Scotland's Gulag: Peterhead Prison 1987 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A riot, a rampage, an explosion of human rage
Fifty hardened criminals seized D block
Anarchy loosed from its cage

Determined to leave their mark
Murderers, rapists, knifers
Bedding and bed pans wrecked
Knuckles and skulls bruised black
Jackie Stuart, officer, snatched
Fifty six years old, hauled up on the open roof

And then, four days of terror tactics
The cons, in balaclavas made of rags
Barricades, booby-traps, flung slates, aerobatics
The hostage, leashed like a dog
Paraded before the press. A hood on his head
A blade at his throat. Cruel torture antics

Fifteen minutes overturned the odds
Twenty SAS men in fatigues, gas masked
Flash-bang canisters, with cudgels
Ladders, ropes and high explosives
Rescued the warder, the horror passed

The day given back to order, The foghorn wail
The crash of the heaving waves
Tons of water, pummelling sand and rock