A British Inmate Protested on the Roof of a Prison for Almost Three Days

Last night, Stuart Horner, the convicted murderer who's been perching on top of his prison for the last three nights, finally came down from the roof of HMP Manchester in a cherry picker. In handcuffs, arms aloft, the pizza and fizzy pop he'd requested sitting next to him, he shouted to those gathered in the street: "I've done what I wanted—I've had a mad one."

But what did he really want? No one climbs onto the roof of a prison for 60-odd hours just for a can of soda. Largely, the press has focused on Horner's conviction for murder, without much notice given to his motivation: the supposedly dire conditions within the prison. In the comments on these articles, as well as on social media, the tone has been frequently unsympathetic: shoot him down; to hell with him.

Outside Strangeways prison yesterday, however, while Horner was still up on the roof, there was plenty of support on the ground. A crowd had gathered for what was part-rave, part-protest rally, organized by Party Protest Manchester (PPM), which received national attention after chasing members of fascist groups Combat 18 and Far Right Infidels out of Manchester city center with house music and sarcastic chants. Emma Leyla Mohareb, one of the organizers of PPM's Strangeways protest, was outside, drumming up support for prisoners' rights and for Horner himself.

"Stuart Horner was falsely imprisoned," she claimed. "All they've got on him are two statements. No DNA. No gun. And this is all because of cuts in legal aid. These cuts meant Stuart couldn't afford a barrister, which means he's in there, and he's had enough."

She added: "We've heard that the prison haven't fed the inmates for two days, and [have] cut off the electricity to try and get him back inside [HMP Manchester were unavailable for comment]. If he does, the inmates will turn on him and god knows what'll happen. If they end up beating him up, the police will just say it was all out of their hands. Stuart has been falsely convicted and his human rights have been violated—and so have his fellow prisoners."

Throughout the day, passing drivers beeped their horns in support. People skinned-up and danced in the street, shouting support from beyond the prison perimeter.

The music was cut suddenly at one point to allow Horner to shout from the rooftop about prison guards attacking the inmates. No one could see inside the prison to verify this, and the police didn't acknowledge his claims. In fact, the only thing that could be confirmed by a member of the police was that many of the inmates on D-wing were being moved out of the prison for everyone's safety. As the vans carrying the inmates drove by, you could hear banging from the inside, in time with the music (lots of bassline, some Vic Mensa, some Dej Loaf) blasting out of the PA.

When night fell, the numbers picked up. Around 150 people were scattered around the area—a mix of protesters and those who just wanted to see what was going on while enjoying a beer and a spliff, splitting their attention between the man on the roof and the teenagers outside doing wheelies on their mountain bikes. The road outside had been shut down, thanks to a roadblock of protesters' bodies, and people peacefully milled around as Horner waved a makeshift flag in the dark. And then, weirdly, some people did the Macarena.

'Party protesters' do the Macarena outside Strangeways. This is so, so bizarre. pic.twitter.com/WvY7O0kgFk
— Todd Fitzgerald (@TFitzgeraldMEN) September 15, 2015

Speaking to those in attendance, the same sentiment kept coming up. One woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "I heard about this and came down here for prisoners' rights—it isn't about what he's done… how bad must it be in there to have to do all that?"

By "all that," she was referring to the fact that Horner had scaled fences, reached the roof, and stayed outside from Sunday until around 3 AM Wednesday morning. Police had failed to negotiate with the inmate, and in the middle of a sit-down protest to stop traffic, a huge cheer erupted as a cherry picker was sent to the roof to try to get Horner down again. The next time they asked, he would finally relent.

A first-time protester who didn't want to be named had a makeshift sign around his neck that read: "Inmates R Still Human." He told us: "I've never done anything like this before. I'm here for all the inmates who have been mistreated. It's not about what he's done—he's sticking up for everyone, and I want to do the same. There's people here who have been in there, and loads who haven't, but everyone knows how bad it is."

Another protester added: "My brother is in there, so I came down here because I'm standing up for people in prison."

There were dissenting voices, too. One woman angrily spat: "It isn't fair that everyone's visiting hours are cancelled because of one man. I mean, he's a murderer—they proved it. They tried him. He's guilty." Her friend chipped in, saying that the whole thing was "a fucking piss-take—would they be out here if he was a rapist?"

Horner's mother, Susan, had previously said: "He did say a few weeks ago that there was going to be a riot because of how things were inside. I know he has done wrong, but surely he shouldn't have to be locked up 23 hours a day. But doing this, especially on his own, will achieve nothing."

Related: Watch VICE News go inside a maximum security prison in 'Murder, Mayhem, and Meditation'

There was sympathy for the guards at the prison, too. One attendee said that, while they were there to demonstrate for prisoners' rights, they also felt "sorry for the screws—it's shit for them, too. The conditions are bad and there's hardly any staff. They're getting it off the inmates, and they haven't enough people to control everyone."

Earlier this week, the Prison Officers Association talked about how the lack of staff at HMP Manchester has resulted in rising levels of violence."In the last five weeks, six staff and 23 prisoners have been assaulted, and in the same period there have been 19 incidents of self-harm at Manchester," they said in a statement on Monday. "This has to be addressed as a matter of urgency."

This protest comes 25 years after the famous Strangeways Riots of 1990, which, like this, were the result of poor conditions. The 25-day protest was the longest in British penal history and attracted worldwide attention, but it seems there haven't been enough changes implemented since then to stop further demonstrations.

Lord Woolf, who compiled a report on prison reforms following the original riots at Strangeways, has criticized the ban on legal aid for prisoners, referring to it as "wrong, absolutely wrong." With the prison population twice what it was 25 years ago, Woolf says previous improvements have been neglected because of "competition between different politicians to see who could sound the toughest on crime—and, for that, read [tough on] prisoners. They concentrated on sounding tough and, as a result, forced themselves into a dead-end where they couldn't do the reforms they might otherwise have wanted to do."

While Horner's guilt was being debated outside the prison, one thing is for sure: there's a real need for a conversation about the state of British prisons. While on the roof, Horner shouted: "I'm doing this on behalf of everyone here. Sort the jail out. I'm sick of it here. I want to change prison history."

This was met with prisoners loudly cheering and calling from their cells, which you could hear from the barred-up windows. At the rally outside, there were calls for prisoners around the UK to join in the protest.

While Horner's protest may well be too brief to carry any real weight across the country (and ended on something of a damp squib, with a bit of junk food), it has again raised conversation about the state of British prisons and the cuts to legal aid. When both inmates and guards agree on the matter, it's clear that British prisons are failing everyone involved.

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