With the words ‘18 months imprisonment, take him down’, ringing in his ears, so began the new life of Jonathan Aitken, the only British cabinet minister ever to be sent to prison. Mr Aitken, the guest speaker at last month’s annual Melbourne Prayer Breakfast, had the 800 guests enthralled as he spoke of ‘defeat, disgrace, divorce, bankruptcy and jail’.
In 1999 Jonathan Aitken was found guilty of perjury and served 7 months at HM Prison Belmarsh in South East London. He told the breakfast that his first night as a convict was terrifying, as his fellow inmates chanted all around him, threatening all kinds of vile things in the darkness.
“Nothing had prepared me for the venom, and I was scared,” he said, “and so I knelt down on the flagstone floor of the cell and said a prayer.”
Morning roll call brought a different response, when his two cellmates apologised for the night before: ‘nothing personal’, they said and the former high profile politician began to settle into his new community.
Mr Aitken explained that until he was forced to examine why he had lost his moral compass, prayer had not been high on his agenda.
“I had at best been a Sunday Christian or half a Christian, which I now understand is about as helpful as being half pregnant.”
Mr Aitken’s place in prison was established early on when he helped a fellow prisoner read a letter. He quickly learned that the prison population is disproportionately made up of men who are illiterate, and so he helped his fellow inmates to read and write letters, to family, lovers, lawyers, the parole board. As he provided this invaluable service, he formed friendships with people he would never have connected with in his former life.
Paddy was a recidivist thief, and through a potentially volatile encounter with Paddy, Mr Aitken sought to explain why he couldn’t accept his kind gift of porno magazines to read. He told the angry Irishman that he was on a different path, a path of faith.
A curious Paddy announced that he would ‘really like to try that path myself’ and out of that simple statement and an Irishman who wanted to share a good thing there evolved a regular group of 20 men, which met in the evenings to pray and read the Bible. As Mr Aitken said, “it gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘a Christian cell group’ ”.
Over ten years later Mr Aitken said 14 or so of those 20 in their little prayer group have stayed out of prison, and are leading fruitful lives, ‘having reached out and experienced the healing hand of God’.
Paddy now works in construction, is a family man and Mr Aitken is the godfather of Paddy’s nine year old son.
“There are certain strange similarities between a respectable audience in Melbourne,” he said, “and unrespectable prisoners. Both are very set in their ways. They don’t want to go on a spiritual journey. We all need to travel on that journey.”
“Turning points begin with ‘p’, pain. Almost everyone in life has pain sooner or later. Respectable people pretend it’s not happening at all, they try and bury it, to carry on regardless and try various forms of denial. Prisoners can’t actually say it’s not happening. After all they are in prison.”
“The men in our prayer group knew there were some things they couldn’t do in their own will power. It needs a higher power. And as we were daring to make that inner journey, to speak to God and listen to God, the fruits of repentance were evident. Some stopped swearing. They threw away porn magazines. They wrote letters of apology to victims.”
In his closing words Mr Aitken, the man who had once been feted as potential Prime Minister material, who had fallen from great heights to extraordinary lows, had studied a degree in theology, and had described himself as being ‘no preacher man’, reminded us of Paddy’s words, ‘I would really like to try that path myself’.