Past, Present, Future

I sometimes used to joke that on release I would take a tour of the prisons I had been held in. Not out of sentiment, but curiosity. For out of any cell window that is fortunate enough to have a view over the wall, the vista is inevitably truncated; I often wondered what was just out of view from the window, and a tour to stand outside the walls would satisfy that curiosity.

Yesterday I found myself in just that position, looking upwards at the cell in which seminal events in my life had taken place. My lengthy hunger strike, the riot of 1990, my gradual transformation into a political animal... But it was not sentiment or curiosity which led me to stand in the shadow of that wall, it was pain.

A message from someone still inside had tugged me straight into that difficult past. 32 years are not easy to shrug away, nor should they be, but the daily prison grind has retreated from the forefront of my memory. The message brought so much back, and reminded me of the strength of purpose I had whilst inside. I knew what I was doing, and I knew where I was going. That ended at the Gate.

And I realised, staring up at that cell window, that things must be different now. I can no longer spend endless hours typing away at people's complaints, running to the library for the latest PSI or reading endless Notices to Prisoners that managers churn out merely to demonstrate their own existence. The jailhouselawyer and subversive political guy may have had purpose, may have been roles that made sense on the landings, but they do not in my new existence.

The scope, the vista, that I am faced with is so much larger. Indeed, it is only limited by my ability and the structures within which the world operates - along with a fat chunk of blind luck. The issues have expanded, become more strategic. Helping a man argue over a personal prison issue has become a policy consultant at the Howard League - no longer dealing with a single prisoner or a single issue, but the whole of the penal landscape with its myriad avenues. Equally, being the front-man for some injustice has become a caseworker at InsideJustice, dealing with a range of people and their unjust convictions.

As the years passed I did find myself addressing wider issues than the immediate. It was this which led me into blogging at the start. And so in some way, I have always seen further ahead than the immediate, the seemingly small issues on the landing (which are actually very large in prisoners' lives). My arguments went from being aimed at screws to being fired at policy makers and I entered the wider political debate with the blog.

And yet....finding my place in this new arena has been difficult. At times it just became ridiculous. What the hell was I, me, doing chatting to Jon Snow on Channel 4 News? The journey so far has been somewhat surreal and so far removed from my previous existence that  felt profoundly adrift.

The chill of that wall's shadow, the pathetic emptiness of my old cell window, brought life into perspective. I can still do what I always did - challenge, question - but now the avenues I walk and the debates I have are different. Perhaps less immediate in their need or effect, but still in some way it is the same activity - only writ large.

And so the battles for change continue. Only now I know, really know, that not only am I home but that I can still try to make a difference.