My forty-day hunger strike nearly killed me, so I will give HM Prison Whitemoor 0/10. Sorry, but it is a fair judgement.
LOCATION: Romsey Road, Winchester.
CAPACITY: 425 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local – Male and Female Annexe.
OPENED: 1846.
HISTORY: Originally the County Jail. In 1964, a YO Remand Centre was built and, in 1992, it was changed for use by Category ‘C’ prisoners. In 1994, the Remand Centre became a unit for sentenced female prisoners.
I have landed at this prison a good eight to ten times from the 1970s to the 1980s. Only ever been here for short spells, a month at the most, and always in their seg block below A Wing.
To be fair, I only ever got one kicking here, but I have no complaint over that, as I gave as good as I got.
Basically, it is a good old jail; I had very few problems there. Once, I attempted to do a roof protest, but it was quickly stopped.
Another time, I attempted to grab a screw hostage and he broke free. So I barricaded up in the office, where I read my file. You should see the bloody damn lies they’ve written about me. After I read it, I even thought I was a nasty bastard. I actually thought, ‘Is this really me? Or have they got me mixed up with Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs.’ On paper, I was a monster; in reality, I am just a cuddly bear.
Another time, they rushed me and injected me; I never did find out why. They must have just thought I was about to explode.
In those days, in the 1970s, it was legal to inject us violent cons. I was injected that many times that my arse was starting to resemble a pin cushion.
But I have some lovely memories of Winchester and I met some decent old screws in that place. I also loved their cells. They always put me in the same cell, Number 3. It was just opposite the steps that lead up to the wing. My cell was a big one, with a high window, which only opened half-an-inch; it used to have dozens of pigeons roosting on my sill. Rats with wings, I call them.
That cell was my gym! My bed frame was my weights. My mattress was my punch bag. My table was for my dips. I’d get library books for my press-ups. Fuck me, did I train in that Number 3 cell. Sweat – buckets of it. Afterwards, I would just bang on my door ’til they let me out for a shower.
Every time I landed there, they gave me a brand-new piss pot, mug and jug. Most nights, about 10.00pm, I would sit on my potty in the back and have a lovely private crap. Just like a little boy on his pot. In the morning, I would march to the recess and shout out, ‘Turds away,’ and slop out down the sluice. Crazy days, but I enjoyed it all.
I would have a strip wash two or three times a day, plus a shower. I would brush my teeth ten times a day. Clean my boots. Anything to kill the boredom. Read, write, exercise. My life was for ever on the move to just another seg block. I saw nobody. Few ever saw me. But I enjoyed it.
Winchester, in a way, was a part of my making. It made me what I am today with its old regime and harsh ways but, truly, it beat all the soppy jails of today. Winchester was a proper man’s jail. It smelt of man.
It smelt of brotherhood. The noise was prison. Everything about it was jail. Not like the namby-pamby new jails of today. Give me a piss pot and a jug of water any day, with my overalls, T-shirt and boots. Fuck all this Mothercare shit of today. Yeah, Winchester brings back some sweet memories, three decades of them. Oh yeah, the good old days. Hard, but sweet.
I will give HM Prison Winchester 8/10, just for old time’s sake.
LOCATION: Winson Green Road, Birmingham.
CAPACITY: 1,200 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local and Training – Male.
OPENED: 1848.
HISTORY: As with most of these Victorian prisons, it is located not too far away from the city centre (3 miles). During the course of this prison’s operation, it has maintained a steady role in serving the locality and receiving prisoners from two Crown Courts and, occasionally, from other prisons.
Here’s another jail that us cons have bastardised the name of. Officially, it is called ‘HM Prison Birmingham’, but we call it the ‘Green’, thus Winson Green. One of the all-time hard jails. A tough city centre jail, full up with all sorts of felons from shoplifting to mass killers.
Talking of mass killers, I was two cells away from one of the murdering duo of Fred and Rose West. As many of you all know, Fred topped himself before he could be tried for the Cromwell Street murders.
It was really fate that he topped himself, because in time someone would have done it for him. Fucking beast. I don’t want to rattle on too much about it as I’ve already covered him in other books, but suffice to say I never gave him a minute of peace.
I never actually hit the Green until the mid-1980s; since then, I have passed through the prison half-a-dozen times. Each time, I have had some fun. One time, I grabbed a doctor hostage; now that was funny. Well, not for him.
I was then assaulted by some sixty screws who were all caught on prison CCTV; this footage was included in my video documentary Sincerely Yours, but the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, threw a wobbler and had it pulled by order of the High Court. Thus any evidence of these nice prison officers assaulting me with two-handed punches and kicks to my body are well hidden away from the Human Rights lobbyists. Just keep on fighting for the likes of Sutcliffe and Brady … what do I care?
But my best time there was when I nicked the murderer and hostage-taker Michael Sam’s leg. Now that was funny.
The Green is a place of evil, make no mistake about it. And like all big jails, there are bad screws mixed with the decent screws. And I met them all there.
The best screw I ever met there was SO (Senior Officer) Woodhouse, an old chap in his late fifties, a big old bruiser. He had hands like shovels. He was just what he was. No shit with him. You got what you were entitled to and he made sure you got it. If you had an hour’s visit due, you would get it. If you were due to get a boiled egg, you got it. If a tray of spuds were not cooked, he would send it back to the kitchen. By now he must be seventy years old and retired, but I respect screws like him – hard but fair.
When I first arrived there, they wanted me to wear some nonsense clothes. I ripped the lot up. So we did a deal; if I boxed it clever and got my head down, then they would not antagonise me. So we all made it work.
Sure, I had my ups and downs – who doesn’t? – but if you were prepared to work on it, there was a solution. The Green, though, has been a bastard to many cons –Johnny Bowden got bashed to a pulp there; Barry Prosser was killed there. Loads got a good kicking there; it was part and parcel of the Green.
Look what they did to the Birmingham Six. Those six Irishmen were battered senseless by screws; even the cons were told to bash them up. But it turned out they were six innocent men! So how do you feel now, bashing them up? Fuck me, that was thirty years ago. Seems like last year to me. I knew them all. Two of the Birmingham Six, Paddy Hill and Johnny Walker, were good pals of mine. Proper nice chaps. It was insane even to think they could plant bombs and kill twenty-one people and injure scores more. It was fucking madness out of control. But the Green tortured them lads, beat them senseless.
There had been acts of evil behind those walls, and you don’t know it ’til you have smelt it. But I have this strange belief you have to fight evil with evil to overcome it. You can bend it. Turn it around. I do … and I enjoy it.
The Green, to me, was a process, a part of the journey. Fuck me, it is not nice to hear it, or see it. Like cons jumping off the top landing and dying, and they do that in the Green. There were a lot of sad endings there.
My pal’s brother died there. My pal, Pat McCarthy, loved his brother, but he died in that Green. So did many decent lads. Some through depression and some mysteriously, to say the least.
But that’s Winson Green – a hard prison. We are not sent there for a holiday. At least, not back then. Now it is a holiday. TV in your cell is supposed to be a punishment! I think they force you to watch three episodes of EastEnders! P
ersonally, I would sooner be flogged than watch three episodes of that dross.
I suppose, if I add my stays up there, I must have spent a good eight to ten months of my life under that roof. And I did get to peep through Fred West’s spy hole – or ‘Judas hole’, if we are to use the proper name. West looked like Benny out of the old Crossroads TV series.
And I did get to kick Sam’s leg. And I did grab the doctor, if only for a few seconds. OK, and I did use a paedophile as a punch bag in the recess. I caught the fucker by accident as I was slopping out. He should never have even seen all my laundry, let alone been in the recess.
He was in such shock, his mouth dropped open but nothing came out. I suppose a bit like the three kids that he attacked; what goes around comes around, I guess. But it’s a fucking liberty bruising your fists on scum like that. We should at least be supplied with prison-issue baseball bats. What are the European Human Rights for anyway?
I will give HM Prison Green 7/10. I just felt happy remembering that paedophile, I suppose.
LOCATION: Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire.
CAPACITY: 600 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local, Remand and Category ‘A’ (SSU Unit) – Male.
OPENED: 1992.
HISTORY: Constantly in the news relating to the poor regime. The Close Supervision Centre was opened in 1998 at a cost of £3m along with special units at HM Prisons Hull, Wakefield and Durham to hold about fifty of Britain’s most potentially disruptive inmates, accused or convicted. With the upgrading of Wakefield’s cages at a cost of many millions, this has resulted in some prisons’ Secure Units closing down or becoming under-used.
What can I say about this place in the land of the concrete cows – Milton Keynes? This place has been both lucky and unlucky for me. I can go on and on about the bad times. The unit I was on is the most infamous of all the special units.
I spent three years there sleeping on a concrete slab, with no window to open and no fresh air. Even Lord Longford (bless his soul) raised a question in the House of Lords over my cell not having a window. What he meant to say was that my window didn’t open. His questions got nowhere and my ‘window’ remained firmly closed … summer and winter.
Woodhill Prison has been described as the British answer to Alcatraz Prison in the USA because of its austere conditions and strict code of discipline. Just like Alcatraz, it has a high-security jail within a jail, the SSU, and continues to house many violent and infamous prisoners, many of whom I’ve met or heard screaming.
The inmates kept in solitary confinement have their cells furnished with cardboard furniture and concrete beds, but if you’re clever, like the prisoner Michael Sams who was jailed in 1993 for murder and kidnap, you can make money from the way prison loses your belongings. Sams was going to sue the prison for losing his paintings, which he said were worth £4,000, and for being placed in segregation. He was offered £3,500 to settle both claims.
Incidentally, I think my hostage-taking rubbed off on old Sams, as the one-legged prisoner had a further eight years added to his four life sentences for taking a probation officer hostage at Woodhill.
When you think about how little a screw earns, then it’s no surprise to find most of them going on the sick; at times we were left neglected because of staff shortages due to them being off sick. If the screws don’t want to work there, then think of us cons … what is our life like then?
Some of the cells have CCTV cameras, and Ian Huntley, guilty of the Soham murders, had such a cell. The exercise yard is caged and topped with razor wire. When Category ‘A’ cons are housed in a prison, then you can guarantee that the court facilities in nearby towns and cities are upgraded to accommodate us in case we ever appear there. The courts in Milton Keynes now have bullet-proof glass installed … I wonder why?
There are three units at Woodhill, all barren areas devoid of any sensory stimulation. Things like plants, pictures, murals or music are conspicuous by their absence. The normal exercise yard is a tarmac-covered bare cage. If you want to sit down, then you have to use the ground. Even the birds avoid this sterile place.
The experimental unit in D Wing closed down when the overly restrictive regime failed. Anyone kicking off with ‘dirty protests’ were slung into the ‘pink room’, which had under-floor drainage. The place was like any Nazi concentration camp – evil.
Even the Chief Inspector of Prisons condemned the prolonged isolation of inmates as posing a risk to their mental health. These cells were only unlocked in the presence of six screws in full riot gear, called a ‘riot unlock’.
My time at Alcatraz – er, sorry … Woodhill – was spent there in what is called ‘basic’ level. A Wing has cells furnished with a sink and toilet, a concrete plinth for a mattress, a cardboard table and chair, and a fixed mirror made of plastic – that’s your lot. Mind you, they did allow you up to twelve photographs, and up to six library books a week. And, my, oh my, a dustpan and brush is issued on request.
For the normal cons, life begins in B Wing, which has sixteen cells on two landings, with a shower room and toilets on each level. The regime is supposed to allow about seventeen hours of what is called ‘constructive activity’, which for those lucky enough to mix with other cons includes time in an association room with a television, a table tennis table and cardboard and plastic tables and chairs.
Now if you are a real arse-licker then you can progress to the third unit, C Wing! This wing provides what is called an ‘intervention programme’ for a minimum of twenty hours a week. After that, if you survived being nice to the screws, you are supposed to be transferred to Monster Mansion (HMP Wakefield). Now can you see why I don’t comply? And then if you lick some more arses, you are considered tame enough to be returned to the ordinary prison system.
A High Court ruling was responsible for D Wing closing down. After the then Home Secretary Michael Howard was responsible for the Special Therapeutic wing in Parkhurst Prison closing down, it was then that the special unit in HMP Woodhill opened. They hoped to be able to use a pioneering therapeutic approach to dealing with the most potentially disruptive prisoners. How the fuck they could think this, I just don’t know.
The Special Therapeutic wing in Parkhurst was run by Dr Bob Johnson and, in the time he ran the place, violence had dropped by 90 per cent and the use of tranquillisers had dropped by the same. Then they go and close it and kick Dr Bob in the teeth!
So it was no surprise to find that in the first year of this unit at Woodhill opening, that there was a desperate need for the ‘pink room’ due to so many cons going on a dirty protest and refusing to co-operate. Since then, the regime at Woodhill has been the subject of repeated human rights challenges.
It was then decided that ‘control and containment’ should be the first priority of the Woodhill units, and it was even considered necessary to discuss whether guard dogs should be introduced.
Once, I managed to rush out of my cell and I smashed the unit up. The MUFTI squad, sixty riot screws, were called in to restrain me. Yes, sixty. I have had the riot screws come and get me off the yard after I was involved in a five-hour standoff in July 2000. I can go on and on about it all. But I am choosing to do the good thing because, you see, Woodhill helped me find my angels. Two beautiful angels came into my life from nowhere. It just came to me in January 2001, a brand-new year.
A mystery letter arrived from Saira Rehman. She wrote to me. Who was she? What was she? Who was little Sami? Then my brother John died, and it ripped me up. I was so low and depressed. Days later, Saira completed all the formalities and paperwork and eventually visited me. Then she brought her ten-year-old daughter, Sami, on a visit. Then, on 1 June 2001, on Saira’s birthday, we married. It all happened in a few months. Now Sami is our girl. She is special to me, and calls me ‘Dad’ too! It is a love and joy that I long forgot about, it is a truly beautiful feeling to possess.
Then my wife Saira … she just takes away all my pain and fills me with so much love. I am now full of love and fai
th. My wife has hair like black silk; her eyes are so deep I can swim inside them; her skin glows with love. Her smile lights up the sky and from her toes to her head is the body of an angel. Her movement is graceful. Her aroma is that of a flower. She is so gentle and loving. Her life, her journey has not been an easy ride. It has been full of pain and despair. But what we have is a true love that I have never experienced in my fifty-one years of being alive.
My whole life has changed for the better, I feel good inside, I even like myself better, my heart feels fresh, my dreams are alive. I have responsibilities, they both need me. Now I think more, I am more in control; I am a proper man, like any dad and husband out there.
So, some good does come out of prison, after all. It really is a miracle how it happened. One day I am in a hole grieving my brother John’s death, and then I am on top of the mountains grabbing a rainbow.
Sure, it is fate telling me to be thoughtful and to slow down. It is now nearly three years since we have been married and my violence is coming to a stop. I no longer get urges to hurt people, neither do I dream of robbing banks.
Woodhill unit is no Butlin’s holiday camp. It can be as cruel and lonely as the rest of the jails. But it sure saved my ass. Because I was on a journey to hell. Now I am first-class all the way to paradise. Singing all the way.
Only love can change a man’s direction, nothing else. I mean, look at how Jimmy Boyle turned his life around, all because of a woman! Only love can cure a broken heart and fill you with hope. It is a miracle. But until the prison HQ can accept it and believe it, I remain in solitary confinement. I remain the label, the Bronson myth, the double danger man, your very own Hannibal the Cannibal. But it is all behind me. ‘Pass the cucumber sandwich … two sugars in my china cup, please.’
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