# Talk:Strangeways Prison riot

The riot directly led to wider resulting media hysteria about child molesters when Fleet Street and ITN etc suddenly realised that stories of them being beaten up during the riot sold very well and got very good TV ratings etc? 

Just a few terms that need to be explained within the article (rather than in the notes which is not convention for wikipedia) before it can be passed:-

Please explain the meaning of Rule 43(a)
Please make it clear how the prison officers were using Largactyl as I am assuming they weren't using it to treat schizophrenia
What are Category A prisoners?
Since there is no wiki article on it, what was the role of the press council?
Thanks Million_Moments (talk) 15:16, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Footnotes it is quite acceptable to explain Rule 43(a) and Category A prisoners in the footnotes section, and even featured articles do it. I personally think it would be distracting to include that much detail in the main text, and it would spoil the flow. Therefore I believe a footnote is the best place for them, but I'm open to discussion about an abridged version if you really think they need to go in the main text?
The original Press Council was the fore-runner of the Press Complaints Commission. Perhaps amend the sentence to something like "In its last act before disbanding in 1991 and being replaced by the Press Complaints Commission..."?
Largactyl is a tricky one. Rooftop protestor Barry Morton describes it: "A powerful drug that can ruin any human being for the rest of their life. The effects are as follows: it slows you down and makes your mind hallucinate and makes you lose your memory and slows down your speech. When you don't know you are doing it, you talk to yourself, but you find it hard to hold conversations with anybody for a long period. You don't remember doing things. Sometimes you live like this for days or maybe weeks, even months, depending on how much they inject you with. Seven prison officers held [redacted for BLP reasons] down and injected him several times and turned him into a cabbage. It's a brown liquid that affects you the minute it's injected into the body." It's futher expanded upon in a footnote in the same book "Largactyl, known in prison as the "liquid cosh", is the most commonly administered of a range of psychotropic drugs used extensively for control rather than medicinal purposes. For a detailed expose of the use of drugs for control purposes see: Medical Power in Prisons by Joe Sim, Open University Press 1990 and The Liquid Cosh by Mickey Peterson, Breakout Collective 1984." There's probably a couple of other sources about, depends how much information you want adding about it? Possibly just the addition of "sedative" before it would clarify it enough? One Night In Hackney303 15:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
Well shift the footnotes to directly behind the terms used rather than at the end of the sentance, as when originally reading the article I thought that these were just references for this sentence. As for Largatyl, something along the lines of "known is prisons as the liquid cosh and used to control prisoners" would do and I agree with your way of explaining the press council. Million_Moments (talk) 16:27, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
All done, thanks. One Night In Hackney303 16:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
What is this book heavily referenced throughout the article "Jameson & Allison" with only the authors name, google throws up only this page for that combination like a googlewhack?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.171.251.77 (talk) 17:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC) 

I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of May 26, 2008, compares against the  six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Pass
2. Factually accurate?: Pass
3. Broad in coverage?: Pass
4. Neutral point of view?: Pass
5. Article stability? Pass
6. Images?: Pass
Excellent article!  If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations.— Million_Moments (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Today's BBC site has an article about the riot citing costs of £90m to rebuild the prison, compared to £55m in this article. I assume it's adjusted for inflation on the BBC site? Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 12:12, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

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Hello,
I’ve noticed that some statements in the article (for example, the exact duration of the riot) don’t currently have inline citations. Would it be useful if I added reliable references — such as BBC “On This Day” coverage or the Woolf Report — to support these?
I want to make sure any changes I suggest are in line with the expectations for this page, so I thought I’d ask here first.
Thanks,
AtkinsBorealis (talk) 15:52, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Everything in the article appears to be cited. The lead does not require citations for things that are cited in the rest of the article per WP:LEADCITE.109.144.210.195 (talk) 21:21, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

The newspaper [[Class War]] - issue no. 40 (1990) has a long account of the Strangeways Riot on pages 7 to 10, which includes this account:
"As was predictable, the press descended on the prison and the lies came thick and fast. Murder, bloodbath, hangings, castration. In the end the Home Office had to admit that all prisoners were accounted for.
"All the press were calling the rioters cowards. But the real cowards are the sadistic screws. Some young prisoners are in jail for the first time, and are subjected to unspeakable acts of sexual perversion by prison officers who know any complaint against them will not be believed. The rioters were consistently shouting from the roof asking for photos to be taken of one certain screw. This officer turned out to be Mr D***** from Claton Le Moor. Class War can reveal D**** was one of the reasons that Strangeways erupted into unprecedented violence.
"D**** is a bullying maniac, a sadistic bastard who gets his pleasure from beating the prisoners. Especially the young prisoners. In all of Britains jails there are many such men as D****, prison officers like him that are responsible for the many suicides that are taking place inside our jails."
I have copied this extract verbatim, including mangling the name of Clayton Le Moors, but hidden the personal name. NRPanikker (talk) 20:11, 28 September 2025 (UTC)