The Loose Screw (3 page)

Once in the strip cells of the seg unit, the inmates were subjected to a brutal disrobing of their clothes, which were literally torn from them, and then they were left, many of them bleeding and complaining of injury, lying naked on the bare concrete floor of the cell. To relocate all twelve inmates took approximately forty-five minutes in total, and I watched in disbelief as they were manhandled down the stairs and at the ferocity and venomous way in which the staff took pleasure in causing as much pain as possible in order to look good in front of this bearded wanker of a security PO.

Once all the inmates had been relocated, the staff involved all started slapping each other on the back, with mutual congratulations on a job well done. The stories then started about who did what to what slag, etc., and it was suggested that we all go over to the mess for a celebratory drink. However, I kept a low profile, as I didn't want to be part of such an egotistical group of idiots. As far as I could tell, a corrupt officer had started this whole incident and it was made worse by a sadistic PO. I could not understand the mentality of people that seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on someone who had been immobilized. All I saw was an abuse of power, but then again I had seen a lot of that during my time in the Prison Service.

Once the triumphant troops had left for the mess and the shouts of protest had faded from the segregation unit, I sat alone and wondered what gave me such a different outlook to the vast majority of the other staff in terms of how to deal with such situations. Unlike them, I felt no bitterness or hatred towards the inmates over the eruption -to me it was just part of the job I had signed up for. I did not blame the lads for what had just happened as, in my opinion, the whole situation had arisen as a result of poor management by staff. The three inmates initially involved in the visits incident had been quite understandably upset by the attitude of the staff, but had resisted the urge to do anything in front of their visitors. Once they returned to the spur and realized they would not get a reasonable explanation, they felt, as is quite often the case especially on a weekend when staffing levels are at a minimum, that they had to take action. The rest of the inmates may not have all agreed with them, but felt they had to support them. This is the nature of our prisons and it is no different to members of staff supporting colleagues by providing false statements.

I had only been in the job about a year and a half by this time, but I already feared that I had made a big mistake and was beginning to realize that I would never be able to act in the sort of unprofessional manner in which many officers conducted their duties on a daily basis. Each day I struggled with my conscience and inside questioned whether I was doing the right thing or not.

As I sat, now totally exhausted and alone with my thoughts, I tried to think why I was so different in my attitude, why I found it so hard just to fall in line with most of the other officers and go with the flow. I began to wonder how I had even ended up on this spur rolling around the floor with prisoners. The answers to why I possessed such a hatred of bullying or over-the-top acts of violence must lie in my past. The experiences I brought with me from past life exploits and people I have met must have forged me into the person I am today. I would need to go right back to the beginning to search for the answers and unravel what and who I was and where I had come from.

2

MY CHILDHOOD

I entered this world on the twenty-ninth of October 1968 in my parents' small council house in Harlow, Essex. I was born six weeks premature, weighing in at only two pounds and measuring about thirty centimetres tall. After a stay of some two months in hospital, during which it was touch and go whether I would survive, I was finally 'released' and christened Norman James Dawkins. The name and my lack of height were to give me some problems during my childhood days. However, as my big sister Jayne grew older and was unable to offer me the protection in the playground that older brothers and sisters do, I had to learn to fight my own battles and earn my own respect from my peers.

In 1968 my father Norman (hence my name), was teaching physical education at Netswell County Primary School in Harlow. He was also a very keen footballer and played amateur games for Barkingside United and the Welsh amateur team, Wales being my family's native homeland. My mother Helen was busy bringing up my sister and me. By 1971 I, my sister and my mother had moved to my grandparents' house in Maesteg, South Wales, for a brief period while my dad carried out his training as a physical education officer in the Royal Air Force at Hendon.

Shortly afterwards we joined him in our new house at RAF Honnington and, at the ripe old age of three, I set out on my first 'tour of duty' with the British forces. They were good days; we had a nice house and my days were spent playing war games and dodging the Modplod (MOD Police) with the other servicemen's kids. We spent hours roaming around the camp watching the various aircraft coming and going. Due to my dad's commitment to the air force he spent a lot of time away so it was up to mum to oversee our upbringing in the early days.

Although I was growing up on an airfield, even at that early age my fascination was not with the air force. From the age of about four or five I wanted to join the army. This stemmed from my grandad Tommy Dare, who dazzled me with tales from the Second World War, when he served with the Welsh Regiment from Normandy to Berlin.

My early childhood memories are of spending long holidays in Wales with both sets of grandparents, and my Auntie Mari and Uncle Clive. My gran and grandad (Tommy and Lillian Dare) ran a general store and I spent hours gripped with the stories my grandad had, which were both exciting and thrilling to a young boy but also extremely modest on his behalf. In all the tales he told it was always someone else he described as the 'hero'. I later realized that he was referring to his own exploits but didn't want to brag about the true horror of war to me at such an early age.

My gran, meanwhile, always felt I was not eating enough, even though I was quite 'chunky' at the time. She was always plying me with biscuits and doughnuts from Glynn 'Doughnuts', the shop's bakery delivery man. Even today she will remind me of this and she still talks about me to Glynn when she sees him. She is now almost ninety but is still as sharp as a twenty-year-old. I remember that during a recent birthday party held for her my Auntie Mari got so drunk she was sick on my sister's patio and my gran gave her a right earful about how if she couldn't handle her drink she shouldn't bloody drink it.

My other grandparents (Mue and Pop Dawkins) lived in the small village of Caerau and I spent many summer days there at 15 George Street. Pop had been a coal miner during the war, so, despite desperately wanting to join up, he was not allowed to do so because he was doing a job that was invaluable to the war effort. Mue was employed as a nurse, which was again a profession that was in demand at that time. Pop was also, like my dad, a very good footballer and as a result has always been extremely fit even into old age.

Each morning we would be up at the crack of dawn, have some toast grilled over the coal fire, make some banana sandwiches and set of for Porthcawl, the nearest coastal resort. There we would spend all day either on the beach messing around in the rock pools or on the rides at the Coney Beach fair. They must have been exhausted but never once did they refuse to take me, come rain or shine.

Mue sadly passed away recently following a short but courageous battle with stomach cancer. I didn't see as much of her as I should have done over the last few years, but her final words to me when I spoke to her at Christmas 1999 tore me apart. She was remembering our days at the beach and fair and what we used to get up to during those long holidays. Her parting words, the last I ever heard her say, were "Don't forget that Mue will always love you ". I broke down after that conversation. It was as if she knew she was dying, even though the family hadn't told her of the extent of her illness. I knew then that I couldn't handle seeing her in such a frail condition and will always remember her as she was before the cancer struck -a truly lovely, genuine woman to whom I owed so much early happiness.

Mue had also had to cope with nursing Pop for years, who was crippled with Alzheimer's disease. Once again it was extremely painful to see a man who had been so fit and healthy all his life struck down with such a terrible condition. All my grandparents are lovely people who never had a bad word to say about anyone, and I will certainly never forget the great start in life they all gave me with their unselfish love and devotion.

My Auntie Mari and Uncle Clive are also both lovely people who, despite having three children of their own (Iwan, Cerys and Meirion), always made room for me during the family holidays to their caravan in West Wales, and treated me just like one of their own. I will always be indebted to them for their kindness and devotion also.

My dad left the air force in 1977 and we moved to Shillabeer Walk in Chigwell, to a little house that looked like a wedge of cheese due to its unusual roof. Here he began working as the educational supervisor at Dagenham Sports Centre. My first memory of Shillabeer Walk was the street party to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee. I remember feeling quite upset because my sister and me only got black and white celebration mugs when all the other kids got coloured ones. The excuse I got was that because we were new arrivals they could not get us coloured ones and we were lucky to get one at all. It was here that I was first introduced to the sport of boxing, although not participating as my dad wouldn't allow it, and I wasn't to get the chance to do so until my army days.

One of the sports shops in Dagenham was run by a little old bloke with the most extraordinary nose I had seen to date. He claimed to have been a champion prize fighter in his day and ran a gym above the shop for young boxers. He tried desperately to persuade my dad to let me join, and kept giving me posters of Charlie Magri, who became my idol, for my bedroom wall. My dad, however, wouldn't give in and within the year we moved once again, this time to Eltham in southeast London. Eltham was to be a big chapter in my life. It was where I spent my teen years and began to explore my own independence for the first time.

On my first day there I strode confidently into the local park in search of some new friends, wearing my best pair of flared jeans. As I approached a small gang of kids about my age they began to fall about the floor in fits of laughter, calling me all sorts of things. I didn't have a clue what was wrong with them and thought I had stumbled across the local funny farm, until it dawned on me that they were all wearing these skintight jeans, and they were giving me grief about my flares. I ran home distraught that my first mission had been cut so embarrassingly short and promptly told my mum that I hated it here and was never going out again. They didn't have enough money to buy me new jeans, so mum got out the needle and thread and tailored the flares as much as she could so I could still get them on.

So looking like a Rod Stewart reject I was ready to venture out once again and, strangely enough, was accepted into the group with no further problems. I went to school at Wyborne Primary in New Eltham and was soon a fully fledged member of the Eltham Rude Boys. I remember once the gang and I decided to decorate my dad's shed with graffiti to do with the mods and the rude boys. We thought it was a real work of art until my dad found it and introduced us to another form of art -a good belt round the head followed by repainting the whole interior of the shed with some white emulsion.

After leaving primary school I started secondary school at Eltham Green Comprehensive. This chapter of my life was to prove to be a difficult one. As I mentioned before, my dad was a physical education teacher at a school sports centre and, as a result, he knew just about every teacher, either socially or professionally, at Eltham Green. This alone caused me a great deal of pressure. Not only did I have to worry about my every move being reported back to my dad, but I also took all the flak from the other kids for being 'that Mr Dawkins' son'. I began to experience the same feelings as every teenager, i.e. that I couldn't do anything and my parents were preventing me from making my own decisions. My dad also taught weight training at the local youth club a couple of nights a week where some of the 'hardest' boys in school went. So consequently if any of them had had a run in with my dad the night before it usually meant that I would have to end up scrapping in the playground to defend myself from a good kicking due to my dad upsetting some of these kids.

Of course most playground fights attracted huge crowds, which in turn attracted teachers, who in turn informed my dad, who in turn would have a go at me when I got home for embarrassing him in front of his colleagues, so I was pretty much in a no-win situation.

My life was about to take another turn in 1982 when somehow I managed to persuade my parents to let me join the local army cadet unit -the 93rd Royal Artillery Cadet Battery based at nearby Crown Woods School. I loved it; we did weapon training, drill, and map reading and staged mock battles in the woods behind the school. For two nights a week from seven until nine, the odd weekend and two whole weeks of camp during the summer holidays I escaped into my own little fantasy world as Lance Bombardier Jim Dawkins.

I had decided that James or Norman didn't fit in with my new 'military career' so from then on I introduced myself as Jim. It was through the army cadets that I met some good friends, some of whom were to continue to serve with me in the regular army when I joined the Royal Green Jackets. Good, loyal friends like Garry Thompson, Simon Long, Steve and Del Fairs, Roger F, and Mick T to name a few. Another good friend I made during my time with the cadets was Nikki Holland-Day. She was to introduce me to my first love and childhood sweetheart, her sister Natasha.

Natasha was about thirteen and I was almost fifteen when we met at the steps of the school playing fields and it was love at first sight. I can still picture her today in her Fila tracksuit top and grey skirt and her big Michael Jackson perm. We were so much in love but I had a problem. To me she appeared so confident and beautiful that it seemed too good to be true that she could be in love with me, and I daren't risk anything spoiling what we had together.