On December 5, 2023, an audience gathered for a Quaker outreach event at Wandsworth meeting house. We were to hear from the then Quaker prison chaplain, Liz Bridge about her work in the prison.
No one was prepared for what happened that night. Liz Bridge’s talk was electrifying, not quite believable. How could it be that the shocking conditions and misery Liz was describing were happening right on our doorstep? Why were others who must surely have known what was going on, not speaking out? Surely, the doctors and lawyers must know. What about the families of serving prisoners?
Then and there, a small group decided to form to campaign for change: the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign.
After Liz Bridge’s talk, attendees gathered for a discussion, in an atmosphere of palpable shock and horror.
One person asked: ‘Where is the voice of the prisoners and the prisoners’ families?’
A woman replied: ‘We are the voice of the prisoners’ families; we have sons in that prison and are here to talk to anyone who wants to talk to us.’
Two weeks later, I and my friend Martine Lignon (a trustee of the Prisoners’ Advice Service) met these two mothers, we call them ‘Ann’ and ‘Jodie’ of sons held in Wandsworth Prison on remand.
We asked: What do you want to tell us? and we recorded what they said. During the interview, their sons telephoned from the prison; we recorded everything they said. Later, I transcribed the interviews. We had powerful, personal and shocking evidence of conditions in HMP Wandsworth and recorded horrific, abusive language used by a prison officer screaming at a prisoner. That became the starting point of this project.
We now publish Voices from the Inside edited by Rebecca Grant. It contains the testimonies given by Liz Bridge, Jodie, Ann and their sons ‘Joey’ and ‘Ben’, 16 other prisoners, and friends and relatives of prisoners, from both men’s and women’s prisons. Their voices must be heard. They are not alone in calling for fundamental change. Can we now hope to see it?
A chaplain’s testimony
From Voices from the Inside. Liz Bridge, former Quaker chaplain at HMP Wandsworth writes:
‘Wandsworth Prison is a nasty place. People are very sad, very frightened, and very lonely. It breaks their mental health. It’s a place where you see horror and it’s a place of misery. It simply isn’t coping. I go out to talk to people to lift spirits, to listen to people’s problems and to be a sane and friendly presence. For eight years, I was Quaker Chaplain at Wandsworth prison – a voluntary role. Over that time, I have watched more and more prisoners squeezed into an increasingly dilapidated Victorian building where conditions were getting worse and worse.
I was given two rooms to work in at the bottom of the G wing. G wing is, I think, the nastiest corner of the prison and the basement runs with rats, the sewage water comes up when the drains block. I would arrive in my room, open the door, and bang to watch rats leaving.’
