Nicole (she/her) shares sad news about the death of her close friend Taylor in prison.

Content warning – suicide (graphic), prison, violence, self harm, abuse, homophobia, transphobia.

Links & resources from this episode

• R.I.P Taylor - Rage is our weapon

Find them all at solidarityapothecary.org/podcast/

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Music from Sole & DJ Pain – Battle of Humans | Plant illustrations by @amani_writes | In solidarity, please subscribe, rate & review this podcast wherever you listen.

Welcome to the Frontline Have Liz podcast with your host, Nicole Rose

from the Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello strangers.

I'm so sorry that the podcast came to like an abrupt halt.

Fortunately I hadn't really done an official launch.

My plan was to get six episodes recorded and then do a big launch.

And that way people can kind of like work through the back catalog, which

is like the advice I'd been given.

But as fate would have it, something pretty full on happened in my life,

which meant that I had to stop recording.

And yeah, my kind of whole world came to a halt, and some of you that follow me on

Instagram may have seen the news already.

Obviously close friends will know, and I've shared the news on my email list.

But for those of you who don't know me at all, I'm gonna be sharing a

little bit about, what happened and yeah, I'm probably gonna be recording

this, uh, podcast like 10 times.

Just so I can get my words out and feel clear and grounded and this kind of horror

story, but I just wanted to share that.

Yeah, there's like a very strong kind of content warning

with this, with this episode.

It's very intimate and personal about my friend Taylor who died.

I'm gonna be graphically talking about suicide, abuse

in prison, transphobia, class.

Yeah, just kind of general state violence.

So yeah, I just wanna kind of pause things there and give you the opportunity to, to

skip, and just download the next episode, which is gonna be about, dandelion and

yeah, there's not, there's not kind of much herbal content, if that makes sense.

This is just like a personal episode about, a friend that I've lost and

I feel like it's relevant to share because I kind of wanna explain where

I've been and I also wanna honor him.

I want people to know his story and yeah, I feel like part of the Frontline

Herbalism podcast is talking about kind of, it's so talking about herbalism,

but it's also talking about frontline struggles, including abolitionist

movements to free people from prison to build a world without prisons.

And so, yeah, this, this kind of feels important and relevant.

Okay.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause it there.

And then, after the little, kind of music bit, I'm gonna start reading a

statement which I'll explain more about.

In a second.

Okay.

Thanks for listening.

Okay, so I already gave a content warning.

And yeah, I'm probably gonna be pausing and editing this

and trying not to wobble out.

I am sharing the details of my close friend who died.

He was called Taylor.

I met him back in, I don't even know, 2009, 2010 maybe, in prison.

And he was the partner of my best friend, Sam, who some of you

would've heard me talk about before on Instagram in various places.

And yeah, we, we kind of, yeah, just hit it off really because of his partnership

with Sam and I was like some sort of weird relationship counselor between them and

yeah, then they, I got out and they got separated into different prisons and kind

of kept apart intentionally by the prison.

And Sam asked if I would visit Taylor cause she was worried about him.

And then, yeah, I started visiting Taylor and me and Taylor began to have like

more of an autonomous kind of friendship.

Yeah.

Where I would see him like every few weeks and write to him and sent him

emails once email a prisoner was launched.

And Yeah, it was just a long decade of friendship and love and trying

really hard to get him out of prison.

I'll explain more about that in a minute.

When I read the statement.

But yeah, he, he killed himself, inside in July and that's why

I haven't been podcasting or really doing anything at all.

And yeah, I loved him so much.

We had a beautiful funeral.

He was cremated.

I went with a friend and some of his family members to spread

his ashes where he wanted them, including in the beautiful sea.

Literally like swam, swam out in the sea to, to, let his ashes go.

And, after his death, like was full of rage and pain, I mean, I still am,

but, me and a close friend and some other comrades who kind of read it and

helped us wrote a statement about what happened, to share a bit more information

to kind of talk about the political context and his life, and yeah, to ask for

solidarity and support in mourning him.

So I'm gonna read that statement now.

I'll put the link in the show notes, but if you wanna read it, it's

at bristol abc.org/r i p Taylor.

I'm gonna pause this now and wipe my eyes and then I'm gonna

finally read this statement.

Hello.

Okay, here we go.

And yeah, I also just wanna share that some comrades have translated

this statement into Spanish well castellano and Galago, and German,

and russian and the links to those translations are also on the webpage.

Okay, this statement, Taylor is dead.

He was pronounced dead in prison at 10:33 PM on Saturday the ninth of of July.

After cutting his neck, he was meant to be on suicide watch,

but the prison failed him.

We were informed by the prison governor at 3:30 AM on Sunday.

His cell has been sealed by police and we await news of the autopsy.

We will announce news of his funeral in the coming days and.

His story is one of abuse, injustice, transphobia, and tragedy.

It didn't have to be this way.

He was murdered by the state.

His death should trigger resistance and rebellion inside

and outside of prisons everywhere.

We have no investment in his inquest or that the state can

deliver any kind of justice.

This is a call to arms, to abolitionists and anarchists all over the world

with rage in our veins and love in our hearts until every prison turns to ash.

Taylor, you were our best guy.

Our queer family will forever miss you.

You will never be forgotten and the state will never be forgiven.

Oh fuck.

Okay, I need to like pause again and then I will rerecord this.

Who is Taylor?

Taylor was a trans prisoner trapped in the UK prison system for over 14 years.

He was an I P P prisoner who had served 10 years longer in prison

than his original sentence.

He was a beloved friend to anarchist comrades who met him in prison.

He had ACAB on his knuckles and an anti authoritarian spirit

and a deep love for animals.

He was a working class, old school prisoner who knew which side he was on.

He hated the system with every ounce of his being.

Taylor was one of the first members of the IWW the Industrial Workers of

the World Union via the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or

IWOC that was founded in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland in 2015.

He was also active with SMASH IPP contributing to the newsletter

and encouraging other IPP prisoners to join the group.

I P P Death sentence IPP or Imprisonment for Public protection is a type of

sentencing that was introduced in 2005 and meant that people would

be sentenced to an initial tariff, that's like time that must be served.

And after that, their release would be decided by their parole board.

This means that I p p prisoners have no definite release date.

It is effectively a life sentence for minor crimes.

After huge public pressure, IPP sentences were abolished in 2012, but not

retrospectively, which means there are still more than three and a half thousand

people in prison with no release date.

The uncertainty is a living hell.

This sentence led to the UK having one of the highest rates

of prisoners suicide in the world.

At least 243 of UK's I P P prisoners have died in prison.

72 of them took their own lives.

For Taylor that I p p was a death sentence.

He was given four years for burglary, but served 14 years before he died.

The long term imprisonment with no end date totally destroyed

Taylor's mental health.

He attempted suicide multiple times, including slitting his own

throat and taking an overdose.

That led to him being in a coma twice.

It eventually killed him.

No end date.

The IPP works by a prisoner, first serving an initial tariff, after which

they have a parole board hearing.

The parole board decides whether to free that prisoner or to recommend them for

open category D conditions, psychiatric imprisonment, or a rehab, for example.

They can also decide if a prisoner must stay in prison for longer and recommend

certain things like courses for the prisoner to complete, the outside

probation service, and offender managers within the prison create reports and

make recommendations, and prisoners are also often subject to various risk

assessments or psychological reports.

At each board hearing new hoops can be created that the prisoner

will need to jump through.

For example, a prisoner might do everything the parole board directs,

and then two years later at the next hearing, the parole board might

say, "You still need to address X behavior and therefore do X course".

This leads to a continual process of imprisonment where

goalposts are repeatedly moved.

The uncertainty, frustration, and lack of power leads to

prisoner behavior deteriorating.

Whether that is increased drug use, self-harm, or kicking off in protest.

This behavior then becomes a justification for their continuing imprisonment

because that person is "not safe", quote unquote, for the community, or has not

addressed their offending behavior.

The cycle continues.

We have 14 years of cataloged evidence of impossible parole

hearings and prison failings.

Taylor's suicidality was the reason he was kept in prison, yet his

suicidality was caused by prison.

There is only so much one human can take.

Death became the only option for Taylor as all legal doors to

freedom closed again and again.

Transphobia, pathologized, hospitalized, and imprisoned.

Taylor gave his consent in 2018 to share more about his life story, to

help raise awareness of trans prisoners and what happens when the medical

system pathologizes trans people.

Growing up, Taylor was subject to years of physical, sexual, and psychological

abuse from his mother and stepfather.

He managed to escape and be adopted by his grandparents as an early teenager,

however, he would often return to visit his family, desperate for love and

validation, but was met with neither.

This intense pattern of trauma has followed him forever.

Unfortunately during his sentence, both his adopted parents died and as a

result, he lost his main support network.

The grief was insurmountable and was unable to heal due to being locked

in a cell and unable to visit their graves or process his grief fully.

We know he is with them now.

Taylor always knew he was a man.

He went to a local doctor as a young teenager and expressed his feelings

and issues with his assigned gender.

The doctor Pathologized Taylor as unstable and denied any access

to hormones or any surgery.

This was over 30 years ago, and access to hormones online or other

support groups was nigh on impossible.

Before prison, Taylor had never met another trans person.

The combination of childhood abuse and gender dysphoria led to drug

and alcohol abuse, as well as a long term pattern of self harm.

Taylor became an addict, and as a working class person with no

financial means, crime was the only option to sustain his habit.

This led Taylor to a very self-destructive life, including many abusive relationships

and actions that he deeply regretted.

Taylor accessed many mental health services, however, none of them affirmed

Taylor's gender identity or needs, and he was repeatedly pathologized,

hospitalized, and imprisoned.

In the judges summing up of his case whereby he was given an I P P sentence,

he recognized it was Taylor's gender issues that led to his imprisonment.

Taylor experienced transphobic abuse imprison from officers

and other prisoners.

Once he was attacked by a girl on his wing in a courtyard.

Thankfully our Taylor was a fighter and defended himself.

He spat back on her and said, "Here's some of my gender fluid".

Oh, he was such a fucking legend.

Okay.

Officers throughout his sentence would target him with insults, dead naming, and

repeatedly and repeated misgendering In HMP eastward Park Officer Lorde deadnamed

him repeatedly in order to wind him up and try to provoke him into acting out

and therefore sabotaging his parole.

When admitted to a psychiatric hospital after a spate of suicide attempts,

Taylor was assigned a psychiatrist.

During sessions, Taylor was repeatedly dehumanized and

encouraged to see himself as a woman.

They said that relationships were a core part of his offending behavior

and discouraged him from being with women or in relationships at all.

During this intense time of vulnerability, Taylor believed that only way to

ever be released from prison was to pretend to be a woman and to not have

romantic relationships with women.

Fortunately, once he had left the hospital and stopped having sessions,

he realized what a horrific transphobic act of institutional violence.

This was one that trans people worldwide have experienced pathologized

by psychiatric authorities.

Taylor was blown away by letters and cards he received from the trans community.

Despite the prison's best efforts to stop him obtaining a binder, including

claiming they didn't recognize if the binders were sent in for the top or

the bottom and refusing to issue them.

He eventually experienced the euphoria of making his chest align

more closely with his gender.

He would speak with excitement about getting top surgery when he

was out and running half naked on the beach and swimming in the sea.

Now he will never have the chance.

Homophobia in prison relationships were constantly considered a risk

factor for Taylor, and his attraction to women was ongoingly, pathologized,

and criminalized in prison.

Over the 14 years he was behind bars, he had separated from many people he

had loved, including one long term relationship that lasted over six years

whereby he was violently separated from them and the prison service

intentionally kept them apart, never allowing them to meet until recent.

In prison, physical relationships are met with punishment.

You can be given an IEP, enough of which lead you to basic or full segregation.

This happened many times throughout Taylor's sentence.

The constant policing by officers and the separation between him and people

he cared about also contributed to destroying Taylor's will to live.

Should Taylor have obtained parole at his next hearing one condition

was that he refrained from all romantic and intimate relationships.

His own lawyer said he would need to comply.

Although we all know, although we all know that closeness to other humans is

a deeply necessary part of survival.

We often spoke with Taylor about how the state was acting like

an abusive controlling partner.

He felt powerless to challenge it.

In the last week of his life, Taylor was nicked for kissing another prisoner.

This was one of the trigger events that led to his death.

HMP Eastwood Park, hell hole.

HMP Eastwood Park is a quote, "Women's" prison in Gloucestershire

not far from Bristol.

Horror emerges from its walls regularly.

Three prisoners have died there within the last month.

One woman, Kayleigh died two days before Taylor on the same wing.

People get violently attacked by officers regularly, and sexual abuse is prevalent.

On a recent visit with Taylor, he shared how women had been forced to give

oral sex to officers in exchange for drugs being brought in from outside.

Taylor was so close to freedom and HMP Eastwood Park took it all away.

What triggered Taylor's latest spiral of suicide attempts

was completely preventable.

He had finally been getting his ROTLs released on temporary license whereby

he could leave prison for a day with an officer as a way of working

towards release and demonstrating to the parole board that he was "safe".

On the 20th of May, Taylor was in Cabot Circus in Bristol when the

officer responsible for supervising him, abandon him, Taylor tried to

find her, but he was unable to.

He had no phone or way of finding her.

Despite looking continuously around the city, Taylor managed

to report it to the prison.

Instead of taking responsibility for losing Taylor, the officer

who escorted Taylor into Bristol lied and claimed he went missing

for a number of hours on purpose.

Taylor became angry and pushed over a plant in reception.

Prison officers then attacked him.

They kicked the shit into him and dragged him into a new cell

with none of his belongings.

We saw Taylor days after and could see bruises all over him.

Taylor was awaiting surgery for a hernia and being bent up by officers

was a life threatening act of violence.

An action alert was launched that 544 people sent to the prison, warning

them that Taylor's loved ones are seriously worried about his wellbeing

and that this abusive treatment is only going to exacerbate his serious

mental and physical health conditions after years of incarceration.

This incident triggered the three suicide attempts and

the final one that killed him.

What if thousands had taken part in the action alert?

How could we have made Eastwood Park take notice?

These are the questions that will always haunt us.

Class war.

Everything about Taylor's life was shaped by class.

We do not want this to be erased.

It is not rich people who use drugs who end up in prison.

It is poor people oppressed by our economic system who end up in prison

and they stay there to keep a class stratified society in existence.

Lessons for our movements.

There's a quote here, The state is permanent violence" - Errico Maletesta.

We write our movements, but we don't always know who "our" is.

We want to acknowledge there were a small number of amazing close

friends and comrades in our networks who supported us over the years.

You know who you are with a little heart.

Who were on the end of the phone after harrowing visits, or who

completed action alerts that we posted online, who sent cards to

Taylor and who came to noise demos.

But mostly we felt alone.

Taylor was alone.

Comrades went through years of hell and more often than

not, had to beg for support.

One person supported Taylor for 13 years, nine of which

were almost completely alone.

Despite her best efforts to bring up his case in groups and write about him

online, some anarchist websites would not share our action alerts or calls

for support because Taylor was not a quote unquote political prisoner.

Even though an understanding of class and gender oppression is a core of anarchism.

Taylor's death could have been prevented if there was more

support, more resistance, if our movements were a fucking threat.

If prison authorities feared us and our calls to action, we need

to fight like hell for the living.

We need to fight like hell for those still inside.

Abolition means prisoner support.

Abolition became flavor of the week for a short time, yet that unsexy

and unglamorous work of prisoner phone calls, visits, action alerts,

relentless fundraising, et cetera, does not attract many people.

We were told we did this work, quote unquote, unsustainably.

Yet no practical support to take the load from our shoulders was given.

We refused to abandon our friends in prison.

Yes, a diversity of tactics is needed, but this can't be used as an excuse

not to engage with an unglamorous work where getting a transfer to a prison

with marginally less white supremacist screws that reduce your loved one's

chances of racist attacks, takes a year and is as good as it gets.

What would've helped prevent Taylor's death?

People writing to Taylor and building trust with him so that he had a more

expanded circle of friends, help traveling for visits, legal advice

and support for his parole paperwork.

People helping with and sharing our action alerts, people offering

counseling or support for the ongoing traumatic stress or even fucking

acknowledging how much this was for us.

People coming on demos where we called for support, and us not being

humiliated, begging people to show up.

People with privilege accessing their networks to help get Taylor

out, media work, legal work, et cetera, giving money to his top

surgery crowd funder, and for visits.

Trans prisoner letter writing events, helping host info nights for smash

ipp, or IWOC work doing banner drops, reposting our statements and graphics.

We needed everyone's rage.

We needed to not feel alone.

We wanted to feel solidarity in practice.

We wanted people to understand that abolition means prisoner

support, that this should be a huge part of the movement.

That, and that keeping our friends alive in prison is part of resistance.

We need people to recognize that prisoners are not projects, they

are not quote unquote case work.

They are not a fascinating objective study to write your master's dissertation about.

They're not the same as organizing a book fair or running a campaign.

They are human beings and the stakes are fucking life or death.

People need consistency.

They need care and friendship.

They need to be treated like fucking human beings.

Taylor loved us, not because we were anarchists but because

we are his fucking friends.

We are his family because we love him with passion and kindness for who he

is and not because he is a prisoner.

Abolition means revolution.

No more fucking reading groups, where is your rage, nothing can describe the

feeling when you receive another phone call saying your friend has been airlifted

out of prison in a helicopter because he has sliced open his own neck because he

cannot take the abuse in prison anymore.

The rage against the prison system moves through your veins.

You want to destroy the whole world, but you turn to your

comrades and where are they?

Somehow it feels like even amongst prison abolitionists, the violence taking place

within prisons themselves is so often ignored and prisoners are forgotten,

erased, patronized, and tokenized.

Yes, abolition requires us to burn down the whole state, the

borders, the education system, as well as not instead of prison.

The state disappears people, so we have to work twice as hard

to ensure people are not erased.

Our loved ones are tortured, and the response is starting reading groups

about abolition writing statements for the transphobic guardian.

We would get told time after time that people don't have, quote unquote,

the capacity to do a demo right now.

We cope with the silence of signal group chats when we ask for support.

Where is your fucking rage?

Why are we not burning these places to the fucking ground?

The abolitionist movement in the UK is passive and docile.

It is not angry enough.

You cannot learn about abolition just from a book.

Learn from prisoners.

Learn from loved ones of people in prison.

There are fucking thousands of us.

Ask anyone their experiences, and you will hear stories of

neglect, abuse, and violence.

That is enough motivation to fight.

Revolutionary abolitionists in the so-called United States would risk death

to liberate people from slave plantations.

They started the Underground Railroad to free their families and comrades.

Where is the direct action to free our friends from cages?

Where is the rage when they die inside?

How do we push our movements beyond canvasing for fucking Jeremy Corbyn.

Abolition means revolution.

It means destroying the state.

It means direct action.

It means putting the war into class war.

We know Taylor was one of millions of people around the world kept in a cage.

We know thousands of people are murdered by the state in wars,

like in the invasion of Ukraine.

We know the state kills people on its borders in detention centers, in

prisons, in psychiatric hospitals.

We know it's those harmed by white supremacy, ableism, poverty,

and transphobia who face the sharpest end of this violence.

Every single incarcerated person is a political prisoner.

The Inquest and the prison and probation ombudsman report will not achieve justice.

Prisons are working exactly as they're designed to.

The horror is this.

Horror is no accident.

It is intentional.

Pools of Taylor's blood covered his cell where he died alone.

His blood covered the hands of HMP and they will face no repercussions.

Unless we make them, we call for rage everywhere.

Remember Taylor, fight with everything you have for those still in prison.

No more empty slogans.

This is a life and death struggle we call comrades.

To honor Taylor in every way they know how.

Against prisons, against the state, for friendship, for freedom, for revolution.

Oh, okay.

I'm gonna go and have a big cry again now.

But yeah, that was written from like a real place of like pain and rage and yeah.

I also had covid, like I was really sick after, after Taylor died.

And uh, yeah, I thought it was just this kind of like extreme rage response.

And then I realized like I also had this viral infection that

was giving me a fucking fever and making my heart go crazy and stuff.

So anyway, like I said, we had a beautiful funeral for him.

The inquest has started, like officially has opened.

We were in touch with solicitors about all of that.

But ultimately, I just wanna add, like people are still behind bars,

like people still need support.

I know I regularly put in calls to action on these podcast, like

show notes and in the first bit of the kind of intro of the podcast.

But yeah, I just want people to learn from his death and to feel like, prisoner

support needs to be a priority for anarchists and for other people, and that

if we're trying to build a society based on care and mutual aid and solidarity

and friendship and freedom, then yeah, we need to look at other people who are in

cages and we need to help get them free.

Okay.

Thanks everyone.

I will be back next week.

Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the