The Loose Screw (19 page)

On one occasion I had picked up the Johnson family at the main visit area to drive them round to the unit in the small battery-operated milk float type vehicle we used at the time. I stopped at the first gate to open it and no sooner had I done so than the van with its passengers went driving past me with little Alfie at the wheel. I could not give chase until I had closed the gates, which gave the little bastard quite a good head start, and I didn't catch up with them until they were almost outside the unit. Meanwhile, the control room had seen me on the cameras running after the vehicle and my radio was jammed with various different call signs desperate to find out what was going on. Luckily, due to his age and the fact that I took responsibility for leaving the driver's door unlocked, the Prison Service did not take any action against Alfie.We did, however, receive a proper new minibus to transport visitors in future. Not that I ever got to drive it, as that little episode cost me a lifetime ban on being the visits bus driver -shame.

Although Ronnie could not show how well we got on for the sake of the other prisoners and more so the other staff members I worked with, he did stick up for me on more than one occasion. Once I remember we had these two racing car drivers on remand for drug offences, who had a bit of difficulty adapting to their new lifestyle. In an attempt to get in with the faces on the spur, they tried to put me down by saying that they could at least go into any pub in London without fear of retribution, unlike myself. Big Ronnie immediately replied that I would be welcomed in any pub he used for a drink as his personal guest, an invitation that he definitely would not extend to the two boy racers.

One of the pair had perfectly permed black hair and always reeked of aftershave, even when going to the gym. He commented once in my presence to another prisoner that he could not wait to get to a dispersal prison and deal with proper screws. The other inmate turned to me and said, "As soon as he hits a dispersal smelling like that and with his hair, they will have him on his back quicker than a basted turkey at Christmas."

The unit was full of different characters from various avenues of the criminal world from convicted and remand IRA terrorists to some very nasty high-risk sex offenders. All the nutters and sex cases were held on spur two and included some inmates charged with some of the most high-profile and disgusting crimes you could imagine. The 'main man' at the time was a particularly horrible creature called Childs. He was an older man who had been accused and convicted of some terrible crimes, many against minors. In one he was accused of murdering a young boy and then hacking up his body and putting the bits through a meat-mincing machine before burning the remains in an attempt to get rid of the evidence. The trouble with Childs was, although he had been convicted of these stomach-churning crimes, he thought he was the dog's bollocks and carried on as the spur's very own barrack-room lawyer.

I hated him and every time I had to be in his presence my skin crawled and I had this overwhelming urge to smack him in the face. One afternoon I was on the spur to pick up an inmate for visits and Childs was once again on his soap box preaching about his rights. I had had enough and told him to shut the fuck up and with that he picked up a jug of boiling water and threatened to do me with it. I snapped and picked up a pool cue and the plastic dustbin lid and charged at him like a knight on a joust. He threw the water at me but I deflected it with the dustbin lid and caught him a cracker with the thick end of the pool cue right across the nut and put him out sparko. Childs, being the type of tosser he was, tried to raise a formal complaint, but it was decided that no further action would be taken as I had only acted in self-defence and I had only struck him once and so had not used unnecessary force.

I never had any further problems from him, and he was always as nice as pie to me whenever I was on the spur. I took a lot of stick for deciding not to charge him with attempted assault but, as I said before, that was not my way and I felt happy enough that I had been able to put him in his place in the way that I did.

Another high-profile prisoner with whom I had a good working relationship was 'Dingus' Magee, a convicted IRA terrorist who was apparently of a very high rank within his organization. You may think it odd that an ex-squaddie could strike up a rapport with a convicted IRA man, especially when it was rumoured that he had been part of the M60 machine gun team that had ambushed a Green Jacket patrol in Crocus Street, West Belfast, killing three and injuring many more.

I discovered that the way to be a successful prison officer was to judge the inmates as people, not for what they had done to be in prison. The only ones you could not treat in this way were the sex cases, as I am sure most of you will agree that it would be almost impossible to ignore crimes of that nature. The only two screws that 'Dingus' would really talk to for any length of time were myself and a good friend of mine, Brian B. Brian had the same sort of laid-back attitude as me and had served for twenty-two years in the Paras. He hated the senior management as much as I did and thought they were all incompetents. His favourite phrase to sum up the daily carry-ons we endured was, "This place is a right cake and arse party." He was the only person I met that did not give a fuck about who he upset, and between the two of us we gave the management more headaches than any prisoner ever could.

We began to have a problem with the Irish prisoners on the unit at weekends due to the fact that they only received visits on weekdays and there was nothing to occupy them at the weekend. The gym staff did not lay on any training for them like they did during the week and, as a result, they were getting increasingly restless and more fights and petty arguments were breaking out. So Brian and I got together with Dingus to see if we could sort something out to relieve the boredom. Our solution was that we would organize training sessions for them on the exercise yard and take them out twice a day on both Saturday and Sunday. It took us a while to get our ideas cleared by security, but Brian and I, being the persuasive type, endured and eventually got the go-ahead.

We used to come in wearing tracksuit bottoms and Brian had his maroon Para sweatshirt on and I had my Green Jacket Northern Ireland one on. I am sure you can imagine what this sight looked like -two screws, both in their army sweatshirts, chasing a group of about twelve high-risk IRA inmates around an assault course we had constructed on the exercise yard. All the inmates loved it and it put an end to all the problems we had faced on previous weekends and the whole idea was a great success. However, when Brian tried to expand the assault course and asked for permission to add some climbing ropes, which he wanted to suspend from the caged roof of the yard, his request was denied.

10

CHARLIE BRONSON

If you put an animal from the wild in a cage and each day you torment it, beat it, starve it, deny it contact with other animals, or tie it up and restrict its movement, it will eventually attack its tormentor out of sheer frustration. Man, it is scientifically believed, evolved from animals and therefore we surely must all possess that basic animal instinct for survival. Animals only attack when hungry, threatened, injured or out of self-defence or protecting members of their group. Some people, I agree, attack others for no apparent reason at all. All these type of men or women generally attack people that are weaker than themselves or have the benefit of others to back them up. These are the bullies of our society. Of course most animals attack creatures smaller, slower or weaker than themselves, but they only do this for survival, to eat and live, not just for fun or self-gain egotistically.

I was told that Charlie Bronson was an animal in every story I heard about him. It did not take me long to realize that, yes, perhaps he was an animal or at least had had to become one during his years of incarceration. He had indeed attacked prison staff and had destroyed prison property -facts that he has or will never deny -but these acts have not been carried out for no good reason. Charlie carried out these types of prison offences after enduring years of torment, deprivation and solitude, as well as suffering mental and physical pain and torture inflicted on him by the very breed of man I have described in the last paragraph 'THE BULLY'.

If you put a bully in a position of authority such as the one a prison officer holds, it gives him the perfect opportunity to prey on as many victims as he can and then cover up his cowardly acts by claiming he was acting within the realms of his duties. I have worked with these scum and witnessed first hand the way they work. They are insecure little pricks as far as I am concerned, and it would be an insult to every creature to call them animals. The only thing they have in common with some animals is that they hunt in packs, they prey only on the weak and vulnerable, and they use strength in numbers to carry out their attacks and solidarity to cover them up.

It is this breed of prison officer that dealt with a young Charlie in his early 'career' in prison and thereafter over the many, many years he has been incarcerated. Their bully-boy tactics have been covered up by their superiors and passed on to their prodigies whose actions they in turn have covered up as they progressed up the ranks within the service. It is a vicious circle that has been going on for years and will likely continue due to public ignorance.

The way Charlie got sucked into the secret world of bullies and solitary suffering was textbook in prison terms. He made one fatal mistake very early on in his prison career, a mistake that played him right into the hands of the bullies. For over three decades they have not let him forget this mistake, and have lied and exaggerated to cover up their own violent and unprofessional conduct to create the ultimate prison 'monster'.

Charlie was involved in a 'sit down' in a workshop at Parkhurst Prison, a common and usually peaceful protest whereby prisoners refuse to work until they get the chance to speak to a governor regarding some dispute or other. These disputes are generally over food visits or exercise, the three most important things in an inmate's daily routine and therefore the most common aspects of prison life deliberately disrupted by staff intent on causing upset among the inmate population. Many times I have witnessed certain elements of staff deliberately denying inmates their preferred diet, holding them up for visits or harassing visiting relatives, and refusing to unlock certain inmates for exercise or association.

On this particular day, Charlie was informed by the other inmates that they were all going to refuse to work, an action he would have had no choice but to participate in, as there were some pretty big boys in Parkhurst at the time. When a group of inmates refuse to work, the officers have to issue an order individually to each inmate in turn so that they can then be placed on report for refusing an order. When this time came, Charlie was first in line to be given the order to return to work, which following the brief he refused. Unbelievably all the remainder of the inmates backed down and agreed to go back to their workstations. Whether this was a deliberate plan to drop Charlie in it, or whether all the others just lost the will for confrontation on that day, the result for Charlie was the same -he was nicked.

The 'mufti squad' (the forerunners of the modern control and restraint team) arrived to take Charlie down the block to await the governor's orders the following day. I know from experience that in these situations the members of the mufti squad used the opportunity to go in as hard as possible and rough the prisoner up as much as they could while being able to cover it up in their identical reports.

Charlie was upset and confused as to why he had been let down by his fellow inmates, and he was also terrified as he had heard the screams of men being dragged to the seg and beaten by the mufti squad's long sticks. He tried to reason with the staff that now stood poised to leap on him with their riot helmets and sticks just visible above the mattress he was huddled behind, but his pleas were in vain; these wolves had the smell of blood in their nostrils. They had no intention of settling for a non-physical outcome and were eager for a roll around the floor to break up the boredom of their shift and give them a good story to brag about in the officers' club at lunchtime over a few celebratory pints.

Charlie did what I think most of us would do in that situation -he picked up a broom and began swinging it in front of him in an attempt to keep the mufti at bay. You must imagine the scene -Charlie is terrified he is going to get the shit kicked out of him, a concern probably being confirmed by verbal threats coming from the psyched-up members of the mufti squad. The inmates, who would be shouting from the sidelines as more officers flooded the area to herd them back to their cells, are also encouraging him. There would be a delay of some minutes before the mufti would strike, as they would need to wait until the area was cleared of all other inmates to ensure they were not outnumbered and there would be no potential witnesses of the removal.

Unfortunately, during this stand-off period, in all the confusion and noise, an officer was caught by the broom Charlie was swinging around. The mufti squad immediately overpowered a stunned Charlie, and whoever else was close enough also jumped in, and a bruised and dazed Charlie was dragged off to the block. Once in the block he received the welcoming strip search and a 'know your place' roughing-up by the seg staff before being trussed up in a body belt and placed in a strip cell.. A prisoner in a strip cell with a body belt on is supposed to be visited by a doctor and, as far as I can remember, the belt is only meant to be worn for a maximum of a few hours. Charlie on this occasion saw no doctor and the belt remained on for days rather than hours. He had committed the cardinal sin in prison of striking a prison officer and so began his out-ofcontrol spiral into a journey to hell, with a little help from the prison staff who would never let him forget that he had struck one of them.

I have seen so many times the way that certain officers victimize inmates. It is common knowledge that if an inmate is involved in an incident with staff or tries to stand up for his basic rights he becomes a target for the vigilante-type bully staff. This abuse of authority went on daily and was an art handed down by older members of staff and accepted by senior management. More often than not, selected members of staff would receive an unofficial briefing by management informing them that inmate 'A' was causing them problems and would need to be 'removed' to the seg unit. This select group would then hatch an elaborate plan to carry out this order, which would always be done when the rest of the wing was locked up.