Free Peterhead by Robert Jeffrey

run-of-the-mill. But this was no drunken chip pan incident, nor was it caused by that other Glasgow serial failing, careless use of candles in a dangerous effort to cut the electricity bill. As the death toll mounted as the victims slowly succumbed to their horrific burns it became clear that this tragedy was gang driven and the story grew to dominate the front pages for weeks. Yet again the police were under the cosh of public opinion and yet again the usual suspects were looked at.
    Campbell and Steele were no Sunday school teachers, they were major players in the Glasgow crime scene feared by the folk who had them living in their midst and constantly at odds with the forces of law and order. They were pulled in. Their pleas of innocence were ignored and they were convicted after a long and complex trial involving other Glasgow low-lifers and false testimony, as in the Slater and Meehan cases. Once again Peterhead and the road north beckoned. It took almost twenty years for Campbell and Steele to be freed and cleared. When their conviction was eventually overruled after years of hunger strikes, escapes, publicity stunts and almost countless appeals and appeals on appeals, it emerged that they had been caged, as the tabloids like to say, on concocted police evidence.
    Long sentences had been handed down and Campbell, in particular, when in Peterhead embarked on a one-man war against authority. It was always going to end in violence. In June 1986 he was accused of punching a chief officer in the high security prison. The allegation was that he had lashed out with his fist when he heard that a visit from his family had been cancelled because of investigations into a riot the previous night. Such was life in Peterhead at the time. At his trial the judge said he entertained a doubt about the prosecution case and found Campbell not guilty of assault. But at the same time he threw out Campbell’s claim that he had been beaten up and kicked by a squad of eight officers in retribution for the riot, resulting in a stomach injury. This was significant as the press at the time was full of stories about so-called “batter squads”. In this important case the authorities cleared the prison staff of that particular allegation.
    Despite the courts clearing the prison officers in this case it seems undeniable that there were, at the time, what the cons – and their villainous friends outside – called “batter squads” at work in the prison. Many ex-cons have talked to me about this. How much of it was going on will never be fully quantified. Nor will any degree of justification of the behaviour of some prison officers. In a riot there is no referee and no predilection to fight by the Queensberry rules. And back then, inside many parts of prisons, there were no cameras. Conflict is hard on each side and you have to have some sympathy for officers who daily faced the prospect of sudden desperate attacks from men who felt they had nothing to lose, men who were there anyway mostly because of violence when out on the streets.
    TC Campbell’s health gave concern of a different kind a year or so later. Hunger strikes punctuated his long years behind bars. On this occasion it was a protest against the authorities’ plan to move him back to Peterhead after a transfer to Barlinnie. His feuding and fighting up in the North-East fortress had planted a desire in his mind never to see the place again. He had few friends there among prisoners or staff. There was always a lot going on around TC, whatever prison he happened to be in. In this case he went on a “liquids only” diet. He was taken to the prison hospital and given twenty-four-hour care, though the authorities had no plans to force-feed him.
    Some will tell you that the pain of Campbell’s hunger strikes were on occasion eased with an occasional bar of chocolate or biscuit smuggled to him. You will always find a cynic or two around even in a prison. But if the idea of the hunger