People Pressure

One of the joys that has come from my studies over the years is a recognition that people - just like you or I - can cause momentous shifts in established structures of power.

This is why I have a picture of Gandhi on my picture-board, stuck between erotic greetings cards. Not company he'd expect, but there you are... A skinny little bugger with an iron will who managed to defy and defeat the guns of the British Empire, without firing a shot. As Gandhi pointed out, if the people simply say 'No', then without their co-operation nothing can move forward.

The revolutions of the eastern European States were largely bloodless, as these things go, again revealing the nascent power of ordinary people who refuse to be squeezed. In quiet moments of individual decision and resolve, people decided to say, 'no'. And the structures of power crumbled.

And so I can appreciate why the Prison Service has always been very afraid of prisoners organising in any way. Our keepers appreciate that prisons (like Governments) can only function with the cooperation of the prisoners.

This is an understanding that prisoners have persistently failed to grasp. When buried beneath a pyramid of power made of concrete and steel, it can be difficult to appreciate that one has a latent power.

Political Prisoners

Between being a terrible Home Secretary and being installed as Governor of one of our more amenable Caribbean territories, David Waddington popped along to Westminster to blag a Peerage. Pausing in the House of Lords, he made the remarkable statement that “life sentence prisoners are political prisoners. Their lives are the property of the state." Such was the arrogance and power of the Home Office in 1989 that this declaration raised not a single eyebrow. The British judiciary repeatedly turned its back on us, leaving us utterly in the hands of secret decisions, made via secret processes, by politicians. Since then, the law has risen from its slumber and wrested control of lifers away from the fickle, grubby paws of the Executive. In this sense, we are no longer political prisoners. This does not mean, though, that there are not prisoners who are highly political. I am one of them, and there aren't too many of us. Or if there are, most are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. Who could blame them? Prison is all about power. It is the sharpest edge of political philosophy, the crucible of all that it means to be a citizen. One of the things that baffles most of my peers is that I find this fascinating. Each day is a perpetual lesson from Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesqueu, Locke, Mill and Machiavelli. I never have understood why my peers are largely indifferent to the meaning of their situation, why they do not begin to wonder about the nature of power, of government and of the individual. It is, surely, a small step to from asking oneself why some order from a screw should be obeyed to asking the far bigger question of by what right is any man given authority over another? What is the basis for their authority? This is where my education and my daily existence intertwined. My first degree being history and politics, as I gained a deeper appreciation of political philosophy then my understanding of my situation became increasingly sophisticated. I suppose that daily life outside obscures the reality of the relationship between the individual and the State. You could go years without bumping into people in uniform whose actions make you question authority. In prison, though, the State parks itself in my doorway several times a day and there is a much clearer link between daily life and the politics and mechanisms of power. How, then, could I not be a political animal? If a man knocks on my door to talk about some conflict with the institution, or to ask about various Rules, how could I possibly turn him away? When a man is facing disciplinary charges, how could I possibly refuse to help him with his defence? And how can I fail to become angry and frustrated at the perpetual stream of stupidities that flow from managers in suits who retain a quiet belief that they are omnipotent in their closed world? Even this blog is a political act. You must conceptualise prisons as totalitarian societies, those with power and those without. In such a situation, the mere feeble act of speaking out and questioning carries some political potency. This is why "they" don't like it one bit; not so much for what I write but for the very fact that I dare to write at all.