Craiginches Read online

  One such scenario could be when a prisoner had maybe barracked themselves into their cell. We had a special machine that you pushed into the sides of the door, pumped it up, and then you warned the prisoner to stand back! When you pressed the button it basically took the cell door off its hinges. There was no messing about.

  There was individual training and team training, as more often than not you were deployed in small teams. You also normally went into these situations in a prearranged formation. For smaller operations like for incidents in cells you would normally go in teams of three officers. The officer in the middle would have the shield and the two other officers would be on his shoulder at either side. That would allow the officer with the shield to corner the offender and then the others to come from the side and restrain him.

  You have bigger teams and formations for more major issues, like some of the riots we had to attend at Her Majesty’s Prison Peterhead. They were high-risk situations and at times you would have three men with shields at the front and between each shield you had three men tucked in either side. You would also have shields above the men and it was an awesome sight. More like a battle scene from an epic film like Braveheart or Gladiator than from one of Scotland’s prisons.

  Ironically, the control and restraint training was brought in to improve the safety of the officers and the prisoners. An inmate might not have thought it when they were faced with a control and restraint team but they were actually less likely to get hurt than if they were to attack a regular prison officer.

  We also went down to England to a big open prison. I can’t recall the exact location but it had an unused RAF air camp. The English Prison Service initially didn’t buy into it! We started to train some of the English-based physical training instructors because the Scottish Prison Service was well ahead of them on this particular front.

  I ended up at Peterhead Prison on three separate occasions, one rooftop protest and two riots. Peterhead was a far different place to HMP Aberdeen. It was mainly long-term prisoners in Peterhead. There were your hardened criminals and some of the worst offenders in the country. It was the top jail in Scotland at one point for long-term prisoners. It was also rather cruelly dubbed ‘The Hate Factory’. It was the top prison until the new prison at Shotts, near Glasgow, was built.

  There were times at HMP Aberdeen when we would take inmates from Peterhead, but only if we saw a definite improvement in their behaviour or attitude. They would maybe see out their time at Aberdeen or even go down to an open prison before they were eventually released.

  Peterhead was a scary place. It was an experience, especially when you went in on control and restraint operations. We used to use one of the old work sheds at Peterhead to train our staff in joint exercises. You are trained for high-risk situations and scenarios. When you go in, there is a mix of excitement and a bit of fear because you just don’t know what you are going to be confronted with.

  When we were at Peterhead we would normally work in twelve-man teams and clear the prison section by section until the situation was brought under control and the prisoners were put back under lock and key. Most of the time it was straightforward, although not always. There was one odd occasion which I will go into later.

  On one deployment to Peterhead I actually ended up dislocating my thumb. There had been a riot. The prisoners had caused havoc and had basically wrecked a wing. They smashed all the toilets and sinks and started to use them as missiles. I had been holding one of the shields at the front and the next I knew a part of a broken toilet had been thrown down from one of the galleries! It came past the side of the shield, hit my hand and dislocated my thumb. I was in agony but I know it could have been an awful lot worse. In all honesty, there was very little chance of the missile breaking the shield. I continued with the manoeuvre until we managed to get the situation cleared and after that I went and got treatment and found out the full extent of my injury. I knew I had taken a sore one but even as a trained first-aider I knew my first aid training would have counted for very little until we had got the situation under control. Such are the pitfalls of being a prison officer.

  It wasn’t always physical but you would have all sorts of abuse and things thrown at you. I think I have been called everything under the sun in my visits to Peterhead.

  On a couple of other occasions all we did was secure the area and left it to the professional negotiators to talk the prisoners out of the situation. That was their job until we got them back in their cells.

  Normally you travelled up in teams. My team was always from Craiginches. We had a first-class training programme there because I would bring all the new stuff back from the training college and the governor would always want us to embrace it and to keep all our officers at the forefront of all the latest prison procedures.

  Whenever one of the officers was off at the college I normally got the call from George through the Governor and was sent down on detachment. Officers from HMP Aberdeen were also sent to some of Scotland’s other prisons, like Low Moss near Bishopbriggs. Low Moss was an open-type prison and an old RAF camp.

  We used to go down there for two month detachments when they were short of staff. They used the former billets as the accommodation for the prisoners. It was mainly the short-term prisoners from Barlinnie prison who went there but sometimes they weren’t any less of a challenge than the long-term prisoners. However, it was a great place to work with a good, relaxed atmosphere. There were also a lot of ex-Aberdeen staff who had been transferred to work there when it opened.

  12

  The SAS Dares and Wins

  My most infamous deployment was to Her Majesty’s Prison Peterhead and was back in October 1987. There had been a riot in the D-Wing of the prison. The majority of the inmates were serving life sentences.

  The prisoners had taken control of the wing, which was serious enough in itself, but they had also taken one of our fellow prison officers as a hostage.

  Most of the prisoners knew they were doing long sentences and had a long time to serve before getting out so they probably thought they had nothing to lose. If I remember correctly, they were protesting against the living conditions in Peterhead. Some others were also angered that they were being imprisoned in the North-east rather than in the Central Belt because it left their friends and families with a major headache when it came to visiting and travelling to see them.

  The occupants of D-Wing were unscrupulous individuals who weren’t to be messed with. So when they captured Jackie Stuart, the bosses knew he was in significant danger. It is a situation that is every prison officer’s worst nightmare. You know there is a risk when you sign up, no matter how small. You just hope and pray it won’t ever happen and if it does then not to you!

  I had been deployed up to the ‘Blue Toon’ several times on special assignments. On this occasion, we knew something serious had happened when the prison authorities informed us to get a team of control and restraint officers organised and our riot equipment into the van and get to Peterhead as quickly as possible, as there was an ongoing incident – that was all we were told. We were quickly organised and ready, so we set off not knowing what to expect, but aware that all our training may soon be put to the ultimate test. When we arrived we were given a briefing about the situation and were located up on the first landing within a cell so we were ready if we were needed. It was just a case of waiting. We were made aware that they had taken a hostage and were on the roof of the prison but we did not learn who it was until later on that day. We knew how serious a situation this was and we just had to be patient. The prisoners were holding all the aces. Our team just had to remain on standby and await further instructions.

  It was left to trained negotiators to try and get the prisoners to release Jackie. Their efforts continued to fall on deaf ears and it was clear we weren’t getting anywhere fast. Our time was spent drinking tea and coffee and keeping everybody’s minds occupied to save the team getting bored as we never knew when we would be needed.
At the end of the day we were relieved by another group of trained staff so it was off home with an early start the next morning, but the longer it went on it become clear that maybe more drastic action would be needed.

  We had just taken up duty early the next morning and we were sitting in the cell when it all kicked off. There were several explosions and flashes and there was smoke everywhere and within a few minutes the prisoners were being marched down the stairs one by one to the ground floor by SAS soldiers. We had been sitting on the front line but unknown to us a rescue plan had been hatched – we did think amongst ourselves earlier that the longer it went on some drastic action might be needed. The good news was that Jackie was safe. The prisoners were returned to prison custody and then transferred to several different prisons around Scotland.

  The SAS had obviously looked at plans of the prison well in advance and worked out the best way to get Jackie out. The operation had been done in style, precisely and without any fuss. I was there and I had a job working out how it all happened, as did the members of my team.

  We later learned that the SAS soldiers had been flown up from RAF Lyneham to do the job. We stayed on at Peterhead for the rest of the day to assist them with getting the prison working again as normally as possible. That is a chapter that neither Jackie nor myself or the members of our team will ever forget and I was more than happy to be returning to normal duty at HMP Aberdeen.

  Aberdeen FC

  13

  We’re Not on the March with Ally’s Army!

  Ally MacLeod will certainly go down as one of the most colourful characters that Scottish football has ever seen. The bubbly Glaswegian managed Ayr United, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Airdrieonians and Queen of the South but is most famously remembered for his infamous short spell in charge of Scotland. He helped guide the national team to the 1978 World Cup Finals and his infectious nature had the country eating out of the palm of his hand.

  It was only Scotland’s fourth appearance at a World Cup Finals and they had previously never scraped past the first round. That is a disappointing statistic that still remains in place today. Yet MacLeod had not only guided Scotland to Argentina but also managed to stir up a tidal wave of optimism in the process. He whipped up such a frenzy that Scotland weren’t heading to South America to make up the numbers, they were going there to win the World Cup!

  Scotland, thanks to the somewhat dodgy vocals of the Scottish comedian Andy Cameron, another regular visitor to Craiginches, really was on the march with Ally’s Army. The cult single peaked in the United Kingdom’s Top 10. The fans were looking for even more success on the field. The expectance hit home when more than 25,000 disciples of the Tartan Army pitched up at Hampden Park to cheer Ally and his players off on an open-top bus en route to Prestwick Airport. It was a tradition normally reserved for teams who had already won silverware – not in advance of it happening!

  The feel-good factor, however, burst quicker than a balloon. MacLeod and his team were embarrassed by Peru and were then held by Iran before they signed off with a much-needed win over Holland. However, that was too little too late and Scotland were eliminated on goal difference. The team and MacLeod returned home humbled and instead of the World Cup all they could offer was a bucket load of broken dreams! If a lot of Scotland fans could have had their way, then Ally could well have been facing time in Her Majesty’s Service for his so-called crime against the nation. MacLeod did keep his job but only for one game before he had to bow to public pressure and end his reign in shame.

  The whole sorry episode did bruise MacLeod’s ego but in his usual upbeat way he wasn’t to be downbeat for too long. He was soon back in management, grabbing even more national column inches and headlines with his outspoken comments, along with some of his teams’ performances on the pitch. People say MacLeod’s unique mannerisms would have enabled him to sell ice to the Eskimos or sand to the Arabs! Yet there was one hard-to-please audience that, by his own admission, he failed to win over – the A Hall of HMP Aberdeen!

  The charismatic football boss made his visit to Craiginches during his time in charge at Pittodrie. During his two year spell at Aberdeen, from 1975–77, MacLeod lifted the League Cup. Many believe he laid the early foundations for Sir Alex Ferguson’s glory run with the Dons before he took the Scotland job. Billy McNeill succeeded him for a year before Ferguson went on to weave his magic that made Aberdeen not only the pride of Scotland but also kings of Europe – when they toppled the mighty Real Madrid in the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup final.

  MacLeod certainly made a real impression in his short stay in the North-east, although there were many of our inmates who thought his patter was criminal. You might be wondering how we actually managed to get one of Scotland’s top managers behind bars – albeit temporarily.

  It all came about because there were three or four local pensioners who would tidy up Pittodrie after all the team’s home games. They would pick up all the rubbish, sweep up and just clean up the mess left behind from all the supporters. It used to take them the best part of a week and it was a bit of a thankless task but the pensioners enjoyed it because they were big Aberdeen fans and they wanted to do their bit for their club. It was also a way of keeping them active and on the go, and giving them a wee bit of income into the bargain, as they were all official employees of Aberdeen Football Club.

  It was through the then chairman, Dick Donald, and the club’s legendary kit-man, Teddy Scott, that we got some of the prisoners involved. I was a long-term friend of Teddy’s. I had got to know him from doing my referee training down at Pittodrie. We used to do all our workouts on the Pittodrie car park and over the years I started to become friendly with Teddy. He knew I worked at Craiginches and he broached the subject about some of the prisoners coming down to help at the stadium.

  I thought it was a cracking idea that would be good for the football club and also for the prisoners. It would give them an incentive to get out and about, and as far as I was concerned it was a win-win situation for everyone. So before we took things any further Teddy went to the chairman and Mr Donald gave us his full blessing – he was behind the idea. So I then went to our governor at Craiginches, Scott Ogilvie, and we quickly got an agreement in place.

  Pittodrie was one of the first outside ventures of this type we had at the prison. The governors then just let us get on with things, although there were pretty stringent guidelines, as you would expect, for taking prisoners outside of Craiginches. I would never take more than four prisoners out to a project at a time. And if I couldn’t get four prisoners that I felt I could trust then I would take fewer people. I also knew that I had to limit the prisoners to four because any more and we would have needed another prison officer and that just wasn’t feasible.

  So I would go down with three or four prisoners and help them to clean up the ground. We would all meet after breakfast and a van would take us to Pittodrie at about 8.30 a.m. It would come back for us at about 3 p.m.

  We would do the same work as the pensioners but because there was more than double the number of hands, we could not only get the chores done quicker, but we were also able to do a lot more in the same timescale. The work that normally took a week was suddenly done and dusted in two or three days. Once we had finished inside the ground we would head outside to the car park behind the Main Stand to clean up the rubbish there and even do the weeding to keep things ticking over.

  Mr Donald was a true gentleman and he thought it was something special getting prisoners to come down and help his club. He would always come out into the Main Stand to say hello and ask how we were getting on.

  The prisoners also loved it, working in a football ground. It brought them into contact with some of their heroes. There were the likes of Bobby Clark, Arthur Graham, Drew Jarvie and Davie Robb there at the time.

  I didn’t really know Ally MacLeod that well but I asked Teddy if there would be any chance of the manager coming in to do a question and answer session at Craiginches. He said: ‘You cl
ean the ground for him, so I don’t see why not! Leave it with me.’ Teddy, true to his word, got hold of him and we asked the question. Ally was great. I said we would give him a wee tour of the prison and then it would really make the prisoners’ day if he would sit down and have a wee chat with them at the end of it.

  Ally didn’t have to be asked twice and right away he agreed. We then got a date that suited everyone. He came round the prison with me and I got the feeling he was quite taken aback. He even said: ‘It is nice in here’. But I joked: ‘I’m not sure the permanent prisoners would share your view!’ He just laughed.

  I then asked him if he would maybe talk to the prisoners for half an hour in the chapel but in typical Ally style he said: ‘Half an hour! I will manage a lot longer than that!’ He was true to his word and answered every question. You have to remember that it wasn’t just Aberdeen fans he was facing. There were Rangers and Celtic fans, and supporters from just about every club you could imagine. So you could say it was a very unforgiving environment. Even the Aberdeen fans, when they weren’t looking for the inside track, were telling him he was picking the wrong team! It was a really good evening and after about an hour I actually had to tell Ally that it was time up. He probably would have been more than happy to sit there all night talking to the prisoners but we had to get them back in for their tea before we got the cells locked up for the evening.

  I said: ‘That is time up, Ally.” He replied: ‘Oh, how time flies.’ One sharp-witted prisoner immediately piped up and shouted: ‘Speak for your bloody self!’ It left the rest of the prisoners in stitches and even Ally had to laugh. It didn’t stop him from signing a few autographs before he headed off into the North-east night.