It has taken me a lot of years, but I find silence is sometimes the best answer.
The screws have brought all the revenge attacks on themselves. Most prisoners that have done some nasty damage in the system have come through the young offenders, where that was just a breeding ground for hatred from the screws point of view. They were famous for bullying and battering young, defenceless boys to the point of death, in some cases.
I keep telling the screws over and over again, ‘If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.’ The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy’s eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy’s or man’s eyes.
It was so funny, I witnessed this with my own eyes, Andy and the screw were like two WWF wrestlers, we were locked behind the grill gates cheering Andy on, the chants started. The chant was to the tune of Jingle Bells and went like this: Stab a screw, stab a screw, stab a screw today, all that fun it is to stab a screw on New Year’s Day, but it was only 29 December.
Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk’s morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying.
You know, in a society where children just about have to seek parental permission to sit on Santa’s knee, the word ‘paedophile’ should send more shivers up your spine than the word ‘druggie’.
Mags seemed to attract trouble wherever she went. The Raploch Estate in Stirling was a nice backdrop, a middleclass place to live and bring up your kids until the scourge of drugs took a grip of its sons and daughters, like any other quiet township. The more the people needed drugs, the rougher and more violent the place became.
The last person to be hanged in Glasgow at the age of 31 was a beast by the name of Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel, he swung from the gallows in Barlinnie Prison on 11 July 1958.
Just as chillingly as Manuel took police to the spot where he had buried 17-year-old Isabella Cooke, it was reminiscent of this when Brady took police to Saddleworth Moor in Yorkshire, when he and Hindley were flown there by helicopter to walk on the graves of more victims.
On the morning of Wednesday 13 March 1996, Thomas West Hamilton shattered the peaceful country town of Dunblane, Stirlingshire, with a fusillade of gunfire that reverberated round the world.
Ian Brady was born Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland, he’s responsible for a series of murders that took place from 1962 until 1965 in Greater Manchester. Brady and Myra Hindley met in 1961, she was a 19-year-old typist, he was a 23-year-old stock clerk. By 1966, both were tried at Chester Assizes for multiple murder. The trial lasted 15 days; Brady and Hindley were convicted on 6 May 1966, sentenced to life imprisonment.
Big Rab has worked in Barlinnie’s Wendy House for over seven and a half years. The average time a screw works in the seg blocks is two years, this man has seen it and done it all. Most prisoners will agree, he isn’t a dog either but can be when he wants. He has had legendary roll abouts with some of Scotland’s hardest criminals but at the end of it he doesn’t hold any grudges.
Many folks describe arrogant people as jerks, idiots, creeps, and much worse. A person that treats you like you are stupid and says the only right way is their way – even when it clearly is not – is arrogant. They try to make up for their own lack of confidence by hammering away at others.
I have known Hammy for years, he has been shot in the chest twice at point blank range with a sawn off shotgun. The other hard men must have been shocked when he got out the car he was in and chased them with his own hand gun, he has also been stabbed multiple times in prison and out on the rough tough streets of Glasgow but he is still standing.
I was also in Glenochil Prison in 1992 when Hammy was stabbed five times in the chest and belly off another man called Fudge, but give Hammy his dues, he never tried to jail bait his attacker up. Fudge never got any more time to his sentence for the frenzied attack on Hammy. This man has also had pit bulls and rottweiler dogs set on him and guess what, he beat the dogs.
Another man of sheer violence was the late Stewart Boyd, he was killed in a car accident over in Spain’s Costa del Sol shortly after being released from prison in June 2003. But he certainly left his mark on the city streets of Glasgow. He was a force to be reckoned with, a gang enforcer. Murder and witness intimidation were high on his criminal charge sheet.
Gary Moore is another legendary figure of sheer violence. In prison, Gary has spent most of his adult life inside one jail or another. When, on the odd occasion, he does get out of prison, it doesn’t take him long to go on a murderous campaign of total terror. Gary has been charged and stood trial for some three or four different murders.
At one point the worst thing to happen was the odd stabbing or slashing, the violence that we live with nowadays used to only be seen in Hollywood gangster movies such as Gangs of New York, Menace to Society and Boys and the Hood. Even when we were reading about the crack hitting London, no one in Scotland would have thought in their wildest dreams that it would have taken off in our cities, towns and now even highland villages.
They think giving people longer prison sentences is going to teach people a lesson. Well that is just fantasy, as we just take our drugs and violence in to the prison. Our brothers and sisters, pals or rivals outside plug the gap that has been left by the dealer that was selling the crack or smack in the first place. Just like kamikazes, when one is dead, fifty queue up to take their place.
TC Campbell doesn’t need any introduction, the man is a legend in the prison community and outside when this very strong-minded man was trying to prove his innocence for the six murders he had been convicted for. TC went on a fifty-day hunger strike, he ended up in hospital. This man was willing to die to prove his innocence, if he never done his famous hunger strike he probably would have never go the MPS in government to sit up and take note.
Think about it, if you can pick up on the vibes and thoughts of others then surely you can send out your own vibes and thoughts to others with a little conscious effort!