25-day prison riot in Manchester, England
The 1990 Strangeways Prison riot was a 25-day prison riot and rooftop protest at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England. The riot began on 1 April 1990 when prisoners took control of the prison chapel, and quickly spread throughout most of the prison. The incident ended on 25 April when the final five prisoners were removed from the rooftop. One prisoner was killed during the riot, and 147 prison officers and 47 prisoners were injured. Much of the prison was damaged or destroyed, with the cost of repairs coming to £55 million (equivalent to £ million in 2023). It was the longest prison riot in British penal history.
The riot was followed by a series of disturbances in prisons across England, Scotland and Wales, resulting in the British government announcing a public inquiry into the riots headed by Lord Woolf. The resulting "Woolf Report" concluded that conditions in the prison had been intolerable, and recommended major reform of the UK prison system. "The Guardian" described the report as a blueprint for the restoration of "decency and justice into jails where conditions had become intolerable".
Background.
Strangeways Prison, which opened in Manchester in 1868, was a "local prison" designed to hold prisoners from the surrounding area, mainly those on remand or serving sentences of less than five years. At the time of the riot, the main prison consisted of six wings connected by a central rotunda known as the Centre. Convicted adult prisoners were held in wings A, B, C and D, and convicted young offenders were held in E wing, which was physically separated from the Centre by gates. Convicted prisoners on Rule 43(a) were held on landings C1 and C2 of C wing, and remand prisoners on Rule 43(a) were held on the fourth landing on E wing. F wing contained administrative offices on the lower floor and the chapel on the upper floor. Remand prisoners were held in wings G, H, I and K of a separate prison, linked to the main prison through workshops and a kitchen. The Certified Normal Accommodation for Strangeways, the number of prisoners the prison was designed to hold, was 970. The population of the prison had increased in the months before the riot, from 1,417 in January 1990 to a peak of 1,658 on 27 March. On 1 April, the prison contained 1,647 prisoners – about 925 convicted adult prisoners, 500 remand prisoners and 210 convicted young offenders.
Prisoners felt their complaints about conditions were being ignored. Remand prisoners were only allowed out of their cells for eighteen hours per week, and Category A prisoners were locked in their cells for twenty-two hours a day, and rarely left their cells except for "slopping out", a one-hour exercise period each day or a weekly shower. In March 1990, Dominic Noonan was transferred from Strangeways to HM Prison Hull. Noonan was the organiser of the Prisoners' League Association (PLA), an organisation formed in 1989 which campaigned for prisoners' rights. Its aims included initiating legal proceedings against prison staff for mistreatment of prisoners and picketing outside prisons in which prisoners were mistreated. The PLA were active at Strangeways, and Noonan's transfer demonstrated prison officers were aware of rising tensions inside the prison.
On 26 March 1990, Barry Morton was taken to the "punishment block" and strip-searched after being visited by his mother, as prison officers believed she had brought drugs into the prison for him. During a struggle he sustained a black eye and swollen nose, and the following day he was released back into the main prison along with another prisoner, Tony Bush. Later the same day, Morton and Bush climbed onto the roof of the prison and staged a twenty-hour rooftop protest. On 31 March there was a thirty-minute sit-down protest in the chapel after a film was shown, which ended after a prison officer promised to listen to the prisoners' grievances. The same evening it is reported that a black prisoner was assaulted by prison officers in front of other prisoners, and injected with Largactil – a sedative used to control prisoners, known in prisons as the "liquid cosh". Prisoners then decided to stage a further protest in the chapel the following day, 1 April.
The riot.
Disturbance in the chapel.
Prison officers had advance warning that an incident would occur in the chapel on 1 April, and security was increased. Extra prison officers were used to escort prisoners to the service, and fourteen officers were inside the chapel supervising the service instead of the usual total of eight. An additional seven officers were also stationed in the vestry outside the chapel. The service was attended by 309 prisoners which was about the usual attendance, but all Rule 43(a) prisoners were prevented from attending as a precautionary measure. A senior prison officer believed the prisoners would attempt another sit-down protest with the possibility of hostage-taking, and instructed staff to evacuate the chapel if trouble began. At approximately 11:00am, a visiting Anglican minister had just delivered the sermon and the prison chaplain, Reverend Noel Proctor, stood to thank the minister when prisoner Paul Taylor took the microphone from him and addressed the congregation. Reverend Proctor was recording the service for distribution to a prayer group, and the subsequent events were recorded:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Noel Proctor: After that remarkable message that has...
Paul Taylor: I would like to say, right, that this man has just talked about blessing of the heart and a hardened heart can be delivered. No it cannot, not with resentment, anger and bitterness and hatred being instilled in people.
[General noise, over which]
A prisoner: Fuck your system, fuck your rules.
[Applause]
Noel Proctor: Right lads, sit down.
[More noise]
Noel Proctor: Right lads, down. Down. Come on, this is no way to carry on in God's house.
[More noise]
A prisoner: Fuck your system.
[More noise]
Noel Proctor: Right lads, sit down. This is completely out of order. Sit down.
A prisoner: Why is it? It's been waiting to happen for ever. It will never change.
Noel Proctor: Come on. This is terrible.
[More noise, banging, shouting, cheering]
Noel Proctor: All of you who want to go back to your cells go the back of the church please.
A prisoner: What? You're a fucking hypocrite, you.
Noel Proctor: I'm trying to help you, to keep you.
A prisoner: Leave it, mate.
[More noise until microphone goes dead]
As Proctor was appealing for calm, a prisoner brandishing two sticks shouted out, "You've heard enough, let's do it, get the bastards". Other prisoners responded by donning masks and brandishing weapons, and three prison officers started to leave the chapel as earlier instructed. A set of keys was taken from a prison officer when a number of officers were attacked by prisoners wielding fire extinguishers, table legs and fire buckets. A number of prisoners attempted to leave the chapel via the vestry; at the same time, the seven prison officers there attempted to gain entry to the chapel. Once they managed to do so, the officers were attacked by prisoners, and a second set of keys was taken from one of them. Some prisoners helped to get Proctor and injured officers to a place of safety via the vestry, while others barricaded entrances to the chapel or attempted to gain access to the roof.
The riot spreads.
The prison officers guarding the gates outside the chapel abandoned them, and ran towards the Centre. The prison officer in charge of the Centre saw his colleagues running from the direction of the chapel, but due to the presence of scaffolding he was in a poor position to view the upper levels and mistakenly assumed he saw prisoners running from the chapel. He informed other officers on C1 and D1 of this and, upon hearing that prisoners were in possession of keys, told them and officers on A1 that they should evacuate the prison. Governor Morrison, who was responsible for the main prison, then ordered officers to evacuate the Centre at 11:13 am as he mistakenly believed prisoners had entered the Centre. By this time prisoners had gained access to the roofs of E and F wings, and from there gained access to other wings by making holes in unprotected office ceilings.
The prisoners found A and B wings unsupervised as the prison officers had already evacuated, and began to free other prisoners who were still locked in their cells. The prison officer in charge of the first landing of C wing was ordered to evacuate, and with the help of three other officers evacuated the 73 Rule 43(a) prisoners being held there, being fearful for the safety of the prisoners who were regarded as sex offenders. Due to rioting prisoners entering the wing, the officers were unable to evacuate a further seven Rule 43(a) prisoners who were being held on the second landing.
Rioting prisoners also gained access to E wing, where the Rule 43(a) prisoners had been left locked in their cells after the prison officers evacuated. A number of these Rule 43(a) prisoners were attacked by rioting prisoners. One such prisoner was Derek White, who was being held on remand on charges of indecent assault and buggery. White later died in North Manchester General Hospital on 3 April after being admitted suffering from head wounds, a dislocated shoulder and chest pains.
At 11:43 am rioting prisoners were seen approaching the remand prison, which was still secure. The prison governor, Brendan O'Friel, arrived at the prison at 11:55 am and gave orders to defend the remand prison. He later recalled that:
By 12 o'clock when I came in it looked as if we'd lost control of the whole thing. My first decision was to send a Governor 5 back up to the remand prison to see if we could hold it, but it was too late. That decision, had it been taken half an hour earlier, would have meant we could have held the remand prison, meaning we could have kept another 400 locked up. Assuming the doors would have held, that sort of thing. But we had about 200 staff on duty, and we must have lost nine or ten casualties of one sort or another and then you lose staff getting the casualties out. We didn't have a lot of the staff come pouring in until about 1 o'clock. I tell you what really bugged us was there an element of April Fool about it. We rang staff up about it, who said "You must be joking, is this an April Fool?" That's what happened when they rang up my home, my son thought it was an April Fool.
Rioting prisoners gained access to the remand prison at 12:20 pm through the kitchens in G wing, and began freeing prisoners who were still locked in their cells using stolen keys or improvised tools such as iron bars and fire extinguishers. At this point the rioting prisoners were in control of all accommodation wings of the prison. A large number of prisoners were on the prison roof, and roof tiles and other missiles were thrown at prison officers on the ground. Rioting inside the prison continued with cells being damaged and fires being started, and at 3:40 pm the Public Relations Department of the Home Office issued a statement:
At 11 am a disturbance started in the chapel at Strangeways Prison when some 300 prisoners attacked staff. Those prisoners then gained access to the chapel roof and then broke into the living accommodation in the main prison. Other prisoners, including those on remand, joined in the disturbance and staff had to be withdrawn. The perimeter is secure.
Between 2 pm and 5 pm approximately 800 prisoners had surrendered, and arrangements were made for them to be transferred to other prisons. At 8 pm Governor O'Friel agreed that prison officers should enter E wing, and at 8:05 pm approximately ten Control &amp; Restraint (C&amp;R) units each consisting of twelve prison officers entered the wing. By 8:10 pm all four landings of E wing had been secured, and one C&amp;R unit progressed to the Centre where they fought with rioting prisoners. This was reported to O'Friel, who instructed the officers not to move beyond E wing. Scaffolding poles and other missiles were thrown at the C&amp;R teams from the roof area above the fourth landing in E wing, and when prisoners broke onto the wing the C&amp;R teams withdrew at 0:22 am on 2 April, leaving prisoners in control of