell, who I think was in the cell above the music, and another prisoner called Vaz, who owned the stereo below. It didn’t take long to learn what Mitchell planned to do to Vaz just as soon as his cell door was opened. Their language bore a faint resemblance to the dialogue in a Martin Amis novel, but without any of his style or panache.
8.37 am
Breakfast. Among my canteen selections is a packet of cereal called Variety, eight different cereals in little boxes. I start off with something called Coco Pops. Not bad, but it’s still almost impossible to beat good old Kellogg’s Cornflakes.
9.31 am
The morning papers are delivered to the duty officer. They’re full of stories confirming that my status has been changed from D-cat to C-cat because of Emma Nicholson’s accusations.
9.50 am
Ms Labersham arrives and actually knocks politely on my cell door, as if I were capable of opening it. She unlocks ‘the iron barrier’ and tells me that she has come to escort me to my creative-writing class.
I’m taken to a smoke-filled waiting room with no chairs, just a table. Well, that’s one way of guaranteeing a standing ovation. Moments later a trickle of prisoners appear, each carrying his own plastic chair. Once the nine of them are settled, Ms Labersham reminds everyone that it’s a two-hour session. She suggests that I should speak for about an hour and then open it up for a general discussion.
I’ve never spoken for an hour in my life; it’s usually thirty minutes, forty at the most before I take questions. On this occasion I speak for just over forty minutes, explaining how I took up writing at the age of thirty-four after leaving Parliament, with debts of £427,000 and facing bankruptcy. The last time I gave this speech was at a conference in Las Vegas as the principal guest of a US hotel group. They flew me over first class, gave me a suite of rooms and sent me home with a cheque for $50,000.
Today, I’m addressing nine Belmarsh inmates, and Ms Labersham has confirmed that my prison account will be credited with £2 (a bottle of Highland Spring and a tube of toothpaste).
When I’ve finished my talk, I am surprised how lively the discussion is that follows. One of the prisoners, Michael (aged twenty-one, murder), wants to talk about becoming a song writer, a subject about which I know very little. I don’t feel I can tell him that a lyricist is as different to a novelist as a brain surgeon is from a gynaecologist. Michael wants me to read out his latest effort. It’s already forty verses in length. I offer you one:
No room, but to leave
You call out, calling for me
to come back
but all you can hear is the sound of your own voice
calling out my name
Michael heard yesterday that the judge had given him a tariff of eighteen years.
‘At least it’s not telephone numbers,’ he says.
‘Telephone numbers?’
‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine years,’ he replies.
When I finish reading Michael’s work, the group discuss it, before Terry (burglary, former cell-mate) reads three pages of his novel, which he hopes to have finished by the time they release him in December.
The group spend some time debating the use of bad language in a novel. Does it tell you anything about the character the author is writing about? Does it distract from the narrative? They go on to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of Terry’s story. They don’t pull any punches.
Tony (marijuana only) then tells the group that he is writing a textbook on quantum mechanics, which has been a hobby of his for many years. He explains that his efforts will add nothing to the genre – his word – but as a project it keeps him occupied for many hours.
The final rendering is one of Billy Little’s poems. It’s in a different class to anything we’ve heard up until then, and everyone in that room knows it.
Crash Bang Slam
Subject despised, committed wrong,
broken wounded, buffeted along,
concealed confined, isolated state,
parental tools, judicial hate.
Golden cuffs, silver chains,
reformed pretence, jewelled pains,
sapphire screams, diamond faults,
brick steel, storage vaults.
Uranium plutonium, nuclear chalice,
poison regimes, political malice,
confounded dark, loomin’ sin,
&nb
sp; atomised spirits, crushed within.
Seditious dissent, proletarian class,
duplicate religion, misleading mass,
ruinous poverty’s, reducing rod,
whipping barbarous, bloodthirsty God.
Liberated justice, equality bound,
desecrating capitalists, unholy ground,
revolutionary concept, militant fire,
diligent radical, poetic desire.
Billy Little (BX7974)
During the last few minutes they begin to discuss when we’ll get together again. The matter that most concerns the group is whether it should be during Association time or considered as an education class. On this they are equally divided, and I wonder if they will ever meet again.
12 noon
Lunch. I open a tin of ham (67p), extract half of it, to which I add two hard-boiled potatoes (prison issue). During the afternoon, I devour three digestive biscuits, and swig nearly a whole bottle of Evian. If I continue at this rate, I’ll be out of water by Saturday, and like so many prisoners, facing the problem of double-bubble. Do you recall Del Boy cutting a cigarette in half, and expecting a whole one back the following day?
1.07 pm
My appeals against change of status and being sent to the Isle of Wight are brought round to my cell for signing. Ms Taylor says that the Deputy Governor wants the forms returned to her office as soon as possible. I read slowly through the two-page legal document, making only one small emendation. I sign on the dotted line, but remain convinced that the Home Office has already made up its mind, and there is nothing I can do about it. The golden rule seems to be: it mustn’t look as if Archer’s getting special treatment, even if he’s being treated unjustly.
2.24 pm
My cell door is opened by Mr Bentley, who tells me that I must report to reception as there are several parcels for me to collect.
When I leave the spur, I am not searched for the first time and the duty officer simply points to the end of the corridor and says, ‘My colleague will guide you.’ It’s taken them two weeks to feel confident that I have no interest in escaping or dealing in drugs. Actually if you tried to escape from Belmarsh – and the roof is the furthest anyone has managed – you’d need an architect’s plan; the whole building is a maze. Even if you work here, I imagine it would take several weeks before you could confidently find your way around. Sometimes I wonder how the prison officers find their way out at night.
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