JOHN CUFFE served as a prison officer from 1978 to 2007. Originally from Blacksod Bay in the Mayo Gaeltacht, he now lives in County Meath. He holds postgraduate degrees in crime-related and social issues, and has lectured in Dublin City University. A regular guest in the media as an expert on the criminal psyche and penal system, he has written for The Irish Times and appeared on Morning Ireland, The Ray D’Arcy Show and The Right Hook, among others.
Stay up to date with the author at:
@cuffejohn
To Seamus Carney, Padraig Loftus and Padraig Kavanagh: three teachers who gave me a love for language and history. They brightened many grey days.
And to my wife, Kathleen, for her support and belief.
Contents
Prologue
Introduction
1. Off to Dublin for the Blue
2. The Bog
3. Shanganagh Castle
4. Promotion Premonition
5. Spiked
6. Out of the Fire
7. Sledgehammer
8. Clear Water
9. Break on Through to the Other Side
10. Goodbye to the Hill
11. Tipping Point
12. Knocking on Heaven’s Door
Prologue
It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
NELSON MANDELA (1918–2013)
A perception exists of the Irish criminal justice system as an unbroken chain, where all the participants work together to ensure its strength and safety. That is risible. The fact is that the Irish criminal justice system is the perfect example of a hierarchy. Sitting atop are bewigged and black-gowned judges and their retinue of tipstaffs, snuff and brandy, and old-world etiquette. Each layer beneath them tries to replicate their status: barristers, solicitors, experts of all hues, including Gardaí and court clerks. At the bottom, vying for air, wrestle the accused and their keepers.
I was one of those keepers for thirty years and this is my story. It is intended neither to slant nor to skew. I tell it as the cards fell: I favour neither prisoner nor employer, workmate nor inmate.
This is the story of John F. Cuffe 02318C.
Introduction
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.
RICHARD LOVELACE (1618–58)
No one grows up wanting to be a prison officer. As a kid I wanted to be a fireman, train driver, marine, sailor, submariner or cowboy. Indeed, my years in national school were lived out Moone Boy style: I pretended I was in the US cavalry. In first class I was a private, second class a corporal, third class a sergeant, fourth class a lieutenant, fifth a captain and sixth a general. Then reality and a grey boarding school knocked me for six as the real world intruded.
My exposure to prisons was non-existent. Coming from a west-of-Ireland seaside village, my habitat was lighthouses and fishing boats, sand, sea and rocks. That and emigration. Scenery and beautiful wilderness do not fill the belly or sate the soul. The bit I saw of prisons was via the American cowboy genre shown on RTÉ television, jails with sheriffs, deputies and bad hombres. Occasionally, black-and-white Jimmy Cagney movies showed mean-street stubble and talk from the side of the mouth. All framed within steel bars and sombre wardens.
Even the lightweight Elvis film Jailhouse Rock depicted the warder as cold and uncaring as Elvis at his meanest uttered, ‘Hey, Screw … fill me a can of water,’ proffering his tin mug in the hot jail. I knew a score from my village who joined the lighthouse service, myself included. I knew nobody who joined the prison service. Around 1970 I saw an advertisement in the Irish Press looking for twelve prison warders for Mountjoy. I was neither interested nor motivated.
Note I have used the words prison officer, warder, warden, guard and ‘screw’ to title the job. Prison staff are described by one or other of those titles in the media. Indeed, I have seen articles that used three of those names within the one story. The Evening Herald in March 1988 ran the headline ‘Prison Wardens Threaten Strike’, with the piece continuing, ‘Prison Officers today decided blah-de-blah’ and ending ‘Warders will, however, meet the minister …’ The place of work is itself called everything from prison, jail, nick, slammer, can and gaol to place of detention.
As you travel on my journey you will see me use all those descriptions as the need and context arise. You won’t see me use ‘screw’ because I find it repulsive, and in my thirty years’ service very few prisoners referred to us directly using that title. However, those in the outside world who should have known better have. It’s akin to describing a Garda as a ‘pig’. You wouldn’t do it.
Around 1994 staff from Arbour Hill did a cycle around Ireland to raise funds for a charity. They sought some publicity and sponsorship. The Evening Herald duly obliged with a banner headline ‘Arbour Hill Screws Cycle for Charity’. I rang the editor; he seemed perplexed. ‘Would you describe a guard as a pig?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he replied, and then silence … until finally the penny dropped … oops. You see, people know very little about prisons.
Perceptions are formed often by hearsay or knowledge of a criminal, warder or film. Perceptions are confirmed by the media. A one-time lifer released from Arbour Hill after serving around eight years once surfaced on a number of radio shows. Describing himself as a former armed robber – sexy title and Jesse James connotations – cleverly he left out that he had, in fact, been locked up for murder, as they botched an armed robbery, killing the owner of the would-be robbed store. He then started going around the schools lecturing secondary kids. He regaled them with tales of how he ‘ran the gauntlet’ in Arbour Hill. A younger brother of a colleague of mine arrived home and asked my workmate about the ‘gauntlet’ that the Hill had. Perplexed, my colleague asked the younger brother more.
Apparently the ‘guest armed robber’ told them that the officers in the Hill formed two lines, batons drawn, and the prisoners had to run through the lines as the blows rained down. I did see this once, in an American film where Apaches ran captured US cavalrymen in such a fashion. No officers carried batons in Arbour Hill; there was never a ‘gauntlet’. In the main, the inmates were just compliant sex offenders, many too old and unfit to take two stair steps at a time. What he didn’t tell those kids was that he was involved in the murder of a hard-working storekeeper and that the man was killed in cold blood. Why ruin a good story?
My own kids came home from school in early 2007 with a more fanciful spin from another ex-prisoner doing the school circuit. This ex-prisoner filled them full of multi-channel American Super Max jail rubbish; my son gave me a knowing look, a grin along with a ‘you kept that a secret for a long time, Dad’ kinda thing. I elicited from him a fairy tale of fairly damaging and libellous rubbish, full of fanciful imagery. Yes, you’ve guessed it: another Jesse James.
Where I live there are many prison staff who contribute greatly to the local institutions, be they sporting, housing or charitable committees. Their children attended the same school as mine. I rang the Vice Principal and pointed out the danger of allowing someone into a class like that where those being tarred have neither opportunity nor recourse to defend their good name. After I explained where I was coming from, the Vice Principal agreed with my point of view.
So how does one wind up working in a jail (or gaol) or prison? It’s mostly via a circuitous route. I envy the youth of today in many ways – their style, clothes, modern technology – but I don’t envy the rat race for the jobs, the treadmill that chews them up and spews them out. When I left school around 1970, those that had a moderate education could aspire to a job with the old Posts and Telegraphs as either a clerk or postman; some got jobs in the civil service, where those with brains became Higher Executive Officers (HEOs). The ESB was an outlet especially if you were a good footballer; the Gardaí, the army and the banks took many more.
For those less educationally gifted there were the county council, factories, CIÉ and, of course, the prison service. I myself trained to be a chef and did a City & Guilds catering course in London. A single summer toiling in a sweaty kitchen with a manic chef exorcised the Jamie Oliver in me. A clout across the cheek from the fraught cook belittled and ironically emboldened me to ensure nobody would ever do that to me again. That kitchen literally became too hot to stand. I hated the kitchens, a good cook yes, but a chef, no. My past as a chef would catch up with me in the prison service but more of that anon.
After my cuisine career I applied for many jobs. Despite having honours in English, Irish, History and Geography, failure to pass Maths meant I didn’t have a Leaving Certificate (nor, for the same reason, an Inter Cert). Boldly, I entered mainstream life with the old Primary Certificate. As door after door closed, a clear sense of entrapment entered my life. Blacksod, my home village and the fountain of my youth, became my prison. I started to hate it, with no money, no prospects and no escape.
I had applied for the lighthouse service but got no reply. My mother, in that gentle but steely way of hers, told me that it was time to move on … anywhere. Some lads home from England for Christmas kindly took me back to the English Midlands with them in early January 1973. I still recall getting on the ferry in Dublin port and the dark bay as the ship headed across the channel on that freezing January night. I still remember Liverpool as dawn broke across that city. On the motorway towards the Birmingham area I recall Paddy John Sibby’s Ford Escort from home with its IZ Mayo registration number passing us. It was at that point that I got homesick.
My first job was for a small building firm. I nearly died. In freezing-cold weather, a canal bank too narrow for a digger needed a trench cut in it. We had to light fires to soften the ground. My uncle’s old boots cut the feet off me and I was perpetually hungry and homesick. This was not how it was supposed to be. I ditched the labouring but quickly ran out of money. My mother, my old reliable, wired £20 to me. I applied for a job in a pie factory. The manager, a Northern Irish man, was more interested in my religion. When I said Catholic, a sinking feeling told me I wouldn’t be making pies.
Eventually I got good work. Lockheed AP in Leamington Spa were hiring. I got a job on a line making high-class engine parts. This was a three-man team and the work, though tough, was financially rewarding. Losing an empty wallet with, of all things, just an old grey Irish Provisional Drivers’ licence in it brought me to a police station to enquire whether it had been handed in. It had, and the constable and I got talking. I decided after that I would apply to the various forces in the UK.
Eventually I was accepted by the Heathrow Airport Police, then run by the Hounslow and Middlesex Authority. Later it was subsumed into the London Met. Having signed up and been measured up, I came home for a two-week break before heading to Ryton-on-Dunsmore Police Academy to train. It was the one nearest to me in the Warwick area. Back at home in Blacksod was a letter requesting me to appear in Pembroke Street in Dublin for an interview for the lighthouse service. Initially I had no interest: returning to England was the only show in town. But the weather at home that summer was glorious and it was easy to love the old village again. As the time for returning drew closer, my resolve was tested.
Finally and with great misgiving, I wrote asking the police to defer my training. I was interviewed for the lighthouses and was successful. After training in the Baily Lighthouse, I was unleashed around Ireland’s coast for about four years. With a month on the lighthouse and a month off on leave, rotating across the year, and travel by helicopter, my life with my two fellow keepers was a cross between being a hermit and a member of The Eagles. The extremes were too much. Solitary and wind-lashed but beautiful coastal scenes intermingled with wads of money to squander in the downtime. I burned the candle at both ends, returning to the lighthouse to recuperate and top up the tan in summer. The nightly music from the then Red Island Holiday Village in Skerries, across from Rockabill Lighthouse in County Dublin, my station and home of the tern, tipped me over the edge. I had to get out.
Salvation sailed across the sea on a small yacht. May 1977 was a scorcher. John Boland, a future Government minister, owned a small yacht and was of the habit of calling to the lighthouse during the summers, tying up his small yacht and showing his guests around the rock. We permitted him to climb the cold stairs of the lighthouse where the view stretched across the Irish Sea to the mountains of north Wales and south beyond the Wicklow Hills.
Boland was a gentleman and always brought out three fresh loaves for us, sliced ham, three bottles of beer and the best of all, the Sunday newspapers. I devoured the papers as well as the beer and chunky sandwiches. On the appointments page was an advertisement for 400 prison officers. This was my escape from the rocky lighthouse! Once ashore I applied for the job, was called for an exam – an easy one, I have to say – and then an interview. To ensure that I didn’t miss the boat, metaphorically this time, I resigned from my permanent, pensionable forty-year career as a lighthouse keeper. Whilst I was happy to go, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge them as excellent employers.
Ahead lay thirty years of a career as a warder. In this book I will refer to various actors and players: ‘the Department’ refers to the Department of Justice; the ‘POA’ is the Prison Officers Association, our union; the ‘IPS’ refers to the Irish Prison Service, domiciled nowhere near a prison and situated in Longford. ‘ACO’ refers to the first senior rank of supervisor in the prison service, called Assistant Chief Officer, a rank I held for about twenty-three years. ‘CO’ refers to the Chief Officer, the fulcrum of the jail: a good one ensured the oil was poured smoothly on the jail gears, a poor one crashed them.
‘The governor’ was nominally in charge of the prison. ‘The Welfare’ was the Welfare and Probation Service. Very few prison staff referred to prisoners as ‘lags’, a few did, guys that were best avoided and generally useless. The more extreme body of prison officers, thankfully counted on a single hand, might refer to prisoners as ‘dirt birds’. Their language tells you what you need to know about them. ‘Time’ referred to the length of the sentence. We all did time, staff and prisoners. Each of us had a number, each wanted the finality of getting out that gate. The ‘Gate’ was just that, but with connotations: coming in could be deflating, leaving was always welcome.
The following chapters tell the story of the young man who left a sedentary village in Ireland’s west, and chart his progress as life and the prison service see him emerge thirty years later – wiser or damaged?
1
Off to Dublin for the Blue
‘Anyone who has been to an English Public School will always feel comparatively at home in prison.’
EVELYN WAUGH (1903–1966)
Despite finishing inside the top eighty out of 3,000 plus in the entrance exam for the Prison Service and completing my medical successfully, it was almost a year before I was called to training. I had given up on the call and was actually about to go to Saudi Arabia with my mother’s cousin who was a roustabout on the oilfields. The proposition was attractive: good money, sun guaranteed and, of course, hard work. I loved the first two and the third held no fear for me.
Then, in early May 1978, a brown envelope arrived for me confirming my call-up and giving me a starting date to report to Mountjoy Jail. I was by then working in Killala, County Mayo, in Asahi, a Japanese company which manufactured, amongst other things, synthetic wool. Asahi was a massive plant, possibly running about a mile and a half in length. The ‘wool’ started life at one end as a highly inflammable and toxic liquid and came out as slightly sweet-smelling warm white wool at the other end. My job, along with three others, was to tamp and seal the boxes at the final stage.
As coincidence would have it, the four of us were hoping to join the prison service. Asahi, though good employers, had a Japanese work ethic where everybody wore the same garb consisting of a two-piece grey canvas uniform with a flat cloth cap. In time the process started to numb us and many of our colleagues. It was pitched at a deceptive speed that looked slow but was in fact relentless, on and on, eternal hell on earth. Today you read of something similar afflicting electronics workers in China. That brown envelope saved me from the ultimate institutional machine, the conveyor-belt factory.
The night before leaving the village, this time for real and for good, we packed my suitcase. My mother was so proud of me: a permanent, pensionable government job. I was excited too. Blacksod, combined with Asahi, had ironically become a prison for me: sleep, work, sleep, work, travel, sleep. Not a life for anyone. I now regretted leaving the lighthouse service and envied them the security of their money and conditions. All my life’s possessions went into that suitcase. I always travelled light but this time the case was bulging. I made a quick trip down to the shore and fish tanks where I lopped off a length of the fishermen’s thin blue rope and fastened it around my case to ensure it didn’t burst open en route. My mother gave a disapproving ‘hmnnn’ as the blue rope was tied but she finally smiled.
Next morning we had breakfast. From the age of twelve to twenty-four, I had been coming and going: boarding school, England and the lighthouses. But that morning was different. The air in the kitchen was heavy, the scent from the teapot on the range was strong, the two slices of toast lay uneaten, and my heart was heavy. I suppose we both knew that this time the departure was for real. There was a lump in my throat, and in my mother’s too, I assume.
‘You’ve got somewhere to stay in Dublin?’ she asked, knowing full well that my friend, a schoolteacher from our village, was collecting and keeping me.
We hugged and clung to each other at the door and my dog Monty sidled away, tail down and sad. I silently cursed him for that show. I would miss him as much. My mother then shoved something into my pocket, drowned me in holy water and muttered a quick Gweedore prayer for me as Gaeilge before patting my forehead and telling me not to look back. Other memories returned, of my dad who had passed away at sixty a few years earlier, as I carried the suitcase to the bus. This was not just a CIÉ bus: to us it was always Tom Cuffe’s bus. He drove the damned thing through hail, rain and storm for thirty years, right up to his demise. The driver welcomed me on board and when I went to pay he told me to keep the cash in my pocket but to sit near him … just in case an inspector came aboard on the journey.
As the bus pulled away I ignored my mother’s advice and had a quick peek back towards the house. Monty, the fecker, was sitting at the doorstep, head down and weight of the world on his shoulders. My mam let slip the net curtain as the bus went past Kavanagh’s bridge. There was to be no more looking back.
The train from Ballina to Dublin was eventful in the sense that I babysat seven-year-old twins for their mam as she tended her younger child. Nearing Dublin I rummaged through my suit pocket and fetched out the envelope my mother had put in there earlier. Two £20 notes reared their heads. My eyes blinded with tears.
At Heuston Station, my friend, the teacher from home, was there to meet me. He had a new car, a Ford Escort with a black vinyl roof, and was accompanied by two girls who were also teachers. He had told them lots about me, it seemed, and as we wound our way through peak time Dublin traffic, life was on the upswing. The music from the car radio was from one of the then proliferation of pirate stations. The Rolling Stones sang the country standard popularised by the great Gram Parsons, ‘Wild Horses’. It was a good omen. I welcomed the sight of the traffic lights: each red one allowed me to drink in the great city, the glamorous girls and the buzz of urban life. Yes, this time I was ready for the move!
Next morning I got the 46A bus from Dún Laoghaire into the city centre, and as the song says, the Liffey stank like hell. The letter from the Department told me to report to Mountjoy at 9 a.m. promptly. I hadn’t a clue where the Joy was. Parked in the centre aisle of O’Connell St were lots of taxis. I opened the front door of the first and asked if he would take me to Mountjoy. ‘Hop in,’ the driver said. As we drove, he figured out that I was about to join the service. Only years later did I understand his perspective. I could have been going up as a visitor to an inmate. It turned out that the taxi driver was an ex-prison officer. I asked him about the job. He was very fair: he had enjoyed it to a point, he said. The pay was good but he had left after a scheme he set up, according to him anyway, a Braille shop, was taken from him and a colleague who had done the donkey work. The embryonic project was transferred elsewhere and to new actors. He took the hump and promptly left. However, overall, according to him, one could do a lot worse than join the service.
We drove up the avenue at Crowley Place that flanked the then entrance to Mountjoy. Prison officers’ houses lined the avenue (they’ve gone now and been replaced by the women’s prison). I was overwhelmed by the size of the great steel gates with no doorknobs or handles. I was flummoxed as to how to get in. My taxi man beeped, dropped the passenger window and shouted at me to press the bell, pointing towards the right of the gates. I nodded grateful thanks but had difficulty locating the bell buzzer. Finally I spotted a small nipple-sized black dot buried in the limestone. I leaned on it and instead of the great big gates opening, a small little insert of a gate within them opened. It was, I learned, called the wicket gate.
Once inside, I proffered my letter of introduction. The warder looked at it and pointed me to a bare room behind his spartan office. Inside were almost twenty other recruits. The gate warder was neither burly, big nor brutal-looking. Years later I laughed when I saw staff described in the media in such terms: ‘the burly warder took the prisoner from the court.’ My initial impressions were that most of the officers were small; indeed, a few looked puny. The measure I had were the Gardaí, who stood at a minimum 5 foot 8 inches. The other thing that leaped out at me was the uniforms: they were absolutely second-rate shite. Having worked for the Commissioners of Irish Lights and having been attired in the finest of blue uniforms, I was shocked at the cheap serge tat on the backs of the warders. Their caps, though like a Garda cap, were also made of cheap material and wire, and were ill fitting.
The numbers in the small, whitewashed room behind the main gate office swelled to about twenty-eight. We laughed nervously, cracked macabre prison jokes and wondered what we had let ourselves in for. Outside, the voices of returning or exiting staff filled the air. I heard the term ‘dirt bird’ for the first time. Though no shrinking violet in the bad-language brigade, as those who know me will attest, I have to say that rocked me. It sounded awful and disgusting. The officer on the inner gate was in banter with the main-gate guy. Apparently it related to a disco the night before. The inner-gate guy’s language in the main seemed to comprise ‘fuck’, ‘wanker’ and ‘dirt bird’ and it was all aimed at his colleague. Worse, it was, seemingly, accepted in jest by the recipient. Looking back, I can say that it was an anomaly. We just encountered a first-class cretin on a scorching Saturday in May.
We were summoned from the whitewashed room and herded through the inner gate where the smallest new recruit was bigger than the foul-mouthed inner-gate man. Standing in front of us was a vision: a prison officer resplendent in an immaculate uniform, creased trousers, ironed shirt, a ‘slashed’ peaked cap, polished like a mirror, and boots that reflected the early morning sun into our eyes. He introduced himself to us and in time we came to know him as Mr Mac. My initial horrified impressions of the prison service were lifted somewhat by Mac’s attire and attitude. Believe me, first impressions matter.
Inside, in an area which we later discovered was the visiting room for prisoners, we filled in countless forms and supplied an endless amount of personal data. There was no formal induction area for newcomers to the prison service in 1978. From there, we were taken over to the stores area. Inside was a vast room that had everything from pots to teacups. We were a hindrance to the store-keepers but they lashed out by twenty-eight times one greatcoat (I will return to this brute of an overcoat), two shirts, one tie, one pair of trousers, one set of epaulettes, one cap, one tunic, a single bright silver whistle and chain plus a silver badge, and a black plastic bag to carry our belongings.
Mr Mac led us through the external Mountjoy complex and down to an area called the Training Unit. Before you logically think that this ‘Training Unit’ was for staff, in actual fact it was for educating prisoners in vocational skills. Within its modern confines were classrooms and areas that taught prisoners how to become mechanics, electricians, carpenters, bricklayers and so on. We, the recruits, were there on sufferance. Our access to the gym was limited to when the prisoners were not using it.
In a crowded locker room, a transformation took place. Fresh-faced young men from age twenty to twenty-five turned from raw civilians into uniformed warders. Navy-blue trousers on, shirt epauletted properly, I giggled nervously as others put them on the wrong way. My cap was big enough to cover a dustbin. I have a head the size of Daniel O’Connell’s, reputedly Ireland’s biggest head ever. That hat looked and felt hideous on me: it cast a circular 5-foot shadow around me. However, when I put on the overcoat, I nearly fell over. It was a beast, a bear of a thing, too heavy and uncomfortable, a back-breaker.
Mr Mac then took us to a classroom where we were introduced to our tutors. Amongst them was a Mr Davis, or ‘Bill’ as he was respectfully known. Bill’s advice over the two-week course would hold water over my entire service. Later that morning Mr Mac took us back up to the mother jail, Mountjoy. He warned us that the prisoners would know that we were recruits but not to worry or heed them. From the bright May morning in the courtyard outside the front entrance to the jail blocks of Mountjoy, we entered a dimly lit, long, grim, yellow-painted corridor that led to a barred gate inside the cell complex.
The noise emanating from behind those bars was cacophonic. It was untamed, loud and unintelligible but it was overwhelming. It was the noise of a live jail. The walk through the check gate into the ‘Circle’ area was a huge leap. As the gate closed behind us, we took our first proper steps in the prison service. The Circle gave a view of all the landings in Mountjoy, but no landing could see another landing due to the ingenious way the British penal system had designed them.
The noise was omnipresent. Prisoners wandering around actually looked like prisoners due to their garb and demeanour. I was surprised as they spoke and chatted to the officers. I had assumed that they wouldn’t be allowed to speak to them, but the talk seemed cordial and not confrontational. Something I wasn’t able to ignore was the stench. The weather had been very warm for a few weeks and Mountjoy stank. My only comparison to the stench was Dublin Zoo, which I had visited with my mother as a young boy. The monkey house had had a horrible smell and the smell in Mountjoy that May 1978 replicated perfectly the smell in Dublin Zoo in August 1963. From one monkey house to another. I smiled wryly to myself as our tour continued.
Our training was broken into two phases. Phase One was the initial induction in the Training Unit, which actually wasn’t a staff-training unit. During our training we marched, we ran, we learned basic self-defence. In addition we took classes in prison rules. Interestingly, we had no guidebooks apart from the archaic Prisons 1948 Rule Book. We took notes and were given copies of various sheets of paper, such as visiting dockets, report forms and the like, to familiarise ourselves with the paperwork of a prison. This was all crammed into a fortnight. Phase Two, later on, would last three weeks.
Each day Mr Mac took us up along the canal bank for a three-mile run. Being a footballer primarily, I had never run but was fairly fit. I surprised myself by not alone not being last, but actually being up at the top beside Mac. It emerged in conversation that Mr Mac was a Mayo man. Years later I also found out that Mac wasn’t one bit sentimental about what we natives call the Dark County. He told me the best thing in Mayo was the road out of it.
One day as we jogged along the Royal Canal, our attention was drawn to the squawk of a Garda radio. Nearby, parked against a derelict bench, was a Garda motorcycle minus its rider. Behind the bench, fast asleep in the midday sun, resting his head on his white helmet, was a snoozing Garda. We didn’t disturb him. On the way back we again took care not to be too loud lest we wake him.
Mr Maloney was our Control and Restraint instructor, an amiable guy with a beautiful Dublin accent. ‘Amby’, as he was known, was one of the lithest and supplest humans I have ever met. Knowing well that it took him years to reach his black belt status and that he had twelve days to knock us into shape, Amby focused on the common-sense approach. No need to be a hero, he counselled. Take stock of the situation, no loss of face by backing off and waiting for help. He made the various holds, grips, tumbles and trips look so easy but I nearly dislocated my elbow when I tried the same. ‘Relax, old son,’ Amby said. ‘I’m at this since I was twelve and I’m still learning … there’s no rush. Get the basics right first before you become Chuck Norris.’ Amby was the epitome of the common-sense men I worked with over the years. Know your strengths, and know your limitations.
Towards the end of the course, after trips to the various jails and courts, we were furnished with a sheet of paper with the names of all the institutions written on it. We were to fill out in order of preference where we wished to work. Before we put pen to paper, we were informed that Portlaoise would take most of us as that was where the greatest need was. So I put down Portlaoise. I didn’t much mind where I was sent. A few lads from around Erris were already in Portlaoise so it seemed like a good idea to go where I would actually know a few guys. We returned the filled-out sheets and then got a lecture from a psychologist. It was a tepid affair, gentle testing of the greenhorns as to what awaited them and how they might react. We didn’t disappoint.
We also received our first pay cheque, called the ‘Wine Docket’ by staff. The cheque was attached to a counterfoil with about forty code numbers telling you what your pay was and how it was made up. The problem with it was they made it out to ‘John F. Cuffe’. It’s a small thing but I am actually John G. (Gerard) Cuffe. I went to the general office where they made up our wages and explained my predicament to the clerk. Sympathetically, he said, ‘Son, if you want to I’ll query this, but let me tell you, by the time they figure it out you might wind up getting the wrong pay. They aren’t the brightest over there in St Stephen’s Green, the headquarters of the Department of Justice.’ I nodded doubtfully. ‘Look, son. Did you get the right amount?’ I nodded again. ‘Good. Then do you give a fuck if they call you John Gandhi as long as they pay you what’s due?’ I nodded the head for the last time and left. Over time I was referred to as ‘J. F. Cuffe’ and towards the end ‘J. B. Cuffe’. My pay number was a different number from my file number. You just lose the will to ask, and let them do what they want; it’s easier, in the end.
My evenings were spent with my friend Gallagher and his pals, a group that were studying to be primary teachers in Carysfort. We’d kick a ball around Clarendon Park in Dún Laoghaire and go to the pubs at night. One of the would-be teachers who was going out with an army officer asked a rather good question. ‘Johnny, how come you are all officers? In the army, the officers have men under them like soldiers?’ I thought for a while and batted the ball to the slips like a good cricketer with ‘that’s a good question … I haven’t a clue.’ However, it was the first of many awkward questions relating to prison officers/warders/ wardens, jails, gaols and institutions.
Friday was the final day after two weeks in training. No passing-out parade, no parchment, no speeches, no hats thrown in the air, no donning of white gloves, or sandwiches and tea for our loved ones. The list was read out. Eighteen of us were assigned to Portlaoise with the order to be there at 11 a.m. on Monday for those without cars (which was all of us bar one). The other six were assigned to Dublin prisons and, after a brief good luck and goodbye, we separated with a black plastic bag containing our uniforms and the thug black overcoat that felt to me like it was actually alive.
I lugged the bag onto the 46A bus to Dún Laoghaire, dragged it across to Clarendon Park and contemplated the next stage of my adventure. That night, Gallagher, his friends and I went to the Cultúrlann in Monkstown and listened to céilí music and sean nós singing. We were as happy there as in the Purty Kitchen down the road with its rock bands. There’s a time and a place for everything. The weekend was for enjoying. On Sunday we visited a group of girls and they made us tea. One of them put on a bet with me. The bet was for £5 and it centred on how long I would last in the prison service. She said a year, I said forever, but certainly no less than five years. We both laughed. In time we met again at Heuston Station, but I declined the fiver.
2
The Bog
Going to prison is dying with your eyes wide open.
BERNARD KERIK (b. 1955)
In late May 1978 my teacher friend drove me to Heuston Station, where I caught an early train to Portlaoise. My stuffed suitcase, still with blue fisherman’s rope holding it together, along with the black plastic bag full of jail uniform, was lugged aboard the south-bound train. Other lads from training were there as well and as the train sped between the green fields and past blurred telegraph poles, we wondered what lay ahead.
Portlaoise in jail language is known as ‘The Bog’, perhaps in reference to its rural setting or perhaps due to the actual bogs nearby. Quickly we got onto the lingo. From the train station in Portlaoise, we traipsed the rather longish journey to the prison with bags in tow. My fingers lost all circulation as the heavy black bag and suitcase squeezed the flow of blood to my hands. My fingers were a post-mortem blue and white.
The jail, on the Dublin Road, dominates the approach into Portlaoise, with its large central building with army sandbags on the roof and walled corner sentry posts. It was then the most secure prison in Europe. We arrived and were held at an area where those who came to visit prisoners were also processed. We were told to wait until a Mr Stack, the liaison officer for new staff, arrived out to see us. I was more concerned about the lack of blood in my fingers.
Brian Stack came out to meet us. A stocky, well-put-together man, he exuded an air of one who had done this many times. He had long, neatly trimmed sideburns and piercing dark brown eyes set in a prominent face. He was serious and seldom smiled but, when he did, he transformed into a warm man, almost at odds with his jail face. Stack tersely informed us that we would be assigned lodgings in the town where we would change into our uniforms and then report back to him. Out of nowhere a fleet of cars arrived and from Stack’s handheld clipboard our names and landladies were called out. Three of us were lodged in a nice lady’s house on the edge of the town. After quickly dumping our bags and donning the uniform, we reported back to the main entrance of Portlaoise. The entire jail screamed ‘security’. Garda vans and cars were coming and going, army jeeps too. People in uniforms of various hues, from khaki green to various shades of blue, were also coming and going. Once we were assembled, Stack arrived. He did a roll call again and then led us through locked gate after locked gate until we arrived in a small room. A single light dangled from the ceiling. The other light came through the open door. Scattered around were a handful of desks and simple chairs. No windows.
This was to be our ‘classroom’ for a few days until we got familiarised with the set-up. The biggest problem within that room was staying awake, not due to Stack’s lectures being boring, but from the summer heat and a lack of fresh air circulating. Soon, like spring lambs, we were fed into the system and the class work was over.
Portlaoise had within its walls a number of groups: the prison and its staff, a large group of Gardaí and the army, along with various hues of republican warriors. Like the Billy Joel song ‘Saigon’, the army controlled the roofs and high walls, we controlled the jail and the Gardaí were there, I assume, as backup. Having a single goal – to run a secure prison – didn’t mean we all sang from the same hymn sheet.
For the first but not the last time, I saw that the criminal justice system was not an interlinking network where all contributed as partners. Instead, it was like a hierarchy where some actors perceived themselves as greater than others. Hence the army had little or no dealings with us, the Gardaí stuck together, seldom mixing with us, and the jailers for their part despised the lot of them. A familiar bleat from the Gardaí was, ‘If I’d wanted to work in a prison I would have joined the prison service.’ The army took the view that they were wasted there. They saw themselves as babysitters. Me? Well, I’d assumed that birds of a feather flocked together but no, different strokes entirely.
The talk amongst the warders and indeed some of the Gardaí was that many of the Gardaí stationed within the prison walls were there because they had infringed rules or upset their superintendents in the outside world. Guys from stations or the traffic corps in on overtime were quick to dissociate themselves from the regulars whom we quickly got to identify if not exactly know. The army, I figured, unless they were overseas were as close to action in the prison as they would ever encounter. Apart from providing cover for bank runs, the most action they had seen up to the end of the 1970s was collecting rubbish when the bin men went on strike in the 1960s, the culling of chickens in Monaghan and the running of lorries during a bus strike in 1979. An odd bunch, indeed, and not a homogenous group, better described as apples, oranges and bananas: all fruit but all different.
Portlaoise’s E Block, a large and airy building totally different from Mountjoy, housed various groups of republicans on four landings. The Troubles in the north had spilled into the south: banks were robbed, and people were killed or kidnapped on occasion, the most famous being the Tiede Herrema kidnapping. The previous Fine Gael/Labour coalition had taken a hard line on the republicans, which resulted in the IRA rendering Mountjoy unsuitable for them by rioting and systematically destroying it, thus necessitating their removal to Portlaoise.
It could be argued that the IRA modernised Ireland’s prison system. Their ability to organise, to have an army structure, disciplined when needed, violent when needed, had caught the jail service and Department of Justice flatfooted. Portlaoise had seen troubled times: an escape attempt on St Patrick’s Day 1975 resulted in the death by shooting of an IRA man. Trouble, strife and anger stalked the prison. Some staff were threatened, resulting in them having to vacate their homes and move into jail houses that fronted the prison. The then governor received a death threat, an attempt to blow up his car was foiled and there was a Garda presence in his garden. He was always escorted by Gardaí when he exited the jail.
The landings were E1, E2, E3 and E4. Landings E3 and E4 housed the Provisional IRA. Seamus Twomey, James Monaghan and Kevin Mallon were there at that time. The E2 landing housed the Official IRA and E1, the ground floor, housed what were termed ‘mavericks’; Eddie Gallagher (of the Monasterevin siege and Tiede Herrema infamy) was there. Also, some of those ‘mavericks’ had reputedly lost the trust of their mentors and a death sentence supposedly awaited them on release.
The cells on the E Block were spartan, simple and reflected their occupants’ views on prison life. The Republicans viewed themselves as prisoners of war, and not as ‘ordinary’ prisoners. The recently elected Fianna Fáil government had relaxed the stranglehold imposed by the previous Fine Gael/Labour coalition and when I arrived the prisoners, in effect, had political status in all but name. In contrast, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was to precipitate the death by hunger strike of ten men in the H-Blocks over the sweeping of a landing and the right to wear their own clothing. The bullheaded – and ultimately futile – evil and childishness of it stayed with me for a long time.
We, the ordinary staff, did not interact with them, even though we were on the same landings. Their landing commander would liaise with the Class Officer and tell him what requests they might have. A Class Officer generally ran a landing of about thirty cells. Essentially he was the boss. A good Class Officer was worth his weight in gold; a bad one left you with problems. The Provos exercised in one yard, the other prisoners in a back yard.
The first morning we were unleashed on the jail system we reported for duty at 8 a.m. On entering the main gate area we were searched: shoes off, pockets emptied and a pat down before admittance. Inside, we went through endless check gates before arriving in a huge assembly hall. There I saw the first indication of the hierarchy that existed between the warders. The old-timers leaned, slouched even, against the back wall with the nonchalance and lack of interest of guys who saw this as a chore. We, the newbies, on the other hand, formed three ranks about 20 feet forward from the veterans.
A Chief Officer (CO) would read the parade. Your name was called out, to which you replied ‘Sir’ indicating your presence. He then called out something along the lines of ‘Officer Cuffe, assist E1, searches, relieve North Wall post at 9 o’clock, visits, assist E4 at dinner time.’ This was too much to take in. We endured the embarrassment of asking a longer-term colleague what the hell it all meant until we had it figured out. Duties in Portlaoise were black and white, which was a good thing. We were there in large numbers to guarantee security, not to rehabilitate.
After about three weeks of being totally anonymous to most staff, I heard my name called out by an officer on the landings. ‘The deputy governor wants to see you,’ he said. I could feel a hundred eyes looking at me: warders distrust guys for whom the governors look, especially ones they hardly know. The term for guys about whom there might be, ahem, a certain doubt, is the age-old term ‘rat’. Jails have many ‘rats’, from prisoners to the odd ‘francach’ in uniform. Puzzled and slightly worried, I followed the officer to a cell door on the E2 landing. The cell actually was a double cell that had been turned into a small office for the governor to hold court and listen to requests or deal with issues regarding the prisoners. I was invited inside and saw the deputy governor sitting behind an austere desk, a Manila file open in front of him.
He must have seen the slight alarm on my face as he invited me to sit down.
‘Mr Cuffe, I’m looking at your file and, in the length I have been here, apart from the local lads, you are the first person to request to work or transfer here.’ He paused as his finger played with the edge of my file. Was he suggesting I was a republican plant?
I explained that I didn’t actually mind where I worked. The reason I’d looked for Portlaoise was that I knew a few lads from my neck of the woods. Also, any job that allowed you to finish at eight o’clock in the evening was a good job, in my book. My poor old father never finished before nine. And as a light keeper on a lonely rock I couldn’t come home any evening … I threw that in as a kind of mitigation.
That seemed to satisfy him. He thumbed through the file again. ‘I see you worked in a kitchen as a cook for a summer and have a distinction in catering from the London City & Guilds?’
I nearly died. If a Garda wished to work in a jail he would have joined the prison service and if I’d wanted to work in a kitchen then I would have continued being a chef. I love cooking … for myself and my family. I hated hotel kitchens; the dishcloth that cracked my jaw a few years earlier still smarted. The problem was that in the City & Guilds London I had a distinction in the theory of catering plus a merit in cooking but I wasn’t a good chef. ‘I think we will give you a run in the kitchens here tomorrow,’ he said as he closed the file. ‘That’s it, you can go now.’ He motioned me to the cell door.
The next morning parade was, for me, short and sour: ‘Cuffe, assist kitchens,’ barked the CO and nothing else. A load of officers were interested in their new ‘chef’. I walked away like a condemned man. Inside the kitchen I met the real chef, known to one and all as Skipper. First thing we did was have a cup of tea, then Skipper scouted through the morning papers looking for news about his soccer teams. I’d struck gold. I loved soccer and the morning flew as I listened to Skipper talk about the Leeds 1974 team or the Man United ’68 team. In essence, we didn’t do the cooking at all: Skipper started it but his helpers, those prisoners who were housed in an area called the D Block, did the bulk of the work.
The inhabitants of the D Block were on half remission because essentially they were there to do the prison work the republicans refused to do. It was a win-win situation: the republicans cleaned their own cells and landings while the ‘ordinaries’ did the work the republicans objected to. In return, those ‘ordinaries’ had their one-quarter entitlement of remission moved up to a third or in some cases a half of their sentences. Thatcher and the Tories might have profited from watching that. An internal phone rang: the governor was on his rounds. Every jail has a governor’s round. It’s supposed to be the opportunity for the governor to see his jail and that all is correct. All is correct almost always because the bush telegraph has warned everybody concerned that the Gov is on his rounds. Most intelligent governors know this and it suits them. What they don’t see hurts no one. Their consciences are salved.
Our governor, Mr Bill Reilly, was a native of Erris, maybe 10 miles from my village. A former Garda who resigned rather than work for their then Dickensian entitlements, Reilly was not a man who suffered fools. Hard working, disciplined and not afraid of anyone, Reilly walked with a slight limp, eyes ahead and an air of coldness. Skipper had picked out a dinner for him to sample. Reilly took a morsel and nodded his head in agreement that it was capital. He then swept out of the green institutional kitchen. He never once showed the slightest sign of recognition of a fellow Erris man. We pride ourselves on our friendship across the generations as ‘townies’. I felt hurt … well, more annoyed really.
That afternoon Skipper broke the news to me that he was off that evening. I nearly died. I would be in sole charge. I confessed my terror to the Skipper, who laughed and told me not to worry. He called over his trusted top cat and told him what to do. A ‘top cat’ is a prisoner who can be relied on to act on his own initiative. They are trusted and in return get a few privileges like some smokes and biscuits. Skipper then informed him that Mr Cuffe would take care of the ‘Specials’. I hadn’t a clue what ‘Specials’ were. Skipper explained that meat, bought from the local butchers or left in, was for the republicans: steak, rashers, fish, sausages and pudding. My jaw dropped when I heard that it was the kitchen’s task to cook this food. Skipper then asked me: ‘Do you want to be back here tomorrow and the day after, or do you want to be out of here for good?’