Just try to imagine this. You and five of your friends are going away for the weekend. You get off the train at the ferry terminal and the port police take you aside. They put each of you in a separate room and say that your local police are coming and they want to talk to you.
The local police arrive and immediately start screaming at you that you’re dirty, murdering bastards. Bombs have gone off in your hometown, killing dozens and maiming hundreds. You protest that it’s nothing to do with you, but the police say they don’t care, because you’re going down for it anyway.
Over the next three days they beat, threaten and torture you all until some of your friends can’t take it any more. They sign statements admitting guilt. At the subsequent trial you’re all convicted of mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. It takes 16 years for you to prove your innocence!
On the night of the 21st of November 1974 the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign reached an unprecedented level of murder and mayhem. There have been claims that warnings were given, but the stark facts are that at 8.18pm a blast ripped through The Mulberry Bush bar in Central Birmingham, killing ten people and injuring forty.
Two minutes later, a second bomb went off in the packed basement bar of The Tavern in the Town. That blast killed eleven and injured one hundred and twenty six, mostly young people.
There was a massive outpouring of public anger and revulsion at the outrage. It was accompanied by a fierce backlash against Britain’s Irish community. Consequently the police were under immense pressure to find the culprits and get convictions. Six Irishmen, domiciled in England, were arrested, beaten, tortured and made to sign confessions that were eventually to get them life sentences.
A long, drawn out campaign was started by the men, now called the Birmingham Six by the media, to prove their innocence. It was only after the intervention of Chris Mullins, MP, followed by two ‘World in Action’ reports, that they were released. They had served sixteen years!
I believed the Birmingham Six were innocent long before they were finally cleared on appeal and released. Not that it was a subject that occupied my attention in any meaningful way. Every jail has its complement of innocent men. For the rest of us trying to survive the tragedy that our own lives had become, it was nothing important. If we thought of them at all it was that they were ‘poor sods’. At least we had done something to merit our sentences.
On my travels from one top security jail to another, no matter how the regimes might differ, there was always one constant. At recreation time and exercise time out on the prison yard or sports field, the IRA prisoners would always congregate together. The most senior IRA man in the jail would automatically be the commanding officer, for these were men who considered themselves to be prisoners of war, not convicts. He would ‘hold court’ with the other IRA men. Although they did mix quite widely with other prisoners at other times, these meetings were solely for IRA members.
I was with all the Birmingham Six in various jails and at various times. Never once did I see them sit with the IRA. The real IRA men would tell us that the Six weren’t and never had been members. To many English prisoners that was too fine a distinction to make, so they shunned them anyway. They wandered lonely, tormented and ghost-like, across a human landscape blighted by tragedy and suffering.
I had been in Gartree Prison with Paddy Hill, one of the Six. I was there for only three months, yet never spoke to Paddy or even noticed him. Innocent or not, that was the degree to which he had become a faceless person in the human warehouse that is our long-term prison system.
After my release though, I did see quite a lot of him. Paddy had formed an organization called MOJO (Miscarriages of Justice Organisation) to fight for miscarriage of justice prisoners still incarcerated. Much of the journalism I was doing was related to criminal justice issues. I also got involved in the cases of other innocent men. It was inevitable that we meet.
I was always impressed by Paddy’s concern for others. He gave of himself tirelessly for countless campaigns, usually started by the innocent person’s family. And there was no ‘grandstanding’ with Paddy. He wasn’t after recognition, or even thanks, he genuinely identified with the person’s predicament and wanted to do all he could to help.
As an experienced and skilled observer of the human condition, I couldn’t help but make certain assessments about Paddy. They were so starkly obvious. Although neither nasty or vicious in any way, either by word or deed, he seethed with a barely suppressed anger. At times it exercised him to such an extent that he could hardly keep still.
Once he started talking about miscarriages of justice it would all pour out of him. He would fulminate and rage against the system in an uninterrupted torrent of pure bile. Sentences would be run together, liberally littered with foul language. If it was a cathartic release it certainly didn’t leave him spent and at peace. The anger and pain inside of him seemed utterly bottomless.
He readily confessed to bouts of uncontrollable rage, coupled with periods of deep depression. He slept only intermittently for a few hours each night. Often he would feel trapped in his apartment and would go for long walks at all hours of the day or night. He couldn’t relate at all to people. It had caused absolute chaos in his family life. Unable to relate to his wife or children, he had left them. This caused him severe feelings of guilt.
So even though he had physically left the prison sentence behind, it had not left him. Its mark was on him for every second of every day of his life. As someone who had experienced an extended period of extreme hardship and suffering myself, I had made something of a study about how people dealt with such things. I spoke to Eoin about doing an interview with Paddy Hill for ‘Front’ and he was very much up for it. For the magazine article I edited and structured the interview to make it easier to read. But here I will let Paddy speak to you himself, verbatim.
N… Paddy, can I just take you back? I know it will be painful. First, was there a book
P. …I wrote a book, ‘Forever Lost, Forever Gone.’
N. …So Paddy, you’d never been nicked before in your life?
P… Oh no, I’d been nicked before. I had a criminal record, violence, gang warfare, slicings and all that. GBH, wounding with intent to commit, etcetera, all part and parcel of coming over here and growing up in Birmingham. It was a very racialist city and very gang oriented. The problems that I encountered when I first came over were not really mine. Most of my problems were my younger brothers’ and my sister, people picking on them. We were a big family, six of us and I was more than capable of taking care of myself. And of course, coming out of the back-streets of Belfast, I’m the first person to admit that I was a vicious little bastard. But was a very happy-go-lucky guy, er, I was involved in taking and driving away. I loved motor bikes. I was only a kid, 15, just left school in ’59, then brought over to Birmingham. To be honest, I didn’t want to come over, but I had so many family over here, uncles and aunts and cousins etcetera, so we ended up coming over because there was nothing in Belfast for us, no work etcetera, usual thing. And my father had just come out of the British Army after 30 years service in ’59 and the reason he left, he was in the Territorial Army and he was an unarmed combat and weapons instructor for the British Army, but they wanted to make him the resident SM and they wanted us to move to Hollyrood Barracks and anyone who knows the geography of Northern Ireland, that’s like going into the lion’s den, and of course we weren’t going to come out of the Ardoyne in to there so my father came out of the British Army, but my older brother and the second eldest of six joined the British Army and came over here, then my Dad came over, then me Mum, then they came back over to Belfast and took us all over. And, of course, I lived in different parts of Birmingham and ended up in a place called Summer Lane. At the time it was probably the poorest area of Birmingham. It’s where all the poor Brummies..and a lot of them had Irish connections, marriage, etcetera, Scots and, as I say, I just fell in love with it. And of course I ended up meeting a girl and I fell in love with her and got married and by the time I got married I’d, for want of a better word, made a bit of a reputation for myself, and everybody knew to leave the family alone and that was it like. There was me and three mates and we all looked after each other, you know, there were four Scots fellas and three Irish, there were seven of us and the biggest one was five feet four, and we were all like, vicious, but we looked after each other and our families and that was what it was all about and I’m very proud of the fact that even though I’ve got a criminal record, none of my brothers have. I sent them all to college. They became master tradesmen, one of them’s a master carpenter, another’s a master builder, etcetera, and none of them’s ever been in trouble. I took all the trouble being the oldest one there, I thought it was my job and if someone had to go to jail, I was prepared to go to jail and I did it.
N. …It was old time values.
P… Exactly, and that’s the way it was in the old areas, every body stuck together and by the time 1974 came around I was a happily-married man. I had five daughters and, of course, I had a son, he was the youngest of the six. And to all intents and purposes my world was complete. We’d always wanted a son and my world was complete. And of course in 1972 in Ireland things had escalated and the Provisional IRA which had just been set up then after the civil rights thing in ’60. After that was set up, someone in the Army command at home in the IRA made a decision to take the war to the mainland. And in and around the Midlands between 1972, which culminated in the Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974, there was probably about 60 to 70 bombings that had occurred in and around a 30 to 40 mile radius of Birmingham and of course during all those attacks, up ‘til then, the only fatalities was one person dropped dead down in the Old Bailey bomb from a heart attack and the only other fatality was a bomb disposal expert in Birmingham who tried to defuse a bomb. And of course everybody knows that most of the IRA’s deaths in those days were what were called ‘own goals’, because the method of bomb making then was very crude compared to the technique they have today, that has become so sophisticated over the years. And then in 1974, in August, the whole pattern of bombing in this country changed for some unknown reason, and before that, bombs that were planted, there was always adequate warning for the areas to be safely cordoned off, and until mid ’74 the exact locations were always given. There was never any obscurity about them, they were precise and exact. And due to that saving grace, there were no people that were injured or killed before then, but then the whole pattern changed and we had the M62 coach bombing, which a young English girl, Judith Ward, was finally fitted up by the same forensic scientist who fitted me up, Dr Skuse. In fact, the evidence he gave against Judith Ward was the exact opposite to what he gave in the Birmingham Six case and, of course, shortly after that came the Guildford and Woolwich bombs in the October.
N… When was the M62 bomb?
P… That was in August ’74 and then there was the Guildford and Woolwich in October ’74. And of course, in between there was other bombs in and around the country. But the next major one was the Birmingham pub bombings. And the revulsion that that sent around the country was, I must confess I have never read an account in a newspaper, anything, about the Birmingham pub bombings. By the time I got access to the newspapers it had sort of disappeared from…you know. And the only news that was in the newspapers then was the fact of us going to court every Thursday on remand.
N…. So you were actually on your way over to Ireland when you were arrested?
P… I was. On the night in question, in 1974, in November. James McDade,a young Irishman from Ardoyne in Belfast, who I grew up with, who comes from the same area as me. And of course, one of my co-defendants, Jerry Hunter, we all lived together in Birmingham, we worked together, although I didn’t see much of McDade, he was a loner, but Jerry Hunter and myself were very pally, we worked on numerous painting firms and what have you. And Johnny Walker and Richard McKilkenny, we all came from the same area, Hughie Callaghan. And we knew James McDade and, of course, when he blew himself up….I didn’t find out until the Sunday. I thought at first it was a Scots fella because of the way it was being pronounced. And I found out on the Sunday and I found out Jerry and them were going to go home for the funeral and of course, I made my arrangements as well, because I had an aunt, my aunt Mary who reared me in the Ardoyne, we lived next door to my aunt and my granny. So I was going home to see my aunt and also, as I said at my trial, I would have paid my respects to Mr and Mrs McDade on the death of his son and, of course, at that particular time and even up to the present moment, people in the upper classes in this country, especially judges in the courts, they have a very hard time understanding Irish culture. They don’t seem to understand and never wanted to understand, that in relation to funerals, funerals are probably the biggest business in Ireland and they are carried out with such reverence etcetera, and as I try to tell people when I am speaking at universities and public meetings, if I had a choice to go to a funeral or a wedding, I would take the funeral. And the reason why, if it was a drink and you like the craic, and at that time I did, if you go to a wedding, the wedding only starts on the Saturday and finishes on the Sunday and that’s it. But if you go to a funeral, the funeral lasts for a week. And everybody sits around telling yarns. It’s a non-stop craic for three or four days while the body lies in state at home. And of course, I would have gone to McDade’s funeral, not as the prosecution put up at the trial that we were going to honour a big IRA hero etcetera. Bullshit! It goes to show how ignorant the judges are and the upper classes are in this country in respect of the IRA or anything Irish. In relation to the IRA, they never display any form of heroism for anyone. They don’t have any other rank other than one and the only rank they have is the Quartermaster. In our trial they put us up as, Johnny Walker was a brigadier, there was lieutenants, there was fucking captains, you name it. And Billy Power who had only joined, who had only joined the IRA a half hour before, according to the prosecution, and he became a lieutenant instantly. People like us laugh because we have to, but it’s so stupid, but this is the sort of things that were portrayed at our trial.
N…. At what stage did you realize that you were in trouble?
P…. I remember I had very mixed feelings, because people were under the impression that we were arrested. We were never arrested. When we got to Heysham boat station I met a cop there who, a detective constable of Heysham port security, he was from Morecombe police force. He questioned me. I had a wonderful time with that man and his sidekick, a superior officer, a sergeant Watson, and I was involved with two police forces. The one the Morecombe police force and the other the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad. In relation to the Morecombe police force I have only one complaint against them. And that complaint is in respect to the way they closed ranks and didn’t come forward to tell the truth about us being tortured at the police station. They admitted off the record you could hear the screaming and they knew that we were getting battered and tortured something terrible, but none of them come forward and still have not today. But in respect of my treatment in the hands of the Morecombe police, they couldn’t have treated the Royal Family any better. I have nothing but the utmost respect for them. And with detective constable Willoughby, I had the craic with him, and on television that was portrayed that there was some sort of hue and cry and big police blockade on the ports. Bullshit! There wasn’t even a cop on Heysham port security when we got there and when we come through the door onto the concourse, there were half a dozen plastic tables laid out with two cops on each and I walked up to one of them and he asked me where I was coming from and I told him where I was going, Belfast, etcetera, and he asked me to step into the office and I asked him where it was and he pointed behind him at a portakabin and he asked me a number of questions, where I was coming from, where I was going, my age, normal routine, because I’d been in the hands of the police. He asked me if I owed any fines, but I said I paid them. I told him that I had criminal convictions, but wasn’t wanted by the police. I told him I was clean, have been for years. We had a great craic and we come out of there and was talking about the football match the night before. He walked me along the concourse and took me up the gangplank of the boat and we stood there talking for about ten minutes and he wished me a good voyage. And he came back on the boat about a half an hour later and took me off and told me that the officer in charge wanted to talk to me. That there had been some explosion in England. And when I come off there I went over to the security offices and went in and it was then that Sergeant Bell had informed me that bombs had gone off in Birmingham and, I’ll never forget his words, he told me, quote, excuse the pun Paddy, you know how things get blown up out of all proportion, but this is serious, bombs have blown up and there have been over two hundred people injured and there’s 14 killed, but I can tell you it’s serious. I said, “I understand, sir.” And he asked me if I had any objections to seeing Birmingham police. I said, “No, what time’s the next train back?” He said that there was no train ‘til the morning, but not to worry because Birmingham police would come down and take a statement from me. But would I mind going down to Heysham?
N…. So where are the others?
P…. I was taken into a little office, so I think they are getting the same treatment. But I’m clean so I don’t give a fuck. I waited about ten minutes, got in a car with two policemen and drove down to Morecombe police station a few miles away and got there about two o’ clock in the morning, pissing down with rain and it was a brand new police station. That’s the thing I remember better than anything. It was glittering like a jewel in the fucking desert, you know what I mean? I got out the car and walked up the steps of the station and as I walked up those steps I never dreamed for one second Norman that those were the last steps of freedom I’d take for sixteen and a half years I walked into the police station and Sergeant Willoughby came in after me and told the desk sergeant that I was waiting to be interviewed. And he said, “you can put your feet there, Paddy” and I sat right next to the door for three quarters of an hour and the desk sergeant got up twice and left. I could have got up and walked out of the police station anytime. A short time after, Willoughby came back with a detective sergeant and we went into an office and I made a detailed statement about my movements for 48 hours.
N…. Which, as an experienced criminal, you wouldn’t have done…
P… I give them my home address, phone number, everything, gave them the information with respect to my criminal record, when I got out of jail the last time, etcetera, etcetera and I gave them a full detailed statement and they went away and I’m sitting there and they came back at half past six in the morning and they told me they checked me out, etcetera, etcetera, and that everything I had told them was 100% correct, including the fact that I was with the others and that we had stopped at Crewe to change trains and that I’d bought the teas and coffees. And I’m sitting in the custody area on a little bench, reading a book that one of the cops had given me. And I remember the door opened and I’ve got two uniformed cops in sight, one of them was Scots and we’re having a great craic, we’d been slagging each other off about the football and the boxing and the door opened and I looked up and these two guys walked in and they had bundles of clothes, shirts and jackets in their arms and they dumped them behind the door, and I could feel that they were glowering at me and I happened to look up and I could feel the vibes coming off them and I looked outside the door and there was another guy, only he had a .38 Colt Smith and Weston shoulder holster with a gun in it and he had one on his hip and I remember thinking to myself, “Fuck me, some poor bastard’s in for a rough ride”, and I never dreamt for one second that it was me. And then about half past seven, I’m sitting on the bench and I knew I’m in trouble then.
There was a cop, I later found out it was Sergeant Bennet of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad, about six feet two, 17 stone, with a military look and he’s standing over me rubbing his hands. And I was a lot heavier then, Norman, about 14 stone, 46 inch chest and 19 inch neck, I was like a little bull, and he said to me, “See you, you little bastard, you dirty, murdering, little Irish fuck-pig”, and he spat right in my face. And I went like, “What the fuck are you on about?” And he pushed me down in the chair and said, “You’ll find out soon enough you dirty, little murdering cunt” and he spat in my face again and walked away. And that’s when I realised I was in trouble. I never realised I was in serious trouble until the Saturday. They’d been battering me all day the Friday, Saturday. Just how much trouble I realised about half past six on the Saturday night. I was brought back after my second interview, they’d been at me from about a quarter to nine in the morning to 5.30. I try to tell people this and people find it amazing, but I have never, ever been questioned about the Birmingham pub bombings in my life, not even by the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.
N…. So they’d already made up their minds, eh?
P…. Sergeant Bennet and Constable Barn told me, quote, “We know you didn’t do it. We don’t give a fuck who done it. Our orders are that we’re to get the confessions and the convictions and to use any means possible. It keeps the public off our gaffer’s back and our gaffer off our back.” unquote. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. He picked me up by the hair and lifted me up and shoved the piece of paper under my nose and said, “Read that, you fucking murdering bastard, read it. That’s our orders, get confessions and convictions, signed right to the top, we can do what we like, we can take you out and shoot you if we want, you’re going to jail, end of story. You can have it the easy way or the fucking hard way, and the easy way”, he picked up the statement form and said, “sign under the caution, sign the bottom right hand corner. We can fill it in. You can have it the easy way or the hard way.” And I said, “I aint” and that was as far as I got. They knocked me off the chair and kicked me up and down the floor again, and this carried on until half past five on the Friday. And of course, at intermittent times, they were telling me that my co-defendants were making statements admitting that they’d done this, and that I was the bomb maker. I was the explosive expert, etcetera , etcetera, and of course, I didn’t believe any of this. I knew the old fucking police routine. And they took us back down to Birmingham and tried to throw me out on the motorway and put guns in my mouth in the car, broke all me teeth. And that’s why I had to have special implants. I had no gums or nothing, my gums were busted. And they battered me again on the Saturday morning, they kept me awake all the Friday night with guns, terrorizing us. And then the Saturday morning took me out and photographed me, fingerprinted me. Took me upstairs about seven o’ clock in the morning and then they were battering me from then until one o’ clock. I remember Bennet looking at his watch and saying it was five to one and they were going to go for their dinner. I was out in the cells area and they came back about three o’ clock and they carried on battering me to about half past five, six o’ clock. They said they were going to go for their tea and they would be back afterwards. And that afternoon they told me that Billy Powers had made a statement and he’d said this, that and the other. And they brought this statement, but they wouldn’t let me see it. They read bits and pieces of it, you know, they also told me that my ex-wife had made one, saying that I was in the IRA and all this, but I knew it was all a load of bollocks, because I wasn’t in the IRA. When I got back to my sell I bent down and whispered through the vent, you know the old prison routine, but they threatened to batter us more if they heard us whispering through the vent, and it was Billy Power. And I said,” Billy, the cops say that you’ve signed a statement. Please Billy, son, tell me it isn’t true.” And Billy Power just bursted out crying and he said, “I’m sorry Paddy Joe, But I couldn’t take any more, I can’t take it.” And I said, “Don’t worry son, it will be sorted out when we get to court”, but I knew then that it was all over. And, as it turned out, we didn’t go for trial, we were already convicted. All we went for was to be sentenced. They talk about a fair trial and all that, when we finally got out they refused to put the cops up on trial even though there was more evidence, we had concrete evidence to show that they had falsified everything and they refused to put them up on trial. The magistrate said that they wouldn’t get a fair trial because of all the adverse publicity. Adverse publicity! Well even before we were charged on the Sunday, we had the Assistant Chief Constable of Birmingham on television that weekend, with our photographs and everything, and we hadn’t even made a court appearance yet. And our photographs are on television and he’s telling the whole world, “we caught the people who done the bombings, they’re covered in gelignite, these are the people who planted the bombs, etcetera, etcetera.“ Adverse publicity!
N…. Did we ever meet in jail, Paddy?
P….Yes, we met in Gartree Jail. I got slung out of Gartree five times and they had to bring me back because no other jail would take me. I spent the first four years in Gartree in the block practically, working on my case, and I spent most of it in solitary, and it was only in, what, 1985, when the World in Action program came out that they started getting off my back, you know what I mean.
N…. So when you first got out did you immediately get involved in the protest movement for other people?
P…. Oh yes, before I got out I had been with Jimmy Robinson of the ‘Bridgewater Four’, also Brian Parsons and a number of other people, and I told Jimmy, I was naïve enough, I told Jimmy that I’d give him the first year of my life. Nine months after us the ‘Totenham Three’ were cleared, but immediately after that the gate came down. During the first year I was out I picked up a number of cases along the way. Since I’ve been out I’ve been involved with about a hundred people. I’m glad to say the vast majority have gone to the Court of Appeal. Two weeks after I got out I got £50,000 as an interim payment. I’d like to say I spent it, but I squandered it. I had no valuation of money. No one spoke to me since I left jail, the last one to speak to me was the Appeal Court judge, who said we were free to leave and that’s the last person of officialdom who spoke to me.
N… Paddy, at least I had the consolation of knowing I did what I did to get in jail, but you didn’t have that.
P… I could never come to terms with it. I used to walk up and down that fucking cell every night and I kept asking myself over and over again, “what the fuck am I doing here, why am I here?” And even today I say, like the way the courts have done it, no charges against the police. In the last ten years approximately 300 people have been released by the courts, wrongfully imprisoned, and they’ve probably served between them about 3,000 years, and nobody’s done anything wrong, not one police officer has stood on trial.
N….. And this is why you formed MOJO?
P…. Well since I’ve come out I’ve been campaigning on my own. I got £300,000 in interim payments and the only thing I’ve bought myself is a flat in Muswell Hill, cost me £100,000 and I’ve spent about £100,000 or more campaigning for people here and all round Europe, America, etcetera. And I’ve always paid my own way, never been paid for anything. Even when I go to speak I’d pay for myself. I was spending a couple of hundred pounds a week and it ended up, last year, well I’m on income support. I’m getting deeper and deeper in debt, but what I want to do is set up a network of MOJO offices. However, under the new legislation that has been introduced by Jack Straw, he now states that the officer in charge of the case will be the officer who decides what is and what is not evidence, that officer will also be the officer to say which of the evidence, if any, he wishes to disclose to the defence, and also, after five years, paperwork of the case will be destroyed. Everyone knows that in respect of miscarriage of justice cases, under the present system that is being run by the Government, mainly the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the way the system runs, everyone knows the two biggest things in miscarriages of justice, one, is very bad legal representation, the Commission and the Government say that 65% of people wouldn’t be wrongly convicted if they had decent legal representation, the other big thing is non-disclosure with regard to legal representation. What it mans is that the cops can go into court and get away with saying anything they like. People say that the system hasn’t learned anything. I tell people that that’s the biggest, stupidest remark they will ever make. In actual fact the system has learned a hell of a lot. Under the new legislation they’ve learned how not to get caught so easily.
N…. The whole experience seems to have affected you very badly. What are the worst things?
P… The depression. My major problem is depression. The doctors told me that I had been living in a depressed state for so long that it was now normal for me. They recommended to the Home Office that I get five years deep psychological counseling. Post-traumatic stress and ‘Vietnam syndrome’ were both mentioned. The anti-depressants didn’t work. The only thing that did work was to smoke loads and loads of cannabis. If I traveled to a new place I didn’t want to go out and kept bursting into tears all the time. I had no appetite. I couldn’t sleep. I felt angry and frustrated all the time.
N…. You’ve been out for 12 years now. Is this getting better or worse?
P…. That old cliché of time being a wonderful healer is a lot of bollocks. If you’re lucky it helps you to come to terms with it a bit better, but it doesn’t heal fuck all.
In 2003 Marsha suddenly decided that I had wasted far too much time gallivanting about the world on what she thought to be pointless assignments and that I should now do something positive with my life. She suggested that I should do a Master’s degree in criminology. I already had a B.A. Hons, which I had passed in prison. This didn’t impress Marsha one bit. She had two Honours degrees, two Masters degrees and was on the verge of getting her Doctorate. By comparison I was something of a dunce.
I did argue that, at 58, I was a bit too old to start a career in criminology. Marsha’s answer to that was that people of 80 regularly took and passed various degrees. It did interest me though. I was very knowledgeable about criminal matters and I did think that, perhaps, I could bring a new perspective to the discipline. All it would cost me was three and a half grand of my money and nine months of my life?
Initially, the powers-that-be at Surrey University refused to accept me. They seemed to be troubled by the small matter of my murder and manslaughter convictions. I contemplated arguing along the lines that for many years I had been working on mastering the practical side of criminology, now I wanted to move on to the theoretical. However, one man’s irony is another man’s sarcasm. Instead I got my MP, my probation officer and the head of a prisoners’ rights group to phone up and complain.
It was a pushover. Terrified of being seen as politically incorrect towards any minority, even one as esoteric as ex-murderers, they accepted me, with the proviso that all the other students should be warned about me. It was just as well that I had developed a thick skin over the years. I wouldn’t have cared if no one had talked to me. In the event, everyone in the social sciences department was very friendly.
The criminology course was in its first year. There were five students, myself and four women. Assessment for the degree came in two parts. The first was based on assignments, the second on a piece of original research, a thesis. The subject matter for my thesis came to me right away.
Through associating with Paddy and getting involved in miscarriage of justice issues I had met several other wrongfully imprisoned men. There is a prison term used to describe someone whose mental state is in considerable disarray. We say that they are ‘shot to pieces’. All of the wrongfully imprisoned men I had met were thoroughly ‘shot to pieces’.
I had wondered why they should be like this when the vast majority of guilty men who had done very long sentences had survived in much better mental condition. I decided to make this the subject of my thesis. If it had been an article for ‘Front’ no doubt I would have called it, ‘Shot to Pieces’. In social scientific jargon it didn’t have quite that ring, becoming, ‘Coping strategies and enduring psychological trauma in some miscarriage of justice victims’. Here is the ‘Conclusion’
Conclusion
There is abundant evidence that human beings are affected by their environment, whether it be by the mechanism of ‘dynamic interchange’ (p.5) as described by Ittelson, Rivlin, Proshansky and Winkel (1974), or by some less interactive method. And if they are going to be affected by any environment, then they are most surely going to be affected by prison, that harshest of human environments so eloquently described by Toch (1979, 1992). However, the point at issue here is how deeply the individual will be affected, and will the effects be lasting and, perhaps, irreversible?
There is much in the literature to support the argument that significant psychological damage can be caused by a prison sentence. However, once a rigourous scientific methodology is applied to the results, there is little evidence to show that it will endure after the inmate leaves the institution.
Zamble and Porporino (1988) predict that, “most men will return to some approximation of their behaviour before imprisonment” (p.148). Following their review of the literature, Walker (1993) and Gearing (1979) agree.
My own experience and that of the three lifers I interviewed for the control group also strongly support this position. Jack equates the experience to that of his school or army days. When Peter thinks of the prison years he just thinks of the good times. For John it was “an education you can’t buy”. For my part, I still have many prison friends with whom I regularly talk about the old times and manage to laugh.
As traumatic as the experience was at the time, it has left no lasting, harmful effects. There is no sleep disturbance, fear of crowds, traumatic association, difficulty with relationships, or any of the other conditions that seem to afflict the ‘miscarriage of justice’ group. If Peter now considers himself to be a “well-balanced, reasonable guy”, then perhaps this description fits all four of us. The experience is behind us.
The same cannot be said for the six men in the sample group. There are the grave diagnoses by the many psychiatrists they have seen between them, and, especially, those of Dr Adrian Grounds. Apart from this, Paddy Hill, Raff Rowe, Michael Davis and John Kamara all show clear signs of dyscontrol and disequilibrium. According to Menninger’s categories, they are not coping. If we include self-intoxication and narcotisation, neither is Bob Maynard.
Similarly, none of this group fits neatly into Goffman’s categories of coping strategies. The closest is Goffman’s ‘intransigent line’, but this is “typically a temporary and initial phase or reaction, with the inmate shifting to situational withdrawal or some other line of adaption”. (p.62) However, the inmates of the ‘miscarriage of justice’ sample group maintained their ‘intransigence’ for the 12, 16 or 20 years of their incarceration.
When we come to examine the coping strategies of the control group vis a vis the sample group we sees significant differences. All the control group settled down comparatively quickly in their sentences. Even I abandoned my escapes and ‘prison activist’ role afterten years. This means that the four of us had many years of stable, if monotonous, prison routine before we were released.
Further, we all enjoyed the support of prison friendships. Peter says, “I couldn’t have made it without the support of my fellow prisoners.” Jack talks about how he “got support from other inmates and found them to be good fellas.” John speaks of other inmates taking him under their wing and I had support from the Londoner’s criminal network. Paddy has referred to the support he got from other prisoners, but in his own words he was, “in and out of blocks, 40 moves and lie-downs, thrown out of Gartree nine times”. This also involved a considerable period of solitary confinement. John Kamara did 16 years in solitary. Raff and Michael spent long periods in isolation in the punishment block. This life-style is not conducive to either forming or maintaining friendships in prison. I, and the others of the control group, enjoyed the social support of friendships that often lasted several years.
Then there is the enormous damage that solitary confinement does to the psyche. ‘Miscarriage of justice’ victims typically do far longer spells in solitary than normal prisoners, so this in itself could be a contributory factor to their experiencing enduring psychological problems on release. I, and many other prisoners who were ‘career criminals, also had the support of a sustaining ideology. I believed that the distribution of wealth in society was unfair and a spirited man would, of necessity, come into conflict with the law. Imprisonment then becomes an unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected, result of this outlook.
McKorkle and Korn (1954) reflect something of this view when they say, “In many ways,
the inmate social system may be viewed as providing a way of life which enables the inmate to avoid the devastating psychological effects of internalising and converting social rejection into self-rejection. In effect, it permits the inmate to reject his rejectors rather than himself.” (p.58 in Goffman) Needless to say, the innocent, ‘miscarriage of justice’ victim does not have the support of this or any other inmate sustaining ideology.
Another factor is the effect of being different, being ‘innocent’ in a world of guilty men and how much this set them apart from their fellow prisoners. From my own experience, in the cynical world of long term prisons, there is little sympathy for ‘innocent’ men. If anything, they remind other prisoners of that especially traumatic early period when they themselves were fighting to prove their innocence. They failed and have moved on. They are settled down, doing their time and don’t need to be reminded of it. Raff’s remark, “I made no friends in prison” is deeply disturbing. I have never, ever heard of anyone before who never made a friend in prison. It is symptomatic of all that is wrong about the way he forced himself to do his time. There is little doubt in my mind that the way the sample group forced themselves to do their time, the isolation, etc, is a major, contributory factor to the subsequent enduring psychological damage. However, it isn’t the whole story. There is a final trigger. Maynard and Dudley are the two ‘miscarriage of justice’ victims who spent the longest in prison. Yet, on the face of it, they have suffered nothing like the enduring psychological damage that the other four of the sample group have. So if the contention of this paper is that a further effect of suffering a miscarriage of justice is enduring psychological harm, what is it that is different in the cases of Maynard and Dudley? At first sight, Maynard and Dudley could have been members of the control group. They quickly settled into the prison routine, without recourse to disobedience and rule breaking. It could even be said that Dudley fits Goffman’s category of ‘colonisation’ by using his painting ability to take the maximum advantage of privileges available.
Both were committed criminals in so far as they had extensive criminal records and had served significant jail sentences. Both were supported by networks of friends in prison. In
Dudley’s words, “It was no hardship going into prison…you know the routine.” And like the control group, they have emerged from prison with little obvious psychological damage. They have reintegrated themselves into their social milieu in a comparatively short time. There is some underlying bitterness, but nothing like that of the other ‘miscarriage of justice’ victims. Neither is there traumatic association with all things that remind them of prison. On interview, both were relaxed and as ‘normal’ as any of the control group. There was little to distinguish them from men who had never been in prison. When pressed for an explanation of how he had re-adapted so well, and with so little obvious psychological damage, Maynard suggested that it was a function of his having been a professional criminal. As a professional criminal he had expected to go to prison. He even went so far as to say that, had he been framed for the sort of crime that he had actually committed, though not been caught for, he could have fully accepted it. Dudley certainly shared the ‘professional criminal’s’ outlook too. So perhaps that was it, then. Even though Kamara had done a four and a half year sentence for armed robbery and Rowe and Davis had both served short sentences for minor crimes, perhaps it was the fact that Maynard and Dudley had considered themselves to be professional criminals (with all the mindset that went with that) that prevented the latter pair from suffering enduring psychological harm. I wasn’t really convinced. Then I realised something that had not fully registered with me before. Both Maynard and Dudley had been released from prison in the conventional way that most long term prisoners are released. They had gone through the whole procedure of open prison, town visits, working outside, home leaves, working on the hostel scheme and finally release. It was after they had been released that they had been cleared. Talking of the release procedure, Cohen and Taylor (1972) say, “there is much attention in ordinary prisons to preparing the inmate for this transition:- vocational training, half way hostels, pre-release programs”. They also refer to, “the psychological ‘bends’ the men will face as they re-surface.”
Apocryphal tales abound of the old lag who has served all his sentence in a closed prison only to refuse to leave on the final day due to an inordinate fear of freedom itself. There are very few ‘frills’ in prison. The Prison authorities do not waste money on things that have no proven, practical worth. The pre-release procedure is expensive in terms of
both staff time and prison resources. It is there for a good reason. When I am asked what my first day of freedom was like after more than twenty years inside, I always ask in return what day they are referring to. Is it my first ‘town walk’ with the Governor; my first ‘town walk’ on my own, my first day ‘working outside’; my first day with my mother on home leave or even my first day on the hostel scheme? It most certainly wasn’t that last day when they finally signed the paper and let me go. For the average long-term prisoner, freedom is a lengthy procedure rather than an event. For ‘miscarriage of justice’ victims it is an event, and a cataclysmic one at that. Except for Maynard and Dudley, all were taken from their cells in a closed prison and released within hours. What a supreme irony it would be if the very thing they had yearned for, for so many years, immediate freedom, was the very thing that did them enduring psychological harm!
So, be careful what you wish for!