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Behind
bars
Instead of spending Halloween celebrating
the supernatural, Bill Svitz was unexpectedly arrested
in Brighton and spent a night in the cells. Here he recounts
his Kafka-esque experience. With additional research by
Phyllida Cox.
"Even
the thoughts of a prisoner," wrote Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
"are not free. Unbidden, they keep returning to the
same things."
| It
was dark outside when the door clanged shut. Blackness
trickled from high brick glass windows. What was I
doing here? An eye appeared at a peephole, then disappeared
with a chink. Hold on… wait! Slumped ruefully
on a plastic mattress I breathed hard. What the hell
was I doing? How had it come to this? |
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A
stone cell, twelve feet by ten, a rudimentary toilet bowl
and a small, alcoved sink. Strangely, confinement is benign;
there is nothing ominous or sinister about it. No hidden
cavities, no bolts to hold things down, no time (all timepieces
having been removed), only a faint smell of recent painting.
It is achingly silent. Except - listen carefully - the
eerie echo of a fellow inmate crying his shame and sorrow
at an impassive steel door. The only emotion stirred by
being locked up is the dark realisation that there is
no way - of your own accord - that you can ever get out
again.
And
- honest m'lud - it had all started out so well.
High up on the Downs, right next to the Asda in Hollingbury,
a new building gazes over the city. Parked up next to
the heaving shelves and gay variety of the supermarket,
a large complex of stone cells and thick metal doors stands
erect: Sussex Police's new custody suite.
In
fact, the Hollingbury unit is so effective the police
themselves have trouble struggling through its fortress
walls. To open each door everyone has to buzz through
to a mysterious command post and request the door opens
which it does, thirty or so seconds later. Apparently,
the new door system does not always work as it should
- you imagine some confused bobby requesting access while
elsewhere in the building automated doors bang manically
as an operator struggles to find the right button.
Indeed,
as you are taken from a police van to a holding cell and
then on to a solitary detention cell, you realise you
are passing from the stern - yet human - hands of uniformed
men and women and into the grasp of an all-encompassing
machine. You have entered a sinister blend of bars and
bureaucracy, where doors open and close of their own accord,
where everything is filled out in triplicate, where you're
passed from person to person, deeper and deeper into the
beast until - finally - the cell door bangs shut.
Opened
in October, Hollingbury was designed, built and is now
partially manned by a consortium led by a security group
known as Reliance Secure Task Management. As part of the
government's push to privatise the security services,
RSTM have signed a £90m contract with Sussex Police
to provide services in Chichester, Worthing, Eastbourne,
Hastings and Crawley, as well as Brighton.
The
deal is part of the government's Private Finance Initiative
(PFI) which aims to realign the country's services towards
privatisation as required by the World Trade Organisation's
GATS agreement. As well as security, GATS promotes the
privatisation of all services, including such essentials
as water, health and education around the globe.
Indeed,
privatised security services are already a lucrative game.
In the US, Securicor controls nearly 40% of aviation security.
In this country, Group 4 are involved with the tracking
of paedophiles, and the computerised security systems
at several nuclear power stations are controlled by private
companies as will be the new computer services to oversee
police data.
While
police numbers have fallen in England and Wales in the
last ten years, private security has grown from an estimated
8,000 security guards in 1971 to more than 240,000 today.
That's more than twice the number of police nationwide.
As
well as the building at Hollingbury, RSTM provides the
custody assistants, doctors, interpreters and cleaning
staff. When the centre opened, and with unconscious irony,
the chair of the Sussex Police Authority said: "I
would like to thank everyone who has been involved in
this project and ensured that this new custody centre
is open for business."
Since
I had time on my hands, I decided to work out what the
hell I was doing here, banged up within walls at which
even the most determined Papillion would baulk. It began,
I recalled, in an occasional English class that I teach.
Surrounded by fifteen students, each of a different nationality,
the talk had turned to politics. "Why," asked
a plucky Italian, "is Tony Blair so determined to
support George Bush?" I found that I could explain
it. Everyone laughed at my suggestion that perhaps Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction. It was obvious,
they said, the war on Iraq is about oil.
And
time has proved them right. Only last month The Observer
reported that US companies are in talks with the Iraqi
opposition as to who gets which oil concession. Weapons
of mass destruction? In his book, former Chief Inspector
of Weapons, Scott Ritter has written: "When I left
Iraq in 1998… the infrastructure and facilities (for
weapons making) had been 100 per cent eliminated. There's
no doubt about that."
We
know the war is for oil. President George Bush is an ex-oil
man. So is vice-president Dick Cheney. Many of their support
staff have a history in the oil business. Why wouldn't
they have an interest in who gets the black loot, post-bombing?
To protest against George's war we had occupied the roundabout
by the Palace Pier. Not much, you may think, but hell,
you've got to do something when there's a real chance
that half a million people are about to be killed in your
name.
To
'liberate' the roundabout, a line of thin-lipped policemen
and women stood brandishing large black batons. For the
occasion, the police had adopted facial expressions that
are probably described as 'stern' in the bobby's handbook,
but actually look rather intimidating in the face of a
choir of middle-aged women singing songs about peace.
A
tall, tough-looking policeman pulled out an aerosol of
pepper spray, an evil concoction that attacks the eyes
and respiratory system. It was looking less likely by
the minute that our local constabulary was about to sit
down with us and hand out flowers.
The
police, according to Chief Superintendent Doug Rattray,
had received 'major' intelligence that a minority of protesters
were intent on causing damage to the war memorial as well
as property around town. Officers stood ready.
The
crowd ebbed and flowed. As the police attempted to push
one part of the protest one way, so protesters would nip
out and occupy another bit of the roundabout, throw themselves
in front of the backed-up traffic and generally cause
havoc. Slowly but surely, however, our roundabout territory
was being 'freed'.
Suddenly,
the heat was turned up. In response to hidden squawks
in the cops' earpieces, the pepper spray was liberally
distributed into the faces of those sitting down. Those
around the fringes received whacks from the batons if
they strayed too close to the encircling police lines.
Batons are, in fact, part of a recognised police tactic
for clearing public spaces due to their effectiveness,
as people I spoke to can attest. Ten or so policemen shuffled
together, ranging themselves into a line. Moving forward
into a V-shape, the wedge ploughed into the crowd.
As
the crush intensified, we stood firm. The police pressed
on toward more of the protesters sitting down. Another
gang of policemen formed up and ploughed crowd-ward. This
one seemed to be headed straight for me. Caught up in
the advance of the police formation, suddenly, I found
myself bundled onto my back, a forearm across my throat,
my arm pinned down by a copper's knee.
I
looked up to an angry, triumphant face, the first emotion
I'd seen from a policeman all day. "Don't move you
fucking cunt," he spat, exultant. He looked at me
contemptuously before hauling me to my feet, twisting
my arm into a half nelson and bundling me into the back
of a waiting van. It was over in a second.
The
anti-war movement may not stop the war. The authorities
are unlikely to take much notice of a few hundred people
demonstrating in Brighton. Tony Blair's mind, to be sure,
is on greater things.
Hitting
people with batons, spraying irritants into their eyes
and locking them up, however, only serves to increase
feelings of anger, and adds to the growing sensation that
the authorities are simply not prepared to listen. As
Nelson Mandela's 26-year incarceration shows, repressing
voices of discontent does not silence them.
But
while government think-tanks continue to plot their war
games, opposition continues to grow. At the end of November,
a second march in Brighton attracted over a thousand people
(it passed off peacefully).
We
may not stop the war in Iraq. But one thing is for sure:
neither fear of failure - nor brutal police tactics -
will stop us trying.
copyright The Insight 2002
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