It’s more than a decade since the death of Margaret Thatcher but her cruel legacy lives on in various ways with a fractured society, huge inequality, crumbling public services, weakened trade unions, post-industrial decay and hollowed out institutions. She deprived children of free school milk, was homophobic and believed in capital punishment. She sowed the seeds for the culture wars that persist today, amplified by the right wing press and online algorithms. Sadly the cult of Thatcher’s individualism is still with us; neither the Blair government nor the current Labour administration have been capable of promoting an alternative.
The political columnist Hugo Young wrote in The Guardian in 2003 how Thatcher changed the temperature of Britain and the British, fathering “…a mood of tolerated harshness.”
One of Thatcher’s less discussed policies (even today) was the Tory manifesto promise to give young offenders ‘a short, sharp shock’ at detention centres across the country in an effort to turn them away from a life of crime. In most cases this harsh policy proved ineffective, often resulting instead in former inmates spending their blighted lives in and out of prison, frowned on by friends and family, turning to drink and drugs, incapable of holding down a job or integrating into society. In addition to the social stigma many of these young men also carried deep and lasting scars from horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of sadistic guards, including serious violence and sexual abuse as well as psychological trauma.
In the North East of England both Medomsley Detention Centre near Consett and Kirklevington Detention Centre near Yarm have been named as sites where systematic abuse took place. Medomsley is now an Immigration Removal Centre for women, renamed Derwentside IRC and the target of a vigorous local campaign to close it down.
Neville Husband, a prolific abuser who worked in the kitchen at Medomsley, went on to work at Deerbolt YOI near Barnard Castle with subsequent reports of similar abuse coming to light. He later worked in local churches in Gateshead but his past eventually caught up with him and in 2003 he was jailed for abusing five teenagers at Medomsley. He died in 2010 a year after his release, having served just over half his sentence.
Special Investigation
We are not talking about a few isolated cases. It is thought that between 1961 and 1988 (when Medomsley Detention Centre closed) many thousands of boys and young men were likely subjected to regular beatings and sexual abuse. Some tried to report their abusers to the authorities but their complaints were brushed off. To date only a handful of perpetrators have been brought to justice, but, with the help of legal experts, therapists, journalists and now theatre professionals, this dark period of British history is beginning to receive proper attention with a Special Investigation commissioned by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman due to publish its report by the end of the year.
Bad Lads
Whilst the Special Investigation is solely focused on assessing the role, behaviour and possible culpability of the relevant authorities at the time, who appeared to turn a blind eye to what was going on, ‘Bad Lads’ produced by Graeae Theatre Company is a new play by Mike Kenny created from a story by Jimmy Coffey and the testimonies of other Medomsley men, which offers an important perspective. Coffey arrived at Medomsley aged 17 for a three month stint following a daft late-night prank with a stolen milk-float. What happened both behind closed doors and in plain sight changed Coffey’s life immeasurably
The production utilises the skills of three actors with Robin Paley Yorke as the young Jackie and Danny Raynor as his troubled older self, finally opening up about his trauma more than three decades on. In true Graeae style a third actor, Craig Painting, plays a signing Jackie. The gestural language of BSL adds depth to the production, often conveying more than words can say. Indeed it is sometimes hard to listen to the text which recounts horrific details of beatings, sexual assault and gang rape.
Throughout the play Jackie is in dialogue with himself, the older man repeatedly asking the boy why he didn’t do anything to stop the abuse, to report the perpetrators, to seek justice. Meanwhile, young Jackie acts as a memory prompt, coaxing his older self to dig deep, mining painful experiences that have lain buried for decades, for example, details from Husband’s living room where the abuse sometimes took place.
At times the three actors work as one, in concert with one another, repeating certain phrases over and over. At other times they step away from the main protagonist role to represent key figures from this true-life horror story – prison guards who likely knew about the abuse but said nothing, family members who were kept in ignorance, other juvenile victims, and the evil perpetrators (for whom there must be a special place in Hell).
Director, Jenny Sealey, proves that she is a safe pair of hands for this most sensitive of stories, taking care of the audience with well-being guides and a table of resources in case we had a wobble, and taking care of the actors as well as the victims who opened up and offered their testimonies. After the performance Jenny introduced me to Jimmy who had overcome his initial terror about seeing his life played out on the stage and was watching for the third time. He was planning to take his wife and grown-up daughter to see the production when it tours to Liverpool Everyman at the beginning of November, and was genuinely glad that someone had at last put the victims centre stage, giving them a voice that has largely been denied to them. He is one of the lucky ones, having received therapy to help deal with the trauma and shame he continued to experience for years afterwards. He is now hoping for an official apology for all the victims which would go some way to addressing the terrible wrong that was done all those years ago.
The testimonies were collected and crafted into a performance text by playwright Mike Kenny, more usually known for his enchanting children’s theatre. Kenny and Graeae director, Jenny Sealey, spent several years in discussion about the project before laying down the foundations. It has not been an easy journey, especially in the current funding climate where risk-averse, cash-strapped theatres are unlikely partners. Huge credit then to Live Theatre for recognising that this is an important story, in the same vein as the Post Office scandal, that needs to be told.
The play opened at Live Theatre at the beginning of October before touring venues across the country. It returns to the region, playing at Stockton ARC on 14 and 15 November.
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