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Former daily editor recalls role as prison riot negotiator

A former regional daily editor has recalled the day his own journalists volunteered him to intervene in a prison riot.

Former Manchester Evening News editor Mike Unger has remembered his role in the Strangeways riots, ahead of their upcoming 25th anniversary.

The riot at Manchester’s Strangeways Prison, which lasted 25 days, was the longest in British penal history and saw one prisoner killed, with a prison officer also dying of a heart attack.

It began with an uprising in the prison’s chapel on 1 April 1990, with Mike’s involvement beginning four days later after the rioters put a sign up on the roof, saying ‘media contact – now’.

Mike Unger pictured talking to the prisoners with a prison officer to his left in 1990

Mike Unger pictured talking to the prisoners with a prison officer to his left in 1990

Speaking to the MEN, Mike recalled: “Unknown to me, my reporters at the scene volunteered my services.

“Within a few minutes I found myself in the surreal situation of flagging down a taxi and asking to be taken to the riot-torn prison’s front door.”

Within a few hours prison governor Brendan O’Friel was asking him not only to act as an observer, but also to speak to ‘the hard-core prisoners’ as a way of getting through to the rest – while those involved also wanted Mike to relay their own messages back to the outside world and a list of grievances about their treatment that they wanted published.

Describing the scene inside, he said: “There was rubble and smashed glass everywhere. Huge steel doors had been ripped off their hinges and thrown over balconies.

“I had to squeeze past riot officers on the landing outside the empty cells until I came face to face with the ringleaders, who were above me in the roof space only inches from my face – but with a steel net separating us.

“They started repeating the demands they wanted publishing and then a hard man with a cockney accent took over, asking for more and more demands that became more and more stupid.

“I nearly caused another riot by smirking.”

He later agreed to meet with prisoners in their cells, despite fears he would be taken hostage.

Following the meetings, a number of prisoners gave themselves up.

Mike added: “I felt as if I had played a small part in this. I never felt threatened and the prisoners were tired, articulate and polite.

“As I stepped out of the prison door I could see all the media in the distance lit up by television lights behind some sort of flimsy barrier. I was therefore surprised when a reporter from the Daily Star rushed up to me and asked me how I was.”

Mike’s blunt response was: “Knackered.”