In my second week in Saughton jail, a prisoner pushed open the door of my cell and entered during the half hour period when we were unlocked to shower and use the hall telephone in the morning. I very much disliked the intrusion, and there was something in the attitude of the man which annoyed me – wheedling would perhaps be the best description. He asked if I had a bible I could lend him. Anxious to get him out of my cell, I replied no, I did not. He shuffled off.
I immediately started to feel pangs of guilt. I did in fact have a bible, which the chaplain had given me. It was, I worried, a very bad thing to deny religious solace to a man in prison, and I really had no right to act the way I did, based on an irrational distrust. I went off to take a shower, and on the way back to my cell was again accosted by the man.
“If you don’t have a Bible,” he said, “Do you have any other book with thin pages?”
He wanted the paper either to smoke drugs, or more likely to make tabs from a boiled up solution of a drug.
You cannot separate the catastrophic failure of the Scottish penal system – Scotland has the highest jail population per capita in all of Western Europe – from the catastrophic failure of drugs policy in Scotland. 90% of the scores of prisoners I met and spoke with had serious addiction problems. Every one of those was a repeat offender, back in jail, frequently for the sixth, seventh or eighth time. How addiction had led them to jail varied. They stole, often burgled, to feed their addiction. They dealt drugs in order to pay for their own use. They had been involved in violence – frequently domestic – while under the influence.
I had arrived in Saughton jail on Sunday 1 August. After being “seen off” by a crowd of about 80 supporters outside St Leonards police station, I had handed myself in there at 11am, as ordered by the court. The police were expecting me, and had conducted me to a holding area, where my possessions were searched and I was respectfully patted down. The police were very polite. I had been expecting to spend the night in a cell at St Leonards and to be taken to jail in a prison van on the Monday morning. This is what both my lawyers and a number of policemen had explained would happen.
In fact I was only half an hour in St Leonards before being put in a police car and taken to Saughton. This was pretty well unique – the police do not conduct people to prison in Scotland. At no stage was I manacled or handled and the police officers were very friendly. Reception at Saughton prison – where prisoners are not usually admitted on a Sunday – were also very polite, even courteous. None of this is what happens to an ordinary prisoner, and gives the lie to the Scottish government’s claim that I was treated as one.
I was not fingerprinted either in the police station or the jail, on the grounds I was a civil prisoner with no criminal conviction. At reception my overcoat and my electric toothbrush were taken from me, but my other clothing, notebook and book were left with me.
I was then taken to a side office to see a nurse. She asked me to list my medical conditions, which I did, including pulmonary hypertension, anti-phospholipid syndrome, Barrett’s oesophagus, atrial fibrillation, hiatus hernia, dysarthria and a few more. As she typed them in to her computer, options appeared on a dropdown menu for her to select the right one. It was plain to me she had no knowledge of several of these conditions, and certainly no idea how to spell them
The nurse cut me off very bluntly when I politely asked her a question about the management of my heart and blood conditions while in prison, saying someone would be round to see me in the morning. She then took away from me all the prescription medications I had brought with me, saying new ones would be issued by the prison medical services. She also took my pulse oximeter, saying the prison would not permit it, as it had batteries. I said it had been given to me by my consultant cardiologist, but she insisted it was against prison regulations.
This was the most disconcerting encounter so far. I was then walked by three prison officers along an extraordinarily long corridor – hundreds of yards long – with the odd side turning, which we we ignored. At the end of the corridor we reached Glenesk Block. The journey to my cell involved unlocking eight different doors and gates, including my cell door, every one of which was locked behind me. There was no doubt that this was very high security detention.
Once I reached floor 3 of Glenesk block, which houses the admissions wing, we acquired two further guards from the landing, so five people saw me into my cell. This was twelve feet by eight feet. May I suggest that you measure that out in your room? That was to be my world for the next four months. In fact I was to spend 95% of the next four months confined in that space.
The door was hard against one wall, leaving space within the 12 ft by 8 ft cell for a 4 ft by 4 ft toilet in one corner next the door. This was fully walled in, to the ceiling, and closed properly with an internal door. This little room contained a toilet and sink. The toilet had no seat. This was not an accident – I was not permitted a toilet seat, even if I provided it myself. It was a normal UK style toilet, designed to be used with a seat, with the two holes for the seat fixing, and a narrow porcelain rim.
The toilet was filthy. Below the waterline it was stained deep black with odd lumps and ridges. Above the waterline it was streaked and spotted with excrement, as was the rim. The toilet floor was in a disgusting state. The cell itself was dirty with, everywhere a wall or bolted down furniture met the floor, a ridge built up of hardened black dirt.
A female guard looked around the cell, then came back to give me rubber gloves, a surface cleaner spray and some cloths. So I spent my first few hours in my cell on my knees, scrubbing away furiously with these inadequate materials.
The female guard had advised me that even after cleaning the cell I should always keep shoes on, because of the mice. I heard them most nights in my cell, but never saw one. The prisoners universally claim them to be rats, but not having seen one I cannot say.
A guard later explained to me that prisoners are responsible for cleaning their own cells, but as nobody generally stayed in a new admissions cell for more than two or three nights, nobody bothered. Cells for new arrivals will be cleaned out by a prisoner work detail, but as I had arrived on a Sunday, that had not happened.
So about 3pm I was locked in the cell. At 5.20pm the door opened for two seconds to check I was still there, but that was it for the day. There I was confused, disoriented and struggling to take in that all this was really happening. I should describe the rest of the cell.
A narrow bed ran down one wall. I came to realise that prison in Scotland still includes an element of corporal punishment, in that the prisoner is very deliberately made physically uncomfortable. Not having a toilet seat is part of this, and so is the bed. It consists of an iron frame bolted to the floor and holding up a flat steel plate, completely unsprung. On this unyielding steel surface there is a mattress consisting simply of two inches of low grade foam – think cheap bath sponge – encased in a shiny red plastic cover, slashed or burnt through in several places and with the colour worn off down the centre.
The mattress was stamped with the date 2013 and had lost its structural resistance, to the extent that if I pinched it between my finger and thumb, I could compress it down to a millimetre. On the steel plate, this mattress had almost no effect and I woke up after a sleepless first night with acute pain throughout my muscles and difficulty walking. To repeat, this is deliberate corporal punishment – a massively superior mattress could be provided for about £30 more per prisoner, while in no way being luxurious. The beds and mattresses can only be designed to inflict both pain and, perhaps more important, humiliation. It is plainly quite deliberate policy.
It is emblematic of the extraordinary lack of intellectual consistency in the Scottish prisons system that cells are equipped with these Victorian punishment beds but also with TV sets showing 23 channels including two Sky subscription channels (of which I shall write more in another instalment). The bed is fixed along one long wall, while a twelve inch plywood shelf runs the length of the other and can serve as a desk. At one end, up against the wall of the toilet, this desk meets a built-in plywood shelving unit fixed into the floor, on top of which are sat the television and kettle next to two power points. At the other end of the desk, a further set of shelves are attached to the wall above. There is a plastic stackable chair of the cheapest kind – the sort you see stacked outside poundshops as garden furniture.
On the outside wall there is a small double glazed window with heavy, square iron bars two inches thick running both horizontally and vertically, like a noughts and crosses grid. The window does not open, but had metal ventilation strips down each side, which were stuck firmly closed with black grime. At the other end of the cell, next to the toilet, the heavy steel door is hinged so as to have a distinct gap all round between the door and the steel frame, like a toilet cubicle door.
Above the desk shelf is fixed a noticeboard, which is the only place prisoners are allowed to put up posters or photos. However as prisoners are not permitted drawing pins, staples, sellotape or blu tak, this was not possible. I asked advice from the guards who suggested I try toothpaste. I did – it didn’t work.
There is a single neon light tube.
The admissions unit has single-occupancy cells, of which there are very few in the rest of the jail. All the prison’s cells were designed for single occupancy, but massive overcrowding means that they are mostly in practice identical to this description, but with a bunk bed rather than a single bed.
The prison is divided into a number of blocks. Glenesk block had three floors, each containing 44 of these cells. Each floor is entered by a central staircase and has a centrally located desk where the guards are stationed. Either side of the desk are two heavy metal grills stretching right across the floor and dividing it into two wings. Within the central area is the kitchen where meals are collected (though not prepared), then eaten back locked in the cell.
The corridor between the cells either side of each wing is about 30 feet wide. It contains a pool table and fixed chairs and tables, and is conceived as a recreational area. There are two telephones at the end of each wing from which prisoners may call (at 10p a minute) numbers from a list they have pre-registered for approval.
The various cell blocks are located off that central spine corridor whose length astonished me at first admission. I did not realise then that this is a discreet building in itself rather than a corridor inside a building – it is like a long concrete overground tunnel.
I should describe my typical day the first ten weeks. At 7.30am the cell door springs open without warning as guards do a head count. The door is immediately locked again. At 8am cereals, milk and morning rolls are handed in, and the door is immediately locked again. At 10am I was released into the corridor for 30 minutes to shower and use the telephone. The showers are in an open room but with individual cubicles, contrary to prison movie cliche. At 10.30am I was locked in again.
At 11am I was released for one hour and escorted under supervision to plod around an enclosed, tarmac exercise yard about 40 paces by 20 paces. This yard is filthy and contains prison bins. One wing of Glenesk block forms one side, and the central spine corridor forms another; the wall of a branch corridor leading to another cell block forms a third and a fence dividing off that block a fourth. The walls are about 10 feet high and the fence about 16 feet high.
In the non-admissions, larger area of Glenesk block the cells had windows with opening narrow side panels. It is the culture of the prison that rather than keep rubbish in their cells and empty it out at shower time, the prisoners throw all rubbish out of their cell windows into the exercise yard. This includes food waste and plates, newspapers, used tissues and worse. At meal times, sundry items (bread, margarine etc) are available on a table outside the kitchen and some prisoners scoop up quantities simply to throw them out of the window into the yard.
I believe the origin of this is that this enclosed yard is used by protected prisoners, many of whom are sexual offenders. Glenesk house has a protected prisoner area on its second floor. “Mainstream” prisoners from Glenesk exercise on the astroturf five-a-side football pitch the other side of the spine corridor. (For four months that pitch was the view from my window and I never saw a game of football played. After three months the goals were removed.) New admissions exercise in the protected yard because they have not been sorted yet – that sorting is the purpose of the new admissions wing. New prisoners therefore have to plough through the filth prepared for protected prisoners.
At times large parts of this already small exercise yard were ankle deep in dross – it was cleaned out intermittently, probably on average every three weeks. Only on a couple of occasions was it so bad I decided against exercise. After exercise getting the sludge off my shoes as we went straight back to my cell was a concern. I now understood how the cell had got so dirty.
After exercise, at noon I collected my lunch and was locked back in the cell. Apart from 2 minutes to collect my tea, I would be locked in from noon until 10am the following morning, for 22 hours solid, every single day. In total I was locked in for 22 and a half hours a day for the first ten weeks. After that I was locked in my cell for 23 hours and 15 minutes a day due to a covid outbreak.
At 5pm the door would open for a final headcount, and then we would be on lockdown for the night, though in truth we had been locked down all day. Lockdown here meant the guards were going home.
Now I want you again to just mark out twelve feet by eight feet on your floor and put yourself inside it. Then imagine being confined inside that space a minimum of 22 and a half hours a day. For four months. These conditions were not peculiar to me – it is how all prisoners were living and are still living today. The library, gym and all educational activities had been closed “because of covid”. The resulting conditions are inhumane – few people would keep a dog like that.
It is also worth noting that Covid is an excuse. In September 2017 an official inspection report already noted that significant numbers of prisoners in Saughton were confined to cells for 22 hours a day. The root problem is massive overcrowding, and I shall write further on the causes of that in a future instalment.
The long concrete and steel corridors of the prison echo horribly, and after lockdown for the first time I felt rather scared. All round me prisoners were shouting out at the top of their voices. That first evening two were yelling death threats at another prisoner, with extreme expressions of hate and retribution. Inter-prisoner communication is by yelling out the window. This went on all night into the early hours of the morning. Prisoners were banging continually on the steel doors, sometimes for hours, calling out for guards who were not there. Somebody was crying out as though being attacked and in pain. There were sounds of plywood splintering as people smashed up their rooms.
It was unnerving because it seemed to me I was living amongst severely violent and out of control berserkers.
Part of the explanation of this is that for most prisoners the new admissions wing on first night is where they go through withdrawal symptoms. Many prisoners come in still drugged up. They are going through their private hell and desperate to get medication. I can understand (though not condone) why the prison medical staff are so remarkably bad and unhelpful. Their job and circumstances are very difficult.
On that first evening I was concerned that I did not have my daily medicines, and by the next morning my heart was getting distinctly out of synch. I was therefore relieved to receive the promised medical visit.
My cell door was opened and a nurse, flanked by two guards, addressed me from outside my cell. She asked if I had any addictions. I replied in the negative. I asked when I might receive my medicines. She said it was in process. I asked if I might get my pulse oximeter. She said the prison did not allow devices with batteries. I asked if my bed could somehow be propped or sloped because of my hiatus hernia (leading to gastric reflux) and Barrett’s oesophagus. She said she didn’t think that the prison could do that. I asked about management of my blood condition (APS), saying I was supposed to exercise regularly and not sit for long periods. She replied by asking if I would like to see the psychiatric team. I replied no. She left.
I was taken out to exercise alone, with four guards watching me. I felt like Rudolf Hess. In the lunch queue I met my first prisoners, who were respectful and polite. The day passed much as the first, and I still did not get my medicines on the Monday. They arrived on the Tuesday morning, as did the prison governor.
I was told the governor had come to see me, and I met him in the (closed) Glenesk library. David Abernethy is a taciturn man who looks like a rugby prop and has a reputation among prisoners as a disciplinarian, compared to other prison regimes in Scotland. He was accompanied by John Morrison, Glenesk block manager, a friendly Ulsterman, who did most of the talking.
I was an anomaly in that Saughton did not normally hold civil prisoners. The Governor told me he believed I was their first civil prisoner in four years, and before that in ten. Civil prisoners should be held separately from criminal prisoners, but Saughton had no provision for that. The available alternatives were these: I could move into general prisoner population, which would probably involve sharing a cell; I could join the protected prisoners; or I could stay where I was on admissions.
On the grounds that nothing too terrible had happened to me yet, I decided to stay where I was and serve my sentence on admissions.
They wished to make plain to me that it was their job to hold me and it was not for them to make any comment on the circumstances that brought me to jail. I told them I held no grudge against them and had no reason to complain of any of the prison officers who had (truthfully) so far all been very polite and friendly to me. I asked whether I could have books I was using for research brought to me from my library at home; I understood this was not normally allowed. I was also likely to receive many books sent by well-wishers. The governor said he would consider this. They also instructed, at my request, extra pillows to be brought to prop up the head of my bed due to my hiatus hernia.
That afternoon a guard came along (I am not going to give the names except for senior management, as the guards might not wish it) with the pillows, and said he had been instructed I was a VIP prisoner and should be looked after. I replied I was not a VIP, but was a civil prisoner, and therefore had different rights to other prisoners.
He said that the landing guards suggested that I should take my exercise and shower/phone time at the same time as other mainstream new admission prisoners (sexual offender and otherwise protected new admission prisoners had separate times). I had so far been kept entirely apart, but perhaps I would prefer to meet people? I said I would prefer that.
So the next day I took my exercise in that filthy yard in the company of four other prisoners, all new arrivals the night before. I thus observed for the first time something which astonished me. Once in the yard, the new prisoners (who on this occasion arrived individually, not all part of the same case), immediately started to call out to the windows of Glenesk block, shouting out for friends.
“Hey, Jimmy! Jimmy! It’s me Joe! I am back. Is Paul still in? What’s that? Gone tae Dumfries? Donnie’s come in? That’s brilliant.”
The realisation dropped, to be reinforced every day, that Saughton jail is a community, a community where the large majority of the prisoners all know each other. That does not mean they all like each other – there are rival gangs, and enmities. But prison is a routine event in not just their lives, but the lives of their wider communities. Those communities are the areas of deprivation of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh is a city of astonishing social inequality. It contains many of the areas in the bottom 10% of multiple social deprivation in Scotland (dark red on the map below). These are often a very short walk from areas of great affluence in the top 10% (dark blue on the map). Of course, few people make that walk. But I recommend a spell in Saughton jail to any other middle class person who, like myself, was foolish enough to believe that Scotland is a socially progressive country.
The vast majority of prisoners I met came from the red areas on these maps. The same places came up again and again – including Granton, Pllton, Oxgangs, Muirhouse, Lochend, and from West Lothian, Livingston and Craigshill. Saughton jail is simply where Edinburgh locks away 900 of its poorest people, who were born into extreme poverty and often born into addiction. Many had parents and grandparents also in Saughton jail.
A large number of prisoners have known institutionalisation throughout their lives; council care and foster homes leading to young offenders’ institutions and then prison. A surprising number have very poor reading and writing skills. The overcrowding of our prisons is a symptom not just of failed justice and penal policy, but of fundamentally flawed economic, social and educational systems.
Of which I shall also write more later. Here, on this first day with a group in the exercise yard, I was mystified as the prisoners started going up to the ground floor windows and the guards started shouting “keep away from the windows! Stand back from the windows” in a very agitated fashion, but to no effect. Eventually they removed one man and sent him back to his cell, though he seemed no more guilty than the others.
By the next week I had learnt what was happening. At exercise the new admissions prisoners get drugs passed to them through the window by their friends who have been in the prison longer and had time to get their supply established. These drugs are passed as paper tabs, as pills or in vape tubes. There appears no practical difficulty at all in prisoners getting supplied with plentiful drugs in Saughton. Every single day I was to witness new admissions prisoners getting their drugs at the window from friends, and every single day I witnessed this curious charade of guards shouting and pretending to try and stop them.
My first few days in Saughton had introduced me to an unknown, and sometimes frightening, world, of which I shall be telling you more.
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Write like this and they are going to regret the nasty minded stupidity that prompted them to lock you up.
Spot on comment.
Bravo Craig!
Exactly.
Beware of what you wish for..!
Positively Dickensian ! He too wrote from direct experience.
Portraying nicely the idiocy of treating addictions with prison terms. Whereas the addicts in the business suits go about their daily business and live in the blue areas, the lower classes live under the social control of the “justice” system.
The scenes are not as stark as what Dickens describes, they are just a wee bit more adapted to the 20th century, but the essence is the same: social control so the plebs will not rise.
Dear Craig
I had a friend who was a monitor at Feltham YOI and had an idea of conditions. But not as bad as that.
I was told writing to you would put me on an MI5 file but at 75 I don’t care. In fact I didn’t write, just sent you a card with a picture of a puppy. I thought it might be of more comfort than my opinions.
Hope you are enjoying time home with the family.
Thanks for all your campaigning
Thank you, Craig, this is fascinating, as well as appalling. You may be interested in the Sean Bean drama, Time, still on the iplayer, which attempted to display the conditions of contemporary jails, and did so with some acclaim, not to mention horror. It is powerful stuff.
Most of your readers are, I am sure, middle class and for most of us prison conditions and the inmates are as foreign and unknown as the far side of the moon. So any account which brings home the reality, the poverty and the sordid squalor is to be welcomed. I feel that one of the reasons for the high security is as much to keep the conditions and inmates out of sight of the rest of society, as it is anything else. It is certainly not to rehabilitate or alleviate the realities of why people end up in there.
If reminds me of Orwell’s trips to the lower depths, and I hope you painstaking descriptions and eye witness accounts will cause some kind of similar awakening to the dead end squalor and dismissal of the most deprived members of our communities. Most politicians and many in society would rather it is kept invisible and at arm’s length. I hope by shining a light on it you will have some effect on policy. As far as I know, Scandinavian countries practice a much more enlightened and civil practice of imprisonment, and this surely ought to be the goal of a civil administration who wish to treat people humanely.
This factual account of conditions SHOULD elicit some response from our MSPs. But our SNP Westminster MPs will simply shrug their shoulders and say either: Mr Murray served his sentence according to the law; or this is a devolved matter and nothing to do with me; Mr Murray is not a constituent of mine and therefore nothing to do with me; he was tried and found guilty and therefore he knew what he was doing.
I have had all these responses from those who are supposed to represent us, the people. These conditions and punishments are not in in my name, I do not condone those responsible and that includes all the Westminster MPs who do not lift a finger to improve these inhumane conditions.
But the problem is far deeper than simply cleaning up the disgusting filth. The problem lies deep in the roots of a so-called progressive democracy which has preferred to allow these gross inequalities to flourish. Let Glasgow flourish!!! Heart-stopping irony!
Mr Murray, please take care of your health which must have been affected by four months in these appalling conditions.
As Mr Murray isn’t know for his unstinted support for the SNP, and it’s not totally unreasonable to state that members of the SNP had a distant hand in his imprisonment, the more likely response is that many in the party, perhaps even some quite high up, will be taking some quiet, but never to be stated of course, pleasure from his discomfiture.
Incredible writing, thank you for doing this. I feel guilty to admit that I was looking forward to receiving your perspective on the whole thing, and the detail – the insight – is surpassing. There have been plenty of prison books written, talking about the grimness, the lack of justice or the brutality, most written for shock value than anything else. Here, you bring a true humanitarian’s viewpoint, and can give a sociological perspective to a side of Britain that most people know little about and care still less.
Surely you can compile these writings into a book once you’re ready. I, for one, feel it would provide me with quite an education.
It is no small relief to find your spirit and humanity was not damaged by bitterness or cynicism. Thank you again.
Indeed it is the poor, the underprivileged, the drug users and such like who make up a large part of the prison population.
So far as drug use is concerned – some people need medical more than legal attention – read on:-
https://cannabisnews.com/news/14/thread14721.shtml
Unfortunately, Sturgeon and her government’s only real interest in prisoner welfare is making sure that they can vote and that officers use the correct pronouns. Clearly, that’s much more important than having to use a toilet covered in excrement or being able to sleep comfortably.
You were put through this hellish ordeal because of a so-called crime called jigsaw identification. How does she sleep at night?
Very, very comfortably. A conscience is not one of the things that ever troubles our Great Leader.
I spent time in Walton in my younger years, the regime was exactly how I remembered it.
‘Edinburgh is a city of astonishing social inequality. It contains many of the areas in the bottom 10% of multiple social deprivation in Scotland (dark red on the map below). These are often a very short walk from areas of great affluence in the top 10% (dark blue on the map).’
You will find similar in most UK cities, I fancy, Mr Murray. I know from personal experience that it was the case in London 30 years ago. My sister and her university friends rented a flat as young graduates on the Caledonian Road, which was a throroughfare heading north from around Kings Cross station. 100 yards to the east of their flat, you found the affluent residence of the hooray henrys, which in later years became the community of Blair et al. 100 yards to the west was a rough council estate where there were regularly murders and police raids. If I came down for the weekend from Glasgow where I lived at the time, arriving at either Euston or Kings Cross between 11pm and midnight, I would regularly walk past a crowd of heroin-addicted prostitutes hanging around the Kings Cross area and then made sure I stayed solely on well lit streets walking the half mile up to the flat.
I probably don’t need to tell you about the deprivation of Glasgow, and certainly you could find entirely similar situations in Manchester where I lived in the Noughties, with Wythenshawe within walking distance of Didsbury and Chorlton, just to name one example.
I saw worse inequality in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, but that was just on a holiday.
Basically, the sorts of people who acquire power in the Anglosphere have a high tolerance of high inequality and quite frankly, they think that they are superior because they have money. I can tell you from personal experience that all the intellectual firepower going doesn’t help if you go 30 months with slave labour wages, an inadequate diet and a working day which brought nothing but frustration and misery. You slowly descend into a slough of despondency and the most important lesson in life I learned came when I basically said: ‘If this is what this career brings me, I need a career break pronto!’ My health was restored by 4 months of 3 healthy meals a day, life in the open air and healthy exercise every day, along with kindly and supportive companionship from both sexes. No pills were necessary, which proves that plenty of depressions can be cured pretty easily (even if some do actually need medicaments).
After all, some of the quickest ways of getting rich these days involve either being a pimp to trafficked women or the owner of properties used by pimps to market their women. The ‘ten floors of whores’ has existed happily, after all, in a very salubrious London postcode with the overt knowledge of Conservative donors and the local police.
If you have that kind of indifference to the plight of other humans where making money is concerned, I doubt you will be overly concerned about social inequality, a culture of drug taking etc. You will just manage the situation to stay wealthy yourself……
It’s entirely the same culture that saw racism promoted in the Empire; fortunes made in the slave trade; fortunes made from turning the Chinese into a nation of opium junkies; and whole nations completely controlled by the odd monarch and a few dozen peers of the realm.
There’s something endemic within the breeding and mindsets of the aristocracy and it clearly doesn’t change its spots, even if its manifestations may vary according to economic necessity and opportunity….
The Caledonian (“Scottish”) Road featured in a BBC documentary about a decade ago – https://vimeo.com/133370246 – which showed the endemic problem with dodgy landlords.
I lived in a street stretching from there to the quintessentially English urban village of Barnsbury. My gloomy flat looked out over the crescent where Sir Tony Blair’stard himself used to bide. I had to block out the noise from the grubby clients of the lady-for-hire up the stairs and was instructed not to make eye contact with the gangster in the fancy house opposite. It was a hive of criminality (not yet of the war kind). I was very relieved to get away.
My residence was a few streets away from HMP Pentonville, and I heard the screaming and yelling of prisoners when walking past late at night. It was terrifying enough from a distance but I’d hate to be in amongst it. Characteristically, Craig makes the humanistic point that there are people going through drug withdrawal and schizophrenia who are actually terrified themselves. That puts a more sympathetic angle on it.
You describe very pertinently the hundred’s of years tradition of class warfare in the UK, exported to the US and Australia, and probably many other “Anglosphere” countries. I was a medical student in Glasgow in the ’60s, and it was exactly the same as you describe Edinburgh, and presumably still is. You could walk along one seriously impoverished street, and literally, around the next corner, a very comfortable complacency ruled. I suppose the very compact nature of Glasgow city made this more obvious. But is it just the “Anglosphere”, I very much doubt it. Any country ruled by a Darwinian capitalist system out of control will see society “red in tooth and claw”, where the “fittest” survive and prosper. Many are good and decent people, but a too big minority are rogues too. But even the good people are smug, entitled and unempathetic, it’s what success almost invariably brings. Democracy as constructed in the UK ,and many other countries, is a well constructed machine of deception for keeping people in their place, but ensuring being kept there appear sas the natural order of things and that real change can come with an appropriate cross on the ballot paper. .
That was a really great post!
The most fascinating text I have read on the blog so far. Downright frighteningly precise and informative.
Paradoxically, the scandal of the conviction has borne fruit. I truly hope the health price was not unbearably high.
Looking forward to the sequel I thank you.
Fucking hell.
Yep – sums up exactly what I thought.
Thank you Craig
Much worse than i Imagined..Drove me to tears.
Indeed. I was also surprised at how bad it seems to have been.
I don’t know Edinburgh or Saughton, but I once lived near Pentonville and Caledonian Road. I also lived in Liverpool as a kid; Walton jail was on my regular route into town. These are victorian institutions, built for half the number of inmates they now hold, and before the time of widespread availability of hard drugs in prisons. It sounds like a nightmare, and I’m not surprised Craig’s nights were punctuated by the sound of prisoners going through withdrawal and smashing up their cells (although apparently there isn’t much in them to smash).
It particularly alarms me that medicines prescribed by doctors that know their patient, and by specialists, are witheld by the authorities, and instead you have to wait for some prison doctor to take a medical history, presumably divorced from your copious medical notes, and make up his own prescriptions. Also, if you are instructed by your doctor to use a medical device like a pulse oximeter, it beats me why the prison won’t let you. Those devices are powered by a button cell, no? What’s so bad about having a button cell in your prison cell?
Vivd, and all the more shocking for it. You endured a barbaric regime, sadistic and out of control.
Not quite the same, but I am reminded of “The Road to Wigan Pier”.
I’m more reminded of another Orwell book “Down and Out in Paris and London”.
And the judges and the prosecutors strut around in their pretentious wigs and gowns, spouting their incomprehensible legal jargon, fooling themselves that they’re providing some vital service to society? They’re doing nothing but protecting privilege and wealth. Condemning people to conditions like that can only perpetuate society’s problems. It could never help or rehabilitate anyone.
There is a price and consequence for everything. Craig turning the dim torch light on the lives of the forsaken stirs the blood in us but how do you stir anything in the empty shells of the bloodless.
….. and, by dumping trial-by-jury when the jury might get it wrong, they are arrogating to themselves huge amounts of power that they haven’t had for several centuries.
Well, I won’t instigate the Kalashnikov and Pitchfork solution, but if others do, then I’ll happily join in. I do think it has reached that stage.
It is the hardest discipline, but we must not initiate violence, for in doing so we cross the line and join our opponents, see below:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/your-man-in-saughton-jail-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-1006287
Witness how the feeble violence from among the Palestinians is constantly turned to propaganda against all of them. Click on the link on my name; learn NVDA.
Clark – you are, of course, completely correct here – and the Palestinian example is a very good one.
I am now fully supportive of the Palestinian cause; I now understand that the Balfour agreement of 1917 was a piece of political opportunism to help get the USA involved in WW1; I now understand that the Arab Israeli war of 1947-48 was an act of ethic cleansing pure and simple and I now see that the current state of Israel, which basically had no reasonable right to be there in the first place, has become the most apartheid state on the planet.
It took me a l-o-n-g time to appreciate this, precisely for the reasons you mentioned. Sure, there was a lot of anti-Palestinian propaganda, but there were factions amongst the Palestinians whose input was totally counter productive. I do half-believe the stories which we were fed by our media that the Palestinians tried to shield their rocket launchers by placing women and children there, so that when the Israelis bombed them, the Palestinians would then try to spin the civilian death toll resulting from the collateral damage as anti-Israeli propaganda (while the Palestinians were, in fact, responsible for this). I do believe the stories of teenagers being encouraged to sacrifice their lives in a futile manner by trying to cross border fences where everybody knew that the outcome would be certain death.
All of this propaganda did lead to a conclusion in my head that the Palestinians had a very cavalier attitude towards human life, particularly the lives of their own children. When this idea was in my head, I couldn’t really have much sympathy with the cause.
So you are absolutely right about this. I’d say that we are dealing with the devil incarnate here. We are not dealing with people who are acting in ignorance. We are not dealing with people who can possibly be brought to see the error of their ways (I’m talking about people like Lady Dorrian, Nicola Sturgeon, Vanessa Baraitser and the judges who sided with the Americans in the latest Assange hearing; Kier Starmer, Boris Johnson). These people do understand what they are doing, their eyes are fully open, but we are dealing with a complete moral vacuum here. We have to be clear sighted about this – we are dealing with manifestation of pure evil.
I think that the Palestinian situation is instructive, though – you’re correct that attempts at a Pitchfork and Kalashnikov solution, while fully justified on moral grounds, are probably doomed to failure and may do more harm than good.
Jimmy Riddle, thank you for your reflections upon your personal impressions.
Regarding your third paragraph – “It took me a l-o-n-g time to appreciate this…” etc, human diversity will always ensure that some make a more aggressive response, while others, usually the majority, show great restraint. Likewise with attitudes adults impart to the children of your fifth paragraph. It’s like littering; any litter is visible, whereas restraint is not, so it only takes a minority in an area for an entire community to be dismissed as uncaring slobs and thus deserving of their fate. Though I would reply to this: “I do half-believe the stories which we were fed by our media that the Palestinians tried to shield their rocket launchers by placing women and children there…” – In Gaza, the population is so dense that there really is nowhere isolated from the general population.
This is why NVDA is so important; learning to bond as a supportive group, to feel the strength of community in the face of provocation. We need the general public to see that we are the force for peace, justice and equality, to throw into contrast the institutionalised violence of the power structures. Without the cooperation of the majority, the power will crumble.
Love and rage.
Clark – yes – I agree with you 100 percent here.
In addition, I’d say that the Main Stream Media is awful good at misinformation. One very helpful thing which gave me a correct picture of Iraq – I met an Iraqi, whom I was teaching, who was training to become a teacher – and he was able to fill me in with a correct picture of what was going on in Iraq – which was completely different from anything you would have picked up from listening to BBC or any of the `trusted’ sources. So talking directly to people with direct experience helps.
One very helpful thing which gave me a correct picture of Palestine was meeting someone who had actually lived there, who was able to give a correct picture, straight from the `horse’s mouth’ as they say. This was entirely different from anything I had heard from any of the `trusted’ news sources.
I have a very good picture of the issues surrounding Julian Assange largely due to what Craig Murray has written (also some pieces in Consortium News have been very good), but you would never find the information from `trusted’ news sources.
Same goes for Alex Salmond and Craig Murray. I would have had a very distorted picture if I had relied on `trusted’ media sources.
There is clearly some sort of `central control’ over what is fed to us. They don’t expect us to travel very much, or talk to people with first hand experience, or go to alternative sources for information. A large part of Craig Murray’s problem was that Lady Dorrian was acting on behalf of this `central control’, where they are collectively going to the toilet in their trousers because of the alternative sources of news and analysis (for example – this blog) which they cannot control.
There are various centres of control, of course; the secret services of various countries, PR and image management companies, billionaire owners of the media picking their favourites to be editors etc.
But mostly there is money, power and ideology, the “hidden hands” which motivate all of the above.
– “These people do understand what they are doing…”
Maybe a few of them, utter psychopaths, but I find it difficult to believe of so many. Our world is dying, our civilisation on course for collapse; what possible incentive can there be? They could be just as comfortably off doing something else.
Looking at history, the human capacity for self-delusion seems infinite. The only rational explanation I have been able to maintain is that it’s structural; the system itself promotes the people who best serve its needs, and expels those who cease to do so. To maintain their ongoing promotion, ‘successful’ people increasingly delude themselves – and this process builds ideology.
The System is vastly bigger than any individual. Could a worker ant, or even the queen, understand the workings of the colony? Could they even see it?
If I was ever in any doubt about whether to continue subscribing while you were inside (I wasn’t), this is a truly excellent article with which to respond and I am very interested to see what else you have to say.
I can only applaud the way you have responded to the adversity thrust upon you and I suspect you emerge more dangerous to the powers that be than you went in….
My greatest respect to you Craig for maintaining your intellegence, humanity and sanity through this harrowing experience. You were incarcerated for a victimless and invented political crime (sorry civil crime) and the details you described is how I would imagine a prison in the 1960’s….somewhere in East Germany. I would not have been capable of enduring those atrocious conditions that you went through.
My personal opinion is that your punishment was predetermined for your coverage of JA rather than AS, not sure if Im stating the obvious?
– “…your punishment was predetermined for your coverage of JA rather than AS..?”
It’s against both, and against Craig himself, because they all stand against secrecy and war.
There are only two sides; those who will lie, and order maiming and killing to achieve their ends, and those who stand against them, and this cuts through all politics and party lines. Blair? Knighted. Kissinger? Peace prize! Corbyn, Assange, Murray, Salmond? Smeared, ridiculed, conspired against. Diana? Dr Kelly? Dead. The lists go on and on, but the pattern is always the same.
I was always of the opinion that your persecution would backfire on the oppressors…. Round one to you. Keep it up. You have supporters and we will back you as long as it takes.
Hi Craig,
An horrific experience, but I am sure it has given you a new view into the realities that certain sections of society in our land have to live and somehow survive.
Thank you for imparting your experiences and take on your stay in this Scottish prison.
Ron Rothammer
West Lothian
This is so shocking.
All best wishes to you and your family.
Sounds like the only thing that’s changed in the last 35 years is the names of the halls.
Heartiest congratulations on your survival, Mr Murray, and many thanks for this horribly graphic but much-needed account of your experiences.
Apparently they can’t keep a real journalist down! But please be careful (if appropriate getting legal advice) not to give them any excuses for further repression.
Meanwhile tens of billions have been squandered on fantasies like “test and trace”… enough to set each of your fellow prisoners up in luxury for life. Today I heard the journalists of UK Column reporting how HMG is planning to give more money to the Kiev junta for the sole purpose of making life difficult for Russia.
Thank you for this, Craig. I suspect that Bevin is right in pointing out that this small ray of sunlight on an evil system is probably the last thing those who imprisoned you would want. This is a prophetic piece – meant in the original sense of something which reveals a societal evil in uncompromising terms. You have suffered greatly to bring it to us. I hope it is read as widely as it needs to be to spur repentance and change.
I’m so glad you’re out Craig. I’ve missed you awfully as after following you for so many years, I think of you fondly as almost a friend and comrade in the struggle to maintain civilised values and behaviour.
What’s annoying is the casual, careless brutality inside these ghastly institutions. Whilst the inmates, apart from yourself, cannot really qualify as ‘political prisoners’, I think they could be described as people who are prisoners because of the deprived social circumstances they come from. In essence, society has ‘created’ them and, in a grotesque way… ‘needs’ them, they have a role to play.
What a waste of time, people and not least valuable resources. The paradox, if one can really call it that, is how costly, several thousand pounds a week per inmate, it is to have so many people locked up in these dreadful, soul-destroying places. Where is the sense or rationality behind this system? A system so awful, so not fit for purpose, yet so expensive to maintain.
– “Where is the sense or rationality behind this system?”
It maintains and perpetuates an underclass which can then be blamed, and onto which fear and spite can be diverted. Worth every penny.
A really interesting, and enlightening, account of the appalling injustice you suffered. I look forward to the next chapter.
“myself, was foolish enough to believe that Scotland is a socially progressive country.”
You’re not the only one who thought it.
Scotland is still socially progressive; the widespread public support for the Baile Hoose occupation during COP26 demonstrated that. Every day, people brought donations, or called at the gate to visit, talk or just show support. The Asian community were very intrigued; my partner and I were treated to dinner, twice.
It’s politics in Scotland that is regressing, rather than the community.
Agreed Clark.
It is very disheartening to discover how many regular names here are knocked off balance by Mr. Murray’s prison diary trip advisor entry.
I put it down to a dislike of getting out more often. If those I refer to had done so they would find that there is a multitude of disadvantaged and deplorables out there.
Or are you joshing with a karaoke of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth due to a sheltered upbringing…_
How patronising.
Believe it or not, I’m reliably informed that, as a result of the 2018 ban, one of the most difficult commonly-used mind-altering substances to get hold of in UK prisons these days is tobacco. One effect of this is that many cons have to vape their spice instead of putting it in roll-ups, which means that a lot less of it pyrolyzes/decomposes before entering their bloodstream – with predictable results. But at least the screws aren’t being exposed to ‘second-hand smoke’, so there is that.
Looking forward to the next instalment of our liberated host’s prison diaries already.