From career criminal to change-making journalist

Hey there,

Nowadays, the media and charity sectors talk a lot about ‘lived experience’ and ‘community-led’ work: the simple idea that people who have gone through certain experiences should lead the conversations we have about them. But it wasn’t always like that. In 2003 the editor in chief of The Guardian was being pretty bold when he put out a job advert for a prisons correspondent. Alan Rusbridger was hoping for candidates who knew prisons from a different perspective: the inside.

At 60 years old, after being a proud career criminal in and out of prison since his teens, Eric Allison was hired. Alan told Eric they were taking a bit of a risk. His one request was that Eric “go straight” from then on, so as not to embarrass the paper. Eric kept that promise, but he did not shy away from taking risks and pushing the boundaries of journalism.

Eric died in 2022, after 19 years on the prisons beat for The Guardian. His close friend, collaborator and fellow journalist Simon Hattenstone told me all about his career.

They helped to uncover one of the UK’s biggest historic abuse scandals at Medomsley Detention Centre and exposed the prolific paedophile at the heart of it, centring the voices of the survivors. (There are some harrowing details in those links, so please read with caution and take care of yourself.) 

Just a few years into his time as prisons correspondent, Eric highlighted the “unethical and barbaric” vans known as sweatboxes, which were transporting pregnant women hundreds of miles to and from prisons. As a result of his reporting, new guidelines were put in place. Eric was, however, banned from visiting Styal prison and phoning the woman the governor suspected was his source.

Eric was also a passionate advocate for challenging suspected miscarriages of justice. He took up the case of Jeremy Bamber, a man accused of killing his family in 1985 in what’s known as the White House Farm murders. Bamber remains in prison today on a whole life sentence, and multiple appeals have been denied. He has always maintained his innocence. 

If he is indeed innocent, after almost 40 years in prison, this would be one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in British history. Eric believed it was. In 2011, Eric was banned from phoning Bamber in prison after publishing audio of a call to him that revealed new evidence on the case.   

Eric always described himself as an activist journalist. Traditional journalistic impartiality was not the priority, truth and justice was. A few years after writing about the Bamber case, Simon and the news editor were gobsmacked to learn that Eric had become a patron for the Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign. Eric was surprised when Simon told him that this created a conflict of interest for future reporting, and it meant he had to take a step back from it. Still, Eric remained a firm supporter of the campaign and Bamber himself, as well as many other campaigners, charities and causes.

Eric had never really been taught the basic rules of reporting, but that didn’t stop him from doing brilliant and important journalism. He rarely took holidays and was always on the phone offering support to countless people – not only those dealing with the criminal justice system, but also journalists from less privileged backgrounds and young people in his local area.

You can still read the archives of Eric’s work at The Guardian, including the opinion pieces which reflect his passion and, often, anger and frustration at the state of the British justice system. One simply ended, “It makes you want to weep.”

Eric was honoured with an outstanding journalism award from the Criminal Justice Alliance and described as a fearless and tireless campaigner after his death. The love- and praise-filled tributes that followed came from fellow journalists, whistleblowers, charities and campaigners, a former chief inspector of prisons, ex-prison governor, and of course fellow ex-prisoners.

I could – and will – go deeper into the impactful stories that Eric told during his time at The Guardian, but let’s start with hearing a bit more about the man himself from Simon Hattenstone.

“Eric had two careers. [Before he became a journalist] he was a lifelong criminal – though he was really quite a moral criminal. As an adult he only stole from banks and that sort of thing. It was mainly quite sophisticated fraud.

He worked with someone at one point, I think he was a professor of art. Their fake was so brilliant that the department of health and social security had to redesign the giro cheque. ~ Lucy here: the giro cheque was a historic method for receiving benefits ~

Eric’s most successful project was that they stole a million pounds from a bank in Manchester. Eventually they did get caught for that.

He did about 16 years in prison over his life. You know how some people give something up and they’re kind of born again? Eric was never like that, he said it was a really good life – he knew the price was sometimes prison and that was the decision you made. Though he did regret how it impacted his daughters.

Eric always said to me, it was never meant to be a permanent job at The Guardian. He was taking a sabbatical because he’d go back to crime. But the brilliant thing is that Eric became as passionate and dedicated to journalism as he had been to crime. He had fantastic contacts, because anyone would speak to him. He was brilliant with prisoners and with bereaved families of prisoners, with people who ran prisons, politicians, organisations. Everyone trusted him.

One of the things that really defined Eric was his first time in custody. Eric had a really bad stutter as a kid. When he got taken to the guard [in the Derbyshire youth detention centre], he had to say ‘sir’ but he just couldn't get the word out. And the guard just punched him in the nose. The police officer who had taken him to the detention centre was just watching on, didn’t do anything, didn't bother. I think, in a way, that gave him his strong sense for injustice.

What I loved about Eric is he would never go around saying ‘I do good things’ and identifying like that. It was just instinctive, to help people. He helped so many people.”

Speaking to Simon and hearing all about Eric was a reminder that sometimes it’s helpful to ignore the rules and fearlessly follow your senses. Most importantly, your instinct to care about people. That type of journalism is something that cannot be replaced by AI and hyperfast news, and has the power to uncover the most hidden injustices.

It’s what we always aim for here at the Bureau – and you can help us keep going with it by becoming one of our Insiders.

I tried my best to sum everything up, but lots of the stories Eric and Simon worked on continue to have significant real world impacts. So we’ll be coming back to one of them in another Spark in the near future. Watch this space!

We’ll be back with more next week. Until then, take care,