Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


Graham Smith JP
 Issue No. 92 Spring 2025
From the Chair

Welcome to the spring edition of the RPGA newsletter produced by our editor Paul Laxton, and thanks to all those who contributed to this edition. As ever if you have a view, an experience or a bit of history that will interest our members send it to Paul who is always grateful to receive items. The last edition was excellent and we seem to go strength to strength with quality pieces.

It was pleasing to have a few members attending our AGM on the 17th November 2024 albeit via Zoom, and it was particularly good as we managed to recruit a new member to our committee, Barbara Treen, so welcome to you Barbara. Myself and Jan Thompson were re-elected to the committee and we look forward to taking the RPGA forward for the next 4 years. It was pleasing that our treasurer reported our funds to be in a healthy state which is down to good management. We have the usual recruitment of new members’ issues and Harry Brett is now contacting retired Governors directly to offer membership, a job well done. One thing we always do at the AGM is to have a minute’s silence to remember those former colleagues who have passed away in the last year. There were 16 members and 9 non-members on the list this time, many of them well-known names from the past.

There have been many reported problems for those serving in our prisons today with initiatives to reduce overcrowding, spending cuts and what must be stressful working conditions. For those of us who worked in the Service for many years it all sounds familiar but we never seem to catch up with what the job is supposed to be about and I wonder if we ever will.

It is early January, another year gone, a bright sunny day, 10 degrees on the Pennines and this following some awful snow and ice that has confined us to barracks for days on end. Poor us! Hope you have had the jabs and are in reasonable health, keep warm and keep safe, though by the time you read this it will be spring and we will be hoping for a warm summer, fat chance!

See you at the next AGM provisionally set for 13th October.

Graham Smith JP

Chairman RPGA