‘Dad was larger than life, a true gentleman. He was a fighter, remaining determined to “beat the buggar” right up to the end.’
Roger died of cancer after a long fight in 2009.
It was Roger’s letter, his constant support and his declared belief in me did what no ECT could ever do. It brought me into ‘a sunny world’ – sorry about the cliché – where my innermost fears were banished forever. I knew I could handle my job. All I wanted now was to get on with the rest of my life.
I had been at rock-bottom during my breakdown and it took years before I finally found myself not only fit but retaining my memory. A dam had broken, somewhere inside. With the water having drained away I found myself on firm ground. Joan must have seen the change for she began to re-establish her links with me. When she learned I was on show for the Service at the Badminton Horse Trials, promoting ourselves from a very nice tent, Joan arrived; she was clearly attempting to make amends for the bruising past years. She recognised what I had been put through. I was happy to listen for I was far enough away from Yorkshire and Barnsley in particular, for it not to matter anymore. So was my father. He was so engrossed in his drinking and smoking with his mates he had become known not only for leaving his front door unlocked but leaving it open to passers-by. But, of course, who would have wanted to break in? There was nothing to steal.
Other than Joan, no-one else in the family ever wrote to me or tried to call me up, share a cup of tea and talk about their children. There was no interest in making contact, for in their eyes I had moved up to a different level of society: Veronica was going somewhere. As Fred put it when he learned of my house in Wilmslow. ‘What does she want with such a bloody big house?’
It wasn’t that big, but compared to my shared attic space, it was enormous but it was jealousy which made him say what he did. He simply could not come to terms with his sister-in-law doing as well as him. And not a potato in sight to do it!
CHAPTER SEVEN
STYAL-FIRST TIME AROUND
I got into a bit of a pickle when I went for my promotion interview in London for Styal Prison. I wanted the job but the timing was wrong.
I was in the process of putting in a bid for my first house in Pucklechurch, nice but not pretentious in any way; it would be my very own place in which to stamp my own authority.
As I did, Headquarters called me up for an interview.
I was well aware that when one was put forward for promotion you only had one chance to accept a new job. Otherwise your name was removed from the list of officers who wanted to progress through the ranks. Refusal meant a life in the back waters of the Service and I needed to experience what it would be like at a higher level in the Service I had chosen.
Refusal was not an option I could contemplate even for a moment. I wrote the date in my diary, swotted up what I thought I needed to say, hoping I would not have to juggle. When the day arrived, smart outfit in place, hair (short) brushed back out of sight, I knocked on the door and was told to enter. The familiar questions began, almost as a routine. I could reassure them I was now fully cured from my illness and ready for any challenge placed in my path; you know how the story goes at these interviews. They are the same wherever you go. I sounded blasé, do I not, during this third interview (four counting Marks and Spencer) but I wasn’t, I was nervous as hell for I wanted the promotion badly because I was absolutely certain I could hold the job down.
At the end of my allotted time I was asked if there were any questions I wanted to ask. No, I answered, only kicking myself as I left and had closed the door behind me. My new house. I popped my head around the corner of the door where the interviewing panel, deep in conversation, looked up.
‘Can you tell me please, when you will be making a decision?’
‘In two weeks’ time,’ they replied believing that to be a very short time to wait. I nodded my head and withdrew. I had been thinking it would be much sooner, allowing me to come to a judgement on whether I bid for the house or not. I might not get the job and I could lose the house as well. So, I made my bid and sat back to wait for the results.
They came together; sod that is, and a new posting I wanted. I was appointed to Styal Prison and my bid for the house accepted. Sod and law were applied in equal amounts. At a stroke, I had bought a property which was going to be one hundred and fifty-four miles from my work place. It would never have worked, of course, and I never did live there, but I did go to Styal Prison, to work that is.
What was completely unexpected was the level of appointment I was given. I had applied for the next step in the promotional ladder, that is, to be a Senior Officer. The powers to be around that interview table had decided to allow me to leap-frog the post, promoting me to the level of Principal Officer; Styal being a much larger prison than Pucklechurch with considerably more responsibility was just what I needed, they believed! This was a big jump in my life but, nonetheless, I was very pleased. It was indeed, just the challenge I wanted. I should mention, to avoid confusion, that this position has now disappeared in the reorganisation and no longer exists.
There were moans from the prisoners that spring, while I waited for the transfer, for the heating supplied by coke boilers had been turned off as usual on April Fool’s Day, only to see a protracted cold snap arrive to invade the already chilly corridors. The inmates only had heating pipes in the cells. The fear of trouble meant the least amount of equipment possible was installed so it could not be pulled from the wall in a frenzy; normal service could return quicker because of the inability of the prisoners to do too much damage. Riots could be frightening places to be, the land of the uncontrolled mob, where reason and sense disappear out of the window. Thus, the idea of introducing any new piece of equipment or furniture has to be very carefully thought through before going into mass production. We had the same heating restriction’s as the prisoners, so we all had to wait until November First to get the heat moving again in the pipes and bringing a welcome return to warmth.
And so, to Styal.
*
Styal was unlike one’s standard image of a prison as we might imagine, in its design and layout, unlike also, the familiar ideas of forbidding walls and massive doors. In eighteen ninety-eight, several cottages had been grouped together to create an orphanage for destitute children. It was the sort of facility the Victorians loved to show off to the world. Styal was located at Wilmslow just south of Manchester Airport and endured until nineteen fifty-six when it closed. Up until this time the houses had been named after flowers. Someone came up with the bright idea of using the derelict buildings as a woman’s prison. This meant we lost the flower house names and substituted them with well-known prison reformers such as Fry and Gaskell. Perhaps, with reflection, we should have left the original titles as a point of cheer? The women would come from Strangeways, a name recognisable as a grim reminder of the past in British prisons. Over a hundred prisoners were to be executed there over the years.
As a women’s prison, Styal was transformed into an important hub, for out of four hundred women prisoners in the country two hundred of them were in Styal. (today there are four thousand). Of this total, it had been calculated by the powers at Headquarters, that women under the age of twenty-one were more susceptible to radicalisation than those over this arbitrary dividing line; the idea being that the older you were, the more wicked you were: and what nonsense was that? Styal’s unique layout of individual houses meant that a high fence had to be installed, as if it were Jerusalem, keeping the under twenty-ones on one side and those over this age on the other. Surprisingly, the only thing it proved was the older women were only too keen to keep away from the younger intake as they were ‘…. too noisy, too brash and quite unsettling.’
Such a mix was always going to bring problems to staff to sort out.
A Borstal sentence was handed out to offenders with a maximum term of two years. This could be reduced with good behaviour. Likewise, it could be reinstated up to the maximum if no progress
was being made.
With lifers’ close-by, both types of offender generated differing characteristics and placed opposing demands upon the system. Our job, my job, was to prevent Borstal prisoners from re-offending and coming back to Styal on the other side of the fence later on. Perhaps reaching these girls early enough, we could instil in them enough belief in themselves to keep them away from crossing that line?
As I continued along in this enclosed world of mine, though with growing awareness of the issues which needed to be tackled, Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the time saw fit to put the whole country on a three-day week caused by striking miners wanting a better life. Where ever I went, mining followed me, memories of early days, of a blackened face and staring red eyes. They might well fade away from the day to day job until, a headline, or a news item brought it up to the surface as if it was a bucket of coal coming up in the winding tower. The newspapers had a ball, while the Prime Minister struggled to keep on top of the crisis. To us, though, prisoners came and went as regularly as clockwork. Not even the Government could stop the even tenor of prison life.
Early on in my life at Styal, I was sent on Detached Duty for four weeks to Brixton. I was needed urgently to travel down to Brixton Prison along with eight other officers Detached from regular duties, all of us were deployed in four weekly tours. This is a male only jail and the reason we nine officers, all female, were sent there was a decision made at a very high level, to hold the Price Sisters on remand in a totally secure prison. Having seen the operation in action, I can confirm, to any doubters, there is no way in which a prisoner could be spirited away from under the noses of the Brixton staff. (So saying, two IRA prisoners did escape in 1991).
We were there at Brixton, as no female prison facilities were secure enough to hold female prisoners and it had to be a top security facility due to the extraordinary danger the two sisters posed.
In 1973, Dolours and Marian Price were part of an IRA unit who placed four car bombs in London which injured over 200 innocent people. It became known as the Old Bailey bombing. The sisters were caught even as they tried to board a plane to Ireland. They were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, though this was subsequently reduced to twenty years. Meanwhile, as they waited to go on trial, we had to look after them as best we could. It was a scary time. We had no facilities to occupy their minds so all they could do was to read books and write letters which were very carefully scanned for information hidden in the content for clues leading to the IRA units.
They were permitted to attend Roman Catholic services, albeit heavily guarded. They spent most of the time playing up the Priest saying he was wearing sandals which they found funny. To us, though, there was not even a smidgen of humour in our days. We were proven right for when they were eventually released, Dolours, still active politically said of the Good Friday Peace agreement, ‘It is not, certainly not, what I went to prison for.’
With such statements, there was no way we could turn them towards peaceful ways. The past hurts of Ireland and the British were embedded in their psyche too deeply.
*
I settled down to learning about being a Principal Officer for, until then I had assumed I would be engaged only on tasks covered by a Senior Officer. At least there had been time enough to absorb a good working knowledge of the prison. I was more than lucky to get this promotion for there were not many female Principal Officers posts, perhaps thirty in the whole of Britain.
Styal’s fundamentals of having houses, separate blocks if you will, meant each type of prisoner was allocated a specialist unit designed to keep particular types of inmate apart. So, the houses, held between twelve to sixteen women. One would contain dangerous lifers, Mary Bell the child killer and Carole Richardson connected with the IRA bombing in Guildford were here; mothers and babies in another; short termers, those deemed mentally ill or, as we put it, inadequates. There was, of course, a punishment block singularly named, Bleak House. This last unit was where the Governor could send a recalcitrant inmate for a fixed term, say three to seven days. Cellular Confinement was its politically correct label. The implication was that a prisoner so charged would spend twenty-three hours a day locked up, for the term handed down. There would be just an hour for exercise and time out for toilet visits. Meals were served in one of the eight punishment cells. Alongside this there could be loss of remission, up to twenty-eight days though the two punishments might not be necessarily linked. To top this, the final straw as it were, was to lose earnings, meaning loss of tobacco which stored up trouble as smoking was endemic in the prison and as familiar as placing fish with chips. There was no special kudos in being housed in a particular block though each house was tailored to the needs and demands of the inmates’ offences. Progression through their sentences, allowed us to begin preparing them for open prison and thereafter for the big, wide, and often, just as frightening, world.
Supervising in Bleak House was, well…. to be accurate, bleak. There was very little to do and it took a pair of officers, always in twos, who would read the letters as normal and chat to each other. The necessity to move these prisoners was much less frequent. The one hour of exercise became a welcome break for them as well as our inmates. To supervise in Bleak House needed staff who were well-balanced, with a calm nature and who could deal with the special environment they were placed in. They were, in fact, as securely locked up as the prisoners. Think about that, when you next listen to a moan from a prison officer.
When I reached the grade of Principal Officer and my turn came up for night duty, it was my task, amongst others, to patrol between the various blocks set in the grounds of the prison. Black shadows everywhere could hide a dozen escapees. Rats scurried back into the darkness, owls hooted and a fox would often slink away on my approach. Although the outer gates were double locked with a second key, I was always pleased when I completed my tour and could come in from the cold.
The pressure on staff from their charges was constant and morale sapping. You, the layman tends to receive all of the information on prison life from the more lurid red-topped rags, often widely distorted or simply untrue. It could be frustrating to see some of the most infamous prisoners almost glamorised by having associated with some D celebrity or other.
Where ever one worked, in whatever sector, and however funny a situation might be, to soften the day there came a time after work when many of my colleagues would need a drink, to push the demons back into their box. These after work drinks could be what I would describe as ‘substantial’, as though some staff had to have a drink rather than just enjoy a drink after work with a colleague, to laugh away a particularly anxious morning or afternoon which could have arisen out of nothing. I did take a drink from time to time to be sociable, but I didn’t join in every day. You might well label me as a prig or a prude in some way, elevating myself above my peers but it was not for that reason I often declined an offer of a drink. Still locked painfully in my mind were the oft-repeated scenes of my drunken father lashing out at us when he got home from work and all because the potatoes were not yet cooked. Drink had stained his daughter’s wedding when he had become legless in front of Joan and Fred. So many chapters of so many incidents were stitched into my mind and I had no intention of hurting others by going down that same road. It was easy to do.
Sometimes, there might be a real reason for a drink, such as a birthday or a christening. I would lift a glass with my colleagues, anxious to toast the new child, or the success of the promotion of a colleague. Otherwise, I would smile and shake my head. They got to know me well, but I knew I was doing the right thing as I found out the dog, living in the flat below me was an alcoholic, which says a great deal about its owner.
Although I didn’t enjoy my midnight patrols through the grounds, it was a different picture during the day, particularly in the summer and on a fine morning. The women had a common room for wet weather, otherwise they could walk outside in the sun and fresh air, far away from the tobacco contaminated smoke o
f their cells, the high fence and concrete exercise yard. The past was separating from the future at an ever-increasing speed.
At the beginning of each day, after breakfast, the women would walk across to the workshops, being carefully watched by two prison officers to prevent the passing of contraband or letters. It was a familiar sight to see the women going to work, chatting, dressed in their own clothes as if they were off to the factory down the High Street. The change from prison uniform to their own clothes was a new relaxation to help improve their self-esteem. The next step was a hair dressing salon which we opened and it worked. The women began to take an interest in themselves and with that came a desire to get home as soon as possible.
Sundays, though, was the nail-biting day. Our prisoners were entitled to attend church each week. The church at Styal was outside the prison boundary wall. It had no secure bars (stained glass and iron bars do not go together very well) and there were several exits which needed guarding. When handling dangerous criminals, this caused much worry when they declared they also wanted to attend a service. (Perhaps that is why they did it?). Two officers were placed on the road to prevent a runner but, if there had ever been a pre-arranged escape by a group of detainees with a well-thought out plan we would not have stood a chance to catch them all, if they had scurried in all directions at the same time. It would have caused wide-spread panic once the Press had got hold of the story, and heads would almost certainly have rolled.
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