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The governor grade seven-day control of Gloucester Prison in early 1986 was a fascinating event. I will argue that it is a story that has only ever been half told. Another aspect to this highly significant industrial relations incident relates to my efforts to uncover records of the affair, but I will come back to that later.
On Monday the 28th April, following a protracted dispute between Gloucester Governor Nick Wall and the branch of his local Prison Officers’ Association (POA), he was left with little option other than to take dramatic and decisive control of his prison that evening. The following day, as he already anticipated, he lost the support of all his 130 uniformed staff. With their refusal to sign an agreement to abide by their Governor’s authority, staff in effect, abandoned their posts. Control of the prison routine had to be established in some other way. With the backing of senior Prison Service Headquarters management, he eventually replaced the whole of his uniformed staff with 63 prison governors of various ranks from other jails around the country.
The dispute between management and the POA had been rumbling on for weeks prior to the 28th April, eventually coming to a head that Monday morning. By way of attempting to work within his allocated budget, the Governor sought to rearrange officers’ hours, as a means of trying to reduce staff costs. Officers in-post were below complemented at Gloucester, as they were in many prisons and uniformed staff worked a weekly average of 18 hours overtime, consequently earning a sizeable amount over and above their normal pay.
Two former officers who have recently recalled events from 35 years ago, remember their disgruntlement with the Governor, centred around his proposal to stop paying officers on the early 06:45 start, that included their 45 minute breakfast period between 07:30 and 0815. The 06:45 shift was known as Breakfast Before Duty (BBD) which staff liked. The BBD staff would come on duty early to unlock those inmates who worked in the kitchen and those inmates due in Court. After they attended to these duties, they would then go for breakfast when the 07:30 staff arrived. They would then have a 45 minute breakfast break for which they were paid. The Governor wanted to stop payment for the breakfast break, similar to how staff were not paid when having their hours lunch break. The dispute of course was much more than BBD and involved arranging for significant cuts to each officer’s overtime schedule across the working week. It is interesting however to note how two former Gloucester officers remembered the dispute for themselves.
Looking at the Service as a whole, similar sorts of industrial relations problems were mounting in many prisons around the country, primarily centred on the question of officer shortages and uniformed staff overtime costs.
It is worth recalling that 1986 was the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, marked by the miners’ strike which lasted 51 weeks from March 1984 to March 1985. Following on was the 54-week Print Unions’ dispute in January 1986 at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation at Wapping. These events can be referenced very easily to this day.
Of course, Gloucester was not a dispute of anything like that magnitude, but it is nevertheless interesting how scant is the available evidence today, on this unique incident inside one of Her Majesty’s prisons.
For what must have been the only time in prison history, prison officers flatly refused to accept the authority of the Governor, and hence a group of non-uniformed staff were compelled to take over.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons Sir James Hennessy used the term, ‘unprecedented’ and as we know, such an event has never happened since. For uniformed prison staff absenting themselves from their prison, leaving the inmates under the control of a group of suited governors, must be regarded as an extraordinary industrial relations event.
The decision by the Prisons Board headed by Chris Train, to employ a detachment of governors to run a prison for a whole week, could be seen as incredibly bold on the one hand or perhaps exceedingly foolhardy on the other. How far up the tree the decision to show this kind of resilience towards the POA went, is not quite clear. What is known however is that Sir Brian Cubbon, as Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, did add his public support to the Gloucester Governor. If Sir Brian Cubbon was prepared to go on the record about this incident, then it is safe to assume that the Prime Minister herself must have had a say.
In 1986, Gloucester was still regarded as an old-fashioned, small jail within the Prison Service estate. It first took shape as a distinct prison in 1791, attached to the former Castle that had previously acted as a place of confinement. There followed a major rebuild in the 1840’s when the Victorian prison building programme gathered pace. Still in evidence is the bold, imposing and attractive gate lodge (pictured above). Back from the Gate, was the inmate cellular accommodation. From a central point, two long wings and one short one radiated out to house individual cells on three open landings. Sadly, the lovely old Governor’s house at one corner of the jail has gone.
Built in the centre of Gloucester, the prison was small, with an average capacity of 278 inmates, 81 of whom were in single cells for their own protection. In 1986, it was classed as a Category B prison for male offenders. The jail was closed in 2013, being classed as inefficient due to its limited size and complicated location right in the heart of the city. To mark somewhat of an ignominious end for this ancient jail, it currently operates as a visitor attraction and ghost hunting venue. However, planning permission has been approved for a partial demolition by a construction company, about to create a vast housing complex. Gloucester, as a renowned old prison, is about to disappear for ever. Some may argue that the plans involving the old Gloucester prison, given its historical significance, are perhaps short sighted.
The Home Secretary during the incident was Douglas Hurd, and there is a Hansard entry from 29 April 1986, of a debate in the House of Commons about the actions of the Gloucester POA. The debate included discussions on industrial relations problems across the Service, but Douglas Hurd made a point of defending the actions of the Governor at Gloucester by suggesting that the POA had reasonable compromises offered to them, which in turn they rebuffed. Hansard provides the only piece of information of the Gloucester event that can currently be found on the web.
Gloucester officers were not alone in challenging management, and disputes were emerging across the whole Service. Some would suggest that a cause of the problem was the POA’s attempt to hold onto lucrative overtime systems, whilst others would say that staff shortages and poor buildings made the job of many officers extremely difficult.
In preparation at the time was a document called ‘Fresh Start’, which would bring huge changes to shift patterns, abolition of overtime, clarity about the Service’s vision, goals and values and dispute procedure protocols. Fresh Start was eventually implemented across the whole of the Prison Service throughout 1987. Back in April 1986, officers could see that their overtime benefits were about to disappear. Which work force would not stand up and try to prevent that happening?
That Monday morning was an extremely difficult one for the Governor. A Principal Officer and a Senior Officer had been temporarily relieved from duty for refusing to publish the Governor’s shift system, and many staff had left the prison early for refusing to work any overtime. Inmate activities had been curtailed and the whole prison was tense. It had been a fraught day with regular confrontations between the legal authority of the Governor and many uniformed staff. One additional governor had arrived at the prison during the afternoon to help set up an operations room, sensing that concerns were going to escalate.
Matters came to a head that evening, after day staff finished their duty and the prison was locked-up under the control of night staff. The Gloucester prison Deputy Governor, Harry Crew, left the prison around 2130 hours, ostensibly to get some fish and chips for the Governor, who had remained on duty all day. By previous arrangement, Harry arrived at the local police station where he briefed four governors from elsewhere, who were scheduled to accompany him back to the prison. On the way back, he searched for a regular fish and chip shop, but being Monday, they were all shut. He bought his fish and chips from a Chinese take-away, and with this in hand, he arrived at the Gate. As he crossed the threshold, his four colleagues were to move forward at the signal when he raised his hat. They slipped in behind him and secured the Gate. A long-standing adage had always been that those who controlled the Gate, controlled the prison. The famed Gloucester ‘fish and chip take-over’ was born.
The four governors who arrived at the Gate on that first night, deserve closer attention. They were from different prisons in the South West region. They had received hardly any notice on that Monday morning other than to pack an overnight bag and get to the Gloucester police station by 1800 hours. All that these four people had been told, was that there was an industrial relations dispute. It is worth appreciating that nobody knew how long or short this incident might last, so a few brief items in a small suitcase turned out to be inappropriate. One of the governors who worked at Portland Borstal, poignantly described how he left his young family at home near his place of work and set off by train with great apprehension to Gloucester, about which he knew nothing. All the governors who were ordered to Gloucester, had similar stories, with no idea what they were yet to face and how long they might be away.
The night Gatekeeper was ordered either to leave the prison or attend to duties on the landings. He chose the latter and worked alongside the night patrols, until the end of their shift at 0700 hours the next morning. That first evening must have seemed surreal, not only for what was now seven governors present in the prison including the Governor himself, but for the six unformed night staff on duty as well. The Governor caught wind of the fact that those uniformed staff in the prison, might barricade themselves in the Centre office (that is the central control point that looks onto the three wings). He sent one of the newly arrived governors to go to the Centre as a means of trying to establish an amicable dialogue. Contrary to what a number of people believed, no barricade was erected. The night staff had been in telephone contact with their union officials outside, and they were not in a mood to welcome any governor grade in the main body of the prison.
The Portland governor grade remembers to this day, his arrival on the Centre into a hostile situation. Working at Portland, he happened to be questioned about a newly promoted officer who had recently been transferred from Gloucester to Portland. When it was discovered that the governor and the staff shared the conclusion that the person in question was of limited capacity, the ice seemed to be broken and the night passed reasonably amicably.
In the meantime, one of the four new governor arrivals with previous catering experience in a former career, under instruction from the Governor, went to the kitchen. She found catering whites that happened to be comically too big for her and started to prepare a breakfast for the next morning. Here was a young woman, relatively inexperienced, missing a night’s sleep, taking up post in a strange kitchen, in the middle of the night and making ready for the next morning. As if this was not demanding enough, she had to go and collect the kitchen prisoner orderlies well before the normal unlock time and get them to help her finalise the meal for close on 300 prisoners. Later that day, the highly experienced Regional Catering officer Tony Frith, arrived at the prison and took over the arrangement of meals from then on.
During the early hours of Tuesday the 29th, the first wave of around twenty governors arrived at the prison to staff the landings. The normal day time staff who were now congregating around the Gate, were given an ultimatum either to work the shift system devised by the Governor or remain outside the prison. By their refusal to obey their Governor they, in effect, locked themselves out. Apart from the Chief Officer, who in fact was a Principal Officer acting up, every uniformed member of staff refused to follow the Governor’s proposed shift pattern, thus giving the Governor few options.
Around the normal unlock time, inmates were making a lot of noise. As a result of some hard overnight work in the kitchen, the landings were unlocked and breakfast was served. Tensions were extremely high. During the morning, another tranche of governors arrived from around the country to support their colleagues.
For the previous two years, I had been seconded to a management tutor post at the Prison Service College in Wakefield with the rank of AG1. Working with a couple of colleagues, I was responsible for running assistant governor training courses during their two years ‘apprenticeship’. We were half-way through a six-week course for about 25 junior governors holding the rank of AG2(T), - that was Assistant Governor grade two with the (T) standing for training. Early on the morning of Tuesday the 29th April, I was instructed to take this group down to Gloucester and report to the prison on arrival, as a means of adding reinforcements to those governors already there. We got to Gloucester around lunchtime and walked through a group of noisy officers before reaching the Gate. Encountering a group of uniformed officers with some throwing insults, was a strange experience that none of us had met before, given that we normally worked very amicably with staff back at our own prisons. The AG2s took up various support posts around the prison and I reported to the Governor for an update. The governor grade control of Gloucester was thus complete.
This was the start of seven days of continuous duty, beginning at around 0730 hours in the morning and ending around 2030 hours each evening. Various bed and breakfasts around the city were organised for us and I had a room not more than quarter of a mile from the jail, with about four others sharing the same house. A number of the AG2(T)’s remembered how they ‘hot bedded’ with some of their colleagues. This group was located in a hotel, where those on the day shift would vacate their beds at the start of their day, and when those coming off nights arrived at the hotel, bed linen was changed and they then went to sleep in their colleagues’ beds.
It was a fascinating experience at several levels, where one of my roles was to offer support and guidance to my group of young assistant governors. Another function was to take a lead with whatever wing jobs needed doing. All the governors had experienced basic landing duties before, in one form or another. Manning the landings with plenty of inmates around was a new experience for nobody. During this event, it was a credit to the young AGs who skilfully adapted to their new surroundings. When I did my four months training stint as a prison officer at the start of my governor grade career nine years previously, encountering a hundred or so inmates milling around the landings at Gloucester nine years later, did not seem particularly daunting compared to the 400 odd inmates who would wander around Durham’s D wing during evening association.
It took about 36 hours to establish a comfortable relationship with the Gloucester inmates, who benefited from a relaxed regime. With only 63 governors to run the prison both day and night for seven days, meant that the normal inmate routines had to be suspended. Around 41 governors ran the prison during the day, and it was noted in one account, that eight of those were female. This group was identified as performing their duties with great skill, adding a ‘softer’ touch to the landing routines that had a calming effect on the inmates. Simply getting the inmates their meals and exercised was the main task in hand in the first few days, before regular routines were established.
Having arrived at around lunch time on the 29th, meant that the AGs and I had missed the demonstration by about 100 inmates on the exercise yard that morning. This was successfully resolved once the Governor intervened. If a good relationship developed with the inmates inside, that could not be said for relationships with a number of the Gloucester officers outside. One governor recalled trying to bring some groceries into the prison from a van parked outside the Gate, and encountering a small but vocal group of officers who were trying to take photographs and shouting obscenities. This sort of behaviour was not uncommon for many of the governors who arrived for work each morning.
On the first day of the incident, about 20 inmates on the exercise yard, climbed onto a few roof tops and remained there for two days before getting fed up and coming down. They had caused significant damage which had to be rectified over the following days to weather-proof the accommodation. One report of the incident identified the fraught, dangerous and demanding period during those first 24 hours or so. Most of the inmate population were on the brink of outright rebellion, and the governors manning the landings, who quelled the atmosphere in those early stages, deserved great credit. One of the governors remembers coming into the prison to take up his post in the Operations room within the Administration block, whilst the inmates were on the roof directly above. He recalls some shouting by those on the roof and the danger of passing under a corner of one building where the prisoners were trying to prise off a huge coping stone to drop down below. This governor remembers offering a cheery good morning, and walking briskly not running, with an apprehension that a dangerous missile from above could cause him some problems.
From the group of officers outside the Gate each day, we heard the suggestion more than once, that we were going to lose control. In fact, the exact opposite occurred over the seven-day period and the inmates became more than compliant, appreciating the situation and enjoying the civility and relative freedom offered by a group of suited middle managers. These are not my conclusions, but the comments of the Chief Inspector who eventually submitted his report on the incident to Parliament in July the following year. Recorded on a running log that was kept during the incident, an entry for the evening of the 6th May stated that a contingent of inmates on association, offered a vote of thanks to the governors who had been working in the prison during that week.
Not everything was order and harmony, however. One incident early in the event involved an older inmate who became dangerously agitated in his cell and had to be removed by a three-man team of governors. They were equipped with Control and Restraint (C&R) apparatus involving helmets and shields. A forceful removal was effected with no injuries to anybody. This sort of task would normally always be done by trained uniformed staff, but on this occasion, it was one of the governors who was a tutor on the C&R courses, who carried out the routine, to the book. Another flare-up by a young inmate, was dealt with by a reasonably sympathetic approach from a couple of governors. One of them being a bit older, gently prodded the inmate with the end of his tobacco pipe. Instead of it coming across as a friendly nudge, it inflamed the situation, causing the inmate to become agitated all over again. This inmate had probably never seen an avuncular, pipe smoking older governor before and misinterpreted it as a threat.
The uniformed staff mostly congregated in the prison mess outside, as well of course, providing a presence at the main Gate to barrack anybody who entered. Evidence supports the opinion that two groups of about a dozen officers, stationed themselves on some erected scaffolding over-looking the prison from a building opposite. This group shouted words of encouragement to try and rouse the inmates to cause trouble. Fortunately, they failed. The Deputy Governor recalls seeing the Gloucester inmates, watching the Bristol prison riots that day on television and expressing relief they were not part of it. The main body of officers were decent, moderate prison employees who were simply wanting to protect their conditions of service. The Inspectorate Report did however identify a group of officers who showed a high degree of inflammatory irresponsibility.
Daily life amongst the inmates during the officer withdrawal of labour, became quite routine but not always smooth. I remember once being called up to a landing to help break up a fight between two inmates. Joining what was a lot of noise and flaying of arms, the well-worn and trusty words of, ‘hey-up fellas, what’s going on. Come on, let’s just calm it down”, quickly eased the situation. The point being made here is that agitated inmates treated with a lack of hostility and aggression, seemed to relax quite quickly.
Another interesting episode on the first day was the discovery of two inmates in a cell who told us that they had not been allowed out for over a week, since they had been diagnosed with AIDS. This was the early appearance of this disease and the inmates had only been handled by white coated and masked officers who seemed to think it was best to keep them well confined under lock and key. We let them out for an hour onto the exercise yard for their first bit of fresh air in weeks. I remember them being so grateful for not being treated like lepers.
An issue of some importance that has never appeared in any report I have seen whilst researching this topic, involves a proposal from Prison Service Headquarters when only a few days into the dispute. A suggestion was put to the Governor that it might be best if the governors running the prison were sent home and staff were allowed back into the prison without implementing the Governors shift proposals, that had sparked the dispute in the first place. The majority of governors working in the prison at the time had no inclination that such a proposition had been offered. From two separate sources, I have heard that the response from at least three officials within Gloucester prison were extremely hostile to the suggestion. Such was the vehement opposition, that the idea was pursued no further. Whether the suggestion to end the governor’s control of Gloucester came from Headquarters or South West Regional Office, is not clear all these years later, but it certainly must have had the Prison Boards consent at one level or another. Looking back at this matter now, it seems incomprehensible that a strategy designed to uphold the authority of the Governor, involving 63 governors from around the country, could be jeopardised by such an absurd and crass capitulation. Reference to this issue, appears neither in the Chief Inspectors Report nor in the South West Regional Offices official log.
To pick up on some of the recollections of those who were there, I was told of one AG who performed night duties for the week, recalling a point late one evening after lock-up, hearing what sounded like a hammer and chisel banging away at a wall. Whilst he criss-crossed the inmate accommodation to try and locate the source of the noise, the thought crossed his mind that an inmate may have been trying to effect an escape. After about half an hour, a police presence outside the prison discovered that it was actually a noise from a building across from the jail, where an enthusiastic DIY'er was carrying out work on his house. The Deputy Governor remembers breaking into the Physical Education Instructor’s office with the Gym inmate orderly on the first day, to get some footballs for the inmates to kick around on the exercise yard. It was a gesture that contributed greatly to calming the inmate mood, but he recalls how it did not take too long for one ball after another to end up over the wall.
During one evening, the acting Chief Officer effected a search of the kitchen. He found a range of knives and implements in a drawer whilst the official shadow board was half empty. When trying to match up the outlines of the implements on the board, there was a serious mismatch. There was a surplus of eight kitchen implements, including a carving knife, blades and a butcher’s saw. The conclusion was drawn that as certain items went missing which could not be found, somebody on the staff simply brought in a replacement. One of the AGs on nights, recalls how two of them inspected all the offices and rest rooms, gathering up a whole range of prison officer uniforms lying around in various locations. Not just the odd jacket or official shirt, but complete uniforms, readily available for any enterprising prisoner to conceal as an aid to an escape. There was a cart full by the end of the operation. Part of the cache of other items found were several riot staves left unsecured as well as evidence of alcohol that had obviously been brought illegally into the prison.
An interesting find was made in the Reception Office from where inmates were discharged on their day of release. Carved into the top of the office desk, was a slot down to the drawer below. This drawer was locked and when it was prised open by the governor working there, it was found to contain quite a quantity of money. The prisoner orderly, who helped the staff in that work, described how some of the Reception Officers, ‘charged’ the departing inmates for their final breakfast on their release from the prison. The money was then dropped into the staff’s ‘piggy bank’ for later use. It goes without saying that this, in effect, was theft.
A great sense of comradeship developed amongst all the people working in the prison during that period. I would not want to single out any particular governor grade, but a few individuals inevitably made their presence felt. AG1 John Aldridge manned the Gate most of the period, being very forceful and at times necessarily direct to any uniformed staff who tried, at different points, to enter the prison to see what was going on. Strict control of the Gate was paramount, of course. Another robust character was G3 Walter MacGowan. This larger than life individual was recorded as having a constant presence on the wings, offering visible leadership, particularly in the early days. For security reasons, no door should remain locked without staff knowing what was on the other side. Walter was charged with checking each locked office if there was no key. Of course it was inevitable that the POA office had to be broken into, used by POA Chairman Bryan Hughes and Secretary Ray Ward who were leading figures in directing uniformed staff in their refusal to accept the authority of the Governor. Another Governor G3, Paul Wailen, ran the prison successfully through each of the nights, with an appropriate group of fellow governors.
We saw the Governor on regular occasions moving about the prison and we were kept updated on what moves were taking place to try and resolve the dispute. The Deputy Governor worked productively on the Governor’s behalf, crafting a document as a means of allowing both sides of the dispute to reach an agreement. The Governor kept up a regular dialogue each day with the inmates to address their concerns and agitations over things like visits, court appearances, canteen, medication, letters and exercise.
For everybody, it was a draining experience but because of its peculiarity, it was nevertheless a very absorbing one. By the end of the seven days, once a compromise had been reached between Prison Service Headquarters, the Governor and the local branch of the POA, I was extremely glad to see the uniformed staff return, thus allowing us to go home and get some rest. It had been a gruelling period, but one that was unique in my varied service. It was stated in more than one report that a phased return by uniformed staff would have been advantageous, but as it happened, the governors left on Tuesday 6th May, to be replaced in one go by all the uniformed staff.
It is not appropriate to recall the incident at Gloucester without mentioning the problems at the same time, in a range of other prisons. Gloucester was identified as the catalyst for extremely serious trouble in Bristol, Lewes, Northeye, Erlestoke and Wymott, where significant disturbances occurred throughout the 30th April and into the next day. These lasted for between 3 hours and 18 hours, causing a huge amount of damage, and the short-term loss of around 800 inmate places. Publicity from Gloucester over their developing industrial action on the 29th, rippled around the country very quickly.
As was inevitable, the media reports inflamed tensions rapidly across the news outlets. The suggestion by the media that the ban on officers’ overtime would adversely impact the inmate regime, caused great agitation, not just in the five prisons mentioned above, but in most other prisons around the country as well. Efforts by the Deputy Director General, Gordon Lakes, to de-escalate the news frenzy, did not work. A few places like Wakefield, Leeds, Stocken and Acklington suffered no trouble at all, but they were the exception.
What may be seen as curious about the incident at Gloucester all those years ago, has been my frustrating efforts to try and discover some documented evidence and official testimony of those seven days. I eventually managed to tap into a private institutional library in London that had preserved several records about the incident in their archives. From this source, I obtained a copy of Sir James Hennessy’s report by HM Inspectorate that provided the key points of the Gloucester incident. In the bundle of papers were seven newspaper cuttings from three national newspapers and a Hansard copy of a debate in the House of Commons dated 29 April.
Trying to obtain reports on the incident from more conventional sources was another matter. I would not offer the view that there has been any kind of cover-up or concealment, but more a case of an important incident, simply being shunted into a siding. When the prison closed down in 2013, I would have expected its records to be deposited either in Gloucestershire County Archives or the National Archive at Kew.
Seeking disclosure proved problematic. No record of the events described could be located at the County Archive, save for a private diary entry from a member of the public, which was subject to a 100 year embargo. Prison and Probation Service Headquarters informed me that they did not have any relevant records. Freedom of Information Act requests to the Ministry of Justice and HM Chief Inspector of Prisons came to nothing despite the latter having submitted a Report to Ministers a year after the incident.
I received no reply to my enquiries from the National Archive, the Prison Service Library or the National Justice Museum at Nottingham that holds the contents of the former Prison Service Museum.
Dampening down the Gloucester incident and removing written evidence of it, may have been part of a strategy within the Home Office to navigate a smooth path towards the implantation of Fresh Start. Of some significance was the fact that the Chief Inspectors report on the prison service troubles in the spring of 1986, were held up for a few months by a branch of government, whilst some of the more ‘troublesome’ elements of the narrative were toned down.
Through private files held by the former Deputy Governor of Gloucester, I was able to expand my knowledge of this event through some contemporaneous documents that laid out the saga in some detail. In this regard, I am grateful to Harry Crew for making his files available to me.
Gathered from governors working in the Operations room at the time, a sound record of events emerged from the prison all those years ago. A document from one of the leading governors in the prison following the incident, went a long way to help frame many of the details in this report. Drawing together the various strands of the incident from sources complementary to the official Inspectorate Report, has allowed for a balanced story not fully recorded before. I am grateful to all those who contributed verbally as well as those who were able to lend me a range of useful documents. This story can now be properly placed ‘on the record’.
Bibliography: -
Post Incident Report from Operational lead G3 W MacGowan.
Post Incident Report from Gloucester Deputy Governor, H Crew.
South West Regional office log, 24 April – 1 May.
Gloucester Prison log, 18 April – 6 May.
HM Inspectorate Report – “Inquiry into the disturbances in prison service establishments in England between 29 April and 2 May”.
Western Daily Express article – 22 May.
Daily Telegraph – 2 May.
The Guardian – 30 April, 2 May, 5 May and 6 May.
Financial Times – 30 April and 7 May.
Governor grade verbal recollections – 8.
(No individual has been mentioned in this article by name or has been quoted, who has not already been referenced in either an official public report or a national newspaper article from the period. All facts have been recorded as accurately as possible to my knowledge. Any factual errors are my own for which the author apologises.)
Peter Atkinson
Former Prison Governor May 2021
Issue No. 85 Autumn 2021
Peter Atkinson
Gloucester Prison Industrial Dispute – 1986.
“Officers Walk out – Governors Walk in.”
By: Peter Atkinson.
