On 3 November 1967, Jimmy Boyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he insisted he did not commit. One of Scotland’s most feared criminals, from the Gorbals in Glasgow, he enjoyed a career of violent theft, money racketeering and gang fights, with regular spells in prison. His autobiography, A Sense of Freedom, written from Barlinnie prison and smuggled out for publication, was shocking not only for his unflinching portrait of gangland life but, even more, for its depiction of the brutality of prison conditions.
I lay on the dark floor in a terrible state. I cried that first night, my heart and my eyes cried. I was so angry at myself and the world that I couldn’t think straight. Internally I was a raging storm, but to anyone peering through the Judas hole of the cell door I would look calm, as though I was just dozing. Without that fac¸ade I would have broken into a million little pieces. For some reason it was very important that I cling to this and make it see me through till I recovered from this inner blitz. I was a walking time-bomb, primed and ready for exploding, all it needed was one wrong word and there would have been such a holocaust that they wouldn’t have believed it. That inner something that seemed to take over the minute the verdict was given stayed with me. By some miraculous means or other I managed to get through the first night and the next few days, though they were very hazy and I can only remember pieces of them.
The press were giving it big licks and I covered the pages with the same old crap of being the super baddie. It seemed to keep up for the first week or so and guys showed me what they were saying but by now I was sick of it. For the first time in my life I became revolted at the sight of my name in the papers whereas all the other times it had been a prestigious thing and I had enjoyed it. The press were keeping on about the moneylending rackets and saying that they would have to be clamped down on, so the cops reacted and went round the pubs in the Gorbals lecturing to the customers and telling them to come forward and give evidence and they would be guarded. There were stories printed saying that some of us had ‘crucified’ a non-paying customer to the wooden floor of a house. This was a statement reported to have been issued by the police. Most of what they printed was nonsense.
My hopes during the first few days automatically lay with the Appeal Court and I applied to the prison authorities, saying I wanted to appeal against the conviction. I began to think it out very carefully as this was my last chance in life and I had no intention of putting it into the hands of anyone else. This time when I went to court I wanted to speak for myself…
Prison being what it is, one has to go to the Governor for permission to obtain what are known as Appellant visits. These are special visits over and above the normal quota for an appellant to gather material for his case. I went to my hall governor to get a special visit from a Mr Davidson. I told him the circumstances about wanting to speak on my own behalf and the need for a visit to get certain information. He began to hum and haw and stretch the whole thing out telling me he would give me an answer later in the day. That was it. I could take no more. Didn’t he realize what this meant to me? The anger came up from my toes and I swung a blow that knocked him from his chair and put him on the floor. I lifted a wooden inkwell but was pounced on from behind and put into the cell next door. I tore a piece of wood from the book shelving and stood with it in my hand, as they carried the Governor out. They waited some time allowing me to cool off and then cautiously opened the door, there was a mob of them. The screws said that everything was all right and I would be okay, that there would be no brutality handed out. I told them to remember that if there was brutality it wouldn’t end here, as I was now in for the rest of my life and would remember anyone who laid a finger on me. I was put into a solitary confinement cell and left alone without any harm done to me.
A short time later I heard the sound of heavy boots and the cell door opened. There stood the heavy mob all wearing coloured overalls and they told me to take off my clothes. I refused, saying that if they wanted to fight why didn’t they get on with it? I was told that there would be no brutality, all they wanted was my clothes for the cops. I thought this over and accepted that they were telling the truth as there were enough of them to beat me up with my clothes on. No sooner had I stripped off than some of them moved in punching and kicking me. I tried to hit back, calling them cowardly lumps of shit. There were shouts of anger, but they beat me to the floor, leaving me in a pool of blood. There is something totally humiliating about being brutalized when naked. Nakedness leaves a feeling of helplessness, and even though I was returning blows it felt as though they couldn’t hurt the person they landed on. There was this feeling of impotence. I lay on the floor in an absolute rage, hating myself for being such a bloody fool as to trust them.
Being a Life prisoner meant looking at prison in a totally different perspective. This experience resulting from my assault on the Governor meant that I had to rethink everything. It was obvious to me that my life style would have to change in order to survive in this jungle. Certainly I had lost my life, but not my will to live, to fight. The whole of my thought processes were undergoing a dramatic change. It dawned on me for the first time that my life sentence had actually started the day I left my Mother’s womb. Strangely enough I now found a new sense of freedom, which I had never experienced before; it was important to me. I decided that I would now live by my laws, not giving one fuck for society or the laws of society. Their very representatives, the media, were labelling me ‘Animal’, ‘Maniac’ and lots of other names. From now on I would totally reject everything and everyone and label them the ‘Dangerous Majority’ and the ‘Perpetuators of Fascism’. Who was society? I described them as being like every para-military organization on the government payroll, and all those silly ignorant bastards who would be brainwashed by the media, accepting their every word as being gospel. From now on the world could go to fuck. I hated everyone and distrusted everyone. They made it plain that they felt the same about me, so we all knew where we stood.