 Ddwi'n fwyfodd meddwl yw i eu cyfwyrd yn gallu ei chlas o bwyntfa ffordd, i gwybod o'r ffordd yr awr hwn yn hyn. Gwyddo nhw'n hynny, felly mae'r nodiwch ddweud yn yr un i'n ymddangos, sy'n gole i chi'n gwneud, ond mae'r cysyllt yn eithaf. Iez i'r hyn i, ac oedd maelod y gweithredu, John Sutton. John, maen nhw yw. Mae'n hi weld, James. Ddwy'n rhoi am ychydig yn byw mewn i'i gwwyrd. Yw'r man yn ei gweld llawer yn inputs o'r pryd. You've worked over 10 years, you've written over 10 books. A man, wnaeth y gallwch ei'w ddiogelwch, you've exposed a lot of stuff in the prison system as well. You've worked with some of the most dangerous prisoners from murderers rapists, terrorists. You've worked with them all. But first and foremost, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks very much. I'm pleased to be here. I always like to go back to the start of my guess, John. Get a bit of understanding about you. Were you great on how it all began? Well, first of all I'm the son of a police officer and I honestly did believe as a young man that I would follow my father into the police and when it came time for me to actually join the police it was discovered that I was coloured blind but I couldn't see colours and that was part of the medical for the police so I couldn't join the police so instead of joining the police I joined the army and that's how I started out my career, really, in the army. Populic at school, John? Oh, rubbish! Oh, rubbish! And I really detested school and one of my schoolteachers was a man called Colin Welland. Now, Colin Welland's quite famous indeed he won an Oscar as a screenwriter for a movie called Chariots of Fire. He was also featured as an actor in the film Kez and he was well known. He was in Zedcast and he was my schoolteacher and he was a big six-foot-two-inch curly-edded fifteen-storm bully who used to beat the kids up with a big plimsel and I always thought I'd get him. I wrote to his agent, you know, and said he's still assaulting little children because I wanted to have a word with Colin Welland and when I finally found out where he was he'd become ill and I was just not going to go and see him if he was unwell. I wanted to see him when he was fit so I could slap his ass. What did you do after school? Tellable, really. I mean I wanted to be a journalist. I went to see the careers that said what you want to be. I said I want to be a journalist. I'm a writer because I was really good at writing. I tell you something at school. I used to write short stories and the class, I used to read them out to the class. And the class would be like, hey, I'll do all that mad stuff, you know. But monsters that lived at the bottom of a pit and when the wind blew from the west you could hear them scream. All the kids loved it, you know, and it was amused me. And I liked all this. The teachers used to rip my work up and throw it away. When it came time for reading they couldn't ever find my work. I detested that, I tell you. So when I left school, when I went to see the careers that said I want to be a journalist, ha ha ha, very funny. You're going to work down the pit or you'll work in a mine or you're going to be working in the mills. I eventually did end up working in the mills. Working in the cotton mills, right at the end of the cotton, you know, the King cotton where they were weaving in. You never worked in a mill, good God, it was noisy and loud. You started at six o'clock in the morning, you know, and you'd worked till two. And then next week you'd be working two o'clock in the morning till ten o'clock at night. And then when I became old enough I was working nights. That's nine o'clock at night till seven in the morning in the mills. Was it more money? It was more money but I didn't get any. My parents, as I say, were kind of strange. They used to take my wage packet off me and give me a bit of spending money. That was it. It was like modern day slavery. They wouldn't allow it today. What was the training like to be a prison officer back in the 60s, 70s? The original, you started off with doing the civil service entrance examination and when I turned up at Strangeways, it was run at Strangeways, the entrance exam for the north west. There were about 20 of us and I think about eight of us passed the examination. So it wasn't a straightforward thing. And there were people there who really wanted to get in but failed the exam. From the examination you went for a medical and if you passed the medical, then you had an interview and the interview consisted of a chief officer and two governors and they were asking you basic questions about your life and what you'd done and what you saw yourself in the prison service and if you passed that then you went on to a training school. There were two training schools. One was at HMP Wakefield and the other one was at HMP Lay Hill which was near Bristol and I was selected to go to HMP Lay Hill. So I went down to Lay Hill and I think it was a 12 week course where you talked about the basics of disarming prisoners, basic self-defence which I knew anyway from the army and the basic rules and regulations of the prison service. So it was 12 weeks training and then you were posted to a particular prison. I was sent from the training school to HMP Wyrmwood Scrubs. What was the pay like? How much were you getting per week, per month? Well we got to go back in time to the 1975, early 1975 and I believe I was getting something in the region of about 40 pounds per week which was slightly more than I was getting as an NCO in the British Army when I left the British Army. As I say, in those days it wasn't particularly bad pay. What was the first prison you worked on? Pardon? What was the first prison you worked on? HMP Wyrmwood Scrubs which is located in London West 12 on Dukane Road and Dukane Road is the name of the master of the prison service who designed the prison in 1860 I believe it was. That's when it dates from. Did you realise how hard it would have been from army prison to then going into one of London's toughest? The thing was it wasn't particularly hard for me because I was used to dealing with people who didn't want to do things. That didn't bother me at all but the problem was of course you've got people who are extremely violent and whilst the inmates in the prison in the army were violent they wouldn't as a rule, general rule attack the staff because they knew what was coming. What was the first batch of trouble you ever seen? I was only there a very short while and the first bit of trouble was not with a particular inmate it was with one of the governors. It was lunchtime and he opened up a Category A prisoner during lockdown at lunchtime because the staff out on duty did out at lunch. I said to him, excuse me sir this is a Category A inmate I said he's not allowed to be unlocked during lockdown, the staff aren't on duty there's only me on this landing there was over 200 inmates on one landing. That was C2 at Wernwood Scrubs and he said, do you know who I am? I said, I know you are sir. I said, do you know the rules? He said get about your duty and he unlocked this Category A prisoner and took him off the landing down to his office on the ones and it subsequently transpired which I found out because I did some checking up on this that the governor was smuggling out letters for this particular inmate and so I went to see the inmate and I said, do tell me, what's the score here? I mean I know that he's smuggling your letters out because he was getting letters in from the House of Lords and it said things like absolutely charming to hear from you wonderful letter do hope the staff at our friends at the Scrubs are looking after you best wish he's Boothby, Lord Boothby, you know from the House of Lords and I said to him, so I know that your letters do not be sending any letters to Boothby because I've checked your files and if you send a letter out then it will be there so tell me why is this governor smuggling your mail out and surprisingly enough what transpired was he said that the governor was actively homosexual and that he was engaging in acts of sexual relations with the governor and the governor in return was smuggling his letters out and bringing in small bottles of whiskey this had to be reported which I did I wrote it all down and took the letter sheets and all the rest took it to the number one chief officer at the Scrubs who was in charge of all discipline grades and he went absolutely crazy he said he was authorised due to conduct an investigation into senior members of staff well I had a warrant card on the warrant card it said all prison officers whilst acting as such have all the powers of a police constable I said so that's my authority you know that's what I'm paid to do I'm paid to protect this system I said then what you've got here is something that needs to be invested get out of my office so you would think what would happen next you'd think alright he's shouted at you but you're going to do something about it the next thing I knew was that there were police officers in the prison and inmates were coming up to me saying what the bloody hell have you been at Gove I said hmm just doing my job and I said there's senior members of the CID downstairs asking questions about you they called the police in to investigate me not to investigate the governor deflection well they'd done something like that yeah so the governor was having an affair with one of the prisoners one of the category A prisoners a homosexual affair well it's well known that a lot of tough guy gangsters and East End villains are gay for the stay well get on with it don't bother me but when the governor is having a sexual relationship or one of the governors with a category A inmate and jeopardising the security of the prison it surely is beholden upon the staff to take action of course when I did take action the first thing I got was the police investigating not the governor but me what for well I didn't have anything they were on a fishing expedition if they could have found anybody who would have given them information about me that was to my detriment then they would have no doubt charged people but there wasn't anything what happened to the governor well that was very strange I never saw him again after that so they may have moved him to another establishment but there was no word out no nothing nobody said anything the chief officer never said oh well done for doing that or that was it he just disappeared out of the system he's no doubt somewhere else because the system looks after its own and how long were you in that prison I was there for two years nearly nearly two years I had some terrible trouble when I was scrubbed what else happened well as I told you at the start the prison service provided accommodation for staff and I'd been there for about five months and I hadn't got any accommodation and I went to see the prison officer's association that's the union supposedly the union that represents the prison staff and I said well what's the score here there's no accommodation for my wife she lives in Manchester which she did and I've been posted up 200 miles up the road to this prison and I said I'm looking for a house he said oh you probably have to wait about 18 months I said I said I'm not waiting 18 months said my wife's not being separated from me for 18 months so why can't we get a property all this said we're looking after a property you'll get yours when time they just basically telling me to piss off so I thought I'll investigate this so I found out that there were about 20 junior officers recently joined the scrubs who were waiting for properties so I called all these officers together in a meeting and I said we've got to do something about this said so we've got to find out how many houses are available and one of the officers said well my father-in-law his uncle or something like that was a chief officer in the works department he said he'll know exactly how many properties are available so he came back about a week later and said about 30 empty houses belonging to the scrubs so I went to see the people I said hey I found out this is the only this is the chairman of the private office of the association I said he said oh yeah we're old in them back for senior members of staff that are coming in from other prisons I said in the meantime you know I've got to see my wife live my wife for six months said and you're going to do that so I went back to all the junior staff I said what we've got to do is get a petition up here and go and see the governor so I brought this petition out and I put my name on the top John Sutton I took it around then about 15 of them signed it there were some that wouldn't because they didn't want trouble and then I went to see the governor and I didn't ask to see the governor I just went up and knocked on his door and I said this is what's happening I said it's not down to me it's down to the housing committee it's run by the prison officers association I said no it's not I said I've looked up the regulations the head of this establishment is yourself, the prison governor Norman Honey's name was I said and you're responsible for the housing I said you can allocate it to who you want but at the end of the day the responsibility rests with you I said and these staff here led by me require housing and you've got housing that is available not allocating it said no if I don't get a quarter at the next allocation meeting then myself and all these officers here will be outside your gate with banners I said and we'll be telling the press and the televisions all the media that you are restricting them and holding them back I said and that is in contrary to our contract of employment and I gave him the petition and walked out of his office the next time there was a meeting of the housing committee was about six weeks away I got a quarter, I got accommodation and all the other staff are coming to me saying have you done it John have you done it I said well it's quite simple all you do is you get a petition you put your name at the top and you go and tell the governor if you don't get a property you've got to demonstrate outside his prison I mean you see you couldn't they wouldn't demonstrate I knew they never would but I would were you going against them did you become a problem for for the prison it did turn out like that I never set out to do that I didn't I was just doing my job there were problems there I was searching cells you know you go as an officer you go to search people's cells to make sure that they've not got escape equipment and weapons or knives or anything like that so I went to search a cell on D wing which was the lifers wing you know the long term inmates wing and the particular cell I was searching I didn't know who it was really I just had a list of cells so I went round and the guy wasn't in his cell so I went to see the principal officer and I said in charge of the wing and I said I've got to search this cell I want to know where this inmates is I said go and have a cup of tea go and have a coffee or something like that he said and then when you've done that have a couple of hours they bring it back I'll sign your papers so you've signed it you've searched it I said no I said I'm going to search the cell I said where is he he wouldn't tell me where he was for some unknown reason so I eventually found the inmates he was in a Spanish class and I went in there and said do you know call his name out I've forgotten his name now but anyway eventually he stood up and said I'm going to search his cell come with me oh no I'm not going well I was pretty well old school used to people doing what I told them you know so I thought well this guy says he doesn't want to do it alright so he'll do it with his arm up his back grabs hold of him arm up the back shoot and then we'll call like that you know and took him to his cell struggling, kicking, screaming and shouting but before I got to his cell the staff the prison staff on the landing on D-Wing come running up what you doing what you doing I said I'm going to search his cell no you're not no you're not get off him I said this one's not telling me I'm not going to search I am going to search his cell no you're not and then the principal officer turned up and said you've got a minute to get off my wing get off and the staff were going to grab me the prison staff so I went from there to the chief the head of security for the scrubs and told him what had happened I said listen they won't let me search this cell there's something going on here no we said there was I tell you what I said go and search some other cells said he's being serious I said I'm going to put this in writing so I put it in writing and I gave it to him I said that is exactly what happened he said no he said I'm telling you go and search the cells on the air wing the other end of the prison and that was the end of that except within two weeks the inmate whose cell I was going to search was on the roof of Wyrmwood Scrubs prison parading up and down dressed up in a mock military uniform with a Irish flag waving it up and down cos he was a member of the IRA and he was demonstrating that the IRA prisoners should have political rights and that's a fact that was February 1976 it's on the internet check it out how bad was that? in the 70s obviously now there's more luxury you get TVs, some prisons have got showers on their cell how hard was it then slapping out and just absolutely filthy I mean I worked on the the biggest single prison landing in Europe which was C2 landing at Wyrmwood Scrubs there were 200 inmates three to a cell and there was four urinals recesses you know but there was no internal sanitation and I said when I first joined I said to one of the senior staff I said they're going to be ringing the bell asking to get to the toilet I said should I let them out you should let them out here mate he said straight there's one answer I said that's what you say if they rang the bell get on your pot that was the sanitation it was filthy dirty disgusting there were some interesting characters on there on C2 landing there was one in mate there called Peter Cook do you know who Peter Cook is a Cambridge rapist just a bit before your time but he used to wear a leather mask with a zip at the front and rapist written on the top by Gemp Mask by Gemp Mask and he raped I don't know maybe 30 or so female students in Cambridge and he was on C2 landing sentence to multiple life sentences except he was extremely weird and one day I opened this cell and instead of being dressed as an in mate he was a category A by the way so we had a single cell I opened this cell he had a dress on he'd got a bed sheet painted it with paint from the art class and made himself a dress and he'd got this dress on nothing else completely naked underneath all that it was wearing underneath was an extremely large penis that was erect he jumped out of his cell Mr Sutton, Mr Sutton I love you, kiss me and he was tragic not to do a spun him round and run him head first into the side of his cell and throw him inside not being raped but they came pretty drapes I don't fancy that How did other people treat him? was he not a target? he was an extremely powerful man strong extremely powerful but not very tall about five foot six, five foot five but extremely powerfully built so he would take some doing and he was a category A so he never went anywhere anywhere unsupervised so they wouldn't be able to get at him and eventually I believe he was sectioned not a case I think he was sent to Broadmoor in the end Was there many gay affairs with inmates in prison? well I mean I just said before especially for the long termers all long termers you know they're gay for this day it's still fucking weird that you're either gay or not people are doing 20-30 years listening to seats to their own but it's still strange it may seem strange if people want to do that I'm not going to get involved but if I came across inmates who were engaging in that well I'd just bang on the door and say come on cut it out don't get caught doing that because I wouldn't intervene with them because I had a degree of sympathy with the poor bastards being locked up in disgusting disgraceful situations like that How has that seen me in his so-called gangsters and murderers then all fucking shagging each other in their cells? Well it wasn't so much shagging on them and there was a lot of fellatio you know sucking decks I had only been on the land in about a couple of months a brand new prison had only been there a couple of days came to me and said how much is it to boss for sucking decks I said don't ask me I said that's one of the cleaners they'll probably be able to help you so I said to the cleaners did he come and ask you oh yeah I said we told him it was like quarter of an ounce of tobacco you know that's how much because the currency on the land at that time wasn't drugs it was tobacco and he said the strange thing is he said he doesn't want somebody to suck his he wants to pay people to suck theirs eh it's fucking creepy bro innit like you say it seeks to our own but he was here like there was a prostitutes inside cat A as well yeah they'd service you for a quarter of an ounce I was out because drugs weren't rife back then well in the 70s drugs weren't in the 70s no because people would do anything for their hit but then it is what they're doing just sucking deck for tobacco just tobacco yeah it was easier ways to get tobacco my ass you should have said who was the guy who was having an affair with a prisoner who was the guy who was having an affair with a prisoner at the start of the podcast she says oh yeah well that was the governor the governor you should have sent the fucking governor to him maybe that's why he became the governor it was a fucking easy gig for him well I mean some people get themselves into positions like that because that's their intention I mean where are you going to find people who are wanting to be involved in that kind of thing the ideal place would be prisons or schools or nurseries or something like that as you say you've all got your little niche in life who else was in that prison the train robbers were in there but the real train robbers not Ronny Big's Ronny Big's was a driver the real train robbers was Gordon Guddie and all that how long did they get they got like 30 years but they didn't serve 30 years they served about 15 where did Ronny go was it Brazil from Wandsworth and he went to Brazil yeah but he was not considered to be anything by the actual train robbers they thought he was just a golfer you know drive me here drive me there so he wasn't any big name he wasn't Buster or anybody like that were you there when they escaped no I wasn't at Wandsworth no how dangerous was it for a prison officer in the 70s around Mad Men was your life ever in danger or were you you were at all times aware that there were inmates who were extremely dangerous and the big one was the IRA of course and for some unknown reason once I got on the wrong side of the prison officers association that didn't take me very long I found myself being put in charge of category A visits for the IRA now at that time because they were highly politically motivated they had to have the secluded visits so if say you were the IRA and I was your brother or something like that I as a prison officer would be sat next to you making notes I mean you can imagine how oppressive that is I ain't got any choice cos that was my job at the end of it I had to report back to the security department to tell them what had gone on and the IRS saying to me things like we know where you live you know we know who you are exactly so the problem was that your life is in danger the IRA doesn't fuck about man there's not like gangsters who make the threats in the shouts they probably didn't know who you lived in they've had every detail on every prison officer they absolutely did I never got attacked by prisoners I mean I always try to be understanding and reasoned fair I have a degree of empathy I mean I'm part of the Irish I understand the reason that they're doing it I just don't follow along that you should blow people up draw a line somewhere it's mad I've had IRA men on I've had UDA men on I've had British soldiers on it's just crazy just a few years ago that people were actually all killing each other on island it's mad to think if you look at it from both sides there's always people fighting for their cause and their beliefs but when you break it all down it is crazy to think it was only a few years ago that that was happening it's not that long ago I had two friends killed in Northern Ireland two brothers who were boxers in the same army boxing team as me they were killed on duty two brothers and another friend who was blown up three of his his colleagues were killed he was severely injured he's never been the same since when did you leave the world med scrubs? I left world med scrubs in 1977 what for? well as I said it took me a while to get a quarter now once I'd got up somewhere to live yeah I thought well it's alright I've got a job I've got a wife and my wife became pregnant and so we were looking forward to the future and I came home one day and I said to my wife I saw this noise outside she said oh it happens every other night and what it was was a gang of louts about four or five of them standing because we were on the second floor up and they were standing in the park half out below the flats you know what they were like what they call them mess and ads you know and they were shouting abuse up at the occupants ah we know your work we know your husband's away we'll come up and give you a good scene two misses you know what you really need is some of this I said I'm not having this so I went down to see them I said excuse me I said what are you doing here you don't live here do you you know I'm best off you know bastard all that that was about 26 at the time they were about 16-17 you know so I said I'll tell you what I said if you come around here again I said I will go and see your parents go and see my parents they'll tell you to piss off I can do what I want so I know who the big one was he was about six foot three actually and he was the son of the chairman of the prison officers association so the next night after work I went round to his house and said I just want to have a word with you you let me in he said I want to have a word with you about your son that's coming round to the quarters where all the staff live and shouting abuse and threatening me and saying oh I can go and see my father he said he said Mr Sutton he said I know I'm going to have trouble with you he said if you ever lay hands on my son or approach him again he said I will have you arrested he said he's serious I said he's annoying all the residents of the quarters shouting obscenities at them he said no get out of my house I thought that's strange I said to him there is going to be trouble and sure enough about two weeks later his son was where the staircase to go up to where I live and his son was sprawled across it with two of his mates I said to him come on get out of the way I want to get through to my house climb over as you're old bastard so I did attempt to climb over him and I said so he kicked me in the eye which split all my eye and when I tried to chase him he ran off so I thought well I'm going to report this to the police or reported it to the police didn't do anything didn't question him didn't do anything and it came round about three months later it was the cup final united versus somebody or other and united lost and I don't follow football so I'm not wasn't bothered anyway and I've been working at the scrubs and I came back and I said to my friend who was with me so let's go and have a beer my wife was about seven months pregnant at the time so let's go and have a beer in the pub called the Askew Arms which is about a quarter of a mile away so as we left my house and these gang of louts followed us there were four of them and when we got into the pub my friend said to me just ignore them John just ignore them I said ignore them you know as long as they don't bother me anyway we got into the pub and I was just about to order a beer when into the pub came these louts picked up glasses and they said right something we're going to kill you now came across the pub there was no way back behind me was the toilets and a stone wall there was no exit I couldn't go backwards I couldn't go forwards because there were three of them so as they approached me with the glasses in their hands saying they were going to kill me I terminated the three of them very quickly and put them down on the floor and they called the ambulance and took the big one away when she got fractured to school I didn't know at the time I didn't mean to hit him that hard I didn't I just wanted to prevent myself from being killed being injured and I was subsequently charged with actual bodily harm and taken to Knightsbridge Crown Court you can imagine how stressful that is for your wife when she's seven months pregnant I was trying not guilty I said this is ridiculous three big lads coming to a pub threatening to kill me in front of witnesses and I defend myself and you charge me what was all this about anyway I was found not guilty and offered a transfer and I went what would have happened if you got remandied a prison officer I'd have got him in prison when I was up because you would have prison officer it would have been unbearable but when I was at Knightsbridge Crown Court the dock officer because it lasted two days to trial on the second day the dock officer said he said do you see those two guys sat down there I said yeah I said why because I thought we were just members of the public you know I said open court he said no I said there the officers that are going to take you to prison when it's finished I said who says I'm going to get phoned guilty he said well I've assessed it he said and I reported this and I think you're going to prison today I didn't what would you have got probably would have got a couple of years and where did you go after that I was posted to Strangeways what was it like in the other first day because Strangeways was a tough prisoner same kind of thing the thing about the places like the scrubs ones with Pentonville, Strangeways they're called Screwsnakes or they were they're run by the jailers not by the inmates the inmates to a certain extent in some prisons operate a degree of control but it's not down to the staff running it the inmates from it but places like Strangeways the staff run it and it's what's known as a Screwsnake because you hear a lot of stories about the Screws being ruthless back then killing inmates, beating inmates stealing from inmates, did you see a lot of that not stealing from inmates but beating inmates, yeah for no reason for no reason no reason other than entertainment I was on duty one night this guy called him Big John he was a big Irishman about six foot two, about 16 a great big Irishman as long as eight and we were on the YP wing about a hundred young offenders you know somebody did something which was ridiculous and he said right I'm going to sort this and he went from cell to cell from every cell in every cell he gave all the inmates a beating a hundred inmates one after the other just grabbed them punched them, threw them away next one, smack I phoned up the duty prince I said I think there's something wrong with the man I'm working with because I never met him before he said what something I said it's John such a body you know I said he's going around battering all the inmates he said how long have you been here I said oh mum he said you'll get used to it get used to it get used to that he was a good friend of mine John he was alright never did that again but he wasn't what's that I'd call a maniac a lot of people use that job to be violent towards others yeah I'm sure that there are people who did at that time specifically joined the prison service because they were verging on psychopaths strangely enough many years later I was working as a hospital officer with the recruitment board I was doing the medicals and I said to one of the governor I said to some very strange people working in the prison service I said John at the head of the recruitment board I said what are you really looking for when you interview the people he said well to tell you the truth we're looking for the biggest psychopaths in Britain that's what the governor who was in charge of the recruitment board said they were looking for nutters what was it like moving from London to Manchester especially with your message just about to give what was that oh no my message she had done that by then she had given birth by then at Hammersmith hospital so moving to strange ways well I mean they'd marked my card hadn't they so as soon as I got there the chief officer wanted me this isn't this job something once you're back here we're going to make sure you don't piss around in this place so it was a little bit they were a little bit aggressive towards her you yeah towards me I was at the time I'd done two years so I wasn't wet behind the ears you know I knew what I was doing but they were quite aggressive and a lot of the staff thought that I'd bit in some way really transgressed and I was bad news you know what sort of person was well in strange ways at that time it was the same kind of set up you can bang in the microphone same kind of set up as Wyrmwood Scrubs same kind of set up but category A for his nose one of the inmates there was Donald Nielsen I believe his name was the black panther who's that he's the guy who tied that girl up and hung her from a drain at a wire round a knack and he was in there he'd been shooting people eventually tried to extort money by kidnapping this young lady and dangled her from a wire in a sewer drains and she died and he was in there serving life he was a maniac first time I met him he was running on the spot in his cell he'd been an ex-soldier and he liked to think he was some kind of special forces hero or something all day you'd only sell in the morning press ups, sit ups running on the spot running round the cell jumping up and down all day never stopped he was really weird he was and there was a guy called George Wilkinson he was one of the biggest men I've ever seen he was something a lot like the size of Tyson Fury about six foot seven he wasn't quite six foot nine but he was big and he'd been throwing his weight around in Cumbria and terrorising this village I think he was in Cockermouth and he was in the block he'd come into the prison and he thought he could do what he did in the village to throw his weight around and bully the staff so they snatched him and stuck him in the cells in the block at Strangways cos they had the block have you heard of the block? yeah well he was in the block at Strangways solitary confinement so he was in the block at Strangways and when he got down there he met the stuff all that nicknames one of them was the school bully they had the black dog and the Chinese money box cos he used to twist your arms so you look like a Chinese money box but it's finished yeah a pig here I think he was just cos he was a pig so he came across that lot and lost he came second the block came first so when I saw him he was standing in a bowl of water all six foot seven of him in about 18 stone stark naked drinking water I said to him you don't want to be doing this you know I said you're gonna be ill so I asked the staff I said ah has he seen the doctor oh yeah they said he's going to Walton jail tomorrow he's bloody mad anyway the next day he was transferred to Walton and that's where they found him dead in his cell what happened to him? I think he'd done his kidneys in with drinking water all the time he'd made himself ill but he couldn't stand it you see it had psychologically destroyed him he'd been used to being the big boy and when he got to strange ways and he hit a brick wall that was the end of him you know he couldn't psychologically deal with it he just didn't want to be around anymore well did you work in strange ways what about were you working on the block? I did work in the block I wasn't regular staff in the block but I worked in the block I was down there on a reasonably regular basis and there were a number of inmates in there one of them was a very strange character called Terry Sinclair who was a major drug dealer from New Zealand and he was appealing his sentence he was involved in the the handless corpse killings where they cut the hands off the body and threw it into a diving pool called Eccleston Delft near Chawley not too far from here actually and one of them was a very strange character called Terry Sinclair far from here actually and down he went the corpse and divers who were practicing scuba diving found the body floating at the bottom its head all caved in so you couldn't take all the teeth ripped out and its hands cut off and the guy behind that was called Terry Sinclair and he was a multi multi millionaire drug dealer from New Zealand he'd got a yacht property all over the world and he ought to let it know that he was offering a million pounds for anybody who could get him out strange ways but he was down the block you know I mean it's difficult to get out of there when you've got keys Did anybody ever rescue when you walked her? Yes from the scrubs they did actually and I know the guys well his name was Eric Allison he ended up as the crime correspondent for the Guardian National newspaper but at the time he was a forger and a fraudster and a bank robber extremely intelligent man Eric Allison and what he did was he forged a bench warrant a bench warrant from the court from the high court to release him from prison and got a fake firm of solicitors in Manchester to serve it on the governor and the governor released him from prison on the strength of this forged bench warrant and so Eric Allison that's how he escaped he didn't climb over the wall but that's how he did it but Eric Allison did get out of prison How is it when people are dead and that's how did you see much of that suicide? People hanging themselves I mean it's not a great deal of fun cutting people down from their army because to say if it's come to that the system has failed because you should always give people some degree of hope and you know as I said at the beginning you know when I was dealing with prisoners in the military they've got to look at this as a blip in time you know put it to one side and you'll get out in the end but people who do that they're not getting out hardly they're there forever more you know I still have I would say it's post traumatic stress disorder I have a recurring dream and I can't get out of this dream and walking around the landings at strange ways and I can't find the way out night it doesn't always happen but sometimes it occurs three or four nights in a row and I think that's post traumatic stress that was from patrol in the landings but yeah finding inmates hanging in the cells but when I was down at the chan there was a big thing about cell fires you know the rumour went round some kind of crazy jail rumour that if you were involved in a cell fire what would happen was you'd get six months off and you survived you'd get six months off your sentence which was utter nonsense so people were setting cell fires to attempt to survive them and then get time off them but you never would but one particular cell I think it was E3 landing at strange ways two of the inmates decided they were going to do this they were going to set fire to the cell and the third inmate didn't want to do it so he tied him to his chair strapped him down to stop him preventing them from doing this and they set fire to the cell and that's where they found him all three of them burnt to death in the cell one of them tied to the chair How does this cell go up if it's all bricks only the mattress they can buy that was the problem it was the mattress the mattresses at the time were made out of foam and the foam when it was lit gave off a poisonous gas and it was the poisonous gas that killed them and then the rest of the stuff they had wooden furniture in there and they had bedclothes and they had their own clothing and it would all take off like that Do you think that's why poisons for the people do it that would die? No I don't think they deliberately done that I just think they'd done it as cheaply as possible I look at Grenfell the flats went up and it was poison it was easy to let do you think that could have been a possibility as well when they left those mattresses so the people would die I don't believe that anybody would be as diabolical as that I don't believe it I think they'd done it cheaply so the cheapest possible mattresses they could get I mean these weren't they had no support they were just made out of sponge rubber so I think they'd just done it cheaply and they didn't realise I don't believe that if you set fire to them they would emit noxious fumes But then again after one or two you think okay Oh they did get rid of them in the end did they? Yeah eventually they did get rid of them they got rid of all the lot Because mental health everybody talks about mental health now and suicide and it's rife but back then in the 70s not many people spoke about it was suicide bad still back in the 70s or was it just now and again It was considered to be what happened in prison you know there was no support for people you know no psychological support I mean for a period of time they had an education department but there was a staff viewed them as the enemy because I mean I don't think that we're going a certain mindset here in the 70s prison staff viewed inmates as being they were the enemy you know they were there to be punished and a lot of the staff got it into their head that they were the people that were going to administer this punishment and that they were going to make sure that they suffered whilst they were in there so if inmates were screaming they didn't mind because that was what they intended How many prisoners were and strangers were at that time At one point believe this or not there was over 2000 inmates there were so many prisoners in strange ways at one point that they hadn't got any cells for them they put them down in the gymnasium and put mattresses on the floor and they slept on the mattresses How many present officers 2000 of each 2000 inmates How many prison officers 400 prison officers but we're going back to a time when if you told inmates to do things they generally did it Was that through fear Yes, it's strange that's how it was wrong and don't forget we had a mad man as a governor I consider him to be insane I don't know Well this is the number one governor the highest ranking grade in the whole prison in charge of 2000 inmates 400 staff One afternoon I saw him he went out of his office he'd seen somebody throw what's known as a shit parcel that's in other words because they couldn't get out of the cell to use the toilets they got some newspaper on the floor of the cell defecated into the newspaper wrapped the newspaper up and thrown it through the cell window Yeah Norman Brown in his office which was on F wing overlooking the side of E wing he'd seen this happen so he went out of his office this is about 2.30 in the afternoon and he'd been drinking in the club from about 12 o'clock because he used to get pissed every dinner time he used to drink in the club that was the prison officers club where they served alcohol at dinner time that was a regular recurrence he'd come out of the club back to his office seen this shit parcel fly out the window came out, went round picked it up with his hands picked it up with his hands walked into the prison ordered the staff, I was on the landing to open the landing opened the cell door and he threw it at the inmates inside a great flying shit parcel it hit this inmate on the side of his shoulder here splattered shit all over the place there was excrement all over Norman Brown's hands and he shouted at them I'll teach you your dirty basins I mean that is the number one governor of strange ways that was the tone of the place about your mess then it was a mess especially as he got the wrong cell to be fair man if a fucking governor was doing that I'd probably respect him more because I think he's just fucking one of us he was when he was one of them he's just a fucking nutcase was people scared of him or did they find that not fuck with a mentality because he'll do what we're doing kind of thing was he trying to match or he was encouraging it he was encouraging it it was Norman Brown that appointed the school bully as being one of the block officers because they picked the block officers especially for being people who were I would say virgin on being psychopaths but do you feel as if that kept a tone in the prison for people not to fuck around because they knew the people in charge were psychopaths oh yeah they knew alright and they didn't they did fear the idea that they were going to get snatched down there because they knew what was waiting they said no joke the school bully if you would say you kicked up on the landing and you got half a dozen stuff dragging down the block throwing you in the block you get put into a cell and the next thing the door opens and there's the school bully and says to you you've got 10 seconds to hit me you're going to take your best swing hit me because when you've done that I'm going to give you the best hiding you've ever had in your life and that's what you did every time no matter who they were you've seen it on TV a lot of these people say things like I was too tough for strange ways they couldn't handle me well I did 11 years and I never saw anybody when nobody so a lot of people get beaten to a shit what happened to that and mate did batter a screw would it then be 6 10 prison officers coming in oh absolutely yeah there was a time that towards the end of my career when I was a hospital officer where they introduced a thing called largactal which is a psychotropic drug which is given to people who are suffering from psychotic incidences and they were forcibly injected into inmates so if they kicked up and they looked like they were getting somewhere it happened to Paul Sykes the boxer he kicked off in strange ways and the work force staff held him down and I was called to give him an injection and he was backside with that and he was quiet after that all the rest of his sentence he was on largactal, liquid largactal 10 mils in a cough do you know what that is? they get prescribed by the doctors to get 10 mils of largactal at 50mg whatever it was so he got these little marks on 10 mils, 20 mils so you pour in them out you got 10 mils in a cough 10 mils they got just a little bit more make sure they were nice and quiet was that just numb the brain? they were walking around like bloody zombies and to do that to the more top end prisoners the ones who could cause riots the ones that could do it the ones that would cause the riots yeah it's like a mental institute then that's what it was that was strange ways that's why they took the roof off so people were just getting injected then just shutting them down basically as an hospital officer it's not my prerogative to actually say right I think this guy needs medication I have to speak to a doctor but I mean the way it worked was the doctors started to trust the staff so if I knew a doctor I would bring him up and say this guy needs whatever you think is right Mr Sutton I'll sign it that's to how it worked and they weren't just me there were orders of the hospital officers who did that he was originally a big bully and he used to help himself to the younger inmates the younger men he used to he was gay for the stay when he was in there we previously discussed this and Paul Sykes would help himself the younger inmates and what they were telling me was he used to get a copy of page 3 from the son when they used to have those topless women on and put that onto the back of his victim on their back and then bend them over the bed and bugger them so he was kind of having the best of both worlds in a way strange character but he was a big hefty guy who was trouble but he wasn't trouble once he got the large actor in him he just didn't know where he was he was shuffling along like a tramp was there many people on that indeed there were I would say probably about 5% of the population of the prison population some heavy stuff that well I don't believe that they do it now because they no longer have human rights they no longer have hospital officers see what happened was if you were a discipline officer as I was working on the discipline side locking people up day to day tasks you could apply to the government the home office to go on a training course to become a hospital officer that's like a nursing officer and you went away to a training school and you trained for three months and if you passed the exams it was partly run by the NHS it wasn't a complete kangaroo setup you know it was professional and if you got a certificate from the home office a nursing certificate you were then a fully blown registered nurse and that's how I became a hospital officer seeing you're in strange ways joined what was the worst thing you'd seen one absolutely disgusting diabolical thing that I did see was I was taking the psychiatrist's round to the inmates on the block and we came to one inmate and the psychiatrist said I'm cautious about this man he's very dangerous I want you to stand as close to me as you can you know without being too obtrusive so I did and I stood next to him and the guys ranting away and he started shouting out in the mice have been in here blue mice, pink mice, polka-dot mice yellow mice, they're running around myself I see them all the time and psychiatrist just listened to him for a bit and said thank you very much he didn't shut the door so he said he's obviously having a really serious psychotic incident he said don't worry he'll be in Broadmoor this time next week so I thought no more about it you know the guys obviously completely lost these marbles and I sat with the block staff about 5 o'clock just before it was time to go home and we were having like a coffee and I said oh that poor ambassador is going to Broadmoor next month next week he said why is he going there laughing away I said I see mice that are yellow, pink and polka-dot they said really they're pissing themselves and I said what's so funny about that he said we've been painting them they'd been painting the mice using paint from the art school and putting them in his cell so he wasn't just seeing yellow, pink and polka-dot mice they did exist they were created by the staff I mean imagine deliberately driving somebody around the bend like that now that was that but who are you going to complain to I went down the block one day and I was a hospital officer at the time and I had a tray with the medication on and as I entered the block cos it's locked away from all the rest of the prison it's below there's a roof on it a solid roof and it's like in a dungeon so I went in there and as I walked in I could see the staff running along the landing booting this inmate who was on the floor stark naked being kicked around and they were taking turns kicking him and they kicked him so hard that the boot polish from the boots had embedded itself into his body you could see all the black marks all over him he kicked some of his teeth out his eyes were bashed in there was blood pouring from his head I put the tray down and ran up and got all of the man by the top of his head and dragged him to an empty cell and locked him in the cell and I said to the staff you leave him alone, I'm going to get the medical officer so I thought the staff I thought they were going to come and get me cos they had that like a blood lust you know so then I went out of there and I got the senior medical officer and brought him back I said you better look at this man I think he's seriously injured he was injured he was all over him boot polishing his body bruises all over so I opened the cell and took them senior medical officer in and I said please have a look at him so I alluded to him and the head of the block was standing behind me and the senior medical officer said to me I can't see anything wrong with this man he said why have you brought me here he said you're wasting my time aren't you he turned around and walked out that was it they were all complicit in the abuse system every single one of them how bad was the abuse for the prisoners towards the prisoners from the prison officers sometimes it was diabolical I was on duty one night and they decided in their wisdom to create a barrack room where they'd knocked three cells into one and they had about 16 inmates in barrack you know like bunk beds and for some reason they were banging and clattering and making a noise so I was on duty with this rather large jailer about six foot five he was a real character this one and he'd been drinking all dinner time and he was still stunk of alcohol and I said to him oh I'll go and have a word with him he said no I said it's my turn and he said I'm going to sort them out and he drew his dungeon and he went up and opened this thing and there were about 16 of these inmates and he went in with his dungeon I could hear all the screaming and the banging and the clattering and the shouting so I went up when I opened the door and I looked in there he was battering every single one of them with his dungeon there were bodies on the floor bleeding and people hiding under the beds he'd done every single one of them there was no complaints next morning no complaints Was there any celebrities? Yeah there were celebrities I can't really name him because he's not fair he's done his thing and he's made a wonderful career for himself but he always used to say to me oh he said I used to deal in antiques boss he said I tell you how to do it he said are you doing as buying cheapest chips and that said you're not so anyway I made him the landing cleaner because he was an affable kind of guy well the original landing cleaner tried to bribe me he said oh he said I need to get my my assistant he said I want you to put him in as my assistant make him a red band I said why would I do that I said he's got to be vetted to do that I said I don't know who this guy is he said listen he said you do that for me he said I'll make it worth your while I said really I said what's an offer he said well when he said I'm the head bouncer for a big club in Blackpool he said all you've got to do is get me myself mate that I want he said and you can go to this club mention my name he said anything you want women you know booze food anything you put you up for the night and I said I said it's very tempting I said but don't you think it's a bit dangerous I said somebody finds out nobody's going to find out he said I said come on did somebody find out no he said I saw you who's doing it and he gave me a list of the officers that have done me that he bribed seriously so I said I'll see you after dinner then I'll have a think about this so I went to see these officers well at a time one was a principal officer there was a couple of senior officers I said you'll not believe this I said but I've just been offered a bribe by this inmate great big fella and he told me that he'd been offering bribes to staff and that you've been taking them I said but I don't personally believe him but that's not for me to decide I'm going to put a paper into the governor reporting this I said then you've got about half an hour to decide what you're going to tell him well the principal officer starts jumping up and down and running around in a circle you can't do that you can't do that I said I'm about to do it which I did anyway when I came back after dinner I went up to see this inmate and he went there I said well what's happened he said you know what's happened he's been moved he's taken him from Strangways and moved him to an Auckland prison called Kirkham well he would he's like won the jackpot he was doing three or four years for Grievous Boddliarm and he's been moved from Strangways which is a serious lock up prison at Kirkham come on he worked at Blackpool do you become a threat exposing people and trying to do the right thing for the prison officers then see you as a target because you're not just fighting in mates you're now fighting with the the prison officers as well who are taking bribes who are beating people up and you are trying to do the right thing by exposing it do you become a target I did I didn't mind to tell them you know I mean you just do it straight you know play the game straight and if I find out you do anything then I will report you I'm not bothered what sort of corruption and the prison system how bad is that well I believe it's worse now than it was then but I mean they used to offer you inducements you know they'd offer you money or whatever but I always thought you only can do this once you do it once and you've sold your soul you've had it you know the devil owns you then so I would never do it don't matter what they offered me I would not do it it wasn't for sale what sort of stuff were they offering they were offering you women and they'd offer you money money that you wanted you know but I mean really as a junior officer or a non not a governor there's not a great deal that you could do for them you know because if you were a governor then you could get move them from prison to prison but as a junior officer you really couldn't all you could do was take stuff into them and I wouldn't do that anyway because it was a danger to the other members of staff but I discovered very quickly that there was a big problem at strange ways with the national front now the national front as you know is a pseudo political party that runs on fascist Nazi kind of ideas of racism and racial purity which to me seemed insane it does seem insane anybody thinking about this thinks it's crazy but I got a phone call one night from a guy called Eric Effa who was at the time the deputy leader of the Labour Party and he was an MP for Walton Liverpool Walton and he said would you do something for me he said I've been given your name and he said I want you to if you will find out about the national front at strange ways so I said alright I'll do it so the guy who was leading the national front was a man called Brian Baldwin he's passed now but he was a principal officer and he was also the chairman of the prison officers association so he was a a mover and a shaker at strange ways and I said to him I said I believe you are one of the national front are you interested John I said well yeah he said brilliant he said no I want you to come with me he said we've got a special meeting this week I said really he said yeah you come with me he said you can come with me because they wanted me anyway I went along and it was a meeting place in Manchester big hall and the speaker was believe it or not a man called David Duke now David Duke at the time was the grand wizard of the Clue Cluck's clan and he was with Brian Baldwin speaking to the meeting of the national front and how mad is this and they were all jumping up and down white power while these people are off the rockers you know at the end of the meeting Brian said to me would you come with us we're having a special conference you know we're going to decide on the action because they're going to have a march through Manchester through the middle of Manchester and they sat down with a big map and David Duke was just sitting in you know and Brian Baldwin said we're coming out in here at the cathedral marching down Deane's Gate that we're turning left up Peter Street he said it's at Peter Street where we're I said would you mean attack he said we've got to be you know we've got to have somebody attacking our march he said so we're going to so what they were doing was they were trying to create publicity about the national front being attacked but they were going to attack themselves to make sure that it happened and he said what do you suggest John he said you've been a military officer you know how does it work I said well I said David's right way to do it it's really injured we'll be to throw flour at them so white flour meets white power brilliant oh yeah wonderful Malcolm on board I thought you bloody bunch of nut cases you lot yeah so I reported all this in writing to Eric Heffer and I sent a copy to the Jewish Gazette I mean they were very interested in that and I also contacted some journalists that I know and they did a big feature in the national press including a picture of Brian Baldwin that I gave what did they say well wild they banned the paper throughout the prison service all the prison service banned it was called the Daily Star before it became a rag it was a proper paper but they banned it all the other prison and Brian Baldwin's going wild you know how dare you do this I thought you were one of us I said you must be joking mate did you ever get any threats from the prison officers because of the stuff that you were exposing well yeah to a certain extent but I had enough for this you know the prison officers association they were all management you see they were chief officers running it they were principal officers running it and the non supervisory grades just weren't they weren't considered I was studying at the time I was trying to do a law degree at Manchester University and I needed time off to study but I couldn't get time off to study because the pre-OA the prison officers association had agreed compulsory overtime with the governor so when I wanted my time off to go and study then they said no you got this I thought I've got to do something about this so I thought well what I'll do I'll start a proper trade union one that actually represents the non supervisory grade staff so I had friends who were solicitors and with them we drew up rules and regulations a constitution and we applied to the certification office to get a certificate of independence and we had meetings and the BBC and we were filming at this time a documentary called strange ways which was filmed in 1979 screened in 1980 and they followed that in their documentary to a certain extent and you can still see it's on on YouTube what was the strange way right it's like well the strange way it's occurred after I left the prison service but they practically did what everybody knew eventually would happen the prisoners just have enough they weren't going to take any more and I actually wrote part of a book on that with Eric Allison believe it or not the guy who I mentioned escaped with a bench warrant because the strange way is very well known absolutely well known and rightly so I mean it was the only way that there was change going to come to the prison system that they finally destroyed it and when the inmates who were on the roof were taken to trial by the government and charged with mutiny and criminal damage and all the rest of it the solicitors acting for the defence contacted me and asked me to give evidence against the government so I went to Manchester Crown Court and gave evidence against the prison service stating that in the event that I had been kept under those diabolical conditions then the roof would have been coming off with me on top as well you can imagine how that went down what happened after that well there was a great deal of change in the prison service you know they started to implement sanitation in all the cells I mean nowadays it is to a certain extent a completely different regime than existed in the 1970s and the 1980s they no longer have inmates locked into cells without any facilities they have got at least they've got a toilet and a washbasin it's fucking horrible to think listen if you're in prison you're doing bad stuff a lot of it by the in prisons there are guilty to be fair but I've interviewed men who've done big sentences who were not guilty but the majority of people in prison deserve to be there if we're honest but they're slopping out some of them 24 hours a day that's not going to create change that's going to create people who then become anti-authority and hate the system because we all know the system is flawed it's not there to help people it's not there to better people's life and understand and then try and improve it just makes more people angry I think the stats are that 60-70% of people who leave prison go back I believe that the recidivism rate in the 1970s and 80s was still around about 80% I believe that the recidivism rate now is somewhere around about 60% as you say that's people who are in prison are coming back to prison but you see a regime like that it brings dependency people become institutionalised they become dependent upon the institution to actually function because in prison you don't have to think you get up in the morning somebody's telling you when to go to the toilet somebody's telling you when to have your lunch your dinner, your evening meal when you go and have a shower you're not engaging in anything when you get thrown into society you get £35 and the doors open and off you go where you're going they don't know where they're going and they're going back to criminality but it's only petty criminality I believe that there is an answer to this and you see the problem you've got is you've got government think tanks that don't think because they haven't actually been down there on the ground floor rolling round the landings with angry big men I mean if they had then they wouldn't be doing what they're doing now they'll be thinking along different lines I believe that a good 40-50% of the people who are in prison should not be there there's no real positive purpose for holding those people in prison none shoplifters, drug addicts people who have not paid the fine there was one guy at Strangways who was in Strangways prison for walking his dog in a park in Burnley against the local bylaws how is that going to benefit society? and the poor thing was the guy was about 65, 70 and everybody knew what he was in for so everywhere he went people were barking at him I mean even the staff he only lasted about three days and he paid his fine and went out because he couldn't stand it that's one way to get your fines paid don't it to be fair who was doing the longest sentence? the longest sentences would be people like the IRA I was on duty one night at the Scrubs and it was New Year's Eve and it got to be about a minute to midnight and everybody starts banging on the door shouting Happy New Year and I was just walking around that it was actually the SEG at the Scrubs and one guy banging on his door shouting Happy New Year he sell card said Lifetime 17 I thought yeah what a Happy New Year you're going to have what a they're mad aren't they 17 lifetime sentences it's scary to be think locked up in a cage your whole life but like I say some people deserve to be they're the guy who had the gimp out fat and destroyed all those women's life like he deserve to be locked up for prison there are people who shouldn't be they're not safe in society in society a million percent did you ever come across Charlie Bronson? I never did but I know about Bronson he's playing to the gallery you know he's a look at me I'm Charlie Bronson and I don't think they can let him out because if he did he'd be a target some nut job out there and say well I'm going to take Charlie Bronson on despite the fact that he's nearly 70 you know so he is a threat not only to society but to himself Was there any inmates you were fearful of or scared of? The completely insane ones Have you ever seen anybody walk like a robot? You have Yeah They're like the mechanical toys one of them in strange ways he wasn't a particularly big man but he walked like a robot and there was no response for other than you opened the door and said go to the recess and he would walk out like a robot to the recess do what he had to do to make a robot back and I was a hospital officer at the time and one of my colleagues went up to him right into his face and he said you snivel in maniac bastard and the guy went boom straight on the snob box wow he was incredibly powerful he broke my mates' nose broke his nose splattered it all over the side of his face and I just said to this guy would you like to go back to your cell now back into the clockwork and went in his cell that was it they are dangerous you've got to be careful Was there many deaths between inmates fighting each other any killings? Killings yeah oh we had one or two at the scrubs one guy came down into the office one day said that's one off boss said what do you mean one off he said I don't have enough of him take him off your list he's not coming back he murdered somebody in the cell at the scrubs you know have you ever seen the film clockwork Orange where they open in their eyes and making them watch that's what they're doing at the scrubs that's where it came from at the scrubs they had a hospital unit and in there they had a chair like a dentist's chair and they used to get the inmates in put them down in this chair and put the eyes on the film and they'd show them films of monstrous things like children being it burnt alive and horrible terrible things and they were all wired up to electrodes what they were trying to do was ask to say in what kind of problems was going on in the head and then they gave them medication and I was talking to the doctor who was running this he said no that's what it does he said sit down I'm going to give you a go so I thought well so I sat down and he put these electrodes on me and he started showing me these films horrible films, horrible things about five minutes of it and he added in the electrodes in the CG machine and when we'd finished it he said to me do you realise he said that you could be actively homosexual I thought I am getting out of this place quick I'm not giving him chance to put it to the test they're bloody mad why did you end up leaving the prison system for your own free will or did you get sacked or were you becoming so much of a problem by exposing some of this stuff I'd been assaulted a number of times by prison staff one particular incident it was Christmas day and the officer I was working with on a clinic cos we ran a clinic a medical clinic and I lived about ten miles away in a place called Ermston and he lived about two miles up the road near Presswich so I said to him well as we got to split the lunch hour between us I said you can have my lunch hour I said I can't go home to Ermston it's too far but you can go to Presswich and spend a couple of hours with your family on Christmas day and I said now run the clinic so that you've got my lunch hour and I said I'm alright I've brought myself an apple and a boiled egg and a book so had my lunch hour and off you go so about quarter past twelve off he went and I thought oh well that's alright for him you know I mean I couldn't do it but he could so he came back about half past two and he was absolutely stoned out of his head he hadn't gone home to the prison club and got smashed up pissed and he hadn't just done that he lost all his money on the one armed gambling machines the bandits you know slot machines lost all his money and he got drunk and he was in a filthy mood I said I didn't know this at the time I just said to him what's up with you you've got to feel like a slapped ass you've just been off and he jumped over the desk he grabbed all the medication out all the syringes drawn up for the people who had to be injected with insulin and all the rest of it the diabetics and he grabbed all the my neck and he started strangling me he was a bloody great big strong man and the problem was fighting back in the clinic there was gallant jars of largactil and medications all over the place but if I start doing this and we're bouncing off like John Wayne in the bloody moon I'm going to smash the place up so I just had to do my best to stop myself from being killed and somebody eventually came in and dragged him off I reported that and they said oh it's only John and I said are you mad I had to go to the hospital after that I was off for about a week they damaged my larynx I couldn't eat any Christmas dinner yes that was just one of them but at the end this maniac senior officer he tried to grab all of the back of my tunic because I wore a white tunic as a nurse you know nursing outfit you know and he grabbed all of the back of my tunic trying to drag me backwards downstairs I was going up to my work in the ward and to prevent him from doing that I turned around and stuck one right on the end of his nose and sat him on his arse and they suspended me for that what was it like working in the prison hospital did you see a lot of dark stuff then John? beyond belief like what? well people would come up to him the voices, the voices so you try and calm him down next thing you know this arms through a plate glass windows slashed all the rest blood all over the place we had one guy come in and he was in a catatonic stupa if you got all the somebody's arm and they met a catatonic stupa and they just hold it there that's it, so they don't move they don't drink, they don't eat they don't do anything they're in like a coma and the doctor was really everybody was really concerned about this guy so he'd been in there about a day and a half and he was on the hospital ward so I got his notes all these clinical notes in charge of the hospital ward at the time about 20 inmates and I looked at it he'd been a senior civil servant like a principal in the civil service so he was not stupid this guy but what had happened was he'd cracked and murdered his wife they were watching television and he wanted to watch something she wanted to watch something else and to solve the argument he'd strangled her to death and put her down in front of the television and got on with watching what he wanted to watch and then he'd switched off so I got it in my head that this guy was an intelligent man so I thought he's likely to enjoy classical music so I had a little cassette recorder and I brought it in the next day with about half a dozen cassette tapes of classical music and I put the earphones on him and he was just sat in bed like that and we had to force him to drink water because he only goes so long without water and I started playing him things like Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Chopin and then I got to a piece of music called Bluebeard's Castle by the Hungarian composer Bella Bartok and I put that on and he'd been about two minutes, three minutes listening to this and then all of a sudden he took the earphones off and said I can't stand Bella Bartok and he was out of his coma so I wrote it all up in the notes just to write notes on the psychological observations of the inmates and the next morning I called down by the chief officer and he said this guy on your ward he said you've said here that he hates Bella Bartok I said yeah he hates Bella Bartok and he said who is she he said you've said that he hates Bella Bartok I said Bella Bartok's a Hungarian composer and I was playing him classical music Bluebeard's Castle and he didn't like it and it snapped him out of his catatonic stupa get out of my office he's a stupid person so I mean basically there were some weird people in there and I just think that people have been promoted beyond their level of care capabilities so what's the thing about the prison system John? The prison system was a duty of care to all those that are inside incarcerated and it fails miserably to meet that responsibility I mean if it was your brother or your sister or your mother or your dad or yourself in prison you would reasonably expect that you would be physically safe and cared for the courts is that you lose your liberty not that you'd be mistreated abused, insulted and degraded by staff and by the system but the government seems to have lost this I believe that the real way to deal with this is for there to be a massive class action against the government for failure to meet the basic human rights of the people that they are holding in custody because they are at risk and people who have got family members who are in prison who are vulnerable and very often you'll find that people who are psychologically disturbed are find themselves in prison not because they've got criminal inclinations but because of their psychological issues that put them at odds with authority and the police are not equipped to deal with such inclinences and certainly putting people into prisons like ones with strange ways wormwood scrubs, armly jail, Victorian dungeons is not the way to deal with people who are psychologically disturbed and you'll find that there's a good 40% of the prison system in that category that there are people who are illiterate, enumerate socially incapable what they should be running is schools to actually produce people who are fit for society not alienating people and creating a repeating cycle of abuse and deprivation and that's where we're at at the moment And how was it leaving the prison system after 10 years? Was that an easy decision? Well it wasn't a decision I made it was a decision that the Home Office made because after I was assaulted by that member of staff giving him a clattering and it was suspended my wife said this is the end of it John you can't go on like this you cannot go on you've got to go and see your doctor I've been to see my doctor about four times about being assaulted by various members of staff and my doctor said I'm putting you on the sick you know I said this just can't go on like this and very soon the Home Office instructed that I had to be psychiatrically assessed so they sent me to see a psychiatrist What did you do after that? Well the psychiatrist sat down and talked to me for about two hours at the end of it he said I had to tell you mister something he said you're perfectly sane he said I've listened to what you say and you're making absolute sense to me he said you're sane he said but where you're working isn't he said you are not psychologically suitable to work in such premises he said I'm recommending that you be medically retired and that you never return to HM prisons again and that was it Did you miss that? Even though it was madness? I never missed working in the prisons and as I said to this day I still sort of to a certain degree from dramatic stress disorder What did you do with your life after the prison service? I managed to retrain and get myself a teaching certificate and a a teaching certificate got me a job with Lancashire County Council teaching adults with learning difficulties and whilst I was doing that one of my friends phoned me up and said there's a man living in Bolton that you want to go and see I said oh is that said it's PJ probably I said is it really I used to like PJ probably when I was a young lad so I went to see probably and I said are you interested in me writing a song for you because I can write so he said yes you get me a demo disc and I'll tell you if it's any good so I wrote a song called stage of fools and I got somebody I knew to record it as a demo and I took it to him and he said yeah I'll do that so I'll record it probably I'll be doing that and that was on the road we went to continue to do that and I made an album with him and that was released and we was on TV and as soon as I was on TV then I was suddenly surrounded by people who wanted me to manage them and I went on to manage a numerous people I fell out with Prowwer because he was a pervert you see who's that he's a pervert he liked little girls who was that this is PJ Prowwer the pop singer he was on with the Beatles and all that he was big news in the 1960s but this is 1990 and I got a call for him one day he said John he's Texan he's from Houston, Texas you come up and meet my new wife I said I'll come up there and have a say hello Jim so he lives at Bolton so I went up to see him and in his house was a lady so I introduced myself and said I'm John and I said I believe you're getting married to PJ Prowwer my mate Jim and Robbie was sat down in the chair and said that's not my bloody wife he said this is my wife and out of the kitchen came an 11 year old girl and he introduced me to her she was about 4 foot 2 she was a little girl and he said we're getting married here and he showed me all these brochures this big hotel and we've got a honeymoon here and he said and you were coming to my wedding John I said oh well thank you very much Jim and I said to this lady have you got a copy of his new album no no I said well I'm getting copies next week I said give us your name and address and I'll post them to you as soon as I get them oh that's very kind of you as soon as I got out of there I went and formed up the duty social services officer where she lived and reported the child has been at risk and uh do you know what they said to me they said this is a very serious allegation you're making I said I've given you my name and address haven't I they said yes you have I said now give me your name well what do you want that for I said well if I ever see that girl anywhere near PJ Robbie again I said I'll be phoned in the police I said and the name I'm going to be giving them is yours now what is your name they never saw that girl again they took action I think they took her into care she was at risk her mother was trying to get close to PJ Robbie you see and using her 11 year old daughter to do it mad world and probably the next time I saw him he had a big boy knife about 18 inches long come running out the house I'll murder you you bastard but at least he never got his hands on that little girl so the mum was basically taking 11 year old girl to get close to him to get close to PROBA that's sick man I hate stuff like that that's what happens that's the world that's how people like Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savill do it but the thing is let me tell you this the minute that you step out of the line and point the finger and say this is wrong you've had it you've finished you're the one you're wrong just doing a lot of that now a lot of people speaking out against the corruption the big names and you see the consequences of doing that it's scary out there and you're doing trial by media now where the media prints something and automatically you're guilty and this is a sad reality of life they're only interested in promoting the media aren't they I mean no names but I mean I've seen some of the interviews that that particular individual who's in the news at the moment has been giving and he's been asking for it he has been asking for it really I mean I can't say whether or not he's been guilty of that but he's certainly been portraying himself as being a predator you know he has all the body language all the verbals everything it's all there so all the need now is the evidence yeah that's what you need there's evidence but the trial by media is a mad thing you do genuinely shut people down but you cannot discredit anything that comes across whether it's 10 years, 20 years, 30 years I spoke to a man yesterday a man yesterday who was abused and it took him 20 years to come forward and speak so some people find strength when they hear about one person coming forward but again there's still got to be evidence and people are sitting on I could get 10 people to make accusations against you so it's easy for people to sit on camera with their face covered making accusations I believe everybody has their right to defend themselves as well but sometimes and the thing about this a lot of these people like you say are predators but what they're very good at doing is realising it's going to come on top so what they'll do is then speak out as if it's all set up for them as if people are against them because they're speaking out so you've got to be careful and question every angle like I say if there's concrete evidence and if they're abusing women and children the fuckers deserve to be put away because they deserve a bullet in the head and that's the only way they can protect people around them but on the flip side I do know how the media work as well and how it can shut people down and cancel people and discredit people you were in the prison system they tried to discredit you they tried to twist things and deflect things to then put the blame on you because you were exposing the governor you were exposing prison guards and if that's only someone who works in the prison system what's it like with someone with a big following they will do it and the thing is a lot of this the people who are in authority are complicit to this they allow it to happen but the problem with people who are in the public eye they're making money people like Jimmy Savill are producing massive audiences and with that massive audience comes cash and if you rock that boat then you're the one on the out I mean no sooner did I point out that probably was a pervert that was the end of it that was the doors closed you know he wouldn't work with me everybody that was associated with it wouldn't have anything to do with it I had just released an album with him a record album I got international distribution through BMG nationally Europe all over the world and he refused to promote it he denied that it was him it was virtually death for that particular project and I'd done that because I'd reported him yeah fair play though you've got to do the right thing for your soul because fuck the money, fuck the attention fuck the album because if you're saving our young girls life then that's the good stuff that's the glory protecting kids but again this sad reality is exposing the people who are doing this fuckery it then comes on top for you where sometimes you can be the bad one that's right I was but I didn't mind at least I wasn't involving myself in child abuse yeah and the mother should be fucking she probably was I don't know they never got back to me but as I said I was working for social services at the time and there were repercussions there because the director of social services for Lancashire County council sent for me and said I want you to explain why you've been speaking to these social workers I had to tell her are you a psychic as well John? yeah I do strangely enough after I started to appear on television at my front door came numerous people who were psychics clairvoyance and they said the spirit world have sent us to tell you that you're working for the spirit world now and that you have got to you've got to help us you've got to help get the message across that there is no death and it's a very strange thing I had a friend, a really nice guy and he went on holiday to the Gambia which is part of Africa and he said while he was there they had a tour into the outbacks and in the outbacks there was a guy in a mud hut who said was like a witch doctor you know he said I went to see this witch doctor he said no he didn't expect much and this witch doctor said to him there is a man in England and his name is John and he's your friend when you get back you tell him that the spirit world are shouting at him for the work so when he came back he came to see me he says you're the only John I really know he was my friend he said there's a witch doctor in the Gambia that says to tell you it's time to work and all these psychic kept turning up to my door so I eventually ended up agreeing to work with the psychics I went and when you say Clair Voin do you see the future past the future lives, past lives what do you see you see I just give what I get and I do see things that are going to happen in the future and I do hear things and I spent 27 years as the feature editor of a newspaper called Psychic World which is the Journal of Spiritualism and I went round the country I worked with a guy called James Burn he was a big name psychic in the 70s in the 80s and 90s and he went with me to the London Palladium we did the London Palladium so this was serious stuff because I knew all about show business having worked with PJ Proby do you think everybody has a gift that you just don't see everybody has a certain gift but as you become socialised from the age of about 5 or 6 onwards then it just gets swallowed into your you too busy living your life it started with me at the age of about 5 and I started with me at the age of about 5 my father was a police officer a very strict man and when he said it's time for bed it was time for bed and we lived in a big old Victorian house and the old doors had locks on them and at 6 o'clock at night I was booked to bed and the door was locked I mean it's crazy now you wouldn't do it now but he did, I think he thought he was doing the right thing you know and I was only 5 or 6 years old beautiful sunny day outside I want to go out and play but I'm only a kid I couldn't read, I was too young so I started counting the flowers on the wallpaper how many flowers can I count and suddenly I was no longer counting flowers on the wallpaper in a room in a house I was in a world far away from where I was it was if I went through the wall and I went back to a place where there had thousands of men brown-skinned men dragging stones across the desert and I was standing on a platform and I had a white robe on and I had scripts in front of me like drawings and I was directing all these men and I didn't just see this I became that man and I know I became that man because I could see who it was and then suddenly I entered this man through the back of his neck and I became that man and when I came back the following day into my room and I was telling my dad, oh look I've seen this it's absolutely incredible he was a Catholic he said you mustn't speak about that it's the work of the devil I was five years old, what do I know about that and that continued that continued for a period of time I was able to travel back and I believe that what I was seeing was the creation of the pyramids like five or six thousand years ago and that I had been the architect in a past life that helped design those and I'd flown back through time and space to that point and that was the first psychic experience I ever had You're talking like astral travel Astral travel through the because there's no time there's no time there's no time, there's different dimensions so I went into another dimension where I had been alive in a past life maybe six thousand years ago as one of the architects who was in charge of the building of these pyramids and they were dragging the storms across the desert How do you think the pyramids were made? I think they were designed and I mean obviously at the time they must have had some kind of very complex ability to create the actual tubes of stone but I believe that what they had done was mount up the earth and build them a step at a time like that so you build the basement then you put the earth then you build the next layer then you put the sand and the earth then you build the next and so on and so on until you got to the top and then when you got to the top and put the final stones on you removed all the earth How do you see things now John? Do you feel things? Do you feel spirits? Do you see dead people? Does everybody get that? Occasionally I mean I've seen my father numerous times as I said he was a police officer he was a detective inspector towards the end of his career and he'd been dead about three months and I went into my house where I was living and he'd never been in there and he was sat in a chair just as alive as you are I don't understand what you're doing here and he just disappeared Does that scare you? No Or does it make you think you're losing your shit? So maybe the psychiatric reports were great and you should be talking more At the time I hadn't joined the prison service at the time I was wondering what to do and I think he'd come back to say you're going to find your way you know but he was dead but he looked just like he did just before he died I've seen him again a number of times and he looks like a young man now I've got a good friend back home Margaret Solis very powerful woman she taught me so many things it's came to and I thought wow you can question it you can be sceptic but there's people are gifted out there so it's okay for people to think oh maybe he is crazy but the genuine is people gifted who can see things and feel things Just for real I mean I worked for a while at the corner of the guy who used to be on most haunted you know he like a show business character but when he came to me he was working in the back streets of Liverpool and he'd never been accepted into the mainstream and he was following me around for about two years everywhere I went I put a show and he'd turn up oh you've got to manage me I was busy you know I had them so I eventually said go on I'll talk to you now so when I did talk to him I thought he's got show he's got charisma this man he can do it so I wrote his book which was published by Piacus and then I got him a TV series with Granada and the rest is history what do you think life is now in your own personal opinion what do you think life is it's very transitory we're only here for a brief blinking time but as you saw so you reap so every day I believe that what I'm doing is building the house I'm going to live in in the next dimension so I have to do some good I don't believe in doing bad if I can avoid doing harm then I will How many books have you written John? I've written 16 I believe 16 yeah Any fiction or the old you leave basically there were biographies and I've written my own autobiography about the prisons HMP Manchester Prison Officer I've written that I wrote books I wrote Derrick Acora's book James Burns book he was a big name at one time James Burns he was a psychic a medium from Bolton we did loads of stuff with him we did a big psychic experiment when he had a TV show called the James World Radio Show James World Radio Show on TV did a psychic experiment I designed all that and produced it so from going absolutely nowhere from being nowhere as a jailer to actually producing TV shows and being on media all around the world Walt Disney flew me to America and I did a TV show with Walt Disney at Orlando in the MGM Theatre in Orlando they had me as a special guest my picture's still up there I believe it or not but you've got that wizardy look with the hat, the beard and the hair you've kind of got that as he possibly spiritual or kind of connected because there's an amazing woman and it's actually a Blackpool Pleasure Beach who's a psychic and she's fucking unbelievable she is unbelievable and people think I have a Blackpool she's unbelievable I've been to see her twice now and she's very gifted well she'll know my name because they all know my name seriously but as I said I went to America I did the MGM Theatre filmed for the Animal Planet with Walt Disney and strange I was in Hollywood I put a show on on Hollywood Boulevard at the Vogue Theatre with Derek Acora and I was standing outside the Vogue Theatre looking at what they put up all the posters and all the rest of it and a woman came up to me and she said can I have your autograph? I said my autograph for she said oh you've just been on television I didn't know it but Disney had done a repeat of the show that I did and she'd just seen me so there I was for one that's the only time it ever happened but for one brief moment in time somebody wanted my autograph what are the plans for the future John? I've got more books to come out absolutely more books and I'm a poet as well I write poetry and I do tour I've been going on tours a poet with what's his name a tiller the stockbroker have you ever heard of him he's a punk rock poet so I did a show with him and I've got a mate called Ron Ellis he's a poet and we go on stage and do shows you know where can people buy your books first of all? Amazon is the place you know getting on Amazon the books are out there there's a couple of them on audio audio book as well if you were the governor of a prison what changes would you make to make the prison system better where people aren't re-offending to then 60-70% of people coming back to prison at least what would you change well as the governor my powers would be extremely limited you know because governors can't do a great deal all they can do is operate within a system that is completely broken in my opinion it would have to be above that level it would have to be at cabinet level and at cabinet level I would say we've got to release all inmates who are serving less than six months in prison empty them and then we're going to change the regime in prison I would do away with what I call the whole stress system which is attracting 18-year-old girls to come and work as prison staff in the prisons I would do away with that it doesn't make sense when you think about it really to have teenage girls acting as prison officers in life of prisons it doesn't make sense it's an insult to the integrity of the system I believe I mean I understand that they're working there they're doing their very best but they're in the wrong place it's not the place for young girls not the place for women it's a man's prison and that's how it should be brought and I would change the system from it being punitive to being educational the sentence you could be given by the courts would be three years and during that three years you'd have to study during that three years so if you were enumerate when you came in then you would be prepared to work in society when you came out so you would be educated, advised, guided and you'd come out with some semblance of an ability to actually function in society cos a good 40-50% of the people in prison can't function outside so that's what I would do for anybody that's watching joining us maybe struggling in life what advice would you have for them? don't give up hope there's always a chance and get yourself educated to the best of your ability I mean I never stopped going to college I tried to stick at it despite working 60 hours a week anyway I was still doing numerous night school courses and studying at the weekend and I eventually got quite reasonably qualified and got myself some decent jobs and it also improved my ability to write that's proven by the fact that I've been published by the biggest publishing houses in the world so it can be done just believe in yourself and don't give in join lessons to finish up on anything else I'd like to suggest that people have a read at my book because I tell them the truth in there and the people who are losing hope and their families are in the system and they wonder what it's like well I can only tell you what it was like and that's what it shows in my book and it's out on Amazon John, listen for coming on a day and telling your story I've thoroughly enjoyed that I wish you all the best for your future and I look forward to see what you do