Peterhead (26 page)

There is seldom one accepted view on policy when it comes to changes in the prison system. Changes emerge after a slew of argument and counter argument. One of the ideas in the Lockyer report had, to my mind, much to recommend it: the idea that these super jails could contain courts of law. Clearly this would help with the problem of absconding when travelling to and from court and it could save money in transport costs, but maybe it is too radical an idea for politicians. But for the government maybe his estimate that his scheme could produce a saving of £10 billion would be more attractive. The size of the problem in England is illustrated by the fact that a quarter of the 140 prisons there are Victorian or older and a further quarter were built in the 1960s or ’70s.

Thankfully the problem in Scotland is not that of the scale in England. Earlier Scotland’s First Minister was criticised for calling the old Peterhead a “jewel in the crown” of Scotland’s prison service. But that rather extravagant description we could optimistically perhaps apply to its successor.

A visit to Peterhead prison on a sunny spring morning in 2013 when a fresh wind rips through the rigging and flutters the flags of the North Sea supply vessels that throng the completed Harbour of Refuge is a dramatic illustration of how times and places change. On opening more than 100 years ago the old jail, so often described as a grim fortress, presented a far different sight from that of today. Then it stood proud on a headland, the rocks of the bay and the sea to its rear and rolling farmland at its front door. The jail dominated the landscape. To anyone gazing at it, even from some distance off, came the wonder of what it was like behind the iron bars of this Victorian place of imprisonment. No one could tell from the outside what it was like in the hell behind the walls, a permanent hell for inmates and a sometime hell for their jailers. It was, however, obvious to anyone who passed by why the site was chosen – to the rear that cold and roaring North Sea presented any escaper with a huge challenge. Open countryside at the front likewise – it would make any alien figure fleeing in a prison uniform easy to spot.

Today if you did manage to get over the rear walls you would be face to face with security as tight as that in the prison from which you had just fled. On the jail’s back door now is a massive storage terminal for the North Sea supply boats drawn to Peterhead by the oil bonanza that began in the 1970s and brought unimagined wealth to the area. Fishing boats are almost outnumbered by the modern gaudy-painted supply vessels – not a whaler in sight – that transport food, drink, spare parts and all the comforts of life needed many miles out to sea on the giant rigs. There is a lot of valuable stuff stockpiled in these offshore yards and it is guarded by high fences, barbed wire and security guards in high-viz clothing. Just like the modern HMP Grampian rising on the ground nearby. Get out the front door of the old jail in 2013 and the escaper would face a different challenge from that of Ramensky in the 1930s. There is a jungle to cross. A jungle of neat little twin-garage bungalows, manicured lawns, motor mowers, patio furniture and flower beds. And another jungle of non-stop traffic on the main road from Aberdeen to Fraserburgh. And after that a modern obstacle for someone fleeing inland is to cross a large and busy roundabout, dodging a McDonald’s burger bar in the process.

But thoughts of escape were far from my mind when I sat down recently over some ham salad rolls and coffee with Deputy Governor Stuart Campbell and a bunch of long-serving prison officers. The chat was interesting and informative. For instance, I learned that on the closure of the old jail there is talk of producing a special one-off whisky to be sold as a souvenir to staff. There should be no difficulty in sourcing a suitable dram from one of the many nearby Speyside distilleries. This should be superior stuff to that once sold in the Glasgow east end pubs that boasted a label calling its whisky “Barlinnie Bevvy.” Any Peterhead dram I suspect would have a bit more class. And though the staff, past and present, might enjoy a wee sip or two chatting about old memories, I doubt if many will shed a tear over the end of the old place. Though one memory many officers told me they would take into retirement or to a new prison in the North-East or down south was that of a strong feeling of camaraderie. A dour Scottish version of real team spirit helped make the dark days bearable. Our chat that day did not need any lubrication. The coffee was enough. Everyone had plenty to say, many memories and forthright views. To Stuart has fallen the daunting task of helping oversee the run down to closure as the previous governor, Mike Hebden, wrestles with any problems thrown up by the building of a new prison next door.

The list of Scottish prison governors who came to the prison service from the military is a long one. The first governor of Peterhead was an ex-army major and the list of his successors is sprinkled with three other majors and, of course, perhaps the most famous of all was the long-serving Captain Buchan, who became so friendly with Johnny Ramensky. It is the same in prisons throughout the land. An army background can be a great advantage. Discipline and leadership are obvious attributes, but it is also true that an army career tends to move a man around many a country and means that in his working life he mixes with humble squaddies and field marshals alike. Good army officers are good motivators, which is a valuable skill in institutions where the depressions and so-called injustices of the inmates can have a knock-on effect on the staff.

The ability to keep calm under fire is also a huge advantage in places like Peterhead, where the missiles heading your way were often slates hurled from a rooftop above. And in a “smash-up,” army training can be a lifesaver. Stuart Campbell walks in the footsteps of many a prison service legend. His service was in the artillery and took him to many foreign postings, including Germany. He enjoyed it thoroughly but after eight years it was time to return to Civvy Street and hopefully gainful employment in his local Aberdeenshire area. There was no family connection with the prison service, though that is something that is quite common in jails, but chats with his army mates turned his thoughts to such a career. He applied to Aberdeen with no success but one morning a letter popped through the door and Peterhead was a possible starting place for his prison service career, which also took him to Cornton Vale and Perth and posts in staff training where his old army experience came in particularly handy.

Armies fight wars and in Peterhead in the bad old days towards the end of the last century, as we have heard, there were wars galore. Around 300 prisoners and 200 prison officers were at times like opposing armies. Towards the end of its life Scotland’s toughest prison, aka The Hate Factory, had begun to settle down but Stuart Campbell remembers his first introduction to it just days after one of the full-scale riots. Hours before he entered D Hall, where the rioters wreaked havoc and terrorised hostages, it still had police “crime scene” status. To new recruit Stuart it was more like a scene from a Second World War film. From the outside you could see and hear tarpaulins on the roof flapping in the wind, temporarily covering huge holes where the slates had been torn off by rioters and hurled with evil intent at anything that moved below. The halls were three storeys high but so much wreckage – mattresses, smashed tables, chairs, anything that could be torn from its fixings and smashed or burned – had been thrown from the upper floors that the staff had to enter via the first floor. Graffiti was everywhere, scrawled messages saying “screw the bastards” and worse. It was an introduction to life in Peterhead that would not lightly be wiped from the memory of anyone who saw it. The thought must have registered that if the inmates could do this once they could do it again. And they did.

But later riots were less damaging to the fabric of the prison and lessons had been learned the hard way. In particular there are now no attic spaces for rioters to retreat to when pursued by staff. Or to be used as places to hold hostages. The great halls of the prison now in their death throes have clear space under the roof, access to which is prevented by strong steel netting. For anyone taking a last look at the place from outside there are other prominent reminders of lessons learned. The prison is built of huge stone blocks which did not always fit together with extreme accuracy, leaving the small toe and handhold gaps which could be used by good climbers like Ramensky. As you walk down the hill now, past the neat rows of bungalows, to the main reception a glance at the walls shows where light-coloured splashes of cement filling the cracks between blocks stand out against the time-blackened walls. No handholds now for would-be escapers.

As I looked at these smooth smears of cement I remembered years ago Willie “Sonny” Leitch, a one-time Peterhead resident, showing me in a Lanarkshire pub how to use the “cracks” to climb a wall. It was amusing and embarrassing, as the customers must have wondered what this spontaneous masterclass in climbing was all about. Willie knew a thing or two himself about escaping though he never managed it in Peterhead. But in his days in the Royal Navy he had managed to depart a Singapore jail in daring and unauthorised fashion.

Willie, now a reformed and jovial character living in Livingston, is a true prison legend. If he stayed behind the walls in Peterhead he still exercised his sense of humour when there. During a chat with a group of officers one told me of the occasion when Willie, who was a brilliant baker in Civvy Street and who gravitated to the kitchens in prison, heard an approaching party of prison visitors and quickly covered himself in white flour. He then leapt out in front of the visitors appearing as a ghostly figure from the jail’s past. Blood pressures were raised! Sonny, now a friend, will not object to me letting you know that he is no Johnny Cash of San Quentin fame when he comes to singing, but he did pen a little ditty himself when he was up north, and again it had a theme that would appeal to all prison inmates:

Way up on Scotland’s North-East coast,

Just outside Peterhead,

There stands a grim-grey prison that holds the living dead.

Bereft of all humanity,

Devoid of all but pain.

I hope I never see its inside at any time again.

Sonny tells me that when he put his pen to paper the man in his thoughts was Oscar Slater. It is interesting to note the fascination poetry and folksong-writing has for those behind bars. Willie’s friend Walter Norval likes to sing a little ditty he learned in his Glasgow days called the “Barlinnie Hotel” song and he also can recite a rather sad little poetic comment on life in Polmont Borstal called, not surprisingly the “Borstal Song.” For a short period the Barlinnie Special Unit had a little magazine called
The Key
, which was an artistic outlet for the desperate men held there. With the likes of Boyle and Hugh Collins around it was naturally strong on drawings of prison life. But the content included a number of dark poems from inmates that were surprisingly good.
The Key
, a rough and ready little compilation held together by staples, was to my mind a really worthwhile exercise but it was not to last long and was killed largely because of opposition from other prison governors. Like much of what went on in that unit it was way ahead of its time.

The flour incident was one of the few touches of humour to emerge from that session of reminiscing during the final days of the prison. Not unnaturally the well documented tales of “batter squads” at the height of the troubles almost fifty years ago were not something these younger men cared to discuss in depth. One intelligent and particularly experienced old hand told me he and other colleagues felt that the public generally did not really understand the provocation that comes from dealing on a daily basis with long-term cons with no hope of release. Nor does the public fully take on the strain of such a job, especially in the bad old days. The newspapers tend to sell copies on the back of lurid tales told by the “bad guys” rather than running insightful features on the worries of the prison staff. This is a common complaint from the officers and if they have a chip on their shoulder, this is it.

I was told of officers who committed suicide not long after entering the service, broken by the demands of the job. The effect on wives and families is also underestimated by the public in the opinion of the staff. It may be that Peterhead will be remembered largely for two different eras – The Hate Factory days and the years of the sex offender unit. The pressure of working in either environment is not something you leave behind when you end a shift. The nature of the job in both regimes puts you in daily contact with the worst in society. When you go home in the evening it is not easy to drop into happy families mode. The work you do stays in your mind, and has an effect on your partner and your children.

In a lighter vein, though, there was also a collective memory of that feeling of camaraderie mentioned earlier. Plenty of memories. Good and bad. One of the good ones is of what must have been some of the most remarkable football matches ever played in Scotland. In the rough pubs on the outside of the prison walls football colours are often banned, the wearing of them considered inflammatory. In such a place the wrong word at the wrong time could easily lead to verbal abuse or in extreme cases the use of weapons – knives now, but not so long ago razors. On the field itself Old Firm matches between Glasgow football rivals Rangers and Celtic were, and still are, no place for the faint-hearted. They attract huge attendances, some of the largest in Britain, and in the clichés of the sportswriters “to retaliate first” and to “take no prisoners” is often the order of the day. The rough and tumble on the park, or a flawed refereeing decision, could spark serious street violence and unrest for hours after a match, whether in the east end of the city or across the river at Govan.

The Glasgow “polis” often made hundreds of arrests on an afternoon of an Old Firm match. Indeed murder was committed on occasion as one side taunted another in the streets. Yet inside Peterhead, which contained some of the hardest of Glasgow hard men, “Old Firm” matches were played without the slightest suggestion of trouble. Mind you, there were only a handful of spectators at these events.