The recent militant Prison Officers Association strike was hailed by the left. Yet the union had virtually pariahstatus not so many years ago.
vo back a decade or two and it was an organising ground for racists and fascists within the labour movement.
Its members are involved in the ugliest, most brutal and racist maro eno or toe sona state. And the union seemed to be unashamedly enthusiastic about this role. Has that all now changed?
Over the past decade or so the union's members nave radicalised in the face of privatisation and a relentless assault on wages and conditions, eroding their status as well paid enforcers lording it over the rest of the working class.
In adaition, like in otner areas of low-skilled public sector employment there has been a demographic shift.
The uniformly white male organisation of the 1980s and before - heavily staffed by exarmy and ex-police officers who made a career choice out of joining the front ranks of the "hang 'em and flog em' brigade" - has been slowly transformed.
There has been an influx of female and black workers driven into the job primarily by the dynamics of the low wage economy and stringent unemovment benen rules.
Parallel to these changes the prisons have been in a permanent state of crisis - with soaring inmate numbers leading
overcrowding and cnronic snorlage or resources for basic rehabilitation and welfare.
The POA - renowned in the Thatcher era for its annual calls for capital punishment is
more likely to be HOW denouncing a system that warehouses the mentally ill and fails to provide drug rehabilitation and education weltare services tor
This doesn't mean everything has changed. Far from it. Racism and fascism among prison staff is a major problem.
Brute violence and corruption is widespread - creating a regime in which murder, suicide and beatings have flourIsneo.
But the old days in which the union saw its job as being to defend such a regime and scapegoat those raising these issues are gone.
Perhaps this is why some inmates clapped and cheered the screws as they came off the strike - despite the resulting loss of their highly-valued visits and association.