Strangeways, here we go again: prison protests in Manchester 25 years on
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Version 0 of 1. One thing was certain: the majority of the noisy, excited crowd gazing up at the roof had not been born the last time a show of this kind came to Bury New Road. But when the Guardian visited the scene last Tuesday evening, it could have been stepping back in time, to just over 25 years ago. The thoroughfare, which leads out of Manchester’s city centre, fronts HM Prison Manchester, formerly known as Strangeways. In 1990, this was the scene of the biggest riot this country’s prison system has ever known. On April Fool’s Day that year, hundreds of prisoners took to the jail’s roof and began demolishing the gaunt Victorian edifice, a long stone’s (or slate’s) throw from the city’s cathedral. They were there, their spokesmen and banners proclaimed, because of the primitive, indecent conditions to which they were being subjected. Related: Remember Strangeways, 1990? The bad old days of inhumane prisons are back | Eric Allison The protest lasted 25 days, claimed two lives and cost more than £100m. It also spawned a public inquiry into the disturbance and others that followed, copycat fashion, across the prison estate. The report of that inquiry [pdf download], headed by Lord Justice Woolf and published in February 1991, was seen by prison reformers as a long-overdue blueprint for changes in the prison system, and a condemnation of those in office who, for decades, had resisted all moves to extend even the most basic human rights to prisoners. A Guardian leader article at the time spoke of a penal system that “is an affront to our definition of civilisation”. During the siege, many hundreds of people, from Manchester and beyond, crowded the surrounding areas. Burger vans arrived to feed the throngs and loud music blared from ghetto blasters. Supporters of the protest held up banners demanding change, and a full-blown media circus, from home and abroad, covered the disturbance. It ended when the last five prisoners surrendered and were brought down from the roof in a cherry picker. So what were we doing, back here again a quarter of a century on, looking up at at the prison, whose massive, glowering chimney still dominates the area after which the jail was named? It was another protest, apparently echoing that of 1990, against conditions in the prison. This time around, there was just one prisoner on the roof: Stuart Horner, who is serving a life sentence for murder, and hails from Wythenshawe, the vast housing estate in Manchester’s southern suburbs. In 2012, Horner, 35, was given a minimum sentence of 27 years for the murder of his uncle, who he shot dead at point-blank range. In March this year, Horner was moved to Manchester prison after staff found damage to the external wall of his cell at Garth prison, near Leyland in Lancashire. The damage was thought to be indicative of an escape attempt, and Horner was housed in the segregation unit at Manchester. Last Sunday afternoon, he scaled a fence in an enclosed exercise yard and headed for the roof. He was still there on Tuesday night, wearing a T-shirt scrawled with a handwritten message to ministers: “It’s not 1990, tell the government we’ve all had enough, sort the whole system.” Related: Strangeways prisoner ends rooftop protest The crowd outside the jail numbered around 200; a pretty impressive attendance, given that both City and United were playing in televised Champion’s League games. Most were young, some with pyjama-clad toddlers in arms, pointing up at the roof and taking pictures with their smartphones. One group had set up a soundsystem, with twin speakers blaring out and the operators apparently taking requests from those at the party. People were dancing the macarena in the street. One man had a microphone and was shouting words of support up at the roof. And despite a substantial police presence, an unmistakable whiff of cannabis permeated the mild evening air. Cars on the still-busy main road slowed down as drivers took in the scene, many blowing their horns. Although just a one-man band, Horner was attracting crowds and creating an atmosphere that certainly took me back 25 years, to when I stood outside Strangeways almost every day during the 1990 riot. And though I didn’t get involved with the musical entertainment back then, I did have a megaphone, and was threatened with arrest for using it to shout messages of support. I thought the threats were hollow – the police didn’t want the largely peaceful throng getting upset – so I carried on shouting. So what was Horner complaining about? And are those complaints justified today? Nathan, in his late 20s, said he was from the same council estate as Horner and knew him well. He said Horner had “form” for rooftop performances, having scaled the roof at Garth prison last year. (The prison service refused to comment.) Nathan had been released from Strangeways last April, a few days after the 25th anniversary of the riot. He said it was a “pure pisshole, with pure bang-up” – cellular confinement. Asked how he thought Horner was staying awake, he guessed: “He’s maybe on speed – there’s plenty of drugs in there. Or maybe he’s just buzzing off the crowd.” A woman in the crowd on Tuesday said her son was in Strangeways, serving 12 months for burglary. In her 40s and quietly spoken, she described the conditions in the jail as bad. She said her son was in a dirty cell with a heroin addict, and was locked up 23 hours a day with nothing to do.” I know he’s done wrong, but it’s just not right to treat people like that, it’s just not right,” she said. As dusk fell on Tuesday, the crowd gathered on Bury New Road could barely make Horner out. But he was certainly able to see and hear them. That seemed familiar to veterans of 1990. “It was strange up on the roof that first night, looking at the crowds gathered on Bury New Road. It was odd, watching them, watching us, watching them.” So David Bowen, one of the original rioters, talking about his first night on the roof of the jail, told me back in the early 90s. With the 25th anniversary of the riot still so recent, the media latched on to Horner’s one-man show, which might explain the audience he drew. But how much has changed since then? In 1990, in Strangeways, the majority of prisoners were confined three to a cell, a space decreed by the Victorians as the minimum area in which one man could be humanely held. There was no in-cell sanitation: prisoners urinated and defecated into pots, or buckets, which were “slopped out” in large sinks on the landings twice a day. Convicts got a bath or shower once a week, saw their friends and families on visits once a month, and had no telephone access. Those conditions were not exclusive to Strangeways. They were found in every “local” prison in the country. “Locals” are found in most of our major cities. They receive prisoners from the local courts and process them through the system. They are still there: Pentonville, Liverpool, Leeds. They are the sharp end of the penal estate – the system’s warehouses, which simply store people, rather than do anything with them. Nowadays, prisoners in local prisons are only forced to share two to a cell (originally designed for one), but with reduced space, due to the addition of in-cell sanitation, which came about after – and because, some would say – those hundreds of men stormed the roof of Strangeways a quarter of a century ago. Related: Music fails to dislodge Strangeways protesters: from the archive, 7 April 1990 The cells now have televisions and the landings have telephones, so prisoners can speak to the families and friends they now see on visits twice a month. Most get a shower daily. Around 8.30pm on Tuesday, one of the young guys working the soundsystem grabbed the microphone and shouted a warning to the man on the roof. “Stuart, the riot squad are coming through B-wing roof, get yourself to the edge,” he yelled. From my standpoint – and with my longstanding inside knowledge of the jail’s layout – I could see that Horner was indeed on B-wing roof. But how did the shouter, if his warning was meaningful, have knowledge of what was happening beyond the high walls? I asked a lad standing near the soundsystem who seemed to be involved. He reached to his pocket, took out a mobile phone and put it back. Enough said. The riot squad did not attempt to snatch Horner, then or later. He surrendered at 3am, coming off the roof in a cherry picker, just like in 1990. He shouted to a local reporter that he had “proved my point. I’ve got a 12-inch pizza and a can of Coke. I’ve done what I wanted. I’ve had a mad one.” The man who took out his phone may have been right. Mobiles are found aplenty in prisons, along with heroin, cannabis and lately, huge amounts of black mamba and spice – synthetic cannabis that cannot be detected in prison drug tests. In the last two years, dozens of prisoners in jails across the country have been rushed to A&E units suffering seizures caused by overdosing on the synthetic narcotics. The mum who said her son was in a dirty cell was not far off the mark. According to an inspection report this year [pdf download], some cells were damp and unfit for habitation. And while the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, identified “solid and long-standing strengths” and praised the prison for making progress, he also found that too many prisoners were doubled up in cells designed for one, with inadequately screened toilets. A prison service spokesperson said that reports had shown Strangeways to be “one of the best large, inner-city prisons of its type with a complex and challenging population”. And it’s true that Horner’s protest may have more complicated explanations. Local prisons also bear the brunt of the increasing number of prisoners suffering serious mental and physical health problems. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 62% of male prisoners have a personality disorder, with one in 10 having had a psychiatric admission before entering prison. Self-harm and suicide rates among male prisoners are soaring, and Strangeways recorded five apparent suicides in the last four years. Related: Lord Woolf: 25 years on from Strangeways, prisons are still in crisis Despite these increasing problems, budget cuts have seen a decrease of 30% in the number of prison staff, and the Prison Officers Association admit that regimes are failing because of these and other cuts. On the anniversary of the 1990 riots in April this year, Lord Justice Woolf, speaking about the state of prisons 25 years on, said the system appeared to be going backwards. We are unlikely to see a riot on the scale of Strangeways again. In 1990, the prison held an unusually high number of long-term prisoners who were not prepared to suffer the conditions any longer. Local jails normally hold a majority of short-sentenced inmates who do not have the inclination, or time, to protest. And the system will never allow prisoners to congregate in the numbers they did in the chapel of Strangeways 25 years ago. So the lid is pretty tightly screwed down, but the problems are simmering away with the burner set on high. And, of course, all but a tiny number of prisoners in the system will be released, most sooner rather than later. Somebody will pay the price for the system’s failings; somebody always does. On Tuesday, one young reveller at the scene remarked: “This is crackers, this. It’s better than Notting Hill carnival.” I couldn’t have put the first part of that proposition better if I tried. |