Inside T’s Notebook (3/5)
T is one of the Filton24, arrested in November 2024 in alleged connection to the action. She was initially remanded to HMP Bronzefield but has since been moved to HMP Peterborough in July 2025. She shares her reflections of her 3 full months in prison.
4th January
Aunt tells me her hair has been coming out in clumps since the raid. Her house frightens her.
She thinks there were around 20 officers combing the house over several days. One of them, a female from Counter-Terrorism Unit, went through all her cookbooks in the kitchen. Then she looked at my aunt, with a smirk, and told her she prefers Jewish cookbooks and Jewish chefs.
Not rising to the provocation and insinuation, Aunt tells her that if she’d look carefully, she would have seen several cookbooks by Claudia Rodin and Yotam Ottolenghi.
7th January
After countless complaints, security comes to my cell for a chat, says she’s happy for me to finally move out of House 1 (detox wing). He could have related this over the pod or via the spur officer, but he’s been sent, in my opinion, on an intelligence gathering mission because he then asks me about my beliefs, where I’m from, and about specifics of the case.
18th January - CW Suicide.
Around 3:40pm I hear a commotion on the landing, like several voices shouting. I open the cell door and in my eye line is Dan, their face is a dark purple. I didn’t see the ligature on the neck until seconds later. It’s so tight that Dan is wheezing.
Officer H is with him, and another one, Officer D, runs up the stairs and cuts off the ligature. I’m in shock - a few others have their hands on their hearts, calming themselves.
Dan gets locked in the cell, it confuses me that someone who’s just tried to kill themself is immediately locked in a dark cell without being checked for possible items of self harm.
Outside Dan’s cell, right next to the camera, a queue forms for dinner. I ask the officer if a medical professional is going to check up on them. I was told to mind my own business and not tell officers how to do their job.
I tell them “you are responsible for prisoners’ welfare” - the SO (Senior Officer) says their job is to protect the public and rehabilitate prisoners, and again, not to tell them how to do their jobs. The SO reminds me that I am the prisoner and she is the officer. I get locked in my cell and a negative comment added to my prisoner file for bad behaviour - of which I am not made aware of until months later during a Key Worker session.
Dan took their own life on 29th July 2025 in the Healthcare wing. A second death was also announced that week. The girls at Bronzefield have been in lockdown and staff take time off for their mental health.
The Holocaust Industries by Professor Norman Finkelstein has been denied because of security issues. I send a complaint asking for clarification on the issues posed by the book. Everything here is a fight and even smallest of basics require the most energy. There’s no opportunity for remand prisoners to enrol on long courses, none that I’ve been told about despite asking. So what am I supposed to do for nearly two years on remand?
23rd January
Yesterday the prison cancelled my visit. By this point, I’ve seen one woman enter and leave prison six different times.
I asked security about the visit cancellation. She tells me and the other’s visits are being restricted from a daily allowance to 3 a week, the legal minimum for remand. We ask why; we get several non-reasons such as ‘we take up the visits it’s not fair on the other prisoners’. “How can that be when the hall is sparse when we have visits?” The next reason she gives is my co-d wore a ‘Free Palestine’ jumper. “What’s wrong with that?”, we say. (The guard said) “It’s offensive to Jews.”
29th January
No visit in eight days. Sleeping loads and extremely lethargic. Limbs feel all floppy. Not much reading or writing done.
Saw Idris Elba’s documentary. Cost of incarceration is 120k per person at HMP Feltham. Imagine the life these young men can build with that amount of money, probably wouldn’t have been in prison in the first place as poverty is a common denominator in most crimes. There is money - there always is.
A friend makes a point that sticks to mind: “It’s crazy”, the friend says, “that there exists so many reformist organizations whose sole remit is reducing women’s incarceration on the grounds that their absence ruptures families in a way that men’s isn’t thought to.”
Bronzefield apparently receives 60k per person per year. I need to check this figure.
T is currently one of the 6 prisoners for Palestine on Hunger Strike in the UK with the demands:
Shut Elbit Down
De proscription
Immediate bail
Right to a fair trial
End all censorship