The Personal and The Political

If there is one unmissable difference between liberty and confinement, it is the distance between the individual and the State. Out in our daily lives, the State is hidden, glimpsed fleetingly as traffic wardens flit by and police cars grace our rear view mirrors. The State is there, in every corner of life, but it gives the impression of being concealed behind the façade that is life.

I am used to a more personal relationship with the State. Directly because of Ministerial decisions, recommendations by the Parole Board that I move to Open prison prior to release were overturned. Every moment of my existence was regimented and regulated, the State being personified by some miserable bugger in size 9’s slamming the cell door shut. Rarely in the “real world” do we have such proximity to government.

A large barrier to my forging any consistent relationship with the State, the gaping hole in the idea of “citizen”, is the denial of the Vote. Ten years after the Hirst judgement and government is still slithering around the issue like a snake in a vat of KY. A government insisting I show slavish obedience to the law whilst ignoring its own obligations is a matter which has, and always will, rankle with me.

Yet here I am, the new owner of a vote. And it came without any effort on my part. I haven’t had to show that I’m intelligent, educated, moral, or even interested. Whether I like it or not, I’m lumbered with the damn thing. And now I have to decide how to wield this miniscule, temporary, power over our masters.

 I could just bail out of the whole business, opting to spoil my paper or just not vote. In the face of a range of political parties all severely afflicted with prisonitis, the idea of voting on the basis of party is a dead duck. All of them can rot.

 In the absence of any meaningful political principles on offer, I have decided to ignore the national picture and rather chose to look local. As is, which local candidate fills me with sufficient confidence that they can do a decent job representing my constituency.

 Rather improbably, I have alighted upon David Warburton. He is not a career politician, which may suggest less adherence to slavish party lines in attempts to curry Party favour. Maybe. And politics is his fourth or fifth career, which has encompassed classic music through to E-Commerce and social enterprises. A person rounded by experience, then. Having popped into his office to sound him out of criminal justice policy, we found ourselves in the café having such a long chat that other appointments were shifted. Unlike a standard politician, David was happy to ask questions rather than merely pontificate.

Turns out, I’m voting….Tory!

The O'Brien Show

The O’Brien Show

On April 2^nd – today or yesterday, depending on my efficiency! – I appear on the new ITV O’Brien Show. And I found the experience quite disturbing. Its made me angry enough to  surmount my writers block, so silver linings and all that. 

The call came in late last week. Would I care to pop along to Manchester to take part in a debate on the new O’Brien Show. Hmm. Daytime ITV can be a bit of a bearpit, but I googled James O’Brien and discovered that whilst he is a minor controversialist, he has stood in on Newsnight as a presenter. Clearly not of the Jeremy Kyle persuasion, I thought… 

Standard practice, train tickets arrived and I dragged myself to the station for the 8am train heading Oop North. Four and a half hours. I arrived slightly frazzled. Unlike any other media engagement, I was left standing in the rain in Manchester for an hour awaiting a car to hoof me to the studio. Such is the life of the part time media tart. 

Arriving at the media centre I was faced by what seemed to be a mix between an airport lounge and a mental health outpatients clinic. I was searched and metal detected. A first for any media engagement, but a loud clue that I missed. What sort of show needs its guests and audience searched? One that is determined to provoke conflict, perhaps… 

Herded into the studio, microphones attached – the process is like being ever so politely indecently assaulted – then seated. Next to a woman who had lost three members of her family to murder. And in front of another family of victims. The other two ex cons were similarly placed. I had a sneaking feeling that all was not going to go as smoothly as normal. 

The headline question we were dragged from all over the country was meant to be, does prison work. What transpired was that each of us ex cons was berated by O’Brien for our past crimes, with him egging on various victims to skewer us. 

I talk about my crime. I don’t shy from it. If id been invited along to talk about that, then id still have turned up – and it would at least have been an honest process. But to lure us in for our views and then use us to prod at victims who have suffered appalling loss is pretty repugnant. But all standard for this show. The ethics of using victims of crime to stir up heat for a tv show is, I suspect, not a hot topic at production meetings. 

The first ex con was set upon. A young guy, ex drug dealer, he was seated next to a woman who had lost a sibling to a drug overdose. The guy was piled into as if he was responsible. Then he laid into Stinson Hunter, “the paedophile hunter”, accusing him of being a vigilante and of responsibility for the suicide of an alleged paedophile Stinson had provided the evidence against to the police, who charged the guy.

 

Then onto me. O’Brien suggested “life should mean life”, an interesting enough topic but not the one that we were invited to address. O’Brien suggested murderers were inherently dangerous….and so I couldn’t resist asking why was he sitting next to me then?! Cheeky of me, I know, but I was hacked off with the way the show was unfolding.

 The final straw with me was when O’Brien pompously suggested that I had laughed at my crime. Nice try. Anyone remotely familiar with me will know I never view my crime with  anything less than deadly seriousness. It was a despicable trick.

 Having seen that none of us were actually being asked to address the issue of prison, having seen us being used as some sort of surrogate offender for the victims surrounding us, I unhooked my mic and headed for the door with firm politeness. It was a natural break in the recording, and O’Brien skipped across to intercept me. And I told him my problem – that having being invited along to talk about the utility of prison, all he was doing was slamming us for our past. O’Brien guided me back to my seat, making placatory noises. Then left me in the lurch as some random told me I should be executed. Right to respond? Don’t be silly.

 It wasn’t just me that felt traduced. In the first part of the show you will see me sitting next to a middle aged lady. By the end, she had morphed into a young brunette. The cause of this transformation? The lady had walked out just after me. A victim of crime, she felt this was all more heat than light and left, with tv people trying to tell her she couldn’t. Why? Continuity! And so a new person was snuck into her empty seat. The magic of television was revealed to be a grubby con trick.

 I had words with the Producer afterwards, and he seemed surprised. With a bunch of ex cons and an equal number of victims, there was a genuine opportunity to explore the issue of punishment and prison. This was squandered, deliberately, burned on the altar of what I call zoo tv.  I’d like to think they considered the victims they invited to emote and recall their loss and pain – to no good purpose. But I know I'd be wrong to believe that.

 Never again. Strictly news shows from here. Unless the jungle calls.