'misadventure' the Mass Killer Strikes Again

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Demonstrators protest the plight of Irish political prisoners Yet why wac he kent for the 10 different prisons in four years? than drugs was ignored by th period? general attitude of the Home Why was Office to medical treatment of of the forces of the state.

A less publicised case has centred on i the death in Walton Prison of George Wilkinson, a 33 year old convict who took his own life by refusing food and liquid for an incredible 17 days.

Hunger strikers normally take liquids to avoid the violent agony of immediate and total dehydration.

Wilkinson died on 5 December 1979 in the most physically allur way bossole. l was und only way he could escape from systematic and patient campaign by the prison authorities to break his spirit:

In Wilkinson's case it is not so much a question of who killed him but of who destroyed his sanity.

The inquest ended last Wednesday with a verdict of "'misadventure" and with an almost total media silence on the crucial questions involved.

In order to forestall the anger of Wilkinson's family and friends and to defuse any public campaign, the press and the state painted George Wilkinson as 'Britain's most violent nrisnner"

He was presented as a raging animal with colossal physical strength and given to uncontrollahla fite at rama In fact, for the last two years at least, Wilkinson had been reduced to the state of vegetable rather than animal and even the prison authorities could find no fault with his conduct during that period.

LONC KESH last 18 months of his existence in a caged cell in solitary confinement with a brick wall specially built to block off the view from the one obligatory window?

Why was he shunted round LONG KESH FRAUMAIN *=.

Why was he in solitary confinement for nearly all of that The subjected to daily taunts and insults by warders from the other side of special mesh and bars?

And why was he pumped full of massive drug doses and given electric shock treatment?

Faced with this sustained and co-ordinated campaign Wilkinson clearly took the only decision he had left within his power-he decided to starve himself to death.

There is no doubt that George Wilkinson was a violent and aggressive man when first imprisoned. But his fate seems to nave been sealed when he go tn have hean canlad whan ha rat involved in two hostage-taking incidents while in prison.

Though neither incident was CANTDA AIT AID COATTAC cerinue and the wardere roncerned were unharmed, the mere fact that he refused to bend down before "screws' meant that he had to be broken.

Coming from close working class family in Durham, he was sent as far away as possible to Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight, then shuttled around 10 other remote prisons from August 1975 to December 1979.

He was consistently refused permission to marry his fiancee. He became a human guinea pig for psychotropic drugs.

The only prison doctor to attempt to treat Wilkinson throuch nsvchnanalusis rather authorities and has now left the prison service in protest at the prisoners. at the don minne In each of the ten prisons STEELE DANERS doctors pronounced him mentally and physically fit yet he was continuously treated as mentally ill (at one stage he was on 900 mg of Largactyl a day). And all this took place (and is without doubt taking place today) in Walton Jail, Liverpool and in prisons throughout the country. • Dubious tales of what goes on in Soviet mental hospitals, tales so beloved by the bourgeois press, are often trotted nut under the hanner of 'human rights'. But what 'rights' TO TAITINA ATTA does capitalism offer to workers on demonstrations; on picket lines. in police custody or in prison?

The cases of Blair Peach, Jimmy Ke ly and George Wilkinson ar : the tip of a very ugly iceberg.

The time is long overdue for a workers' enquiry into the activities of the forces of the state.

Such an enquiry cannot ignore atrocities committed by the British troops and RUC in the occupied North of Ireland:

The time is approaching when the state will certainly resort to the most violent methods of attacking workers who come forward in struggle.

The refusal of the present labour movement leaders to take up such questions can only l disarm such workers at the most crucial time.

Chief warder Whitelaw