 Tell her what's poppin It is We are on twitch. We are not live, but you can come maybe to like comment subscribe turn on your post notification bells, man Let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK It is documentary Monday Yes, sir. Got my Little snack Britain's most dangerous prison for documentary this is the Something right on beautiful wise quotations you to enjoy These two men were the ringleaders behind Britain's most notorious and violent prison riot 25 years ago Nearly 2,000 inmates broke out of their cells and took over strange ways prison in Manchester The world's media caught every moment of the rooftop siege But what made strange ways remarkable Was a cameras had already captured the brutal conditions that existed inside the prison Oh, so you knew that what they was doing this for you knew why they was rebelling. Okay a Start warning of what was to come This place will go off and when this place does go off the roof will go Yeah, this hidden world finally erupted men died and hundreds were injured Now for the first time the riot leaders The inmates who followed them and the prison officers who fought them Take us inside Britain's toughest prison riot It's like Because it's in jail. I get it But there's two human beings. I know I know I know It did some bad stuff to get here But you got to have certain standards and certain Level of cleanliness and certain things have to be had there like So I chose the longest one to do first because my baby is in the room sleep But you know the grind don't stop So this will be a two-part series So if she wakes up Anytime before 30 minutes I'ma continue part two straight through uh part one Is until she wakes up or until 30 minutes strange ways prison in Manchester And so into a barred and unnatural world of 900 male prisoners and 140 male officers A world without money or women or liberty You don't understand that the people who were trained in you Probably joined the prison service just after the second world war And they were trained by people who joined just after the first world war Well, they were trained by people who joined after the world war So the standards that applied were the standard military 50 60 70 Perhaps a hundred years ago. What were those standards there? Discipline Simple as that. My job was the same as any other officer, especially young ones Keep your mouth shut. Listen, watch and learn Prison officers had to be there seven o'clock in the morning not one minute past seven If you didn't appear properly dressed, then you could be disciplined It had so even officers in this reputation along with ones with us sort of being the last bastions of discipline in the service Strange ways was Britain's largest jail A dark star hidden behind vast Victorian walls in the heart of Manchester So either the prison was designed on a Victorian design Okay If you were to look right down from the top of the rotunda, you would see the prison centre Which would be the hub of the wheel Of that centre Were the five wings a b c d and e And those wings would house All the inmates on four different landings a one a two A three a four Making sense so far exactly the same with b wing c wing d wing And e wing okay, you can stand on the centre of the prison and look down every wing and see everything that's going on kind of This is life in the local prison as it actually happens today In 1980 The hidden world of strange ways was revealed when a documentary team filmed life inside the prison So this is in the 80s this the documentary There's a mammoth silver please imagine going to jail with a haircut like this For the first time In this big-ass jail like this. This is intimidating as fuck. I ain't gonna lie Look at this kind of Dickensian For a young boy, you know 15 and a half 16 years of age. It's it's quite gruesome Slip on shoes Blue jacket pinstripe It was 20, you know A small young they getting all that they get the click-clackers and a pinstripe jacket That's not dinner retire at the fanciest restaurant. What the fuck young man When you're a young offender or that's them taking them you go to the reception stuff. Okay, that's intake. Okay You stripped and you know and the You know the deep, you know, the ash gets a bend over and the explosion Everything in there was dark. It's frying in as well I'm trying It's a former prisoner. Okay. That's one of the leaders that arrived It was known to the locals as the big house We are the only hotel in Manchester that is always a 100 percent full I was very proud to work at strange ways There's no tighter bunch than those people What they had a bar in there small fucking something this is a bar inside the prison Or my tweaker is this happy hour after that a bar at a bar that's close. No, this is inside gotta be We work in an institution and I found out to be very Satisfying but strange ways was struggling to cope with the rising tide of prisoners coming through the gates Built for 900 men Strange ways now housed one and a half thousand Prisoners outside the prisoners and tensions of him prisoners. That's that's that's the first That's the first reason why I should be going left on prisoners overcrowded Are increased when two or three men share this living space a cell devised in the victorian age for one man We had a previous governor who uh, once labeled it as A human warehouse It's right really was a human warehouse three inmates had to share The toilet facilities in a cell which was a chamber pot like a plastic bookie Right with the lid on if you're lucky where you're shitting your piss and it's in your shoulder It wasn't very nice if you if you're wanting to defecate And you sell mates, you know in the cell and he has to experience the stench of that So Seems absolutely barbaric But in those that's all prisons, but like the bucket thing is tough that's that a bucket an actual bucket I'm gonna leave it as tough Stays that was that was normal and you just accepted it and got on with it as a way of life Prisoners were allowed just one hour's exercise a day For the other 23 hours the men were routinely locked back in their cells Tension anger frustration The added problem of overcrowding rising to alarming proportions has also increased the threat of insurrection There's mess This is a Victorian prison In 1990 that's still acting And treating people like it's Victorian times This place should be closed down because this nick is run by the screws But I'll tell you something this place will go off and when this place does go off the roof will go Miding on the wall Into this powder keg stepped an idealistic young governor Brendan O'Freel He had a reputation. Is this like the warden modernizer When they say governor, they mean like the warning of the prisoner The big issues were we had far too many prisoners and not enough cells things for them to do It makes people very depressed very morose It makes them very angry Brendan O'Freel was a remarkable man A man of deep convictions of real spiritual experience and a man who cared The new governor was quick to spot the simmering tension that existed between prison officers and prisoners You know, I was a bit of a bastard to say the least sometimes, you know, I was volatile and explode You know man, and I was hard work for them and sometimes what sometimes you don't even have to do nothing Say like the 200 officers in strange ways I'd say there's only sweating them that were really bad. The others were all right. They were decent staff They just went about the daily jobs and above the no one but out of the sweater the bad apples The bad apples make make the prison So just like any system the bad apples stand out way more Because if everybody's doing cool, it's doing cool and it's going cool. They're expecting you as a bad apple You've made a name for yourself because everybody else is cool. You know what I'm saying? You walking in there. You the bad apple like damn. They come this much effort. You know what I'm saying? Like dang There's already animosity towards you every day We're a little firm and they used to come around beating people up There's no abuse Simple as that No physical I know verbal It's I know Simple as that pull up There's no abuse. Oh, he was one of the bad apples simple. He was one of the bad guys there. He's lying Simple as that. No physical You're lying. I know verbal It's Hannah weevil she know evil. He was we've You know I know it Someone's prisoners on occasions can be extremely difficult Extremely objectionable and staff Are rightly on occasions very cautious about prisoners and sometimes get very crust about them But alfreol also discovered a culture amongst some prison officers That had no place in his prison We had a club a prison officers club immediately outside the gate, which regrettably served alcohol at lunchtime So while on a job they getting lit and then going in Already with that shitty ass attitude Now i'm drunk It meant that in the afternoon there was the danger that some staff would return to duty having been drinking And this would have two effects one is it would probably affect their judgment a bit and certainly would aggravate prisoners Well, yeah, they used to use me fists at times But when that wasn't working because he used to have their battens and stuff like that We used to have a piss pot. So we used to throw that over them Full of piss and shit And the new governor noticed that there were some prison officers Who were openly racist Some of the stuff wearing on their ties And a little symbol that was regarded as racist Some of them used to have badges with like You know the gollywell off the jam jar on it and things like that and you know, it was just like what is this place? I constructed that all those symbols be removed You can remove the symbol, but the next steel races they should have fired the uh That sort of behavior would not be tolerated He looks familiar all of the prison officers Male a situational frail soon remedied I remember my first day at strange ways and I was allocated b-wing And I was just stunned at how many prisoners there were just unlocked at the same time Marching down so disciplined It's illogical to our female staff looking after male prisoners We certainly had buddy definitely was a bad apple bumps and bangs as we introduced Change like that you always do but overall the the effect was quite remarkable If there was tension on the wing if prisoners were going to fight sometimes the females just being there calmed it down Unlike previous governors Brendon made it his business to get to know prisoners crazy thing to start so it was a little bit different He'd openly chat to a prisoner if a prisoner came to him and said something it He would actually chat to them on the sensor Which as officers we found a little bit strange I must admit I knew about Brendon a free letter the conversation with him on the central ritz under one day Just by chance he was passing and I engaged him in conversation I was trying to persuade paul that there were opportunities for him to go to work because he was a sentence prisoner And I was trying to get all the sentence prisoners in the main prison Doing some sort of activity for at least half a day Okay Paul Taylor was serving three years for checkbook fraud and handling stolen goods I grew up in Birkenhead until the age He was like a scammer and my mother had to break down and From the age of seven and a half. I was in care homes He'd been in and out of prison since the age of 15 Now nearing the end of his sentence Brendon O'Friel was keen to prepare Taylor for life outside It's where I come to contemplate life The rocks in Birkenhead Park I like schooling You know the power of the written word This is a rock I imagined when I'm sat on those rocks over there But this is a lecture hall and that this is Aristotle or Plato or Socrates giving me a lecture Well, he's strange ways first of all the governor of strange ways today admitted He'd initially been daunted by the arrival of prison inspectors, but his fears were largely unfounded O'Friel's approach began to pay off Strange ways got a good report from the chief inspector of prisons When it came out I was extremely pleased because he did the two things I wanted first of all He praised what we had done so far, but he also pointed out we had a very long way to go And we were in serious need of major capital investment Dear Despite O'Friel's progress Strange ways was still taking in more and more prisoners In February 1990 Alan Lord a convicted murderer with a fearsome reputation in the prison system arrived at the jail Alan Lord was a life sentence prisoner and as a life sentence prisoner you always treated these people warily um Because they were in for a capital offense. They did not care Lord had been moved from prison to prison I knew him because of his history a violent prisoner bodybuilder Potential to be very dangerous Lord knew strange ways. He'd begun his life sentence there And he bought what kind of prisoners name is strange ways. That's like Did they change that name by now because that's due to have some issues obviously Yeah, I'm in prison strange ways. What the hell a grudge I was 19 years of age Just as I was entering the cell One of the screws punched me in the back of the head And said you murdering black bastard I decided that once that door was opened again. I was coming out fighting I took him already in there for life. No matter what cello was in smash hell out of that cell And never an own comforts never had a bed frame and never had a mattress I lived in an empty cell slept on the floor Dang Because it's me taking control inevitably Lord was sent to d-wing segregation unit for difficult prisoners Back in the main prison And a no-friil pushed on with repairs to the aging jail And a bird It was like a menagerie in the evenings and nights because we got birds that got through Broken glass etc It was becoming an issue That can drive you crazy birds in the middle of the night and you can't go nowhere escape You can't drown them out with no type of music can't put nothing in your ears Oh 20 tons of scaffolding was erected through the jail's central rotunda Creating a vast climbing frame That rose up to the fourth floor. Oh, wow Made it difficult to see into the wing even though those electric light it still made it dark And I felt that those this this darkness was reaching everyone within the prison That month even more prisoners arrived Strange ways was bursting at the seams We had 900 or so places we had 1600 1700 prisoners That was the reality day in day out That is Tiny cells For paul taylor Prison conditions were now intolerable I'd written to the home office an 18 page representation The prison service was negligent In addressing its Duty of care to address prisoners problems And didn't feel I was getting anywhere taylor's frustration boiled over I feel like you don't get this until you talk openly of revolt Oh, yeah, I wanted personally to demonstrate to prison officers and prison governor in particular That prisoners had reached the end of their tether Taylor was you've got to know man. You got to treat them with some type of respect because it's like a 1700 of them. There's not 1700 prison guard. It's simple. The numbers are just against you every day every Center the segregation unit to cool off It's gonna make me more angry. It was there that he first met allen lord During their one hour Of daily exercise we were able to walk side by side We just magneted towards each other that I went on the same way wavelength We said that people have to stand up for the rights because this cannot be the situation in this century Together they hatched a plan And I said the 24 hour protest in the chapel would be great If everybody stuck together The chapel was the one place in strange ways where large numbers of prisoners were allowed to gather I was going to make a statement on the stage And if prison officers came in in force to try and break it up We might retaliate It was very quiet. It was a eerie that night Quiet before the storm When I was doing my rounds the occupants were wide awake just laid on top of the bed Which wasn't usual, you know They're usually asleep It's like christmas night. You're christmas eve. I'm waiting Prisoners were talking about what they were going to do the next day and We was going to go to the chapel and have a peaceful protest Any type of rebellion in the any type of rebellion in this situation Is a threat to the guards, uh, but I'm guarantee they handled it very wrong Sunday 1st April What they thought it was April 4th John, huh? On the sunday I was late for the first time in my life When I arrived the senior officer said to me we're short staffed Uh, I'm putting you in the chapel. I has extra staff So I thought well at least I've not got a roll of king The challenge for church It'll be better clean than we have to do And um Line got on line for church By 10 o'clock that morning More than 300 prisoners had filed into the chapel That's that's ridiculous 300 prisoners at any place at any time is a load That's a lot. That's a lot of trust When the prisoners came in there was a certain amount of tension I was seated at the back Because I was on the punishment cells So the punishment cells and the categories we all sat together at the back Well, no one started the service and uh Everything was going sort of pretty well I was enjoying the service I was invited to an army chaplain and And I enjoyed his testimony I think it was I think it was preaching from st. Paul's gospel something like that And he was calling them all sinners and I thought just just get off mate, you know quick suddenly Paul Taylor got to his feet and ran from halfway up the chapel down the steps And rushed to the where the choir had their microphone And grabbed it and and began to harangue the audience Home And god's area you all decided to do this. I get it. You got to do what you got to do it But god's treatment by prison officers anymore I distinctly remember no plot to waving his arms about in front of the altar like come on Let's kill down. This is not the way to behave He started pulling on the microphone lead to try and disconnect us I pulled it too hard that I hit myself in the eye with it and give myself a lovely black eye I know you're still bleeding from it on the top of your head I saw an inmate put a balaclava on take two chair legs It was jeans and I thought Get him on here we go And then he just said right less we've heard enough and the whole place just Turned up Everyone just started going mad There'd be anything that could have got damaged was getting damaged If he was in the pile in the middle kind of thing Like a bomb fire He's paid back time And I'm not saying it's right. I wrong bought You know you kick a dog down eventually gonna bite your back and that's exactly what they were doing All we could do was hand it over to god and say lord you're in charge here. You sort this out I remember putting the priest out Forgive me lord for talking about his bleeding head one colleague out by his Trousers and he said they've got me keys Unless I forget your keys, mate. Let's just get out And I said I'll have those keys and we opened the back of the chapel doors And we flooded out onto the landings And prison officers went up for the fights No, they just reached it retreated Of course they went back to the pub and got another drink In strange ways All cells were opened by all that tough shit was out the window A single set of keys Paul Taylor now had access to the whole prison I opened up all the prisoners who were still locked up in their cells Saying exercise You know slop house My test now was go to the rotunda where there was construction going on with the scaffolding From the ground floor up into the top of the roof, which was 83 and my testing was down the roof So I managed to scale across to the end And then eventually when I got to the end just stood up And don't forget at this time there was a documentary documenting all of this. So this is all on film. They picked the perfect time It was like wow Look at this or they had just done a document. It looks either way it's camp televised Oh, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful place, Manchester It was so happy to see the Andale the CIS building This was like me now being released the form on the roof here. I feel safe I happened to see the bell So instinctively I went I'm getting the bell down But smashed a lot of it put a lot of dints in it and when I've had me fun with that bell I threw it off the roof. So there's your bell back You can see him down there. I remember shutting down. He's got your prison now. I've got your prison News is coming in of a major disturbance. Crazy, man. The most savage prison person the most savage person in there Took that bitch over Climbed to the ceiling got through strong bodybuilder punched through the wall a roof Grabbed the bill dented it up threw it off the real roof said I got your bill like what is this king kong? That's uh, not king kong. Um Donkey Kong when he goes up those the bear less. That's a terrible comparison How could all of that lack the short staffed Somebody that works the prison doesn't normally work it 300 people y'all didn't think about that like damn. There's 300 people here. It's normally like 150 What the hell was going on? Nets of the prisoners reaching the roof The riot had become a national event Rushed up to the gate and discovered I couldn't get in because of these hails of slates that were coming off the roof They were throwing the tiles just like frisbees They were throwing them at stuff. That's free work now. You don't got to get the roof Taking off that's how the job done. You just got to get a read down You know They were trying to injure sir. There was a few stuff I could have swore they said peaceful protest. This is Not peaceful from the jump. There was no peace ever tied to this right badly injured Number one stuff all negativity piece of slate through his job Damn there was chaos going on Because prisoners were just frantically letting off steam Oh, they were pushing coping stands off the top onto the control center So what did they all in hd this thing hd this is like 240p But the cameras couldn't see what was happening inside the prison Housed on e and c wings were inmates charged or convicted of sex offenses Oh Okay, this is where it gets interesting what the hour they're um Rioters ripped doors off their hinges to get to the men Yeah victim number one saying these annonces. These are sex offenses, you know, man And they were they were just beating them and they'd have them in life. There was a cupboard that was like a freezer And they'd have them in there and they'd have them locked in there and they were bringing them out one at a time I've seen a few of them it with iron bars It was just like a wild pack Doing things and people were just joining in I want to locate a particular prisoner who had come in that week for attacking a six-year-old girl attempted rape of a six-year-old Now you two I don't condone any of this But a year old girl And we went up onto that landing and we found a cell that he was in and we hinted at cell and I did punch him twice and prisoners set the bottom of sticks and he dragged from the cell and his face was pushed into the railings And then he was picked up and thrown over the railings He grabbed over the railings and so intensely That it required, you know, hitting his fingers with a stick for him to let go Tables chairs everything went over Don't condone it but listen listen we're all enjoying it and getting off in it and so was your pair No one felt bad about that at all Buddly injured and fearing for their lives Prisoners drug themselves to safety This inmate was actually thrown out at the end of a wing onto the stone steps He'd been beaten up in such a way maybe his private parts or whatever. I thought he was in such a state His blood all over the place When that prisoner was lying on the floor in the state he was he was still being bombarded by other inmates off the roof That afternoon worried relatives joined by standards flocking to strange ways desperate to get messages into the prison I want him to get out because there's going to be a lot of kill-out and feel it in me bones Listen Jeffrey Whatever's going on in there don't have to feel it in me bones listen Jeffrey Of course they were the same name as me that's crazy You ain't got to warn me shorty. I got this I got this. I'm holding on Yeah, I got a pink sweater on but I'm holding mine Whatever's going on in there don't have nothing to do with it at all You just get yourself to the nearest door and get yourself out of there laddie It's impossible if you don't know what you're talking about by the end of the day 1,000 men had fled the riot and surrendered As we started to see that the numbers inside were dropping We thought it was time to explore Whether we could get any of it back I then met Brian Nicholson Who was taking control of the situation? Brian was immense in stature an immense in character Is a Yorkshireman and you could always tell a Yorkshireman, but you can't tell him much My assessment was it was very serious indeed and it was going to be a very very difficult complicated job Taking this prison back This is something like out of a movie boy This is crazy. This is like a movie scene. I feel like I watched this in a movie somewhere They had to have make a movie about this Oh Well, I've made it to 30 minutes. So tlo. Leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification bells, man Let's get ready for part two. It's coming immediately. So