The blogging prisoner locked in a struggle
originally published:
7th October 2009
Ben Gunn was 14 when he killed a friend. Almost 30 years on, his blogging and protests about prison regime injustices ensure that he is still no nearer release.
The government is expected to grant the vote to prisoners at the next election – and it will be due to the efforts of two men, both lifers. One of them, John “Ben” Gunn, has been locked up since the age of 14. Now, almost 30 years later, he is the general secretary of the Association of Prisoners (AoP).
As he sits opposite me in the visiting room of HMP Shepton Mallet, Somerset, it is the first time I have met Gunn, although I feel I know him well – a feeling shared, I suspect, by many involved in prison reform. For years, he has written critiques of the system that holds him, the main theme being the abuse of power that characterises many aspects of prison life.
Reform groups have given him a regular platform, and few issues of Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners, emerge without a piece bearing his name.
It was his predecessor as AoP secretary, John Hirst, now free, who persuaded the European court of human Rights that a high court ruling in 2001, forbidding prisoners to vote, was a breach of his human rights.
