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Graham Smith
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Graham Mumby-Croft


I was unaware of the bigger picture, especially of how the riot fell in with what was happening in the rest of the country at the time. In fact, during the whole incident, I never saw any of the news coverage either on TV or in the papers.

Over the years much has been discussed, and indeed debated, about the events of April 1990, most of it concentrating on the bigger picture of what was the cause, could the outcome have been different if another course of action had been taken, and of course the repercussions that came in the aftermath, not least the tremendous cost of having allowed a whole prison the size of Strangeways to be so badly damaged as to require closure and multi-million pound repairs and refurbishment. It was with this in mind that I decided, after all these years, to write down my memories of the things I either did myself, or was actively involved in, during those 26-days at Strangeways. My memories are of the day-to-day work that went on, from the initial reaction to a rapidly developing situation on that first Sunday, to the gradual development of methods and techniques, and indeed policies, many of which I understand are still in use today. I was very lucky that being a Works PO, and also fully C&R trained, put me into a unique position, so much so that throughout the whole duration of the incident I was never restricted to just one location, or one particular task, and working with a team of Works staff, and under the direction of my line manager, Mick Bell, we developed the ability to come up with a workable solution to any problem that senior management, the C&R teams, or we ourselves, came up against.

One of the main memories that remain with me was how, after the situation was ended, and everyone started to deal with the aftermath, I was involved in two major events. The first was the long and detailed police enquiry into the riot itself, that involved several long interview sessions with the investigators, and would eventually lead to me appearing as a prosecution witness at the trial of the main perpetrators of the riot. The second was my involvement in the internal prison service debriefing that was provided to all the Strangeways staff who had been directly involved in the events. I can remember being instructed that I was required to present myself at the Training Unit for a debriefing session on such and such a day, and at such and such a time, and duly turning up to find myself in a mixed group of staff of all grades, and disciplines, to be taken through a debrief session led by a senior psychologist.

The thing that struck me most was that that as the session progressed, and people started to open up about what they had seen and done over the last few weeks, was that many of the staff, whose background was in working the wings and landings, expressed strong feelings of guilt that they had not spotted any advanced warning signs of the impending events, or worse still, with hindsight they now realised that the signs were there, and they missed them.

At one point in the proceedings the psychologistic turned to me and asked, how come I was so quiet, as during this time I had said very little. I was encouraged not to bottle up my thoughts, but to speak out and share with the rest of the group exactly what I was feeling. My response was that I too was feeling guilty, but for an entirely different reason. I had just had the most intense, exciting and enjoyable period of my whole service career, and the reason I felt guilty now was because I realised that I was with people who had worked at Strangeways for all of their service, and who in some way blamed themselves for not spotting the signs of the chaos that was to come. Whilst here I was, I still on a high from all the things that I had been personally involved with, things about which I had no guilt or regrets, but which I knew it was highly unlikely that I would ever get the opportunity to do again.

So, let’s turn the clock back just over a year before the events or the riot and to how I came to be at Strangeways at one of the most critical times in Prison service history.

I was posted to Strangeways on promotion to P.O. (Works) from HMP Lincoln and took up my post on Tuesday 28th of March 1989, the Monday was the Easter Bank Holiday. The Works Department at Strangeways was a large one, indeed one of the largest of any prison establishment, and I was proud, to find myself as the PO in charge of the Mechanical and Electrical department. Of course, as well as settling into my new establishment, and new role, there was the small matter of finding a new home for myself, and my family, something that would turn out to be a financially challenging period, as there was a slump in the housing market at the time, (it seems there always was when I had to move house), and selling my house in Lincoln was proving to be difficult. So, when I did find a house in Bury, at the northern edge of Manchester, I needed to arrange a bridging loan facility, and of course receive authorisation from the Prison Service in order for them to fund it. That in itself was a very interesting time. As both my children were of school age, the pressure was on to complete the purchase and to get moved and settled into the new property in time for my boys to start at their new school in September. So, a quite hectic time, but we did manage to move into our new home in Bury during the first week of August 1989. Failure to sell my house in Lincoln, the bridging loan and the state of the housing market would all come back to haunt me afterward, but I will come back to that much later in this memoir.

One of the things that I tried to do in my time at Strangeways was to not be isolated as just a “Works” PO, and so I volunteered myself for C&R training. The initial training took place at Strangeways in the gym, and a disused workshop, but as I advanced through the different levels the training moved to the very recently closed Buckley Hall. So recently closed that as we were undergoing C&R training, other establishments were on site stripping out catering equipment, and anything else that could be removed, and re-purposed.

Being a PO and trained in C&R, led me to the situation that on a number of occasions I received a call requesting that I attend on a wing in order to take the supervisor role in a “Cell Removal”. In a large establishment such as Strangeways cell removals using a 3-person team, and whilst not an everyday occurrence, it was something that was used regularly and the PO/PEI Pat Coleman, who usually got called on to take the lead, was always happy to suggest my name instead.

Now I used the term 3-person team very deliberately, as I recall on one occasion the team that I was given for a cell removal was in fact entirely female, and the prisoner to be removed was a particularly well built, and extremely nasty individual. “The Team” took him out in textbook style, and I will never forget the look of defeat on his face when they took off their helmets to reveal to him that it was 3 women who had not only subdued him but had him crying like a baby.

Those of you who have any knowledge of the Strangeways Riot, or who have seen the documentary, or indeed may even have read the report, will know that one of the key factors at the time was that the whole central rotunda area of the establishment had been scaffolded out so that essential high level maintenance could be carried out. Whilst I was not personally involved in that specific project, I was obviously aware of it, and indeed had been involved in several meetings to discuss the impact of the work, and most specifically the security implications. What is not so well known, and in view of the subsequent events, sadly overlooked, is that at this time there was a great deal of major work going on within the establishment, all aimed at improving the conditions for prisoners.

This meant that it was not only the centre that was scaffolded up, but there was also a scaffold halfway down G Wing that went from the 1’s right up to the roof space. In addition, we, The Works Department had started work on B Wing to install In-Cell sanitation, initially as a trial, but if successful to eventually be expanded across the whole establishment. At this time there were so many contractors on site that to ensure that their movements in and out of the establishment, including their deliveries, did not interfere with the operational capability of the establishment a temporary gate and contractors’ compound had been created in the perimeter wall, at the corner of Southall Street and Empire Street. This gate and compound would prove to be invaluable during the events to come.

One of the main security precautions for scaffolding in a prison environment was that wherever scaffolding poles were exposed, and therefore presented a climbing risk, they were clad in corrugated steel sheeting fixed securely to the scaffolding poles. Because the “Centre” at Strangeways was built as a traditional hub with wings radiating off from it, there was a walkway all the way around the central hub at the 2’s 3’s and 4’s levels. These walkways were “fenced in at the sides, and overhead, to prevent climbing, and so, where the scaffolding passed outside them it was not clad as it was assumed that the mesh on the walkways would prevent prisoners gaining access, an assumption that proved to be wrong.

One evening, in the week preceding the riot, I had finished my shift and was at home when at about 19:00 I received a call from the establishment control room asking me to attend, as there was an ongoing incident that required a “Works presence.” On arriving at the establishment, I was met by The Governor, Brendan O’Friel, who briefed me on the situation, which was that 4 or 5 prisoners had managed to peel back the mesh on one of the walkways allowing them to be able to gain access to the scaffolding. They had then climbed to the top of the scaffolding to the Rotunda where they kicked the windows out and then climbed onto the roof by hanging on to the frame and dropping to the roof level below.

It seemed quite clear that this had been a spontaneous and not very well thought through action, as having reached the roof they found that they had nowhere to go but down, and the route down was a direct one ending in almost certain death. At the time of my arrival the prisoners were huddled together at a point where the roof of A Wing and The Chapel (F Wing) met, and where the brickwork of the lantern light formed a steep wall preventing them from moving anywhere. It was also a cold, damp March evening, so very unpleasant to be sitting on a roof.

My briefing from the Governor was that the prisoners had already indicated that they wanted to come down from the roof, and my task was to get them down, safely.

The chapel at Strangeways was a large one that took up 2 complete floors of F Wing and slopped down from the back to the front dropping 2-floors in the distance from the entry from the centre to the altar. At some time in the past a full suspended ceiling had been installed, and this meant that at the back of the chapel, the ceiling was actually at its lowest with only about 2.4m (8ft) headroom. Above the ceiling at the back of the chapel there had been a water tank that had been removed some time previously, and a wall had been demolished to facilitate this. This area was directly below where the prisoners were now huddled.

It was suggested to the Governor that as these prisoners were at a point where they could not be reached either by ladder or by a hydraulic platform, the quickest and safest way to bring them down was to simply create a hole in the roof close to where they were and bring them back into the prison via that route. This would however involve cutting a hole in the roof security mesh that was fixed to the rafters, large enough for a person to pass through, and the removal of sufficient slates to create the hole. This was agreed. With the assistance of two of my Trades Officers we then set about the task and by about 3:00 hours we had all the prisoners safely back inside. The damage caused to the roof, and the breach of the security mesh, were only temporarily repaired, as access to the outside was very difficult. This would prove to be critical in the following days. The riot began on Sunday 1st April 1990, and as most people are aware it started in the chapel, and many of the first prisoners onto the roof found their way there via the very route that had been created to bring in the failed escapee’s the week before.

The weekend of the 1st of April was my weekend off, and I was in Derbyshire with my family on a caravanning weekend at the time and knew nothing of events at work until I was on my way home. In order to get to Bury I had to pass by the prison, except of course I couldn’t get passed for the police roadblocks. Having explained to one of the officers that I worked at the prison and needed to get home in order to be able get back and report for duty I was allowed through, and must have been a strange sight on roads that contained nothing but police cars, ambulances and fire engines and there was me, my family and the caravan making our way through.

Having dropped the family at home, and leaving the car hitched to the caravan, I quickly changed into my uniform, jumped on my motorbike, and made my way into work, arriving at the main gate at about 19:00 hrs. I would not get to home again until the following Friday, 6th April. During my police interviews I was asked to explain what my role had been, and everything that I had done, seen, and heard, during the 26-days of the incident. As I explained to the police then, and even today I am the same, is that I could remember almost everything that I did, and much of it in great detail, but I simply could not put them into a clear chronological order, either then, so close to the actual events, or now 32years later.

What I do know is that having reported to the Command Centre and been greeted by Brendan O’Friel and the incident team, the first task I was given was to try to provide some protection to staff who were entering and leaving the prison via the main gate, which was under almost constant bombardment from prisoners throwing slates. bricks and whatever else they could from the roofs. So, using scaffolding poles and corrugated sheets, ironically from the same scaffolding stock used to scaffold out the centre of the prison, myself and a team set to work creating a safe passageway between the gate and the entrance to the security department where the command post was located. During this time, I had need to make my way to the Works Department that was located on The Croft.

For those not familiar with the layout of Strangeways it is actually a split site with the original prison, and all prisoner accommodation on one site, and the Stores, Workshops, Works Department, Gymnasium and staff car parking located on the other side of Sherbourne Street. This area was known as The Croft. Access from one part of the site to the other for prisoners was via a secure bridge across Sherbourne Street, or for staff to get to the car park, involved a long walk from the main gate to the secondary gate that gave access to The Croft. With access to the Croft via the bridge not possible my route to the Works Department was out of the main gate and a walk round to The Croft. The sight that greeted me there was incredible.

At the beginning of the riot many prisoners had decided that they were not going to become involved and sought safety with staff. There was also, without doubt, several prisoners who were involved, but had a quick “bit of fun” getting out before things got out of hand, or before they could be identified. Either way, many of those prisoners had been escorted across the bridge to The Croft, and held in any space available, while plans were put into place for what to do with them.

The plan was for there to be a mass “shipping out” of prisoners and when I arrived at the Works Department this plan was well underway with buses everywhere, and several Governor grades simply loading buses with prisoners, trying to keep some sort of tally, allocating escorting staff and sending them off to various prisons around the country. It would be several days before a final roll could be confirmed accounting for every single prisoner who was in Strangeways at unlock on the morning of the 1st of April 1990. As I recall it was somewhere in the region of 1650.

Among the many strange things that happened on that first night there are several that have stuck with me. One was that I remember being called on the radio to report to the main gate to meet with two guys who seemed to have some sort of home Office approval to offer help. It turns out that they were from the company who supply the C&R equipment such as the shields, helmets, and armour. They told me that they had “Blue Lighted” all the way from their factory in Lincolnshire with a boot full of equipment, and when I asked what they meant by “Blue Lighted” it turned out that they had somehow acquired a flashing blue light and attached it to their car, and had driven at high speed across the Pennines, totally unchallenged.

A little later I was called to the visits building as there were staff located in the building awaiting instructions and who needed equipment. However, this was in very short supply, and I was unable to help them. However, it turned out that they had been there for several hours without food and very little water. I was able to help them with this, as I had with me a universal key, also known as a large hammer, that I used to open the vending machines for them to help themselves to the contents. I also recall that on leaving this building a large coping stone that had been thrown from the roof landed on the ground only feet from where I was passing. A reminder, as if needed, that this was actually serious stuff.
It very soon became apparent that there was a severe shortage of C&R equipment. I recall that this was so bad that those of us who had our own kit, and particularly members of Tornado Teams arriving from other establishments fully kitted-up, had to hang onto it very tightly as there were a number of cases on that first night of people who took off their helmets and put down their shields to have a break, only to find them gone, if they looked away for only a moment.

I also remember that as things started to become organised, we were issued with food that came in the form of individual tins that contained either Stew or Curry. Around the outside of the can was a jacket that contained a chemical that you activated with a stick that was fixed to the side. You pierced this layer several times, around the top, starting a chemical reaction that heated up the jacket, and supposedly the contents of the tin, which you then opened and ate. The trouble was that people were so hungry, and the chemical process so slow, that most did not wait for the food to heat up but ate it cold. Later, several people burnt their hands when picking up the empty cans and finding out that the chemical reaction would continue for about an hour, and with no food in them, the cans actually got very hot indeed.

The following morning there were about 22 full C&R teams lined up, and briefed, ready to storm the prison. I remember the feeling from everyone that it was going to be a very tough day indeed, and also the feeling of deep disappointment when we were stood down. The general feeling was that although it would be tough, and that there would be significant casualties on both sides, that we would have prevailed in the end. But it was not to be, and from that point on the incident became a war of attrition and my role became that of floating Jack of All Trades.

As with most incidents where prisoners riot, one of their favoured weapons is fire, and Strangeways was no exception to this, and indeed over the course of the incident there were many fires, several of them very serious. At the beginning Greater Manchester Fire Service attended the establishment and fought several of the fires. However, they came under serious and sustained attack by prisoners, and were forced to withdraw, meaning that several sections of the prison were completely destroyed by fire, including the Roman Catholic Chapel.

Eventually the Fire Brigade Union, and Senior Management of the Fire Service decreed that their staff were not to be put into danger of attacks from prisoners and they were not allowed to use their powerful hoses as a means of protecting themselves, or prison staff, and they withdrew from the prison. To counter this it was decided to provide the establishment with their own means of fighting fires by the deployment of a Green Goddess Fire Engine, and one was dispatched from the Home Office Store at Burton on Trent. This unit arrived at the establishment late one afternoon in the first week and I was dispatched to the Croft area to take possession of the unit, and, as it turned out, to be trained in how to use it. The whole business was quite comical from the start, as the two chaps who had driven the unit up from Burton were, both in look, and attitude, something like typical British Workers from a 1950’s Ealing Comedy, all long brown coats, flat caps and a serious “not my problem attitude”. They were also very keen to not be there, and so my training lasted no more than 30 minutes and consisted mainly of being instructed how to connect the hoses, both supply and delivery, and how to set the gearbox from driving the wheels to driving the pump. The one clear warning, when pumping and operating with two men on a hose was, DO NOT EXCEED 3000RPM on the PUMP. And with that they were gone.

It now fell to me to pass on my vast knowledge of how to operate a Green Goddess to several members of Works staff, and the establishments Fire Officer, who had been “volunteered” for Fire Duty. So, we proceeded to rig up the engine with a water feed from a hydrant and ran out two hoses from the back with two big and burly members of staff on each hose. Being “the expert” my role was to manage the machine, control the water flow, and the pump speed. With everything in place and running, I turned on the water and slowly increased the engine revs to the pump. Here began lesson one: As water made its way into the hoses they expanded, and as the pressure increased, they became solid, in fact like iron bars. The trouble was, if the hose had a kink in it, as the water pressure increased it pushed the kink in front of it, and when it reached the nozzle end it would give a quite vicious kick. So much so in fact, that on the first attempt at running water through a hose, this kick took both men holding the hose completely by surprise and knocked them over. Attempt two went better, as I now realised that if I let the hose pressurise slowly, the final kick was small enough to manage. Once running I slowly increased the revs and the result was truly impressive, with the hoses throwing water a seriously impressive distance, as the two men struggled to hold onto, and direct it.

Any fireman will tell you that by modern standards the Green Goddesses where truly awful Fire Appliances, but the pump that they were fitted with had no equal. They would pump thousands of gallons of water, at high pressure, for hour after hour, and high pressure really was high pressure. So, as a newly trained “expert” in Green Goddess technology, I was of course keen to see what my new toy could do. That meant pushing the revs beyond the stated 3000rpm as I wondered what would happen if I pushed it to 4000rpm. Well, I can confirm that what happens is that at 4000rpm the force at the nozzle end is so powerful that it can, and indeed did, take two fully grown men clean off their feet, and no matter how hard they tried, they could not hold onto it. When they let go, or to be fair, when the hose was ripped from their hands it released a writhing serpent that was intend on destroying everything within its range, before I managed to kill the pump. I had just discovered how truly powerful stuff, water, can be.

By the end of the incident, we had 4 Green Goddesses on site, and with help from the friendly guys from Greater Manchester Fire Service, who provided unofficial guidance and support, they were successfully used to extinguish several fires. However, their main use was to be in providing tactical support, which, although we were under strict orders that we were not allowed to aim the water at prisoners, certainly proved useful in deterring them from being where we did not want them to be, simply by putting a hose on that spot. Over the course of the next two weeks these 4 units pumped tens of thousands of gallons of water into, and onto the building, and on the last day they were used in unison, at one point pumping so much water that I was told later, North West Water asked us to stop, as they could no longer sustain the water supply to the surrounding area.

One other funny story relating to the Green Goddesses is regarding filling them up with fuel. The engine of a Green Goddess is a 4.9 litre 6-cylinder petrol unit, which consumes fuel almost as fast as you can pour it into the tank. They are also notoriously difficult to drive, and positively lethal if you attempt to drive them on the road with a full water tank, as this is located high in the body, and means that they are very easy to tip over.

Once we had 4 of these units on site, we developed a system whereby we would take them out of the prison at night to a 24-hour filling station about 2-miles up the Bury New Road to fill them with petrol and use the establishments fuel card to pay. One night I was driving the lead engine, and was also responsible for all of the units, as I had possession of the Fuel Card. I can still recall the look on the cashiers face from behind his security screen as I went up to pay, and he asked me which pump, to which I replied, “all of them” I think it was something like 160 gallons of 4 star, with petrol in those days at about 40p/litre, so around £1.80p/gallon.

The design of the Bedford truck on which the Green Goddesses were based was unusual in that the engine was mostly in the cab, accessed by a cover that was removed by a single lever and a good strong pull. On the way back to the prison after filling up with fuel, my passenger informed me that he could smell burning, and as soon as he said it, then so could I. I stopped the vehicle, and we quickly came to the conclusion that it was coming from under the engine cover, so off it came, and ooh, bugger, out jumped the flames. On the engine the carburetor sits right on top, and the air filter is connected to it with a large hose. This hose had worked loose, and come off, so that petrol from the carburetor was splashing onto the exhaust manifold and had soon ignited. Luckily, it was only a small, and after all we were in a Fire Engine, and so we managed to put it out and we returned to the prison without further incident. However, I suspect that I am to this day the only member of prison staff who has the dubious record of having managed to set fire to a Fire Engine, while being on official duty.

In the third week of the incident, I recall coming in to work at about 6:30 one morning and as the prison came into view, I could see smoke rising from one of the wings. When I arrived, it was clear that a fire had been started on D Wing and in order to get at it we were going to need to fight it from inside. A team were dispatched to gain access from the rear of the wing from a single storey flat roof, which gave access to the windows of the library. I was sent with a Petrol Disc Cutter, with the idea that I would cut out the steel frame of the window to provide a means of entry. We also had a Green Goddess with us to provide the firefighting support.

Stood on this flat roof we were in clear view of prisoners, who were at the windows at the very top of the central rotunda, and who started to throw objects down at us, including scaffolding clips, each about 1.5kg of solid steel. On stepping back from cutting the window I happened to glance up and saw one of these clips begin its journey from the hand of a prisoner, and in what seemed like slow motion descend in an arc toward me. I must have been mesmerised as I watched it fall, and it was only the quick thinking of the guy stood next to me with a short shield, who stuck it in front of me a split second before the clip would have hit me. His quick action saved me from serious injury, or possibly worse. The almighty bang as this thing hit the shield snapped me back to reality, very quickly. To this day I do not know who it was with the shield, but I know I owe him a great deal.

When we had cut out the window a team of us entered the building and started to feed in a fire hose so that we could try to get at the fire from inside while others, including the Fire Service attacked it from outside. The fire was very severe, and it was discovered later that the prisoners had scoured the whole prison for anything that would burn and stuffed it all into 2 cells about three quarters of the way down the wing. These items included every toilet roll that they could find, newspapers and magazines, and every single tin of shoe polish to act as an accelerant. And it certainly did, because the fire was horrendous and generated so much heat that the ground floor of the wing actually buckled, and was raised by almost a foot, and the brickwork of the wing cracked in several places, with some of the cracks large enough to stick your arm in.





























PRISONERS ON THE ROOF AT STRANGEWAYS APRIL 1990 - SCENES THAT WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

Inside the wing fighting the fire was an “interesting experience” as not only did we have the sheer physical effort of trying to drag heavy hoses in through a window, across the room we had entered and out onto the landing, but once on the landings you had to be extremely careful as there were no handrails, and in many places the landing deck itself, many of which were of the old slate type, had been smashed, and so there were some significant gaps. One of these prevented us from being able to get close to the seat of the fire, however they also worked in our favour in helping limit prisoners from being able to get to us.

Obviously, the prisoners had seen us cut our way into the building, and feed in firefighting equipment, so several of them came to try to dissuade us from attempting to put out the fire, and would you believe it, their chosen method was to throw things at us. Earlier I mentioned that we were all under strict instructions that the tactical use of water needed to be approved from Head Office, and throughout the riot that approval was never issued. However, on this particular occasion we worked on the principal of what Head Office can’t see, they can’t bollock us for, and after all these years I am now ready to admit that inside D Wing on that particular day at least 2 prisoners felt the full force of what a fire hose connected to a Green Goddess could do, and they all soon withdrew, once they realised what a potent weapon we possessed.

To be continued…   (Part 2)


GRAHAM MUMBY-CROFT


Graham Mumby-Croft
The Strangeways Riot and My Small Part in It

One of the interesting things that I found during my short stint as Editor of The Newsletter last year was reading the stories that people submitted of their time in the service, and some of the memorable moments that have stayed with them, even after years of retirement. I have also noticed that there has been a recent spate of documentaries on the television of late, looking either at particular events, e.g. The Strangeways Riot, or at a particular prison, e.g., the recent documentary on HMP Wakefield.

Watching these programmes was interesting from a number of perspectives; firstly, because in both programmes there were several people in the role of “talking heads” that I knew from my time in the service, and indeed some of whom I am still in contact with today. Secondly, and specific to the Strangeways Riot programme, is a much more personal interest, as I am in the position of being able to say, “I was there.” Seeing the Strangeways programme again brought back many memories, both of the event itself, and of how years later I would watch the documentary and think to myself that in respect of some of the things that were shown and commented on, that that was not how I remembered it at the time. The other thing that struck me was that being so closely involved in what was happening at the coal face, I was unaware of the bigger picture, especially of how the riot fell in with what was happening
Issue No. 87 Autumn 2022