His 15-year old son was at first convinced it must be an April Fool. When Brendan O’Friel’s bleeper went off on the morning on Sunday, April 1, 1990, the message was that a riot had broken out at Strangeways. A cruel joke, surely?
O’Friel had done his rounds at the Victorian jail only the day before and all had seemed peaceful. “No prisoner came sidling up to me and said ‘There’s going to be trouble, gov’, as prisoners would from time to time,” he recalls.
But at Sunday service in the prison chapel, a tough Birkenhead prisoner called Paul Taylor strode to the stage, grabbed the microphone in defiance of chaplain Noel Proctor and began a rabble-rousing speech. A hard core of 16 other inmates were in on the plan, carrying masks to distribute to other prisoners.
Taylor punched a prison officer to the ground and others snatched his keys. Soon prisoners were storming out onto the wings freeing other prisoners, prising doors from their hinges and hurling them over balconies.
Strangeways: The day the rooftop rebels took over
The irony is that at the time Strangeways exploded, the prison was improving. Just a week before the uprising, the jail had been given a positive inspection report, testament to the reforming work of O’Friel, who arrived as governor in 1986.
“The place was still a terrible mess in terms of any objective criteria, but we had done a lot of really good work,” says O’Friel. “Instead of being locked up as much as they were, a lot of prisoners were getting out for association in the evenings, one evening in three.
"We improved the work places for all the convicted and sentenced prisoners considerably, and a lot were into half-day work. When I arrived, an awful lot were totally unemployed during the day. A lot would be locked up pretty well all the time except for coming out for meals and an hour for exercise.”
Despite the reforms, Strangeways was still overcrowded, with cramped, shared cells and the indignity of “slopping out”. Its certified normal accommodation was 970, but by April 1, there were 1,647 prisoners. Some 250 of those had arrived since Christmas.
“I can remember saying to regional office ‘Can’t we do something to get the population back down?’,” says O’Friel. “I don’t think they saw it as a priority. If we’d been able to take one or two hundred out, that would have sharply decreased the chances of the riot.”
As the prisoners took over the jail, beatings were dished out to segregated inmates accused of sex offences. Barricades were erected, fires were lit and masked rioters battered their way through to the roof, raining heavy slates down on prison officers. It was the start of 25 days of anarchy. At one point it seemed a very real possibility that hundreds of prisoners would breach the prison walls and rampage towards Manchester city centre.
Many of the prisoners wanted no part of the riot, but simply removing them to other safe custody was a “logistical nightmare” in itself.
“If anybody had said to me on the Saturday ‘We want you to evacuate 1,200 prisoners from Strangeways in 24 hours’, I’d have said you can’t do it,” says O’Friel. “And yet we did that and we didn’t lose anybody in the course of it.”
By the second day, fewer than 200 rioters remained in the prison. But having lost their computers and manual records, prison authorities could not make a definitive head count for days.
That lack of certainty encouraged rumours that a slaughter had taken place. Were these rioters dancing on the roof knowing that the bodies of their victims lay strewn amid the wreckage of Strangeways? For days, that was the question that enthralled what was by now a worldwide media circus camped at cordons around the jail.
By day two, O’Friel had 450 prison officers in riot gear standing by to re-take the main prison. But, unable to reassure Brian Emes, deputy director general of the prison service, that the assault would not result in injuries, perhaps even fatalities, the governor was ordered to abort the operation.
It’s very difficult to negotiate with people if you don’t have any powerBrendan O'Friel
“We then didn’t have any alternative strategy other than trying to find other ways of putting pressure on prisoners to surrender,” says O’Friel. “We set up a negotiating team, but it’s very difficult to negotiate with people if you don’t have any power. The prisoners obviously knew that we hadn’t been allowed to go in and take the prison.”
As prison officers played a waiting game, a rash of disturbances broke out in other prisons. The number of rioters dwindled until by April 23 there were just seven. But the authorities still could not know what may await officers who ventured to the upper landings in pursuit of the rump of the rioters.
Taylor had briefed surrendering inmates to tell false horror stories about fiendish booby traps, such as holes hacked in the landings and covered with lino – man traps through which officers would fall to their deaths.
Eventually, newspapers caught wind of O’Friel’s earlier thwarted plan to quell the riot, and splashed it across front pages, Home Secretary David Waddington arrived at Strangeways unannounced, giving authority for an attack.
On April 23, rioter Alan Lord – a muscle-bound murderer who had been a dominant presence on the roof – had been ambushed and captured.
“That was one of the highlights,” says O’Friel. “He was a big player in their command structure and very influential. Once we got Lord out of it, we were in a much better position to conclude things peacefully.”
Then on April 25, prison officers moved into the upper landings, capturing one prisoner, then breaking through to the roof where the final five rioters surrendered.
Improved
The Woolf Report, looking at the disturbances at Strangeways and other jails, made a host of recommendations to make prison more humane. Slopping out disappeared soon after, payphones were introduced into jails, the first Prisons Ombudsman was appointed.
Prison conditions improved dramatically. But something even more remarkable happened in the 20 years since the riot. In April 1990, the prison population of England and Wales was 45,518. Today, the figure is over 84,000. That number is “extraordinary, given the cost in both human and financial terms”, says O’Friel.
“We’ve had to build more prisons, and I think that many of the arguments that we were advancing 20 years ago still apply, about prisoners being dealt with in other ways – by shorter sentences or non-custodial sentences for those who have committed non-violent offences,” says O’Friel, who was a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust until four years ago.
“Historically, you can almost pin it down to that famous, or infamous, Michael Howard speech to the Tory conference in 1992 or 1993 about how ‘prison works’. From then on, Labour, in order not to lose the image of being tough on crime, got into competition with the Tories about who could be the toughest, and ‘toughest’ was interpreted as longer sentences, more people in prison.
“There’s quite a lot of evidence that the overall effect of the politicians talking tough, and the media supporting that line generally has influenced both the legislation, the judges and the magistrates and as a result we end up with a larger and larger prison population.
“While we have to lock up violent and dangerous offenders, there are a number of people in prison who are very damaged, very inadequate and I’m sure we could deal with in other ways.
“Old Victorian mental hospitals needed something doing about them, but the result is a significant number of people in prison with mental illnesses, where it’s difficult for the prison service to provide adequate treatment.
“From my perspective, it’s quite depressing to see that we are locking up over 80,000 now, and although the level of overcrowding is nothing like it was in the time of the Strangeways riot, and conditions generally have improved, there are some areas where, I think, if anything things have got slightly worse.
“They do seem to have gone through a phase of moving people round the country at a much greater rate than we used to, simply to avoid overcrowding. That’s hugely damaging to anybody trying to run a positive regime, to build positive relationships with staff, to run programmes to improve prisoners’ abilties, to address offending behaviour. All those things are hugely difficult if one day you’ve got a prisoner and the next day the prisoner is gone.”
O’Friel fought suggestions that Strangeways be razed to the ground and replaced with a prison on a greenfield site. But he did not stay to see the rebuilding, moving to govern Risley, then take a senior prison administrative role in London before retiring at 55. Now 68 and living in the Isle of Man, he chairs a public transport passenger body, and is Surveillance Commissioner, having oversight of all surveillance operations by public authorities on the island.
The events of the riot remain fresh in his mind, and he acknowledges that on April 1 1990, there was “undoubtedly a swell of discontent that a clever or a lucky leader could tap into”.
O’Friel did not meet that “lucky leader”, Paul Taylor, again until two years ago when the key players in Britain's most memorable prison drama were assembled for an edition of BBC Radio 4's The Reunion.
“Paul Taylor was put under a bit of pressure about some of the really serious misbehaviour towards the vulnerable prisoners,” says O’Friel. “He’s got guilt feelings about that, and so he should have. Their behaviour was appalling.”
Strangeways: The day the rooftop rebels took over
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Laying in wait, Manchester (30/03/2010 at 10:27)
Although this article touches on the conditions being poor what is not mentioned is how poor they were, what made them poor and how some of the prisoners were mentally broken down and treated like cattle.
Some might say they deserve to be treated like cattle- but even cattle have a natural desire to break for freedom.
One of the many failings that the prison service up-held and went on to abuse when Michael Howard introduced his politically driven "Tough but fair" policy was the 3 tiered scheme refusing inmates more possessions than they could fit into a cardboard box. This scheme meant that all prisoners including lifer's (15 years or more) were only ever allowed to have personal effects that would fit in to a small box.
When all you have all day is you and four walls that is not rehabilitating or eluding to keeping the peace.As a punishment for whatever the screws saw fit prisoners would sometimes be asked to pack all their belongings and unpack every two hours in some cases ,anything that didn't fit was confiscated.
This scheme would also involve how much a prisoner was allowed to spend in the canteen. If you were on the -Basic tier you could spend £2.50 a week in the canteen and have a 30 minute restricted visit per month.
-Standard was a 30 minute open visit and £10 per week spend in the canteen and at the highest level 1 hour per week open visit and a fifteen pound spend in the canteen.
This money by the way was not given to them by the state, if they had friends and family they would post the money to them.
This facility was abused by the P.O's and forced a divide between the in-mates and developed resentment around the prisoners and via the screws. Divide and conquer was the governments aim.
The note regarding the lino was not a fact it was a made up threat and never took place. The blood and butcher was nothing more than prisoners breaking in to the meat area and creating horror to cause an effect and the 450 riot police were only there after the 24th day.
Other ways to break down the prisoner’s intent on causing a scene was to fry onions so that the smell would enter the prison breaking down their want to carry on and a cherry picker was used with a dummy in it so that the roof top insurgents would think they were about to be attacked.
The other very important happening that is not mentioned here is the use of drugs in the prison .Some prison officers would turn a blind eye to cheaply made hooch or cannabis use. They were more than happy to have a bunch of convicts in a relaxed state as opposed to what came next.
In steps Michael Howard yet again with another politically lead knee jerk reaction with his policy on drugs.
This time Howard said that random and weekly drug tests would be performed at regular intervals and the in-mates adapting to this situation stopped using cannabis to get high in favour of heroin.
Heroin stays in the blood stream for less than 48 hours where as cannabis stays in the blood stream for weeks. You would have inmates charging upwards of 6x the amount for 1/ 7th of heroin worth £75 on the streets and easily smuggled in through bottling (inserting the product up the anus). At £300 a go - family members and friends would send money to the in-mates who said they needed it for other things.
What was actually achieved through Howard’s ill thought out plans were a set of in-mates who were previously mellowed through the use of cannabis to heal their daily boredom of being locked up 22-23 hours per day (3 to a cell and where ablutions were carried out in front of each other) to heroin addicts willing to fight to their death who became all the more agitated at not being able to get a hit of this highly addictive drug.
One female officer of the prison system was caught with a bag of ectasy in her car and on inspection was found at home with scales and another set of drugs ready for sale.
She was immediately suspended and absconded with a former in-mate.
Following break outs in Jersey prisons Howard should have resigned and faced an extremely difficult questioning session from Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s Newsnight
Being the character that he is or as Anne Widecom described him - "Howard is certainly a character of the night" failed to do the honourable thing and resign...
Instead the prison directors were sacked and he came out on top ...
I feel for the governor in this case but the policies the government put in place were not well thought through were not sustainable and in this case were put in place to appease those who were crying for the re-instigation of a tougher penal system, Howard simply gave public opinion what it asked for...