Director of the Prison Service, claimed that no concessions had been made, but his insistence that nothing improper had occurred with Blake was simply discounted.37 Hill, a veteran of the brutal post riot assaults in Hull, had an unnerving ‘sense of déjà vu’. Letters of assured good conduct distributed by the Assistant Governor were on this occasion honoured in full.38 Although the Board of Visitors gave promises that personal possessions would be forwarded to those moved to other locations, it transpired that many, including McCluskey, did not receive belongings listed in Gartree.39
The direct agency of Dr. Peter Smith in treating Blake troubled ordinary prisoners in Gartree. Smith was an ex-employee of Broadmoor and was reputed to have ‘sectioned’ or ‘nutted-off’ more inmates than any other to secure psychiatric institutions.40 The term derived from the authority of Section 72 of the Mental Health Act (1959), which enabled doctors to commit persons they regarded as violent or potentially so to a mental institution such as Rampton Special Hospital.41 Prisoners referred to Smith as ‘Doctor Death’, as was highlighted in a Leveller special, although the alliterative sobriquet was otherwise used in relation to Dr. Cooper on the Isle of Wight. According to Ray McLaughlin, ‘the prisoners felt they had to make a protest to protect themselves from being subjected to a similar fate’ to that of Blake in Gartree. It was alleged that militant prisoners had been drugged against their will in Gartree to demonstrate the capacity of the medical staff to apply pressure.42 The Home Office insisted that drugs were ‘only’ administered on the basis of ‘clinical judgement’ by qualified persons ‘for the restoration of health or the relief of symptoms’.43 Largactil, one of the most potent and feared pharmaceuticals dispensed in England, had been widely consumed in the prisons since 1958.44 Prisoners placed no reliance in official statements averring appropriate dispensation. The concern of Gartree’s wider jail population was by no means allayed by the refusal of Rees to publish the relevant report furnished to the Home Office by the governor.45
Dr. Smith went on record in May 1979 in opposition to the key strategic Dispersal System concept of ‘human containment within secure perimeters’. He severely criticized the supposedly liberal approach, delineated by Tory icon Lord Mountbatten in 1966, as lacking ‘commonsense’. When recalling events of Gartree’s ‘long night’, a term redolent of deep negative subjectivity, Dr. Smith deflected plausible accusations of administrative culpability within his office for what had transpired with references to prison staff grappling with ‘the explosive psychopathic mixture which we have watched and listened to’. His trenchant views elicited praise from the POA and their leader, Bob Brown, who claimed during their annual conference in Margate on 24 May 1979 that ‘the people who are being punished are the staff and their families’. Brown, following Dr. Smith, implied that the psychiatric rehabilitative function of the English prisons, insofar as it really existed, was unimportant. He claimed, in order to counter allegations of inappropriate dosages being supplied to prisoners, that many fellow officers were taking proscribed medication ‘simply to get them into work the next day’.46 Access to subsidized alcohol by staff was a perk of the prison service noted by their singularly deprived captives. Owing to denial of eyewitness status, they could form no cogent opinion as to whether the palpable frisson within their locked-down wing community, arising from heavy drug utilization, was in any way mirrored in the ranks of those paid to keep them under lock and key.
On 1 November 1978 the POA branch in Gartree circulated its own fifteen-page document which, in addition to promoting service demands, ‘urged the removal of mentally ill prisoners’.47 They were reported as claiming that at least twenty of seventy-five disturbed and psychopathic prisoners in Gartree at the time of the riot ‘should have been in Rampton or Broadmoor’.48 Inmate behaviour and treatment were clearly major issues for staff in the Leicestershire prison, although Home Office Minister Lord Harris had declared himself to be ‘totally satisfied with the medical regime at Gartree and throughout the prison service’ on 6 October. This indicated confidence in the colourful Dr. Smith, who when questioned that day by journalists as he left the prison held aloft a green customs sticker while saying ‘nothing to declare’.49 Requests from Birmingham - based psychiatrist Dr. Maire ‘Betty’ O’Shea to examine Blake were reputedly ignored. Leftist Dr. O’Shea had been prominent in the campaign against the force-feeding of IRA prisoners in 1974–5 and a vocal supporter of prisoners’ rights to humane treatment and, in the case of the republicans, political status. She was acting in 1978 on behalf of the Medical Committee against the Abuse of Prisoners by Drugging.50
The Board of Visitors imposed punishments on those deemed to be culpable, and did so with the confidence imbued by the recent High Court judgement that they had full legal authority, albeit subject to legal review. In October 1978 the Court of Appeal accepted that a prisoner had ‘residuary rights appertaining to the nature and conduct of his imprisonment’ and that decisions taken by a Board of Visitors were subject to re-examination. Outside courts had hitherto declined to rule on internal prison procedures on the grounds of jurisdiction.51 Those accused of rioting in Gartree, moreover, had communicated with London-based solicitors who would have been in a position to assist with their defence had the option of hearing criminal cases in an outside court been green lighted. PROP had welcomed this prospect as the ‘first test case’ of the post-Appeal Court decision, although the Board of Visitor process was followed in the event.52 Gartree rioters were ultimately sentenced to eighty-six days in solitary confinement, and those not serving life sentences forfeited a year’s remission of sentence. Time spent awaiting adjudication was not deducted and the net effect of the Board’s deliberations was that Jerry Mealy lost 440 days remission.53 Republicans alleged that IRA members, British anarchists and other political prisoners were singled out from the main body of those responsible. It could not be denied, however, that the IRA had been deeply involved in the disturbances, and their agency was noted in the Times.54 Many life-sentenced prisoners were moved due to the loss of accommodation which compounded the reduction in places occasioned by the Chelmsford prison fire in March.55 Being shifted after a hiatus in receiving visits ensured that the families of those ‘ghosted’ around England were uncertain where to re-establish contact.56
Paul Holmes was one of the few IRA men initially retained in Gartree where he received a sentence of 186 days in solitary despite having played no part in the riot due to his enforced isolation from events.57 He was then moved to Long Lartin where he served the additional sentence. Brian McLaughlin, who had only just been returned to Gartree from a ‘lie-down’ in Bristol, was also retained in the prison. After repeated requests for medical examination in the aftermath of the riot, McLaughlin was diagnosed with TB.58 Martin Brady was regarded as a ‘ringleader’ and was sent to Wakefield where he was promised a ‘hard time’ from staff. This
