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Interview with John Bowden

Support John Bowden | 07.05.2007 21:16

An old interview with John Bowden from Schnews

John Bowden was arrested in 1980 for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992, after years of brutality and repression, he managed to escape and was on the run from the police for a year and a half. He was recaptured in March 1994 and has since been in Perth Prison in Scotland. Here he talks about various aspects of being inside, including the reasons as to why he committed murder and his subsequent politicisation.

How do you justify asking for our support, having taken a life?

The murder itself cannot be looked upon as an isolated incident, it has to be tied in with my history. Being identified as Irish I experienced racism as well as extreme poverty very early on in life. Unfortunately my instinctive rebellion against both sets of disadvantages was always blind and misdirected. I rebelled early by committing serious anti-social acts (I burnt a factory to the ground when I was nine!) and so was criminalised and incarcerated quite early on in life. I was fed into the ‘criminal justice system’ as a mere child and systematically brutalised and de-socialised to the extent where I became a complete outsider, made hard and violent by institutionalisation and predatory in my relationship to ‘straight’ society.

The writer Norman Mailer has drawn some interesting and profoundly accurate parallels between the condition of ‘state raised convicts’ (people who had literally grown up in penal institutions) and that of the rebellious slaves sold into the gladiator schools of ancient Rome. Both groups suffered extreme dehumanisation and were turned into killers - the gladiators so that they would kill each other for the entertainment of the rich; the state raised convicts so that they would represent the ultimate social folk devil from which ‘normal’ society must be protected and carefully policed against.

By the time I had reached my early twenties I had already spent the bulk of my time locked away in various prison-type institutions and had accumulated a long criminal record, composed mostly of violent offences, which were becoming increasingly more violent. There was therefore a certain inevitability about my arrest for murder in 1980 and subsequent imprisonment for life. Within a year of being sentenced I was involved in a highly publicised hostage taking incident at Parkhurst Prison when an assistant governor was seized in protest over the murder of a prisoner in the hospital wing. I was sentenced to an additional ten years imprisonment, on top of life, and buried in solitary confinement for over four years. At that point my life was effectively over, and yet in a very real sense it was only just beginning. Somehow in the midst of all that hopelessness, pain and repression I actually began to discover my true humanity and experienced a process of deep politicisation which drew me closer to my fellow prisoners and oppressed people everywhere. From a brutalised and anti social criminal I metamorphasised into a totally committed revolutionary.

My politicisation happened while I was being held in solitary confinement and I suppose it had the intensity of a religious conversion almost. I was held in solitary for over four consecutive years at one point and so read and thought a great deal, and began to make connections between the struggle that I’d been fighting all of my life, albeit in an individualistic and self-destructive way, and the far wider struggles of oppressed people everywhere. I was also radicalised by my direct experience of struggle in prison essentially because in its treatment of rebellious prisoners, the state always reveals its true nature which of course is pure fascism. Revolutionary politics helped me to properly contextualise my struggle in prison and also to sustain and inspire me when I experienced repression of the most brutal and soul-destroying sort.

...Malcolm X once described prisons as universities of revolution. I discovered myself in prison and also a sort of freedom that I had never before known - my body might have been imprisoned but my mind and spirit became completely liberated...

What’s it like being in prison?

The pain of my recapture and the soul-destroying reality of being back in prison wounded me terribly and at one point caused me to contemplate offering up my life in one final struggle against the system - but then you made contact and I felt as if I still had some link with the outside.

Life here is much the same; I eat, I exercise, I sleep. Someone once described prisons as huge human battery farms, designed simply to warehouse people and maintain their biological existence. We’re fed (badly), clothed and housed in tiny boxes devoid of even the most basic human comforts. Though physically sustained men are spiritually crushed and driven insane almost routinely.

One day there will be a ‘carnival of the oppressed’ (my favourite description of revolution) and these bastards will be held accountable for their actions.

During summer prison becomes even harder to endure and accept and right now my longing for freedom is so painfully overwhelming and desperate. I want to be away from this awful place and free to wander with the sun on my face and the sounds and colours of summer all around me.

There are moments here, especially in the early mornings when I first awake and struggle to make the psychological adjustment from dreams of freedom to the hard edged reality of captivity, when I feel totally overwhelmed by depression and deep deep sadness. It sometimes requires a real Herculean effort of will power just to climb upright each morning and endure yet another soul-destroying day in this place, another day filled with dead time and frustrated desires, with such a desperate craving for freedom. Prison is a veritable evil exactly because it is so deliberately designed and structured to destroy the human spirit. I feel that psychological and emotional violence very keenly.

The experience of such extreme oppression, however, will never break or diminish me because in a sense I’ve been held captive all my life and so have grown hardened to their efforts of breaking me. Being imprisoned wounds and injures me but never will it touch my essential core, that vital source of strength and resistance. Despite all the pain and hardship of prison, I do somehow manage to survive with dignity and integrity and even humour.

...no matter how overwhelmingly bad the odds, retain a powerful hope and belief in the possibility of struggle and a far better world as a result of it...

I’m fortunate that I have apolitical perspective on prisons and so can universalise my struggle and relate it to the struggle of oppressed people everywhere. That awareness does provide a real source of strength and hope in this situation. In prison, especially you learn to understand the importance of collective struggle and mutual support and there really is no way that I could endure and survive this experience merely as an individual prisoner, depending on my own individual dreams and hopes.

How important is it to write to prisoners?

Prison, more than anything, is designed to isolate and alienate people from any source of support on the outside, and it is exactly that sensation of isolation that often destroys prisoner activists and political prisoners especially. There is no greater feeling of demoralisation than that created by the feeling that one is completely alone and isolated here, because no matter how strong or committed one is we all still need to feel that we are part of a much wider struggle with comrades supporting and assisting us even if they are not physically present. If I know that people on the outside recognise and support my struggle here in prison then I can endure and continue to resist infinitely even if buried in the deepest solitary confinement unit. Your own expressions of solidarity are a constant inspiration and source of so much that makes life bearable at the moment. A single letter is always sufficient to restore my belief in struggling on and reaching beyond all that presently exists to oppress and crush me.

Support John Bowden

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

cruel and unnatural punishment

07.05.2007 23:22

1980 ? Twenty-Seven in in prison, unable to walk or fuck or breathe. Four years totally alone. 10 years for murder, 17 years for mouthing off when you witness an injustice.

And on the outside ? We keep quiet in case we lose out jobs. Oh, the shame.

Orca


what the fuck

08.05.2007 01:10

am i the only person who finds that 'society made me what i am' argument a bit of a dodging the question?

and can someone explain why some people think bowden accidentally killed someone in a drunken brawl and the papers think he chopped someones limbs off and kept their head in his fridge?

perturbed


That is a meaningless misreading of the situation

08.05.2007 06:03

"Some people" think a right load of cobblers, because they don't trust anything but what they read in the pages of right-wing press.

You think you can divide it into - a drunken murder where he gets support - and - a premeditated one where he doesn't - ?

After 25 of years of prison, of coming to terms with what he was, and what he wants to be, you want to deny him the validity of who he now understands himself to be?




nms


John Bowden has more integrity in his little finger...

08.05.2007 07:48

Interesting (and rather typical) to see some who style themselves as liberals or anarchists are actually even further to the right than the state. This man was being prepared for release, he has served hard time, and now the only thing standing in his way is that he refuses to denounce his politics and conspire in a libellous campaign to brand the ABC as a terrorist organisation. How much more integrity he has than the anonymous twerps who troll Indymedia spreading lies in order to undermine support for a prison militant. I see over on Libcom there are even cunts queuing up to slag off Jeff Luers.

R.James


State on Indymedia?

08.05.2007 08:09

I notice that almost all of the John Bowden threads on Indymedia have been trolled by a least one post spreading lies about Mr Bowden. Most if not all appear to have been posted by the same person using different pseudonyms - the same person who posted under the name 'Capricorn' on Libcon (his first post.)

One wonders whose interests are best served by smearing Mr Bowden so relentlessly.

Observer


Jeff Luers

08.05.2007 08:14

"I see over on Libcom there are even cunts queuing up to slag off Jeff Luers."

That really is the pits. But then I doubt anyone would ever be good enough for these wankers to support, they can always find excuses to do fuck all apart from bash away at there keyboards. I doubt their support is worth anything anyway.

BT


Shameful

08.05.2007 08:30

Just read some of that Libcom thread - I've never seen such fucking bollocks - and these people call themselfs anarchists??!!! That 'Capricorn' is like the pied fucking piper at the moment - comes out with some crap - and all the little muppets follow along. Funny how they all seem to think jails are packed out with child-molesters and seriel-killers rather than by (mostly) ordinary working class people.

Andy


re what he is doing time for NOW not 25 yrs ago

08.05.2007 14:07

yeah, i agree with most of yous, there have been some right reactionary comments on lib-com. i post on there as purplelibertariancommie and have posted, and had bad pm back from peeps. funny how bold they r when anonymous.
ain't got time so have just cut and posted an answer i put on another indymedia article

John Bowden isn't being kept in jail because of this murder, he is there for the politics he espouses today.

Today with the new S.O.C.P.A. more peeps are getting done for political protests and stuff, rather than this serious crime these pigs r meant to be addressing - why ain't they out getting nonces.

maybe u 2cents, who may never have considered prison a possibillity, could end up inside, even if only for weeks and months rather than years and decades.
It don't really "suit" many prisioners to become politically aware when they were not before, they clock how the other political and/or class war prisioners and prision resistance and activist cons r treated.
Not too many anarchists in the ranks of the POA.

are you still gonna stick to your politics, and have solidarity with other cons or keep yer head down.

john used to discuss politics a lot with me when we were in contact, never met him, but every book or political ramblings i went on, john had read or knew the gist of most of the books i was reading, and some i had read. He even sent me his copy of Revolutionary Suicide when i wanted to re-read it, and did not know where my copy was cos i was homeless and most nights in a tiny room in a b and b.

he did not become political when it suited him. he realised the true nature of the class war inside, as many have including george jackson and malcolm x.

he chose to do hard time, solidarity with other prisioners and resistance, which obviously carries a price.

F.T.S.
in solidarity
Caroline

btw i changed my name from caroline, my middle name to m.caroline F.T.S. cos i noticed that someone had put a comment on with caroline as a name as well. it was actually b4 my coment but i was so pissed with what i was reading i did not look at names proper lol

m.caroline F.T.S.
mail e-mail: kj10680@yahoo.co.uk


Jackals on libcom

08.05.2007 18:53

Hard to believe that pack of fucking jackals on libcom, what a bunch of morons. Some dodgy as fuck first-time poster dangles a bit of salacious bullshit in front of them and they've all swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Without even blinking an eye they're slagging off a prisoner who is getting shafted for his politics, and going into full-on hang em high mode. If this pack of idiots (with a few exceptions) are typical of libcon then all I can say is it is a disgrace to anarchism and has the level of debate you'd expect on stormfront - only possibly more to the right. How brave these pathetic little internet warriors can be when they're slagging off someone who can't answer back. John Bowden doesn't need the 'support' of these scum who are only fit for sitting on their arses, cowardly producing bile to assist the state.

Captain Birdseye


A good bloke

09.05.2007 00:59

I was in jail with John Bowden. he is a good bloke, always stuck up for his rights and for others. He seemed to know a lot of other cons, can't rembere anyone having a bad word to say about him, but plenty had good to say about him.

Paddy (Newcastle)


Demo for John, 25/5, Edinburgh

09.05.2007 21:42

Since this article has been 'promoted' and the newer call for a demo hasn't, I thought I would add the link:

"Please come and join us outside the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh on Friday 25th May at 2.00pm. Bring placards and banners."

Please publicise it on other forums and appropriate notice-boards too. Anywhere where anarchists take insult at being labelled 'terrorists', or anywhere ormer prisoners take insult at being imprisoned simply for sticking up for heir rights. I can take four folk in my garden and find digs for others.

Danny
- Homepage: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/370172.html


sahiba@hotmail.co.uk

19.11.2008 00:59

Hi John

Hope u r well! have u ever written anything on Stephen Lawrence report?? pls do reply

regards s x

Sahiba
mail e-mail: sahiba@hotmail.co.uk


Apologies to mr Ryan's family for my comments but this is a democracy.

16.12.2008 00:21

I have spoken to John on many occasions,there is no-one who regrets the events of that tragic day more than him.He is still living with the consequences of it.
Sorry,but mr Ryan was no innocent either.What was he doing up in that flat on the north peckham estate in the first place.They were all a bunch of piss-heads,hanging out getting blotto in a flat run by prostitutes.
So forget the image of the innocent man lured to his death by psychotic killer etc,and all the other tabloid elaborations.What tommy did was wrong,but who pulled the knife first?
Anyway i'm not writing this to try to white wash over any of it,but he is still banged up.All this time later the others went free years ago,why?
If the law of the land said the death penalty ok,but it said life.John's done effectively two.Just when is enough,enough?
He is a completely changed man,has qualifications in social care and has been allowed to work out in the community.Is it because of his beliefs,and who he communicated with he is still locked up?.
I would write for the gardening weekly if it allowed me to be heard and let the outside world know i was still alive.
Who am i? Well for the record i was boyhood pals with him and went to primary school together.I knew and liked Tommy then and still do,agreed he was a right little herbert.But we all were,growing up in The Old Kent road in the late 50's,early 60's it was like that.He is the first to admit he took the wrong path and has spent the best part of a life time trying to understand why he did.But the point is he is probably one of Britain's longest serving prisoners.
HE'S DONE HIS BIRD NOW LET HIM OUT!!!!
By the way,just who is this Anon wanker "Bowden raped my mother etc".What's your problem mate? Why don't you print your name?

jim clements
mail e-mail: rainbowboa48@safe-mail.net


Take responsibility for your actions

14.01.2012 23:28

Speaking of (quote) "bastards", shame no-one asked John Bowden to actually LIST his "mostly of violent offences" and list his victims

Existentialist


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