Bronson (2 page)

FOREWORD

I’ve eaten more porridge than Goldilocks and the three bears! Twenty-six years of porridge would fill a swimming pool and I’m sick of it. Now, after all that’s happened, I’m facing more years. It’s like there’s no tomorrow, as if I am meant to be in a cage. Maybe I am.

A friend once described me as being a lost soul. How right that is.

The world left me behind more than a quarter of a century ago. I’m a lost man – what more can be said? Over the past two decades I’ve had every convenient label, every badge: Mad Man, Danger Man, Violent Man, Disruptive Man and Disturbed Man! I’ve been on a mission of madness, a mission of destruction, within the prison system.

Sure, I’ve given them hell. But I’ve ended up in a living hell. There are roughly 60,000 cons in jail. How many have seen a Hannibal Cage, let alone been locked up in one? I’ll tell you – not very many. You can count on the fingers of one hand the men who’ve been banged up in such max secure conditions. All killers. Danger men. But I’ve never killed. I fight with my fists. I’m not a gangster. I work on my own, and it has left me facing life on my own.

I’ve done it all, seen it all, had it all. Prison created what I am today, and what I’ll be until I die. A legend within the system.

It’s no big deal. It’s really been a waste of life – but it has been my life and I’m still a proud man.

So fuck anyone who says it’s no life! I’ve made it exciting!

This story I’m about to tell is a true account of life behind bars. It’s not a life as it should be, it’s an existence. It’s senseless, it’s a waste, but it’s my life and it’s all I know.

I say to all youngsters who are thinking about becoming criminals, ‘Stop and think now. Don’t be foolish. It’s not worth it. You’ll break your family’s hearts and destroy your own.’

If you do decide to become a criminal, even after reading my story, remember this one thing: there are no tough guys behind these doors. We all search for our souls. It’s a truly empty world – believe it!

I’ve spent my years in most of the top-security prisons, as I’ve always been a high-risk inmate. My time is always under secure conditions. Being observed, monitored, analysed, assessed.

You’ll never understand the true sense of freedom – until you lose it.

To be able to go in and out of doors when you like, to walk in the rain, to walk under the stars. To go to the toilet, to wear nice clothes and to eat nice food, all
when you want. And, most importantly, to be loved and wanted.

In jail, they are watching me every day, like a buzzard watches its prey and a mongoose watches a cobra. Like a spider watches a fly. I’m trapped, caught up in the web. I’m a strong believer in fate. I truly believe everything is meant to be. Obviously, certain things we can change but basically it’s all planned for us. From our birth to our death, life is a test of our strength and ability – mental, physical and even spiritual.

Some of us end up in a cage like some birds, lions or elephants end up caged. Prison is the human zoo, a cage of man. After 28 years of looking through the bars and searching myself, I am now convinced it’s all been my test in life. Even now, as I tell you my story, I face more years caged up.

Maybe this book is the very reason for my existence on earth? I’m not going to preach, or ram goodness down anyone’s neck. Just read how it’s been and
think
. That’s all I ask.

This is a journey through the penal system, the dungeons of hell: beatings; drug control; isolation; asylums; roof-top protests; hostages; violence; hunger strikes. Fate has been cruel and I’m still fighting for a happy ending. But in my heart of hearts I know I’ll probably die fighting. I’ve been labelled Britain’s most violent prisoner. To get a label like that doesn’t come overnight; it is years of agony, pain and a lot of emptiness.

For every punch you throw in prison you take a dozen back. The system caters for everyone. Where one screw is needed for one prisoner, six will look after another – and the alarm bell will bring 60 more. I’ve been throwing punches from the day I entered prison. I’ve actually lost count of all the screws I’ve punched and they’ve probably lost count of the times they’ve
punched me. But there is really only one loser. You may as well punch a door or nut a wall – better still, work it out in the gym, because every punch you throw is losing you a big part of your life.

As I tell you this story, remember that, in spite of everything, I’m a born survivor. I lower my eyes to no man. I’m still strong, despite my years. My whiskers may be greying, my skin may be pale after decades with little natural light. But I’m fitter and stronger than men half my 47 years. Maybe I’ll never get out, except in a body bag. Maybe I’ll have creaky bones, a walking stick and a white ’tash when I finally walk out of here. Who knows?

But I tell you what – right now I’m king of the press-ups and sit-ups. I train alone in solitary; I have done for over 20 years. How else can I keep hold of my sanity? I recently smashed the press-up record by 250. I completed 1,727 in one hour! Yeah, and I still kept some back, just in case I have to make a comeback. I’m an old fox, see. A good poker player! I play to win. I once did 25 press-ups with two men on my back. Show me another man who can do that.

You can be too big, too strong, but you can never be too fit. My strength has caused me a lot of trouble inside, and kept me caged for so long, but I still feel lucky. I have my lows, but I have to keep strong and stay training otherwise I’d just die. I tell all the guys who take drugs or smoke, ‘Hey, there’s only one drug. It’s already in your body. Adrenalin. It works and it’s natural. So get it pumping around your veins and feel good! If you wanna be a fat, lazy, useless slob, if you’re happy with your fags and drugs, then enjoy it. It’s your life. But don’t ever bring them near me! Why? Because I don’t bloody like it, that’s why!’

Right. Before I take you back to the start of my journey, I’ve got to end here for the moment – as I’ve got 500 sit-ups to polish off before lights out. Nice ’n’ easy!

CHAPTER ONE

‘Now I’ve got you. Take your last fucking breath because this knife is going in you. You’re the bastard that slagged my cartoon off.

‘Right. You keep quiet now, because most people want to keep quiet for a time before they die. If I don’t get what I want, they can carry us both out in body bags.’

Charlie was making loud noises … shouting, swearing and cursing. He was making monkey-like noises. He was acting like a crazed madman. I passed out, I think from fear and adrenalin. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness … 

‘Charlie, where are you?’

‘Speak when you’re fucking spoken to. You talk too much.’

Charlie re-tied me in a different way. He tied my left arm to my body and to the chair, and then tied my wrists together. I was still convinced that I was going to die.

Charlie found a snooker cue and then with a bandage he began to bind the handle of the knife to the end of the cue. The result was a spear. Charlie held the spear by his side and then began marching up and down like a soldier. It was as if he was in some sort of trance.

I thought I was going to be sacrificed on the snooker table. I felt that I had to keep a rapport going with Charlie to try and save myself. He tied one end of the skipping rope around my neck and held on to the other end.

‘Dance!’

I started marching and doing silly steps to keep Charlie amused. Every minute felt like an eternity. Charlie then began to sing ‘I’ll Never Walk Alone’.

I felt like I was being treated like a dog on a lead. Then Charlie said something to me.

‘You’ve been my best hostage. This is the big one. You are also one of the few who hasn’t physically shit himself.’

1 February 1999 is a day that will live with that man for the rest of his life. It was the day he must have prayed to God that I would not kill him.

The skipping rope went around his skinny ostrich neck and the knife went up to his face.

‘You’re mine, you faggot!’

The longest British prison siege in living memory
had started. Hull max secure unit was mine. I was the governor.

There is no turning back the clock, but now I’m going back to the beginning. The beginning of the journey which saw me fall into the pit of no hope, trussed up like a chicken in the modern equivalent of a
straitjacket
, crawling like a worm across a concrete floor to eat food out of the plastic dish left for me. Being transferred from high-security jail to high-security jail at no notice. Strapped up, stark bollock naked, in a ‘body-belt’, hands cuffed in medieval-style metal hoops by my sides. Slipped out of the back of one prison into the back of another.

A seemingly endless journey. Sometimes in a wheelchair, like Hannibal Lecter. Not because I’m disabled, but because they wanted to keep me under control. Because I had earned the unenviable reputation as the most violent prisoner in British penal history.

Charles Bronson. Danger man. Serial
hostage-taker
. One-man army. Double dangerous. Twelve screws plus dogs needed to unlock him. And all looking ‘hard’, chewing their gum and staring. Big, tough guys. Jangling their keys. I’d like to see their faces if I met them on the outside, without their batons, without their closed-circuit TV.

Don’t get me wrong. There are screws I respect, and governors, too. Fair men. Men who have given me a chance. It’s been a long journey and I’ve met the good, the bad – and all of them ugly. Likewise, there are cons I admire, and some I despise. It may seem strange to you, but there’s a strong moral code in prison. I’ve never killed. I hate wife-beaters and paedophiles. My crimes are armed robberies and
violence, urges I’ve been struggling to overcome for more than a quarter of a century. If you’re my friend, I’ll be loyal until the end. If you mug me off or try to pick a fight, I’ll bash your crust in. You’ll get no warning. You’ll be in hospital; I’ll be having a nice cup of tea.

The reason for my length of time in prison is simply my crimes on the inside. The violence, the
hostage-takings
. But I’ve never really hurt a hostage – and when I slap a paedophile, am I not doing what most of you would really wish to do? Ask yourself, in your heart of hearts. I love kids. I’d nut a moving train to help a child. That’s why so many of my feats of strength – my world-record attempts at lifting weights and doing press-ups – have raised hundreds of pounds for children’s hospices. All the lads chip in, even if they only get £2.50 a week in prison wages.

Anyway! I was a lovely baby myself once. My mum says so. So who can argue with that?

I came in at 21. I was in the prime of my life. It was 1974, the year the Three Degrees had their Number 1 hit ‘When Will I See You Again?’ There’s a lot of people I’ve never seen since that day. A lot of people who will be nothing more than vague memories. It was the year I slung everything away – my car, my home and, most importantly of all, my beautiful wife Irene and my lovely son Michael.

I’d held down a few jobs. I’d tried my best. But my violent urges overcame me. One day I turned to major crime; I got myself a gun, sawed down the barrel, and went to work as an armed robber. The outcome was a prison cell.

In one week of madness, I robbed a post office, a garage and a Tudor mansion. I had committed serious violence. My head was flipped. I even stuck the shotgun up a bloke’s arse and was a fraction away from committing a murder. This was not me. But I
can’t blame anyone except me. I’ve got no real excuses. Drugs and drink were not the reason. There is no answer but excitement. It was a complete week of insanity. Violence took me over and the courts had no choice but to remand me. It was a miracle I hadn’t killed anyone.

I pitched up in Risley Remand Centre, Cheshire. Now, you may not remember, but this jail was at the time the Number 1 prison for suicides – mostly youngsters. It was really gloomy and depressing.

There was a lot of bullying going on – screws intimidating and threatening. This prison was nicknamed ‘Grisly Risley’, and I hated every stinking day of it.

For a jail that was built in the mid-’60s, it was a disgrace. The cells were designed for one inmate. An 8ft sq cube – and they were doubling inmates up. It really was inhumane. Some guys woke up to find their cellmate hanging.

Most of the deaths seemed to be in the hospital wing, and some of those deaths were mysterious to say the least. The whole fucking place stank of despair.

At night, cons would shit in a newspaper and sling it out of the cell window. What else could we do? Who wants to sit in a cell all night looking at a piss-pot full of shit?

There were rats in Risley as big as cats … vicious fuckers! I’ve sat at my window watching them carry away food, bits of fruit, bread and even the shit parcels. I hate rats. I’ve watched a dog handler do his rounds and seen the alsatian tear a rat to pieces. The shriek went right through me.

The real horror came one night when I woke up to see a rat sitting on my window-sill inside my cell. The fucker was staring at me with eyes as black as coal! As I moved to grab my shoe, it leapt out of the
window. I never forgot to close my window after that.

Cockroaches were another type of vermin we had to put up with. These things would come into our cells throughout the night – under the door, through the air vents, the cracks in the walls. They scavenge for bits of food. I’ve found them in my socks, in my jersey, in my shoes, even in my body hair.

The main thing, though, was who you got in your cell to share your life.

Another human being is forced into your world. You don’t know him, he doesn’t know you. He could be anyone! I soon found out that I wasn’t going to like being in jail. Days were long, weeks felt like months, months felt like years. I was on the edge of madness.

Risley is in Warrington. Most of the cons there were either Liverpool lads or country yokels. Football is the northern lads’ religion. Liverpool were the cream, Man United their worst enemies. Risley was a war zone for Scousers and Mancunians. And then there was me – supporting Spurs and coming from Luton. It never made me too popular on a Saturday!

I happen to know a lot of Scousers – and a lot respect me. But to get respect you must earn it. It’s not something you can buy. I earned mine in more ways than one, both inside and out. My motto in life has always been ‘It’s nice to be nice’. But, sadly, it’s not always possible. Some guys will take kindness as a show of weakness.

Prison breeds violence. Whenever men are herded together, violent incidents will always occur; black against white, Protestant against Catholic, Muslim against Jew, Hell’s Angel against skinhead – and so on. Men stand up and fight for their beliefs. Prison is a fucking powder keg.

My cell was no exception. I got my share of idiots, snorers, moaners, liars, smelly feet, farting and faggots. Some lasted a day, some lasted weeks. Some
became life-long pals, some became punch-bags. Risley for me was hell.

At this time, all visits, except legal ones, were closed – without human contact. Closed visits took place in a big room with little boxed cubicles. Our visitors were behind a sheet of unbreakable glass, with a steel vent to talk through. It was frustrating, degrading and inhuman. During my entire stay in Risley, I refused to see my son and my wife Irene. Obviously, I wrote to her and she wrote to me, but I could not see them behind a sheet of glass. Never.

It was bad enough seeing my parents and family like that. No way could I see my three-year-old boy. How the fuck can you accept it? Your own flesh and blood looking at you in a filthy fucking box – and not being able to touch him. I wanted to hold my boy, not watch him! I still feel bitter and hateful, more than 25 years later, over these visits. I still shake with rage. This was the beginning of me losing my sanity.

I next saw Irene and my son when I appeared at Chester Crown Court. My mum Eira was there, too, and my Auntie Eileen. I pleaded guilty to all charges as I was bang to rights. There was no way out of it. I received a total of 28 years, fortunately to run concurrently.

Seven years for all I had done.

Some would say that was a good result – the shotgun alone, the post office, the violence – but I saw it as far too long. I was 21 years old, in the prime of my life. Three years would have been fair. A short sharp shock – it might have worked! But it was seven whole years. With remission, I should serve four years and eight months. With bad behaviour, I would serve seven. Both seemed an eternity for me, my wife and my son.

Little did I know then, I would not be freed for thirteen-and-a-half years. If I had known, I might well have cut my own throat that very night.

Irene was so upset she ran out of the courtroom clutching Michael. My mother and her sister were allowed to come down to the cells to see me.

Chester Crown Court is in an old castle, beneath which is a dungeon. In some of the cells there were rusty rings where the chains used to pass through. There were cast-iron gates, and the walls and floor were made up of big slabs of stone.

It was cold, damp and empty. Mum’s eyes were tearful; Eileen was upset, too. They told me Irene had got a taxi home. She was devastated.

I told them seven years would soon go. Be strong!

I gave my mum a big hug. ‘I’ll be out of here before you know it.’

My mum was 43, a beautiful woman, loved and respected by many. She would be 57 when I next got out. I would be 35, my wife would be 38, my son 17 and my father 64. I’m just glad I never knew my fate then. Hell was just around the corner.

I came into this world as Michael Gordon Peterson on 6 December 1952, the year George VI died.

I’ll go out of this world as Charles Bronson – my fighting name.

I’ve lived in two towns during my life on the outside – Luton and Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. But since I’ve been banged up, I’ve almost lost count of the places I’ve been – and never seen.

They call it ‘ghosting’ – moving high-risk inmates at no notice from jail to jail. From east to west; from the far northern reaches of England like Frankland Prison, County Durham, to the furthest tip of the country – Parkhurst jail on the Isle of Wight. Often, I had no idea where I was going; I was always in the back of a prison van.

Cuffed or strapped up, I’ve travelled the country more than any other con – and more than most folk on the outside.

But it was in Luton where I grew up. My family are law-abiding – there’s nothing in their nature I can put my madness down to. We had a loving upbringing, me and my brothers.

My angel of a mother, Eira, is still alive. Joe, my dear dad, has passed away. I’ve pretty much lost contact with my brothers. John was 19 months older than me and emigrated to Perth, Australia. Sadly, he died of brain cancer on 3 March last year. Mark is younger, and I sadly fell out with him some years ago. He was born eight years after me, in 1960, and was only seven when I left school to find a job. My cousin Loraine – my mum’s sister, Auntie Eileen’s daughter – has always been a source of strength. I’ve turned to her in my hours of deepest need and although I’ve not always treated her right – mainly because of the way I’ve been treated on the inside – I still love her dearly. She’s always been there for me in the background, and I know that she will be there in my mind when I finally slip out of this world. Hers will be the last face I see on this earth.