‘You’ll get it,’ he said with great confidence, almost as if he knew the result in advance.
‘How on earth do you know that?’ Doubt, considerable doubt was writ large on my face. Was I just being chatted up? I was sure the taxi-driver was eating his sandwiches with his colleagues as he retold his story of the day of a woman in a pink suit who…. well you are not going to believe this-.’
‘Because you look the part. You look professional. You look as though you know what you are doing. Simple as that.’
I did not believe him but he proved to be absolutely right. I got the promotion along with eight others that day. Returning to work I received a call a few days later from the Regional Director. ‘Veronica, we want you to go back to Styal, now you have your new promotion. You know the place.’
On the strength of his words, I had seen a house I liked in Wilmslow and, bypassing the Estate Agent I went in and made an offer. New job, new house. It could not have been better. Naturally, for me, Sod was still keeping tabs on me (maybe you were unaware of this?) but it is not easy to sack or otherwise remove a poorly performing member of staff particularly an out-going Deputy Governor, and it took a year to find a suitable position for him so he could be relocated.
While sorting out this delay, one, strange to me, event took place which was organised by the family – surprise, surprise! It was for my fiftieth birthday and became one of those surreal days with a false gaiety, for none of us save Joan had really made much attempt to contact any other of the family for more years than I care to think. But, it was nice in its way; it was a first step towards a more engaged family. We might never be ‘close-knit’ but we could take an interest in each other’s lives and the progress of children. I returned home, happier, if thoughtful, to learn the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan this time, was to make a visit. His reputation for absorbing facts was legion, so I made a few phone calls to other Governors who I knew had met him in similar circumstances. They soon brought me up to speed with what he might be wanting to know when he arrived.
From the moment this powerfully built, 45-year-old son of Lithuanian Jews (Malcolm Rifkind was a cousin) stepped out of his car, he was ready to go. He was already deeply involved with the Miners’ Strike but he managed to maintain his interest as we had coffee together. Then he was off, discarding his security officer and PPS like salt from a mill, throwing out questions whose replies generated even more queries as if he was a many-headed hydra. He roared off alone and found a prisoner working in a greenhouse with whom he spoke, leaving his guard outside simply because he could not get inside as well. Leon Brittan was quite…large. What the Home Secretary did not know was that the prisoner he was in earnest discussion with was Carole Richardson of IRA and Guildford bombing infamy. Carole had been convicted in 1975 and was only seventeen at the time of the trial. At the Court the judge, Mr Justice Donaldson who presided over the proceedings expressed regret that the Guildford Four had not been charged with treason. It was just as well they weren’t, for all four would have met the mandatory death sentence in those days. Their convictions were later found to be unsafe. All the greater need for having removed the death sentence from our Courts.
Carole was armed with a spade and a fork, apart from other smaller tools and she could have done him quite a lot of damage but she left him alone to the relief of the security guard. Perhaps with her insight into the future she knew that her conviction was unsafe and she would be released, which she was, but my backbone continued to feel hot until he was returned safely to us. I could not have got into the greenhouse with the Home Secretary blocking the door and no doubt, the security guard would have tried it on before me. It would have made a good cartoon for Matt in the Telegraph.
We went in to lunch which I seemed to remember was fish and chips and strawberries preceded by a sherry, the latter slightly out of place, with a very traditional English meal but it all disappeared down a large hatch, after which we went immediately to a Press Conference in the Staff Rest Room. The subject of the Miners’ Strike only took a moment or two to surface leading to discussions which could be described as ‘heated,’ for the hacks were refusing to listen to his bland replies as they sought headlines which he refused to provide.
Having dealt with the Press, it was a handshake all round, missing no-one before he returned to his car once his security officer had given one of those hard-edged surveillances over the small crowd. His PPS lifted a hand in thanks to me before the car drew away sharply with a spit of gravel. I had learned a great deal that day, which I filed away for future use.
That Christmas, we arranged a carol service for an invited audience which enabled me to put forward my prize singer. She sang a carol, solo without a hint of nervousness, causing more than one tear to roll down a cheek. Most of those sitting there had no idea she was a murderer and, if they had known, it would have astonished them. Mary’s Boy Child and child killing could never be reconciled except perhaps, here in Styal where she was serving out her time for killing her two children.
The Governor was to dress up as Father Christmas so he could visit the mothers and babies’ unit and hand out presents to the babies. The inmates were concerned that if a Governor was to come calling, albeit in a red jacket and white beard, an inspection might be forthcoming. They rushed as one, to the chimney where they jointly kept their…joints, and various other drugs. Afraid of imminent discovery, they took the lot at one go, so to speak. The effects were rather quick, well, instantaneous is a better word. The prisoners were so spaced out that during Christmas they had no idea the holiday had passed them by and repeatedly questioned why they had missed the big day.
New Year’s Eve was no better. It had always placed a strain on the system as Styal could be like a tinder box. The holiday season went by having prisoners kicking their heels each day in utter boredom. With Styal’s layout of individual buildings within the grounds, prisoners ran amok outside from block to block, hooting and laughing. Some stayed out until three in the morning, the transgression of which was not entered in the Governor’s Journal. Of course, the news leaked out and reached the ears of Area Office. It placed me in a quandary when I was asked my view of the night’s events over the telephone by my area boss. I had to remain loyal to my superior governor yet could not deny the reports concerning a riotous New Year’s Eve. It proved a difficult time.
This loyalty, having to supervise both staff and prisoners on an equal basis, had to be handled always sensitively. A single mistake can lead to a serious disturbance in any prison. It happened with us. A kind of madness took over one day causing the prisoners to smash everything in sight including their own possessions. It made no sense at all and it still doesn’t, and it continues to occur throughout the Service. It was the mob syndrome and it is always terrifying. Logic just flies out of the window leaving prisoners at the end with no possessions of their own and loss of remission to boot.
It made no difference when days were relatively calm, for we had to monitor the leaders who would inevitably rise to the top of the pile to take control of a house. They wielded power, so if they pushed it too far they had to be moved from the prison entirely. A Governor of a neighbouring prison would be approached, at which time I would ask if I could off-load so-and-so and they would usually oblige, and hand one back, for this was two-way traffic and we all had to acknowledge the fact.
One threat which did work in the early days, was to tell a prisoner, who would insist on swimming against the stream, she would have to be moved to Holloway the next day. It usually worked, but if not, off they would go. Moving Rachel to Durham for this same reason brought about an innovative method of restraint, probably not in the manual. Rachel was violent and had injured six nurses in one attack in the high security prison at Rampton. She was known by the doctors for attacking without pre-meditation and with murderous ferocity. The move promised to be a nightmare trip; I could see it in her face. She needed six officers at any one time to restrain her, so we came up with the idea of s
itting on her for the entire three hours journey it took to get to Durham. She was unable to move but quite unharmed and we delivered our charge with considerable relief.
At such times, we would take advice from our medical officers who would know the medical history of such women and who became important sources of information for me. I listened to them carefully as they passed on their best views on dealing with unguarded moments which a woman prisoner could seek to exploit with frightening results.
It is the unpredictability of such very sad cases which required me never to relax my guard, not even for a minute. Six nurses at Rampton found that out with a broken arm and hospitalisation for them all. At the time, she needed ten staff to subdue her.
Balanced with such violence was a case of one lifer, a woman who had murdered her husband’s ‘bit of fluff’. She had been told she had terminal cancer and only six months to live. As a result, she stopped eating and I had to go to see her. Was there anything I could do for her? She replied she would like a Harvey’s Bristol Cream. It was not something we stocked in the prison, in fact no alcohol at all was permitted, but, through the medical officers, they managed to prescribe some which brought a fleeting moment of pleasure to her face. I was so concerned for this prisoner I applied for and was granted a Royal Prerogative, the only time I have moved for such a grant and she was released. Before dying, a Bishop confirmed her, causing some resentment among the staff (understandable) but I turned around to them and asked, ‘Do we all know the real facts? Who are we to judge such cases? Perhaps you should put yourself in their position sometimes.’ This was especially true here, for her husband returned to look after his ex-wife during the last few days of her life.
The importance of the church, in all religions, cannot be over emphasized. Styal had a priest who was particularly strong and he and his church played an vital part in our prisoners’ daily lives. There was a priest or celebrant for every denomination, save for Muslims, strangely enough. This was only due to the fact in those days there were few Muslim prisoners and thus no Imam was needed. I am sure these days it is the other way around. Often, stress could be alleviated by the timely intervention of a priest.
Nights could hold as many stresses as in the daytime. I was listening to the police radio one night in the central office when there came an announcement that, for the first time, an escaped prisoner had been shot dead by the police. The bulletin came a few minutes before we received a surprise night visit from the Governor charged with checking us out rather as the banks do with their auditors arriving out of the blue. Stress began to mount as I scrolled through my mind as to what was not in place. I passed on the news I had just heard to a very surprised, and frankly, disbelieving Governor. She dismissed the very idea of a policeman doing such an act. ‘You must have heard it wrong,’ she said. ‘Don’t be silly Veronica, this is nineteen seventy-seven, not the nineteenth century.’
I was not going to argue with her, for she still had to inspect the prison. However, after a clean bill of health we returned to my office, where the BBC news, again repeated the death of Billy Hughes. The visiting Governor was now very shocked as everyone else. She believed the police did not do such things. But, let’s stand that news item on its head; there is always a different picture to be seen. Hughes was being transported in a taxi and, extraordinarily, he managed to stab one of the accompanying prison officers and injured the other, allowing him to escape. (Hughes had stolen a seven-inch knife from the kitchen). He took a family hostage and over a period of fifty-five hours murdered the family, one by one, keeping the wife to do his chores. It was not, therefore, surprising that, in a moment’s lapse by Hughes, a police marksman dispatched him, surely justifying the killing in this case.
Life at Styal was nowhere near as frantic as this episode, but it was never quiet. There was always a surprise, not always violent but requiring urgent action to move swiftly to avert a crisis of one form or another. I was on an overnight sleep-in duty, it was three in the morning when a member of staff ran to my bedroom saying one of the babies in the unit was very ill. I jumped out of bed and ran all the way over to have the baby handed to me by a night patrol officer and I spun on my heel and tore off towards the hospital wing, but, on arrival the baby sadly, died. This was the beginning of December and I felt it my duty to accompany the mother to the funeral of her child, but owing to a blizzard which had blown up from nowhere we were very late in arriving. The mother was quite noisy as she tried to find out where her baby’s coffin was located and, seeing no-one, the distraught girl ran to her grandfather’s grave where she had asked for her child to be placed alongside. But there was no baby and no coffin; indeed, there was no funeral, for a mistake had been made in issuing the release form to the undertaker necessary because there had had to be an inquest. The troubled girl returned to Styal, causing tension to rise in the prison each day as no news was followed by more of the same. This carried over the Christmas holiday itself, leaving a blot in the air which flowed through the women’s dormitories even as we celebrated Christmas. No-one would ever say a baby had died in prison, nor had it, but it took a long while for the stain to disappear with the spring when the form was released and the girl found some sort of peace.
It reminded me of my previous time in Styal when I had been a Principal Officer. I had learned Ruth Ellis had been hanged at Holloway for killing her lover, a racing driver. She was the last woman in Britain to be hanged, the 18th July 1955. The days leading up to her hanging were awful, magnified by the continuous protests going on outside the prison. Inside a prison, you will find a tight community with little penetrating the lives of the inmates. When one of your kind is to be executed, and there is nothing you can do about it, the danger of riot can become extreme. Prison can be like an arsenal. Safe as houses in the right hands until someone comes along armed with a fuse…and a match.
*
As I have described, someone at Headquarters had pulled out my file and begun to read up on how I had coped with my short sojourn at Thorp Arch and, finding nothing untoward to embarrass the Home Office, made the decision to promote me to Governor Grade, at Level 4, the second tier up the ladder. This was the ladder I had been seeking to reach for it led all the way to the top and I knew every rung.
There was a mood about the Service in those days which showed a hardening into something close to militancy led by the Prison Officers Association. Strike action talk which had been unthinkable a few years earlier was now in open discussion.
Trouble boiled to a head when the women Prison Officers at Risley, my old stamping ground, who I all knew well, decided, that with the Governor of the women’s sector on sick leave and the Deputy away on secondment, they would stage the first women’s Prison Officers strike. Back at Styal, settling in to a Governor’s role, I caught the news that Patrick Fitzgerald who was in overall charge of the prison at Risley, was to deal with the strike head-on.
I was at home, undressed and ready for bed when I took a call from Regional Headquarters in Manchester.
‘Veronica, pack some sandwiches, buy a pint of milk and come over to Manchester now…on the double. We’ve got trouble with your women Prison Officers and they are not talking to anyone.’
I frowned. Your women Prison Officers? This had to be Mo, a militant officer who had long held grouses about pay and conditions, some of which held some credence. What I knew must be prevented at all costs was to allow the strike spreading to the men on the other side of the prison for there would not have been enough Governors in the country to cover any action if the male officers joined the strike. Leave would have had to be stopped, Governors recalled from where ever they were sunning themselves; minor illnesses would have to be forgotten.
When I turned up at the main gates of Risley, a familiar enough scene normally, it was subtly altered by a group of women gathered outside the entrance. They had been working to rule, but this having failed to make a mark on the Government’s policies were to strike the next day. I knew them all, r
ecognising Mo alongside her number two, Angela. With the car parked, I headed through the crowd which parted politely. I did hear a single voice at the back passed to another. ‘Bloody hell, we’ve no chance now she’s back. She can find herself round here blind-folded.’ This comment was made, I believe, because the strikers strengths lay in the fact there were 120 officers out on strike, mostly toeing the Union’s demands, and there would not be enough Governor grades to man the prison. They had not reckoned with Patrick Fitzgerald.
As soon as I arrived I went to see him, having worked together previously. I knew his mettle and abilities. He was busy with a planning chart. ‘Ah Veronica. Good to see you so soon. You are going to have to be our ears and eyes at night. If I take the days, there is no-one who knows Risley like you. We will work back to back while we draft in Assistant Governors, and some Administrative staff too. Some of these are still in training but it will be good experience for them. Stand them in good stead for the future. Patrick obviously believed there could be more strikes. How right he was. These trainee governors were following an alternative path to the way I had climbed up the grades. Entrants would take a two-year course at Staff College after which they became Assistant Governors. This was a completely different way from how I had learned the ropes, working in every department in a prison; and then moving around the prisons to get a feel of the differing operations, and Categories of threat. But, this was the manner in which the Service wanted to proceed.
‘You are going to need trainee governor grades at night with you to patrol the wing. You are going to have to explain in detail to them what you need and what they have to do. You will find them very co-operative and willing to learn, so you should have no problems in getting them to work for you.
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