Doren Lawrence Lionhearted Mother

So Gary Dobson and David Norris got life with minimum terms to be served of 15 and 14 years respectively. Many will say it is not long enough – they would have got higher minimum terms had the killing happened post the 2003 Criminal Justice Act or if they had committed the crime as adults. If it is any consolation to anyone outraged by the apparent shortness of the terms however, rest assurred that there is little chance that they will actually be released when their minmums have been served. Few lifers ever get out “on tariff.” There is a chance that these two could be out in under 20 years, but they will have to convince the report writers and the Parole Board when the time comes that they have made the efforts to change and to demonstrate that they no longer present any danger to the public. (Since this was without question a race hate murder they will have to demonstrate also that their attitude towards people of colour other than white has changed significantly for the better. From what we have seen so far such efforts seem unlikely to be forthcoming.)

But in fact, in a way, like the suspects who so far have got away with their involvement in the murder, Gary Dobson and David Norris have been serving a sentence since they first became suspects in April 1993.  With no word of regret or sorrow – no sign of remorse or shame, there will never be any hiding place for the perpetrators – convicted or not, inside or outside prison. And no chance that they will ever find peace. Thanks to Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, for the rest of their lives all those who were involved in his murder will be defined by what they did. Doreen Lawrence’s ferocious tenacity in her efforts to see her son’s killers brought to justice has not been driven by hatred or bitterness however - only by her love for her son. Like all human beings Stephen Lawrence was precious – to his mother he was most precious of all. It is for him that she fought like a lion.

My support for Haven books stems from my own prison experience. When I went to prison for life in 1984 I had  no hope or any sense at all that I would or could ever again live any kind of a contributing life. If anything I was relieved that my destructive life was effectively over. Life outside had been painful for me, but more importantly painful for other people because of me. I entered prison an inarticulate, ill-educated brute – but luckily I was literate. Books provided a gateway into education and through education I learned a better way to live. Despite the best efforts of various prison libraries however, getting hold of the right books was always a struggle. Sometimes it took months to locate a particular textbook. It was three years before I owned my own dictionary. Significantly I think, the most popular  requests to Haven even today are for dictionaries. Over the years I counted books among my best friends in prison. They gave me hope, for sure – but more than anything they were the practical means to achieving a life worth living. When the chance came for me to write for the Guardian newspaper from my prison cell fifteen years into my sentence I realised that unwittingly I had been preparing for the opportunity with books. Books inspired me to become a writer and for the first time in my life enabled me to become a contributor to my society. I have never considered myself to be a spokesman for prisoners, but I met hardly anyone during my twenty years inside who did not have the desire to change and a yearning to  live a crime free life. Without books few of us would ever make it. For that  reason I applaud the ideals of Haven books. Every book this tiny organisation  sends into a prison represents a potential key to a better life for the  individual recipient – and to a safer community for everyone.

The Big Dundonian died at around 5.30 this morning. He went peacefully said the nurse who rang to tell me – and one of her colleagues was with him when he went. “He wasn’t alone when he passed away,” she said. That was good to know. I’m not superstitous, but when they released him on “compassionate grounds” the evening before – at about the same time it began to rain gently over my home and then the biggest, brightest, complete rainbow burst into colour right across the sky. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen a complete rainbow from end to end. The sun’s golden rays raced through the blue and grey clouds like jewelled spears, their shimering light cascading all over the trees and the old red brick buildings. As me and the cows, the sheep, the pheasants and the geese all stared skywards all that was missing was Tchicovsky’s 1812 overture. It was the most magnificent gift from nature and I’ll never forget it. I never thought anything of it until the nurse told me this morning that Rinty was gone – immediately I remembered the rainbow. Rinty would have loved that.

Thank you so much to all the good people who sent lovely messages of support for the Rint over the years. He loved hearing whenever I’d had a message or a comment, couldn’t believe anyone out there cared that much. That they thought highly of Rinty in the prison I have no doubt. But you know they still haven’t called me, his offical next of kin, either to say they released him yesterday or to tell me he is dead.

But not for much longer. I went to see my friend today in the small hospital they’ve put him in a couple of miles away from the prison. He was so frail. Me and the Gambler went to see him in the same place three weeks ago and he was frail then, but at least he could get out of bed and into a wheelchair. The Gambler pushed and I followed. We sat outside in a small patio area. It was sunny, but too bright for Rinty to sit in the golden rays. 

Conversation was hard going – until I got the photo album out. “I’ve got some pictures to show you,” I said. I’d only opened a couple of pages before he made a typical Rinty comment. ”I am terminal don’t forget.” I turned the pages faster - of course he was kidding. But I found it so hard to judge the humour between us. He didn’t look like the Rint – he looked like a fragile old man with his thick, unkempt silver beard, his sad sunken eyes and his mottled, yellow, paper thin skin. We managed to talk for a bit, the three of us. I swore. Rinty scowled and shushed me – “there are old people in there,” he said pointing to the common room. We’d passed them on the way out to the patio. Real elderly folk with various serious debilitating illnesses sat around a flat screen televison that had the sound turned down. I was touched that he was still considering the feelings of others. We kissed him when we left, thanking the prison officer guarding him for being so discreet. When they first took him out he had two prison officers guarding him. The only surprise was that he wasn’t chained to the bed like he was when they took him out for tests last year. We were grateful for that.

The Gambler went to see him on his own last week. He’d go every day if Rinty would let him, but the big man gets so tired, too tired. He has good days and bad days, like all sufferers of serious diseases as they near the end. He told the Gambler on the phone to bring him luxury prawn mayonaise sarnies from a well know up-market grocery store. A prison officer guarding him had given him one of his one day – Rinty had never tasted anything like it. The Gambler took him the sarnies, cola and fruit and the Rint wolfed it all down.

 Since then his throat has swollen so that he can barely speak or swallow or cough even. When I walked into his little room today he was still asleep in his bed. The prison officer guarding him nodded. I had a bag of goodies with me. Luxury prawn mayo sandwiches, seedless grapes, bananas, trifles, cola, fizzy orange. I put the bag down and whispered, “Rintyheed…” I saw an eyebrow flicker and a minute or so later he slowly raised a withered arm, still with his eyes closed and gave a laboured thumbs up. I welled up immediately. I was trying so hard not to cry – his courage has made me feel so puny. He managed almost fourteen years back in the closed system on a not guilty verdict – he stayed mentally strong and lucid, in the face of the most convoluted and distorted psychological “assessments” of his character – he kept going. And he was undefeated, until cancer did for him. That’s the bit that gets to me the most – he was handling all that the system was throwing at him, carrying the weight of his unjust situation like a champion weightlifter, (odd analogy since for all of the thirty two years he’s spent incarcerated, never once did he ever step foot in a prison gym.) But his strength was more than physical, or mental – it was psychological. I think his psychological stamina was the most enduring of anyone I have ever met. And then cancer pulled the rug from under him.

I walked over and took a hold of his hand, squeezing my eyes to hold back my tears. I reached down and kissed his fingers. I was trying to tell him not to move, to keep dozing, but I couldn’t speak for sobbing. “Dont…. get…. upset,” he said. The prison officer guarding him told me that when Rinty coughed he coughed up some unpleasant dark mucousy stuff – “He always warns me,” said the officer. “He won’t cough when I’m eating my lunch or having a snack.”

I’m so touched by Rinty’s consideration for those around him. He expresses no bitterness, no anger. He just lies there accepting that there is no hope of a reprieve. ”I’m… ready… to… go…,” he said. I reached over and kissed him on the forehead. “We don’t want you to go,” I said. I told him the Gambler told me to tell him that he loves him like a brother, “and I do too,” I said, by now tears running down my face. Rinty closed his eyes again. I thought he was going to doze, but then he began to push himself up into a semi-sitting position. I tried to help him, but everywhere I touched him was sharp bone and stringy sinew. I didn’t feel confident enough to put even the slightest bit of pressure on any part of him. Eventually he was sitting up after a fashion. I had to listen ever so carfully when he spoke. ”I get confused,” he said. “I only found out a couple of hours ago it was Sunday.”

His application for “compassionate release” was turned down last week for reasons that were spurious: the address he gave for release was not suitable, (it was my address,) and he wasn’t yet “bedridden.” Well he’s bedridden now, he hasn’t been out of it since he got his knockback and the only place he can go if they release him is a hospice. He told me the prison is doing all it can to get him released to the hospice – they are embarrassed at having to guard him, my lovely friend: a broken, defeated, cancer-ridden wreck who can barely breathe, let alone speak. The prison has done its best by him. But for the Ministry of Justice to decide that it is appropriate to pay for a prison officer to sit and “guard” him when he is lower in life than on his knees is pathetic.

I kissed him again before I left.

Nobody on the gate could tell me what Rinty might have wanted to tell me when I phoned so I had to wait until the Gambler had his visit with him on Sunday. “He was just the same as he was last time we saw him, except there was a bit less of him” he said when he called me immediately he left the prison. What the Rint had been trying to tell me, (he’d left a similar message on the Gambler’s phone,) was that he was being taken to the outside hospital last Friday. When me and the Gambler saw him last time he was a skinny bag of bones, but he had odd swellings, in his chest, his stomach, his legs. This was because his organs were closing down and he was retaining fluid – and we are talking serius amounts. At the hospital they attached a draining mechanism to his body and siphoned off TWENTY ONE LITRES of liquid from his system. That’s nearly five gallons for christ’s sake – the mind boggles.

The Gambler’s visit got off to a bit of a morose start – as he walked through the gate he passed a police incident van going out. He learned from Rinty that a fellow lifer, someone with mental health problems, had committed suicide earlier in the day. The man had been sectioned before and sent to special hospital for “treatment.” Eventually a man in a white coat had decided he was well enough to be sent back to jail – he didn’t last long. A number of times during my own twenty years of incarceration I saw exactly the same thing happen. Men breaking down, being sent to hospital only to be returned later and breaking down a second time only more severerly. Prison you see is not a place for the mentally unwell – yet so many people there are quite obviously suffering from mental problems.

I think the thing I admire most about Rinty is his mental strength and resilience. Through all that has happened to him his mind has stayed strong all the way. Now he is planning his funeral service. We’re going to talk about it again when I go to see him in a couple of weeks.

It’s not good. Me and the Gambler went to see him recently. As we walked into the prison visiting room a prison officer approached us and asked us our names. When we told him he said, “Oh, your visit is taking place on the wing.” My heart jumped immediately. Rinty was too ill to even walk to the visiting room – I dreaded seeing him laid up in his cell, weak and helpless. The big man was always so resilient, so full of energy. I know he is dying – but my memories of him are still so full of life – his Rinty smile, his Rinty jokes, (inappropriate of course) – and his Rinty philosophy, “always fight complacency…”

Rinty does not deserve what is happening to him – the cancer, well nobody deserves that. Good health – bad health – that’s the luck of the draw. What I mean is that Rinty does not deserve to die in jail. He did his whack first time around. He was jailed for life for manslaughter in 1976 – he always acknowleded the harm he had done, the life he took, the pain and grief he had caused. He worked on his failings in prison – years of one to one work with psychologists and psychiatrists. As a boy he had been abused terribly by a family member – it was no excuse for his crime, but certainly affected the way he grew up and contributed greatly to his dysfunctional youth – drink and drugs gave him some solace, but also took away his sense of reason – his plea of not guilty to murder was accepted by the prosecution on the grounds of his diminished responsibility. He managed to rebuild in prison – gave much to others, helped me a lot in my early years – taught me to transcribe Braille – he was a real expert in Braille transcription, self-taught in prison. When they released him in 1994 after he’d served 18 years he should never have looked back. When the home Office recalled him to prison in 1997 after he was found not guilty of an assault charge (he really was innocent, the jury took just eight minutes to return their not guilty verdict) – he should have been re-released quickly and helped and supported. Instead they kept him in. That decision was a death sentence. But he’s fought it with incredible courage and dignity.

A prison officer escorted me and Gambler through the prison to Rinty’s wing – through bars and gates and more bars and more gates, and then led us into a little side room. We waited for a few minutes and then in hobbled our big friend. We took it in turns to hug him before he sat down – the physical change in him since I had last seen just a few weeks earlier was dramatic. He looked like an aged version of himself – like a computer generated image of how he should have looked in another 20 years or so. But he still managed to smile when I asked him how he was doing. “That’s a daft question,” he said as he slumped into his seat. The best thing about this visit though was that we were all so relaxed – especially the Rint. No officers present, no having to lean forward on the low seats of the visiting room so we could hear each other talking. Rinty sat back. “They’re being really good to me in here,” he said. “They don’t like what is happening to me. They couldn’t be more helpful.” I’m just in awe of the strength of character he has demonstrated since his diagnosis last year. The only time he’s shed a tear is when he was getting helped back to his cell by a female prison officer after a visit to the doc’s. “Just before she shut my cell door she turned and gave me a hug,” he said, ”that just did for me.”

Leaving Rinty that day was hard. He’s got a panel who could order his release in July – we talked about it. I’m going to try and get him up with me if they let him out – I want to do something to make his final days comfortable. But July seems such a long long way away.  He called me on my mobile yesterday. I’d left it at the bottom of my garden and had to rush to it when I heard it ring. By the time I got to it it had gone to messaging. When I listened I barely recognised the croaky, feeble voice – “It’s me, I need to talk to you, I’ll try again later.”  He never got back to me. I’m going to call the prison today.

Going into North Sea Camp for The Guardian this week was a sobering experience. I felt really privileged to be allowed in as a journalist. Open prisons do such a good job of getting people who have been inside for long periods ready for the outside world – yet so often they get slated for being too soft, too lax, too easy.  No prison is perfect, nor could they ever be. But North Sea Camp is doing as good a job as possible in functioning in the best interests of the community. I had unfettered access to prisoners. One young man I met, Graham Blount gave me a copy of a book of poems he had written, which he wants to be used to educate troubled young people - young people  like he once was. Graham was heavily into gang culture as a boy and got a five year sentence when he was fifteen for a knife crime. Now aged thirty his life of crime appears to be over. He is using his last bit of time in open conditions to put something back – and his writing is superlative. I met quite a few prisoners and all were eager to talk – but a shock for me was meeting Steve, a lifer I knew on the landings sixteen years ago. I couldn’t believe he was still in. He was a handful back in the day, now he is quiet and reflective – and he has become an acclomplished artist. Much of his artwork adorns the walls of the prison’s barrack-like accommodation blocks. I told him I would try to help him and I will. I know nobody wants to sympathise with the plight of prisoners,especially lifers. But so long as we have a system that ultimately let’s everybody out, we have to have places like North Sea Camp – and we have to have confidence that they really are doing some good. I hope what I found during my visit allows readers to believe that that is the case.

A lack of access to the internet over the past month has made it difficult for me to keep in touch with the world – via the web at least – hence little site activity for a while. My communication problems pale into insignificance when compared to the plight of my pal Big Rinty however.  I was supposed to be going to see him tomorrow, Saturday 18th December – I guess you could call it our Christmas visit. I’ve always tried to get over to see him as close to Christmas as possible - but this year the snow is threatening to make us postpone the visit until the new year. We had five inches last night and today I cannot get to the main roads. The journy to Rinty is nearly 200 miles and I can’t see the weather improving much by morning, so decided to phone the prison to see if I could rebook  the visit for next Wednesday instead – Rinty’s prison only has visiting days on weekends and Wednesdays. “Sorry,” said the visits officer, “all booked up for Wednesday.”  Well what about Sunday I thought – maybe there will be a thaw by then. ”Sunday’s fully booked too,” said the officer.  I was just about to put the phone down when suddenly the officer came back at me. “Hang on,” he said, “we’ve had a cancellation for Sunday. I can book you in then if you want.”  He spent a while sorting out the machinations of his visits booking system but eventually it was done. I was really touched by the trouble he went to for me – so many others in his position would not have bothered. Anyway everything is now crossed that the roads are passable on Sunday and I can make it.

I spoke to Rinty this morning when he called me and warned him that tomorrow wasn’t looking good. “Don’t worry if its difficult,” he said. “I’m not bothered about difficult,” I told him. “I’m happy with difficult. I’ll only not come if its impossible.” He told me today that his skin is hanging off him he’s lost so much weight. He told the Gambler during a visit last week that he knows he is dying. Stroll on Big Friend.

(By the way Rinty wants to get in touch with his offspring to try to make peace before he goes – anyone who might know of his child’s whereabouts or contact details please email me at erwin.james@guardian.co.uk)

Martina Cole

I wasn’t lying when I said the idea of interviewing crime writer Martina Cole actually scared me. She and I were first supposed to meet at the Guardian Hay Festival. In part preparation I watched her on her tv show about female serial killers, Ladykillers, and thought, “Christ, she’s going to make mincemeat out of me!”  I was massively disappointed when that event was cancelled for an unspecified reason, but also a little relieved. Hay is a great book festival. Martina’s event was sold out – probably three hundred people or more would have been watching us up on the stage as she turned me into a quivering wreck… When the chance came to meet her again at Waterson’s in London’s Piccadilly however, fear or no fear, I wasn’t going to let it pass.  As I said in the Guardian, when we met she immediately put me at ease. Her warmth was totally reassuring. This lady, who came through impoverished hell to succeed against the odds, was chatty, witty – and completely approachable. And she looked terrific – unlike her on screen image there were no hard edges. That is not to say she is not tough – she has had to be as tough as the toughest survivor to get where she has in her chosen profession. But there was a definite sweetness about her too – the fact that she has had the same publicisit and the same publisher for 20 years is testament to the value she places on loyalty.

I met her son Chris that night too – a complete gentleman who runs Hostage Music, his mother’s most recent business adventure. Hostage Music of course is where Brixton country/gospel/rock/blues band, Alabama 3 are signed and whose most recent album is the preternaturally superlative REVOLVER SOUL.   

I am in conversation again with Martina during the Folkestone Book Festival at Quarterhouse on 11 November. Tickets are available here.