MR. TERENCE GALLOGLY (Hansard, 18 January 1977)

§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)
rose—

§ Mr. Tim Renton (Mid-Sussex)
I had risen before the motion for the Adjournment was moved, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I ask the Minister to set out the Government's intentions in the light of this crushing rebuff of their hopes to change the shape and size of Hansard?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine)
Order. This is now taking time out of the Adjournment debate.

§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon
I rise to address the House on the issue of a man who was imprisoned at Wakefield Prison at the material time from June 1976, serving the last six months of his sentence on the pre-release prison hostel scheme. His name is Terence Gallogly. In my view he has been treated with a measure of injustice which I hope I shall find words capable of explaining but which my powers of oratory may well fail to encompass.
Before he went to prison this man was a diligent trade unionist, and at the time he was on the prison hostel scheme he was employed by a firm of tubular garden furniture makers in Batley. The firm was called Aronsteads. The man found to his surprise that the firm was not unionised. It contained about 30 per cent. Asian workers and 40 per cent. women workers. In his view they were getting a raw deal from the firm and would benefit from trade union organisation.
Therefore, with the assistance of the area organiser of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers he formed a branch at the firm and he was one of a number of shop stewards who were elected by the first meeting of the branch. It is interesting to note, in the light of later developments, that the Asian employees thought that they should have an Asian shop steward of their own.
290 They selected an Asian who was the holder of a disabled person's green card and who was prevented by his disability from working at a machine standing. Nevertheless, the information about the branch meeting, which was held in a local public house, was obviously received by the manager after the lunchtime adjournment, and that very afternoon the Asian shop steward was put on a machine which meant that he would have to stand for the rest of the day. When at the end of the day he protested, he was dismissed. Such was the attitude of the firm towards the establishment of a union in its employment.
The first that I heard about the position of Mr. Gallogly was when he came to see me on 2nd October. The date is material. He then explained to me in words which I later recounted to the Minister in the first letter that I sent him that he had been warned by the prison authorities that he could not carry out the functions of a shop steward as a prisoner on the hostel release scheme, and if he continued in that capacity the firm was objecting and he would have to be withdrawn from the firm, which would mean his return to prison.
I asked the Minister on 13th October to investigate this matter because I did not think that it could be right. It took the Home Office until the middle of November to reply. That reply proving unsatisfactory, there has been further correspondence. But the whole matter has been so delayed that I have not been able to get redress for Mr. Gallogly before he left prison at the end of his sentence on 20th December.
Such are the antiquated procedures of this House that, to call the Executive to account for what I regard as its maladministration, I have been seeking to get an Adjournment debate since the middle of December. I have only come up in the Ballot this week, only to find that we are discussing the matter at 2.30 in the morning. Such is the way in which Parliament is supposed to be able to try to control the Executive.
This means that the effective redress for Mr. Gallogly has been missed and that nothing that I say now will lead to effective redress by Government. He is himself taking action before the industrial 291 tribunal a week on Monday, I think, to try to get some sort of compensation or reinstatement to make up for his dismissal. I am concerned tonight with the Government's part in this, particularly that of Wakefield Prison.
After I had written to Lord Harris, I received a notification that Gallogly had been withdrawn from the hostel back to the prison. It was alleged that this was because he had intervened on behalf of an employer who had been attacked with a bayonet by one of the foremen and that as a result of his intervention the foreman had been dismissed. It was alleged by the prison that the firm was claiming that other foremen had threatened to injure Gallogly because of his intervention.
Gallogly himself, from his inquiries of the firm, does not believe that there ever was such a threat, although it is fair to say that the managing director of the firm confirmed to me that he had had that threat expressed to him by shop stewards. However, it is clear that it was not that and that alone which caused the prison authorities to withdraw Gallogly from the hostel scheme: the firm had been pressing for his withdrawal for some time before the incident with the bayonet.
He was removed on 22nd October, the very day of the incident, and taken back to Wakefield. On 11th October, after some Press publicity about the matter and, I think, demonstrations outside the prison, he was sent back to the hostel. There the warden told him that the firm would not re-employ him and that he must look for work elsewhere in the area.
Mr. Gallogly says that he took the view that it might prejudice his appeal to the industrial tribunal if he were to obtain other work elsewhere. He wanted to be reassured that that was not the case by the union's legal adviser. He therefore told the warden that he would not apply for other work until he had received that reassurance.
He was seen only hours later by the assistant governor and repeated the same refusal to him. I make the point because later in the correspondence Lord Harris, the Home Office Minister responsible for the Prison Department, claimed in a letter to me that Gallogly had refused absolutely to take work. That was untrue. I am 292 convinced that Lord Harris said that in innocence, on instructions he had been given, and that therefore he had been deceived by the prison about the real nature of Gallogly's refusal.
Gallogly actually went to the trouble of writing out a statement to the assistant governor which made perfectly plain that his refusal was conditional only on obtaining the necessary reassurances from the union's legal adviser, and he had originally told this to the hostel warden, Mr. Rock, only hours before he wrote out that document to the assistant governor. It is untrue that, as Lord Harris later claimed, Gallogly told different stories at different times.
I say for the record that when I first heard the story in October I was inevitably sceptical about it and waited to hear what was the Prison Department's version of the story. In the welter of stories that I have heard since then everything that Mr. Gallogly told me has been confirmed from some other source. Although there has been a degree of hard lying from somebody in this story, I am convinced that it was not from him. I suspect that it was either from the Prison Department or the firm. The Prison Department claims that the firm was pressing it to withdraw Gallogly even before the bayonet incident, but in a telephone call to me representatives of the firm claimed that they were not and that they never asked for him to be removed until after the bayonet incident, when there was a threat to his life.
They say that he was never appointed shop steward, but I have a letter from the area organised of the AUEW which states that his appointment as shop steward had been confirmed. The prison authorities claim that it is not against prison hostel regulations for a man to be a member of a union or to be a shop steward. Nevertheless, I have a letter written by the AUEW organiser on 8th October recounting a conversation which he had with Mr. Rock, the warden of the hostel, in which he said that Mr. Rock told him that it would not be in Gallogly's interests to go on as a shop steward because his action in raising a complaint with the manager could, technically, lead to a breach of the regulations covering his present circumstances as a prisoner on the hostel pre-release scheme.
293 In the letter, which was written by the organiser to Mr. Gallogly, the organiser stated that in his view the presence of Mr. Gallogly as shop steward would be extremely valuable. He also stated: Your manner and experience could greatly assist the introduction of better relationships at the firm. Several points arising from that letter are technical and some have implications for the future. First, I take the view that what Mr. Gallogly did was admirable. He organised a union, even though it might well have prejudiced his position as a prisoner awaiting release. He organised it in a way that was regarded by the union's area organiser as admirable, and when he was warned by the prison hostel warden that he might be withdrawn, he nevertheless went on with his activities because he regarded it as right to do so. I regard that as admirable and worthy of commendation. The way in which he was treated by the prison was despicable. My question is whether that was the fault of the firm or of the prison.
I accept that the situation was unusual. There cannot be many prisoners who act as shop stewards in a firm. One of the warders once told the district organiser that he was surprised that a man serving four years for smuggling drugs should be accepted as a shop steward by the AUEW. I think that there was that antipathy towards Mr. Gallogly in any event. But it is equally clear from what Mr. Rock said to the union organiser, and from my conversations with the assistant governor at Wakefield, that the prison authorities were not clear whether Mr. Gallogly could be a shop steward in those circumstances, and that they gave indications to the firm that they would not countenance that kind of activity. The firm therefore had a ready get-out when it did not like what Mr. Gallogly was doing.
In effect, the firm did not want to have a union on its premises. It wanted to break the union if it could, and it started by sacking the Asian shop steward. It then wanted to get rid of Mr. Gallogly. If Mr. Gallogly had not been a prisoner, there can be no doubt that the firm would not have risked industrial action by the AUEW simply because somebody else in the firm had threatend physical violence to Mr. Gallogly because he was honour- 294 ably undertaking shop steward duties. It would have been deterred by the thought that that might precipitate industrial action.
What the firm managed to do was to get the prison to remove Mr. Gallogly, and it is now claiming that it did not dismiss him. Clearly it did, but that is an issue that will arise at the industrial tribunal, and I do not intend to deal with it at great length now. I do not see how the industrial tribunal can decide anything other than that the firm dismissed him. It had been pressing the prison for some time to get rid of him, and eventually the prison withdrew him.
I argue that because of a misunderstanding, or perhaps because they did not like the idea of any of their prisoners being members of a union, the prison authorities co-operated with the firm in anti-union activity. If that were to continue, it would be a disgrace for a Labour Government to countenance that kind of policy. I want from my hon. Friend the Minister a firm assurance that all prisons engaged in the hostel release scheme will be told that any prisoner can join a union and take any effective part in it that he wishes; that he is not restricted because he is a prisoner; that if there is industrial action he will he treated in exactly the same way as if he were not a prisoner; and that it will not count against him in terms of disciplinary treatment and his removal from the hostel premises.
I also want the prison authorities to make plain that it was not their original wish that the man should be withdrawn from Aronsteads, and that the pressure for his withdrawal originally came from Aronsteads alone. That is a material piece of evidence for the industrial tribunal.
I hope that no such incident will ever occur again. That is why I have raised the matter. I am only sorry that I could not persuade Lord Harris to change his mind about putting the man back on the hostel scheme so that he could take steps against Aronsteads then. I am equally sorry that I could not raise the issue in the House whilst Mr. Gallogly was still in prison, so that it had more relevance to his condition then, but I hope that something will be gained for other prisoners in the future.

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Brynmor John)
My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Lyon) will readily know that it was not the Executive which denied him the opportunity of taking up this matter at an earlier stage in the proceedings. I shall try to answer my hon. Friend in the short time that remains to me in this debate.
It is important to know that the prerelease scheme is one by which selected prisoners sentenced to four years or more are enabled to spend their last six months before release in a hostel, thus helping them to take their place in society again. But the fact is that they are still prisoners and still under the control of the governor of the prison. A hostel warden is responsible to the governor for the good management of his hostel. It is part of the duty of the governor to return the man to prison if the governor thinks it right to do so. That is a provision contained in the form signed by each prisoner before he goes to the hostel. Mr. Gallogly signed such a form.
A further point is that the pre-release employment scheme is dependent for its success on the good will of the employer. Hostel wardens do a great deal of hard work on behalf of prisoners to fit them into jobs in a situation that is by no means easy.
I turn to the case of Mr. Gallogly. There are a number of disputes of fact and a number of questions on which the versions differ. It may assist my hon. Friend if I give brief particulars of our understanding of the case.
Mr. Gallogly started work on 28th June 1976 with Aronsteads Limited. As I understand the situation, it is a non-union firm, but I also understand—I go no further than that—that the firm does not object to its employees belonging to a union if they so wish. However, the rights and wrongs of the industrial scene are matters between the employers and the employees and trade unions concerned and not for the Home Office.
Mr. Gallogly believed that a recognised union branch could be established in the firm, and he started activity to that end. The hostel warden advised him that he was entitled to be a member of a trade union, but that if the firm dismissed him or asked the governor to withdraw him, 296 he might have to return to prison until another employment opportunity arose. That is spelt out in the form he signed before he went into the hostel scheme.
What happenedmdash;and I realise that the versions do not tally substantially—was that, following an incident in the firm, threats of physical violence were made against Mr. Gallogly by other employees, and Aronsteads asked for Mr. Gallogly to be withdrawn in his own interests. That was done on 26th October and he was returned to prison and not to the hostel because, in the governor's judgment, he would have been at more risk had he still been in the hostel.
I want to repudiate the allegation that Mr. Gallogly was sent back to prison to punish him for union activities. The reason that prompted the governor to return him to prison was a desire to secure the man's own protection. He was not being penalised for his union activities.
On 11th November the governor decided that the cooling-off period had been completed and that it was right that Mr. Gallogly should go back to the hostel. Again there is a difference of fact. My instructions on this version are that during the interview with the hostel warden Mr. Gallogly gave no reason for his failure to co-operate, but he did do so during an interview with the assistant governor at a later period during the day.

§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon
Why is it that Lord Harris told me in a letter that Mr. Gallogly had given different accounts on different occasions when it is now accepted that on the first occasion he gave no account of his reasons at all? I have a letter written on the day by Mr. Gallogly to his wife describing what he had told the warden of the hostel. That is consistent with what he later told the assistant governor.

§ Mr. John
My understanding is that when Mr. Gallogly was interviewed by the hostel warden he gave no such reason, but later did give one to the assistant governor. It could make no legal difference to the prisoner whether he was in prison or in the hostel; nor would his seeking other employment affect the issue. Nevertheless, Mr. Gallogly wished to be assured on that point, and since he could not reside in the hostel without 297 working or seeking work, he was retained in prison until his release on 20th December.
I emphasise that there is no question of a prisoner being punished for union activities or of depriving him of his union rights. Neither did the prison act as an agent on behalf of the firm by removing Mr. Gallogly without the firm being laid open to legal liability. Whether an employee wishes to belong to a trade union is a matter for him and not the Home Office or the Prison Department. Whether an employer wishes to recognise a union is a matter between him, the employees and the appropriate union. The pre-release rules allow union membership.
I cannot accept my hon. Friend's version of the position. Such a man is still a prisoner and the governor still has a responsibility for his safety and a responsibility to avoid his being put into positions of possible violence. I ask my hon. Friend to consider what would have happened—and the criticism to which the Home Secretary would have been subject—had an incident involving violence occurred without the governor having taken steps to deal with the matter.
The decision was taken in the interests of the safety of Mr. Gallogly and not for any reason connected with the firm. We were not concerned to act as the agent of that firm and the governor had to judge whether to remove Mr. Gallogly in his 298 own interests at that stage. I am satisfied that the decision was a reasonable one in all the circumstances.

§ Mr. Alexander W. Lyon
Is it not correct that the firm had asked for Mr. Gallogly to be removed before the incident—whether or not for his own safety—and the governor acted on that request?

§ Mr. John
Certainly the firm advised the governor. I am speaking of the governor's motive and his motive was not to oblige the firm but to act in the interests of the man's safety. A request for withdrawal in Mr. Gallogly's own interests was made by the firm and once that withdrawal had been made the firm did not accept Mr. Gallogly back, although the immediate incident had passed. In coming to his conclusion the governor decided that this was in the interests of the man.
This scheme at present enables about 400 men and women every year to benefit from arrangements that usually work smoothly and with good will on both sides. That much is clear from the history of the release scheme.