KENNETH ROY
on the reality
of life in Greenock prison
– where the Lockerbie ‘bomber’ helps illiterate Scots
Why Megrahi will be missed
Thursday
If Megrahi is released within the next few hours or days (it seems pointless to speculate further), he will be badly missed in Greenock prison. The reason for his popularity with other inmates is not, as so often stated in the Scottish media, the privileges he enjoys, including a big fat telly with satellite channels which he kindly allows his fellow prisoners to watch – mainly football, needless to add. The real reason he will be missed is one I have never seen stated in the Scottish media, possibly because it is so inconvenient, even humbling, for Scotland. I have it on good authority that he helps illiterate local prisoners to read and write letters in English.
The next question is: so how many inmates of Greenock prison are illiterate? It is hard to say. I have found official statistics on illiteracy in our prisons somewhat elusive. But here are two connected facts. First, each year one in nine men between the ages of 22 and 24 in our poorest communities spends some time in prison. Second, each year four out of 10 young people from these same communities leave school without the basic literacy skills they require to function in society. We can assume, then, that many of the people Megrahi has got to know in his years in a Scottish prison, many of those who are said to watch football in his room, are from Scotland’s poorest communities, are aged between 22 and 24, and have difficulty reading and writing. Put another way: unless Greenock prison is demographically distinct from all the others, the chances are that of its 300 prisoners, 120 of them are functionally illiterate.
These sombre reflections are prompted, not only by the possible imminent release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber, but by a phrase which leapt from the page, as phrases do, during a first skip through a new book about Scottish politics. The phrase was ‘a bit of a skoosh’.
According to Michael Munro’s invaluable guide to current usage, ‘The Patter’ (Glasgow District Libraries, 1985), ‘skoosh’ is either a general term for any fizzy soft drink (as in ‘Gie’s a slug a yer skoosh’) or indicative of anything easily accomplished (‘The drivin test wis a skoosh’; or ‘Four nuthin tae the boys – pure skoosh’). A bit of a skoosh in Scottish political terms is, however, unrelated to driving tests or football matches. It is Kenny MacAskill’s way of describing life in prison. I have given several favourable notices to the justice secretary and, if he releases Megrahi on compassionate grounds, he will be entitled to another, even if his handling of the political storm of the last week has been far from assured. But I can only suppose that his use of the phrase ‘a bit of a skoosh’ (which I missed at the time) was a disingenuous ploy to convince the punishment freaks of the Scottish media, and his political opponents, that the prison option is actually softer than the non-custodial alternatives his administration are justifiably anxious to promote.
Nevertheless, Kenny MacAskill was wrong to use the phrase. It will inevitably be repeated as ammunition by the advocates of tougher prison conditions, the righteous army of hacks and party placemen for whom imprisonment is indeed a bit of a skoosh and needs to be anything but.
I was introduced to the Scottish prison system at a very tender age. I was seven years old when my theatrical parents, who took their strolling players to some rum gigs, presented a play in Polmont Borstal (as it then was), dragging me along for the ride. The production was warmly received; tumultuous applause greeted the final curtain. But the experience, if not quite scarring me for life, had a profound effect. When we returned to the company bus, I turned back for a last look and saw several hundred small faces peering at us through prison bars, waving the actors goodbye. I was old enough to feel sad at this pathetic spectacle; it remains one of my outstanding childhood memories. The boys of Polmont will now be old men. I wonder how many spent most of their adult lives drifting in and out of prison: judging by the statistics, a disturbing proportion. For them, I fear, it was not a bit of a skoosh, but a waste of a life.
Then, as a young man, I visited Saughton prison in Edinburgh, doing a series of lectures on – of all things – the Scottish economy. I could not believe that any prisoner would be interested in attending such a tedious adult education class, but around 20 turned up. When I asked why, I was told that it was to assuage the suffocating boredom. Even a talk on the economy had this beneficial effect. No skoosh there either.
In 2002, Bill McKinlay, the admirable governor of Barlinnie, allowed me to take a party of young people around his nick. We were given a conducted tour of the halls and access to the sex offenders’ wing, where we spoke to a few of the long-term prisoners. The young visitors were shocked by what they saw and heard that day – by the Victorian grimness of the environment, the tiny cells in which men were two-ed in bunks, the squalid lack of sanitation (slopping out was still being practised), the general air of hopelessness. They spoke of it later, when they returned to the conference they were attending, in hushed tones, having had the squalid reality of the prison experience (rather than the absurd media stereotype) revealed to them in all its horror.
I once spoke to Kenny MacAskill’s fellow nationalist, Ludovic Kennedy, about his noble work in correcting miscarriages of justice. (I expect that if Kennedy was not now a very old man, he would have been a leading figure in the campaign for Megrahi.) But I wanted to probe a little deeper, to examine the psychology behind his various crusades. I put it to him that he had made wrongful imprisonment such a central part of his life because he himself feared being imprisoned. He said nothing for a bit and then acknowledged that, although no one had ever suggested that to him before, he suspected that, deep down, it was true. All intelligent people, Kenny MacAskill included, know that prison is far from being a bit of a skoosh. It has not been a bit of a skoosh for the dying man in Greenock prison, who may soon be no longer around to help young illiterate Scots with their letters.
20 August
31.08.09
Issue no 133
THE BBC AND
KENNY MacASKILL
Kenneth Roy
Can the public service
broadcaster be trusted?
[click here]
THE LOCKERBIE FILE
Recently in SR
In the interests of justice
28 August
[click here]
Die or else
27 August
[click here]
The changing mood
26 August
[click here]
Speed reacting
25 August
[click here]
The weekend of unreason
24 August
[click here]
Marina and her sister
21 August
[click here]
Why Megrahi will be missed
20 August
[click here]
Obstruction of justice?
13 August
[click here]
GALLERY
Contemporary Scottish art
Michael Murray:
The Hidden Lane
[click here]
In view of the continuing political crisis in Scotland, SR continues to publish daily for the time being
