Hell (A Prison Diary 1)

‘Oh yes, you’ll have noticed how rudimentary the searches are. That’s because prison regulations don’t permit us to do any more. We know where they’re hiding the drugs and every method they use to bring them in, but because of the Human Rights Act we’re not always allowed to carry out a thorough enough search. Some of them are even willing to swallow plastic packets full of heroin, they’re so desperate.’

‘But if the packet were to burst?’

‘They’ll die within hours,’ he says. ‘One prisoner died that way last month, but you’d be surprised how many of them are still willing to risk it. Did you hear the fire alarm go off last night?’

‘Yes, it woke me,’ I told him.

‘It was a heroin addict who’d set fire to his cell. By the time I got there he was cutting his wrist with a razor, because he wanted to suffer even more pain to help take his mind off the craving. We whisked him off to the medical wing, but there wasn’t much they could do except patch him up. He’ll go through exactly the same trauma again tonight, so we’ll just have to mount a suicide watch and check his cell every fifteen minutes.’

A horn sounds to announce that the exercise period is over. ‘I suppose you’d better get back to your cell,’ he says. ‘If you weren’t writing a book, I can’t imagine what the authorities imagine will be gained by sending you here.’

5.00 pm

I return to my cell and continue writing until supper. When my door is unlocked again I go down to the hotplate on the ground floor. I settle for a Thermos of hot water, an apple and a plastic bag containing tomorrow’s breakfast. Back in my cell I munch a packet of crisps and with the aid of half the hot water in the Thermos make a Cup a Soup – mushroom. The cell door is slammed shut at five thirty, and will not be opened again until nine thirty tomorrow morning, by which time I will have used the other half of the water from the Thermos to take a shave, in the same bowl as I eat the soup.

I spend the next couple of hours following the Open Golf on Radio 5 Live. David Duval, an American, wins his first Open, to see his name inscribed on the silver claret jug. Colin Montgomery and Ian Woosnam put up a spirited fight, but are not around at the seventy-second hole.

I flick over to Radio 4 to hear Steve Norris (Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party in charge of women’s affairs) telling the world he always knew I was a bad man. In the election among Party members for candidate for Mayor of London, I defeated Mr Norris by 71 per cent to 29 per cent.

I turn the radio off and read a couple of chapters of The Moon’s a Balloon, which takes Mr Niven to Sandhurst before being commissioned into the King’s Own Highlanders. I rest my head on the rock-hard pillow, and, despite the prisoners shouting from cell to cell and loud rap music coming from every corner of the block, I somehow fall asleep.

Day 5

Monday 23 July 2001

5.53 am

The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I’ve been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with shoplifting – his first offence, not even convicted – and he is being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain.

I can hear the right-wingers assuring us that it will be character-building

and teach the lad a lesson. What stupidity. It’s far more likely that he will become antagonistic towards authority and once he’s released, turn to a life of crime. This same young man will now be spending at least a fortnight with murderers, rapists, burglars and drug addicts. Are these the best tutors he can learn from?

12 noon

I am visited by a charming lady who spotted me sitting in church on Sunday. I end up asking her more questions than she asks me. It turns out that she visits every prisoner who signs the pledge – I fear I didn’t – and any inmate who attends chapel for the first time. She gives each prisoner a Bible and will sit and listen to their problems for hours. She kindly answers all my questions. When she leaves, I pick up my plastic tray, plastic bowl, plastic plate, plastic knife, fork and spoon, leave my cell to walk down to the hotplate for lunch.*

One look at what’s on offer and once again I return to my cell empty-handed. An old lag on his way back to the top floor tells me that Belmarsh has the worst grub of any jail in Britain. As he’s been a resident of seven prisons during the past twenty years, I take his word for it. An officer slams my cell door closed. It will not open again until four o’clock. I’ve had precisely twelve minutes of freedom during the last twenty-two and a half hours.

4.00 pm

After another four hours, I’m let out for Association. During this blessed release, I stop to glance at the TV in the centre of the room that’s surrounded by a dozen prisoners. They’re watching a cowboy film starring Ray Milland, who plays the sheriff. Normally I would flick to another channel but today it’s the selection of the majority so I hang in there for ten minutes before finally giving up and moving on to the dominoes table.

An Irishman joins me and asks if I can spare him a minute. He’s about five feet eight, with two scars etched across his face – one above his left eyebrow, short, the stitches still showing, and another down his right cheek, long and red. The latter I suspect is the more recent. Despite this disfigurement, he has that soft lilt of his countrymen that I can never resist.

‘I’m up in court next week,’ he says.

‘What for?’ I ask.

‘You’d rather not know,’ he replies, ‘but all I want to find out is, once I’m in court, am I allowed to defend myself?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him.

‘But would it be better to give my side of the story to a barrister and then let him brief the jury?’

I consider this for a moment because during my seven-week trial I gained some experience of the legal profession. ‘On balance,’ I tell him, ‘I would take advantage of any legal expertise on offer, rather than rely on your own cunning.’ He nods and slips away. I dread meeting up with this sharp, intelligent Irishman at some later date to be told that his barrister was a fool.

I stroll back across the room to see how the film is progressing. Being a western, a gunfight to end all gunfights is just about to take place when the officer on duty shouts, ‘Back to your cells.’ A groan goes up, but to be fair to the duty officer, he’s seated at the far end of the room and has no idea that the film only has another five minutes to run.