The last FRFI Prisoners Fightback page featured the brutality that goes on in British prisons’ segregation units. Alan Porter wrote to us from Frankland prison about 73-year-old Ronnie Easterbrook, who had been moved between the ‘health care’ unit and segregation unit so many times he had refused to leave the seg unit again. Ronnie was convicted in 1988 of the attempted murder of a policeman during an armed robbery that was set up by the police and a TV programme and in which the only person who died was his fellow would-be robber who was shot dead by the police. He has campaigned relentlessly since then for his conviction to be overturned, refusing to become involved in applications for parole or early release. Ronnie writes:
After some months in the health care here I was put down the seg for refusing
to go on ‘normal location’, since I’m not a normal prisoner. It is now on my record that I am and have been held illegally – though an official at Whitemoor referred to it as ‘held in the interests of the state’. After four days in the seg I was returned to the health care in a wheelchair due to prolonged and intermittent refusals of all food. Six weeks later they tried again and once more after four days my health was such I was sent back to health care (no wheelchair).
Only a few days later I was asked to volunteer to go to the seg for the night, as my cell was needed. Naturally I refused, so was again ordered to go to the main wing, refused, was nicked, arrived down there and told the governor that were I kept down then I would stay for good. Two days later I was given seven or 14 days cellular confinement and two days further on they bring the wheelchair to return me to health care but I refused to leave the seg. After 20 days in cell/fridge, they asked me to move into the cell directly above so as to avoid having to traverse the stairs to use the phone, and here the shower is only two paces away.
I still get asked to move but I got sick to death of their games. They know full well I am held illegally; it was actually admitted in the doctor’s office at Whitemoor, yet still they try to break me down to conform (surrender to unremitting persecution) and people still wonder how guards in the concentration camps could throw people in furnaces. It’s very simple, the chain of command, each individual protecting his position or job, and if asked – ‘Not me, guv, I was only doing my job.’
I have now been down here since 3 October. It is controlled unlocking so only one person is ever out at any one time, and in fact I have never seen another prisoner, except out of my window to the cage below, referred to as the exercise yard. After the first four weeks I have been allowed eight pints of water a day for drinking, formerly it was four, so I have four pints of black coffee (with plenty of sugar) per day and four pints of OXO, with 1.5 of those little cubes in each. I am of course very thin but surprisingly my only real problems to date are pains behind my eyes. I went partially blind in my left eyes about three years ago due to muscular degeneration as a result of these intermittent hunger strikes for my rights, so I have recently increased my vitamins intake, expensive in here, but I don’t want food in disguise. Dying at 73 is no big deal but infirmity is another thing altogether.
They say I am strong-willed, yet being right, even when one can prove it, as I can, is just a state of mind. If one had no principles it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to carry on, but as I have always had good principles there is no question that I would ever accept the burden a corrupt state and judiciary have placed upon me.
Thank you for continuing to send the paper. I admire the strength of character that enables you to keep trying in a world that seems to be slipping inexorably towards a disaster yet to make itself fully visible, but one that will surely have greed as its basis.
Ronnie Easterbrook B88459,
HMP Frankland, Finchale Avenue, Brasside, DURHAM DH1 5YD
Readers are asked to send Ronnie letters and cards of solidarity, and to write complaining about the appalling way he is being treated to Governor Paul Copple at the same address.
FRFI 183 February / March 2005
