by Jake Arnott
He sounded noncommittal. Polite. So unlike Harry.
‘Come on,’ I urged him. ‘Tell me what you really think. Be brutal.’
Harry sighed. His eyebrows knitted.
‘To be perfectly frank, Lenny,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit old hat.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And a lot of your arguments are confused. They don’t seem to go nowhere.’
‘Yeah, well . . .’
‘Look, you wanted my opinion. Face it, Lenny. The bubble’s burst. Deviancy theory is dead in the water. It’s all over, bar the shouting. Maybe that’s all it was anyway. It wants to be radicalism but it’s just liberalism with a loud mouth. Sorry, Len.’
‘Well I said “be brutal”.’
‘Yeah,’ he grinned. ‘Well I have got a bit of a reputation. I liked some of it. That bit about the institutionalisation of power and that. I tell you what, though—’ He leaned forward, eyes darting to and fro – ‘I’ve been reading something else. Something very tasty.’
His sudden enthusiasm for another writer compounded his excoriation of my own work. I felt a bit sick.
‘Who?’ I asked, swallowing.
He uttered something I couldn’t recognise. Foe cult, it sounded like. I had strange images of oppositional subcultures.
‘Oh, come on Lenny,’ he protested as I squinted at him. ‘You know I can never pronounce these names. French geezer. Discipline and Punish.’
‘Foucault, you mean.’
‘Yeah.’
He muttered foo co, foo co, under his breath a few times, making sure that he’d got it, then looked up at me.
‘You seen it?’ he demanded.
I had. I’d even tried to read it but had not got very far. It seemed deliberately obscure, the long description in the first section of an eighteenth-century judicial torture rebarbative and brutal. Designed to shock perhaps but all a bit grand guignol.
‘It’s a bit heavy going,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well,’ Harry chuckled. ‘It ain’t for the squeamish.’
The irony of the Torture Gang Boss reading all of this suddenly hit me and I laughed. His knowledge of brutality gave him insight, perhaps. And, as I remembered, straight after the torture account in the book came a description of prison routine of some seventy years later. Something that he also had first-hand experience of. Foucault was setting out two very distinct penal styles, one shocking and one familiarly modern, and inviting the reader to reflect on how, in less than a century, such huge changes had taken place. This much I understood and that any notion of ‘humanisation’ was to be avoided in the subsequent analysis, but that’s about as far as I’d got. Harry was very keen to explain it all to me.
‘It’s all about the economy of power, Lenny. The modern penal system can present itself as being more just, more rational, but in effect it can exercise far greater power over people. Everything is controlled much more efficiently as with all other forms of industrial institutions. Remember what I said about the cat and the birch. Losing remission is a far worse punishment but it’s seen as being less brutal. In fact punishment isn’t seen any more but instead becomes the most hidden part of the process. So you abolish corporal punishment, you know, punishment on the body. Instead you punish the soul.’
‘The soul?’
‘Yeah, you know, the psyche, the consciousness, whatever. When you’re banged up you’re allowed exercise, you can study and pretend you’re not turning into a zombie. But all along your personality, that delicate sense of freedom and integrity, is constantly being exercised and disciplined in time and space. That’s the soul. The effect and instrument of a political anatomy. They imprison it, it imprisons you. The soul is the prison of the body.’
I tried to take all of this in as Harry went on. He was determined to use the rest of the visiting time to conduct a brief lecture outlining the whole thing. He talked of Bentham and the Panoptican, his design for an ideal prison where each inmate could be clearly seen by a central observer.
‘You saw what it was like in the Submarine. We were hidden away, our punishment was hidden away from civilised society, literally submerged, if you like. Yet at the same time we’re under constant surveillance. Constantly aware of our visibility to the system. Constantly isolated, with the only real intimacy being our relationship with the power exercised over us. Now, of course, this system produces delinquents, recidivists, deviants. This is prison’s vengeance on justice. So what do you do, in a scientific age? Come up with another science to keep a check on this new species. Criminology. Sociology. Study the deviants then you can extend the surveillance. That’s where you fit in to all this, Lenny. All this radical posturing. You just help to maintain the system. Make it appear more liberal, more civilised, but ultimately make it work better.’
‘That’s pretty damning, Harry.’
‘Yeah, I’m afraid it is. But it’s all there. You really should read it. You see, the problem with deviancy theory is that it never really analyses the structures we’re supposed to be deviating from. Oh, you love the subjects. So strange and exotic. Like going to the zoo. You love all of these wild creatures because they’re behind bars and can’t hurt you. You want to like us but deep down you’re shit scared of us.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Sorry, Lenny. I’m being a bit hard on you. Fact is, I’m in a good mood.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Well, I’ve got my first parole board coming up in a couple of months’ time.’
‘So, you’re optimistic?’
‘Well, Lenny, you know, you’ve got to be careful how you think about these things. You can’t afford to be hopeful about your situation. That makes you vulnerable, and the fuckers can grind you down easily. But you can’t afford to be hopeless, neither. Because then they’ve really got you beat. It’s like Antonio Gramsci said: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.’
I smiled.
‘You’ve been reading Gramsci?’
‘Yeah. Now don’t get a hard on just ’cos I’m quoting a commie, Lenny. I didn’t buy all of that hegemony stuff. But anyone who’s done that much time and held it all together deserves some respect.’
My mind was reeling as I came away from that visit. It was as if our roles had been reversed. I had become a student to Harry’s teacher. He had acquired such clarity in his analysis of things whereas I had become more and more confused. My whole theoretical base was challenged. I had to start again.
I struggled with Foucault. I was jealous of Harry’s clear grasp of it. And I felt guilty because deep down I didn’t really want him to get parole. In a strange way I wanted him kept where he was so that I could have occasional access to his understanding. I didn’t want him on the outside, roaming free. The thought of that always left me with a twinge of fear.
I didn’t have to worry. Harry got the knockback. Later that year, six weeks after his board had met, he received a letter. ‘The Secretary of State has fully and sympathetically considered your case for release under licence, but has regretfully concluded not to authorise it on this occasion.’
I managed to get a visit with him near the end of 1977. He looked terribly depressed. Puffy eyes stared at me gloomily.
It was an awkward visit. There wasn’t much I could say about his being turned down.
‘Well, you can carry on with your studying,’ I suggested, hoping that we could talk academically. There were things I wanted to discuss with him. But Harry wasn’t in the mood.
‘It’s all been a waste of fucking time.’
He gave a hollow laugh.
‘Not that there’s anything to do in here but waste time. But you’ve loved it, haven’t you? I bet it’s really been interesting for you.’
‘Harry,’ I murmured.
‘Do your own time, Lenny. I’ve fucking had enough of it all.’
There was silence for about a minute. I cleared my throat.
‘They’re bound to lessen your category, at least,’ I ventured. �
�You’ll probably get moved to an open prison.’
Harry’s nostrils widened and he glowered at me.
‘Open fucking prison. Open fucking university. Yeah, everything’s fucking open, isn’t it? You know what the worst thing is? Cunts like you looking in on me thinking everything’s going to be all right because of their fucking bleeding hearts.’
Harry was becoming quite agitated. A screw came over.
‘Now, now, Starks. Turn it in. Otherwise visiting time’s over.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said to the guard. ‘Fuck the lot of you. I don’t need visiting time, anyway. It’s a waste of fucking time.’
A couple more screws came over and they started to manhandle Harry.
‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ he shouted as they dragged him away.
I lost touch with Harry after that. He had got into trouble again over Good Order and Discipline. The last I heard of him was that he had been moved to Brixton. I reasoned that he might have finally cracked up as he had feared he would. Thoughts of him troubled me from time to time. But after a while it all receded in my mind. And that peculiar fear I had of him in the back of my mind nearly disappeared altogether.
I was left with the legacy of what I had learnt from him. The seed that I’d planted bore bitter fruit. I lost faith with my ideas, my once treasured theories. He had proved them wrong. I tried to keep up with new bodies of thought, new paradigms. Harry was certainly right about Foucault. His influence was tremendous. And all these other French guys. Post-structuralism, post-modernism, everything became fractured. The very consensus that deviancy theory envisaged (and indeed relied upon) was falling apart, so deviancy theory itself petered out very quickly. I carried on lecturing, without much enthusiasm. I was going through the motions.
Punk arrived and suddenly I became old fashioned. Students started criticising me for being an ‘old hippy’ or even a ‘boring old fart’.
Funnily enough, punk regurgitated all that situationalist stuff from the late sixties. All that King Mob anarchism. The self-proclaimed deviants seemed ready to be digested as the new folk-devil pariah elite. I started to write an article for New Society but it just turned out turgid and flat. Stan Cohen had already done all that years ago with the Mods anyhow. I was bored, but not like these kids with their blank generation aesthetic. I was bored because I had become boring.
The Tories got in again in 1979. That seemed to epitomise the lost opportunities of that decade. Some people on the Left said it was a good thing. That it would give the people something tangible to rebel against. I wasn’t so sure. Consensus was dead and our radicalism seemed burned out. In fact it looked like the very idea of radicalism belonged to the Right now.
Then, that same year, Harry hit the headlines. TORTURE GANG BOSS IN DRAMATIC ESCAPE, read one headline. STARKS ESCAPE: BRIXTON SECURITY PROBE ORDERED. I felt a familiar shiver of fear up my spine. It gave me quite a thrill.
It had been a meticulously planned escape. At Brixton, Harry had noticed that the external wall at the end of his wing connected to a flat roof. By bribing a couple of key warders, Harry had engineered a change in allocation that got him the cell at the end of the block. He wanted a better view, he assured them. Then, with the patience of an archaeologist he set to work. He started to cut into the mortar around a whole patch of brickwork. He used drill bits, fragments of hacksaw blades, anything that could be smuggled in or bartered for with other prisoners. He worked slowly and carefully and at night. He stole sugar from the canteen and sprinkled it on the floor of the corridor in front of his door so that he could hear the crunch of the rubber-soled boots of an approaching screw. That way he could time the lengths of the landing patrols and know when it was safe to work.
At dawn he would carefully sweep up the brick dust and mortar rubble from the night’s labours and dump it in his chamber pot. In the morning he would slop it all out undetected. He hid the growing hole by pushing a wooden locker up against the wall.
It took him nearly three months to chisel out around fifteen bricks that were to provide him his exit. But he knew that any haste might lead to mistakes or clumsiness. He had time on his side, after all.
On the night of his escape he gently pushed out the loosened brickwork and crawled through the hole onto the flat roof. He had attached a short rope to the back of the locker so that he could pull it up against the wall and cover his exit. On his bed was a dummy, prison clothes stuffed with newspapers to fool the night-duty warders inspecting the cells. His disappearance would not be detected till much later that morning.
He made his way across the roof, over the security fence. He then simply hailed a cab on Brixton Hill and he was away.
I followed all the news stories about Harry that week. When the letter to The Times was published it took me a while to suss it out. Then it glared right out at me. Our letter code. It had been such a long time since it had been used. In the final analysis, that was the trigger phrase. In the final analysis, it’s my assessment that this worthwhile opportunity to humanely rehabilitate effectively enough now, is nigh. Enough over-zealous legal deterrence. Continuation of my punishment thus only negates society’s tentative reforms, exceeding equitable treatment. I decoded it. Spelt it out.
IMATTWOTHREENINEOLDCOMPTONSTREET. I’m at Two-Three-Nine Old Compton Street. Soho. Harry was hiding out in the West End of London. And he wanted me to meet him there.
An invitation. A summons more like. For a moment I felt indignation at Harry’s presumption that I was going to drop everything and go and meet him. Then I felt fear knowing that I couldn’t resist the adventure of it. A sense of excitement I hadn’t felt for years.
I made some oblique excuses to the faculty. Family crisis, affairs to be sorted, arrangements to be made. I could be gone for a few days, I warned them. I threw a few things into my car and drove down to London.
PRIVATE SHOP was the sign above the storefront that was 239 Old Compton Street. I parted the coloured strips of plastic forming a curtain at its doorway and went in. There were racks of shrinkwrapped magazines. Danish Blue, Swedish Hardcore. Amanin an anorak was surreptitiously examining the covers. There was a glass case in front of the counter which displayed strange pink objects like holy relics. Behind the counter a very fat man with lank greasy hair and froggy eyes was reading Exchange & Mart. On the shelves above him were displayed Super 8 films. Fanny Get Your Gun, Ranch of the Nymphomaniac Cowgirls.
The anorak man wandered out. I sidled up to the counter. The fat man was absently picking his nose. I coughed. Froggy eyes looked up from the auto-spares section and he wiped a finger on his sleeve.
‘There’s more hard-core stuff out the back,’ he said, thumbing at the doorway behind him.
I drew in close to the fat man.
‘I’m Lenny,’ I whispered, conspiratorially.
‘Nice to meet you, Lenny,’ he whispered back with a knowing smile. ‘What is it, S&M? Animals? Whatever you want, Lenny. I’m sure I can find it for you.’
‘No,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve come to see Harry.’
His heavy-lidded eyes flashed for half a second and then looked down, pretending to find something interesting amongst the small ads.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the fat man said flatly.
‘Tell Harry Lenny’s here.’
He looked me up and down and chewed at his lower lip.
‘Right,’ he said finally, coming out from behind the counter. ‘Mind the shop for me will yer?’
Harry paced up and down in a tight pattern in the flat above the shop. Still measuring cell dimensions. He looked lean and mean, his greying hair slicked back tight against his skull. He had evidently gone through a rigorous exercise regime in the run up to his escape. He grinned at me. His eyes had a wild and hunted gleam in them. His stare was as piercing as ever.
‘Glad you could come, Lenny,’ he said. ‘I knew you would. I knew I could trust you.’
I didn’t know quite what he meant by this. I had no ide
a what he wanted from me.
‘Good to see you, Harry,’ was all that I could think of to say.
‘Yeah. Likewise. Look, I was hoping that you could help me with this campaign of mine. Get it noticed. You know, like that George Davis thing.’
‘“Harry Starks is Innocent, OK”?’
Harry laughed darkly.
‘Nah, I don’t think that would stick. A few friends have been doing this graffiti: “Free Harry Starks”, “Ten Years is Long Enough”. That sort of thing. It just needs a bit of a boost.’
‘Well I don’t know what I could do.’
‘I dunno, get a petition together, hold a public meeting, I don’t fucking know. You know more about these things than I do.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Come on Lenny. I ain’t asking much. It’s a human rights issue. I need all the help I can get. And it’d be good for you and all. You might learn something.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Go on,’ he urged, his eyes narrowing into mine.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I replied, timidly.
‘Thanks, Lenny,’ he said, patting me on the shoulder. ‘I appreciate it.’
That evening, making sure the coast was clear, we went to The Stardust. Wally, the fat man in the sex shop, provided cover as we moved quickly through the dark streets. The Stardust had been Harry’s club in the sixties, and Wally was running it for him.
‘There’ve been some changes,’ Wally explained as we walked around to the club. He seemed a bit nervous.
‘We ain’t just doing the Erotic Revue any more. We’ve sort of, er, branched out.’
‘You mean like proper cabaret?’ Harry asked, his eyes lighting up.
‘Yeah,’ replied Wally, hesitantly. ‘Sort of.’
The Comedy Club, the sign on the door announced as we arrived. We went in and stood at the back near the bar. Drinks were brought over. On stage was a tubby, crop-haired man in a tight-fitting suit and a pork-pie hat, jerking about in front of the microphone stand.
‘Thing is,’ Wally went on, almost apologetically, ‘your tasteful striptease revue just ain’t making money any more. Peepshows, that’s the business these days. Smaller premises, fewer staff, faster turnover. And no choreography or nothing. Just some tart rubbing away at herself.’
