Once again on a cold London night we proceeded across the yard of Church House, Westminster, to the Hall for this year’s “Longford Lecture” organised by the Longford Trust and sponsored by the excellent Independent Newspaper which is owned by Tony O’Reilly’s Independent News and Media. I mention this as the Celtic Sage has read the Independent and admired its non-aligned journalism (Its original strapline was “A Newspaper, not a Views Paper” – although some, including Tony Blair, would dispute this now) even before it was Irish owned. Tony O’Reilly has long been associated with the Ireland Fund and the support for the lecture is admirable.
Lord Longford (Frank Pakenham)
Lord Longford (Frank Pakenham) was from the Anglo-Irish tradition and remained sentimentally attached to Ireland even though he probably broke every tradition of his Anglo-Irish ascendancy family. He was born into a military, Protestant, Conservative and Unionist clan, and educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. As an adult, he embraced the Roman Catholic Church and Irish nationalism. His failure to follow his soldier father, who was killed at Gallipoli when Longford was nine, remained an open wound. Longford's memory will live on, if not for the scale of his achievements then certainly because of his courage, tenacity and nobility in trying. He was a man of great intelligence and moral strength and the speakers and themes of the “Longford Lectures” reflect his life’s work. Last year’s lecture was on the theme of “Changing History” by the President of Ireland, Professor Mary McAleese, (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/longford-lecture-2007-changing-history.html ).
This year, as a one-off, the trustees decided to stage a debate, chaired by Jon Snow on the theme “We Can't Build Our Way Out of Britain's Prisons' Crisis” The four principal speakers were Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Jason Warr, former Longford Scholar, now a Cambridge criminologist, and Phil Wheatley, director of NOMS, the National Offender Management Service.
This is the latest in the annual series of lectures organised by the Longford Trust on questions of social and penal reform. Past speakers have included President Mary McAleese of Ireland, Clive Stafford Smith, Brenda Hale QC, Cherie Booth QC, Archbishop John Sentamu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The Trust also awards an annual Longford Prize to an outstanding individual or organisation working in the field of prison and social reform. It funds Longford Scholarships for ex-prisoners who want to rebuild their lives through education. And it offers financial support to Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners.
Offenders sentenced to community punishments should be forced into uniform to restore flagging trust in the criminal justice system, Sir Ian Blair declared last night. In his first public appearance since his resignation a month ago, the outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner argued such sentences had to be shown to be effective to win public approval. Sir Ian also called for early intervention with youngsters to deter them from carrying knives and cast doubt on the drive to build more prisons.
Speaking at the annual Longford lecture he said: "One of the things we are going to have to do is move towards is the very unpalatable situation where community punishments are visible.”They are in uniform, on the streets, doing jobs and people can see people are being sentenced to community projects that do not seem very pleasant." He explained that the public needed to see that community punishments were not a soft option. He added: "If they don't understand it's happening they will want people locked up."
Sir Ian Blair
The Commissioner asked: "Why do so many people think prison is the only answer? An element of the media and political community argues that the only good thing is to lock them up and everything else is namby pamby." Sir Ian, who leaves his post on 1st December, refused to discuss the background to his departure or shed light on his plans. Turning to the spate of knife murders in London, he said: "We can't arrest our way out of this. The only way we can stop this is to stop young people believing they have to carry a knife for their protection."
The Government has drawn up plans to open another 10,000 prison places, with up to 7,500 in three "Titan" jails. But Sir Ian suggested prison should be reserved for violent and persistent criminals. The public had to be confident fines were paid and bail bandits were punished by prison, Sir Ian argued. They should also be informed about the outcome of local court cases.
Church House, Westminster
The Labour peer Baroness Kennedy, a leading human rights lawyer, attacked "Titan" jails plans, saying that large prisons were less effective than smaller jails at rehabilitating offenders and tackling suicide and self-harming among inmates. She condemned the booming prison population as a "shame" on the nation, stating that Britain had more prisoners per head than Libya. Lady Kennedy said: "There is no way we can build our way out of a prisons crisis. It is a shame on society that we have as many people in prison as we do. Since 1992 we have doubled the number of people in prison. We are the prison capital of Western Europe. We have seen a Dutch auction between the political parties about who is tougher."
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
Phil Wheatley, director general of the National Offender Management Service, said he had no direct influence over the number of people behind bars. He argued that the size of prison estate was the result of politicians' and judges' decisions. But he acknowledged that the public tended to take a hard-line view on dealing with offenders and politicians had to take that into account. Before the lecture, Grendon Prison, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, received the annual Longford Prize in recognition of its work in rehabilitating violent offenders through intensive group therapy.
Frank Longford said often during his life that he would like his epitaph to be ‘the outcasts' outcast’. It summed up a long career as a politician, writer and campaigner on social and prison policy which was all about standing up for the unpopular, the unloved, the underdog and those on the margins of society. He was first a minister in Clement Attlee’s post Second World War Labour government, where as Deputy Foreign Secretary he played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of West Germany. From 1964 to 1968, he was a member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet.
He started visiting prisoners in 1930 and continued until his death. He was assistant to Sir William Beveridge on his landmark report of 1942 which laid the basis for the Welfare State. In 1956 he founded New Bridge, one of the first organisations in Britain seeking to create links between prisoners and the community, and in 1963 chaired the committee on crime whose recommendations led to the establishment of the parole system. On leaving the government, he launched New Horizon, a charity for young people in need.
The Pakenham Family have roots in both Ireland and England and have influenced both countries over the years. In Dublin they are commemorated in Longford and Aungier Streets and the former Pakenham Hall near Castlepollard in Co. Meath was renamed Tullynally (The Gaelic name) by Tom Pakenham (The current Lord Longford, although he does not use his titles) when he took it over in 1961. Tom Pakenham is himself an author and historian of note as are his sisters, Lady Antonia Fraser, Rachel Billington and Judith Kazantzis.
Tom Pakenham
Lady Antonia Fraser
Rachel Billington
The plight of the underdog motivated Frank Pakenham throughout his life and although he is associated in the public mind with his campaign to free the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, many would argue she was an unworthy focus of his attention and obscured his wider message about penal reform, a concern which is even more pressing today when Britain, despite the evidence of failure, locks up proportionately more of its population than any other European Country.
In its bid to establish itself as the party of law or order, Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced a series of draconian measures, including a tougher sentencing policy for petty offenders. The fact remains that in the UK so many prisons are bad and most prisoners are not re-educated or rehabilitated but come out more corrupted and go onto re-offend. Of the current prison population of over 80,000 shamefully it is estimated that over one in eleven prisoners are ex-service personnel who have developed mental, alcohol or drug problems after leaving the forces and 8% are foreign prisoners. A high proportion of the convicts interviewed in the study had suffered some form of post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the forces. Often their convictions were for drug- or alcohol-related violence. Ex-services charities said the findings highlighted the difficulty which many former soldiers face in making the transition to civilian life. The National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO), which carried out the research, called on the Government to do more to tackle mental health problems suffered by people who have fought in war zones. It said that around 24,000 veterans are either in jail, on parole or serving community punishment orders after having been convicted of crimes. They make up around nine per cent of the prison population.
The relative number of women prisoners is rising even more sharply than that of the male inmates—more than doubling since the mid-1990s. Twice as many women are jailed for their first offence compared to men, while few female offenders pose any threat to the public. The frequent imprisoning of mothers has an enormously disruptive effect upon their children and family life. One third of women imprisoned in British jails have children under the age of five.
Prison Inspector reports in some prisons show eleven per cent of inmates claimed to have been assaulted by officers at the jail and one mentally-disturbed prisoner had been denied a wash or change of clothes for weeks because staff thought he was faking his illness. The Prison Officers Association has said that because of understaffing at many prisons “they have been unable to provide the basics, like showers, clean clothes and mail, on a regular basis." They said this had also led to high levels of sick leave among officers. Their General Secretary commented; "At the end of the day cash is king and while there are votes in health and education, there are no votes in prisons, which means they will continue to be under-resourced," he said.
So the cause that Lord Longford espoused and which his charity and the Longford Lecture seek to remind us of is even more relevant than ever and Britain as a society remains challenged by the disconnect between cause and effect in its Penal Policy. As for Frank Pakenham himself we should remember the quality of his humanity and commitment to the underdog best, and affectionately, summed up by his daughter Judith Kazantzis in her introduction to the Longford Prize;
Judith Kazantzis
“While he had his strength, he never failed to answer the prisoners, often despairing and lonely, who appealed to him for practical help or just friendship. When I think back over the years to countless phone calls from unknown men, ringing to ask for Frank, or for Lord Longford, maybe to report progress on their case, or just to confide, I see how he was an inspiration from my student days, in the deepest sense: in his belief in equality and justice, those two pillars of a truly free society.
No one is less free than the prisoner. How simply I heard my father put this: how irrefutably. He said that society cannot go on punishing and punishing the prisoner, who is already punished with the loss of his freedom, with the key thrown away. The prisoner must be treated with human dignity. He or she absolutely must be offered the chance of a new life after prison.
My father drew every day until he died from the teachings of Jesus Christ. The prodigal son was a story we read to him on his deathbed. He himself was prodigal in his prison visits, often in the worst of weathers, seeing complex, long incarcerated people at the end of exhausting journeys. He was prodigal just as much in his public speaking out for reform of our prison system. I believe he had it right: to work for the individual, to fight for the wider change, like one hand holding the other hand.”
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