A Man's Search for Meaning
A New Year's call with Jeremy Bamber
A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. The sort of person the concentration camp prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Frankl came to believe man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose.
Jeremy Bamber: I'm just reading a book by Viktor Frankl, And it's called Man's Search for Meaning.
So I started reading it, someone sent it to me for Christmas. He was in Auschwitz for a couple of years talking about, you know, what he learnt in there that makes people still carry on or just run into the electric fence and finish it all.
And it's an interesting take on that, because I think people sometimes wonder what keeps one from going under. And in this situation, well, because we find meaning in mundane things.
I mean, he was saying in there about what it was like and how they survived. And there's so many similarities between what we have to endure in here.
And he was saying this, as I was reading, because I'm about halfway through, that one of the things, it's not the actual physicality of it all, but it's, on a minor scale in jail, it's often the injustice of what they throw your way as a way of punishment.
When really, if they just hit you with a big stick, that would be less painful than that, just the injustice of the insult that they'll give you. Like when I went on the yard the other day, the screw stood there, and he went,
“Oh, Happy New Year, Jeremy. I bet you're looking forward to the next year in custody.”
And I looked at him, and these little minions around him, you know, the other screws, started laughing. And I looked at him, I said,
“Really?”
‘Really? Is that what you need to say to me today, that I'm looking forward to another year of injustice?’ And it really stung me, it really did, rather than him just punching me in the face and saying, ‘I hate you, Bamber’.
You know, that kind of, that petty insult that they do, the petty little sneaky things they say and do, and it's, you know, for nothing most of the time.
The Doc Maker: Yeah, and it's sort of like crushing hope, isn't it, really, I think.
JB: That's indeed what they try and do. It's often not the actual physicality of it, it's the undermining of hope that they do on a daily basis. And one of the things that has got to me now, after doing so long, is that I can no longer remember the outside world very clearly.
I was trying to think about, you know, special Christmases with mum and dad, or Sheila, or the boys, or, you know, other relatives, and I just don't remember them. I can't, you know, kind of construct in my own mind a happy place from, say, Christmas in 1971.
I don't have any memories of them anymore.
And I hate that, I hate the fact that I, you know, just the passage of time and the mundane kind of hamster wheel that I keep running in for so long has just overridden everything in my mind. So I find it difficult to think back more than, well, yesterday. And that is tragic.
But, oh well, never mind.
TDM: I was telling someone yesterday about your “never mind” thing, and I was just saying, you know, he goes through these moments of frustration, but he just ends it with, like, “never mind”, whereas I'm just thinking, oh, for fuck's sakes, you know. And my mate said, ‘I don't know how he does it’. I don't know how you do it.
JB: Well, and it's the mundanity of it, and I find joy in the smallest of things. And it's enough joy to make me happy enough not to want to do anything other than doing what I'm doing. And I believe, I genuinely believe that I still have hope.
TDM: : Well, you know, you didn't do anything, did you?
JB: I know. Well, you forget that. That's what I'm trying to say about this 40 year of mundane repetitiveness, same day every day over the years, is that you forget that you've done nothing, or I forget that I've done nothing to deserve being in here other than, you know, when I was talking to DI Jones, and just taking the piss out of him, eating bits of my fucking jumper and just taking the piss. And I look back and I think, fuck, you know, that's all I've done wrong is to piss him off.
And now I've done 40 years in jail because of it. Because if the system had been different and I was watching it on the telly last night, they could only keep you in custody 24 hours outside. Now, if you do more than 24 hours, they're going to release you on bail.
I did six days. People say I only did five, but it was the Monday to the Friday. It was all, you know, all those days, or whenever it was, Sunday to Friday, there were six days in total.
And that wouldn't exist now. But, you know, it is what it is. Still, we've got to keep on persevering, but I do feel that something's going to happen.
TDM: Have you ever sort of woken up, I mean, you must have done, I suppose, but woken up and thought, ‘maybe I did do it? I can't have been in here for 40 years and have done nothing’, because I've had moments where I've woken up in the night thinking, ‘fucking hell, he's been in prison for 40 years. He must have done it”, you know.
Do you know what I mean?
JB: Yeah, I get that, but no, I've never thought that. I just think, I wish I hadn't been such a prick when I was 24, when it came to all this, because I just didn't know what I was doing and I just had that hope. ‘Well, I didn't do anything, so what's the point of fighting?’
And if I'd have fought harder and, you know, got Rivlin on side instead of him just sending me down the river, if I'd worked harder, you know, I do feel guilty about all those things, but it certainly doesn't deserve 40 years in jail.
TDM: It's just relying on all these so-called experts and professionals and respectable people that have fucked you over, isn't it?
JB: Yeah, well, I mean, the one thing that has got me, because every 1st of January they go to the National Archives and there's things on this 30-year Official Secrets Act that they then release all the Northern Ireland stuff that came out this year. But there was lots of it. And then I look at mine and I think of Keir Starmer and Priti Patel or whoever did it, putting 88 years on, you know, public files, and you think, what the fuck is there in my case that lets them release all that paperwork after 30 years for so many wrongdoings?
And yet, in my case, they think that it's OK to put 88 years on it. I just can't get my head around that. But it is what it is, isn't it? No, I never think that. I never think I did something wrong. I just think I wish I wasn't such a prick.
You know, and I've beaten myself up a lot about that, don't worry. You know, if I'd have just been sensible and answered the questions and not let them get into my head, I wouldn't have done a day in jail.
TDM: If I'd been 24, I would have been the same, mate. You know, so fucking stupid.
JB: You didn't go to Gresham's. Fram boys are not the same as Gresham's boys. But yeah, that arrogance of youth and also being completely comfortable in who I was and where I was in the kind of consciousness of life. You know, I was a middle-class guy with an exceptionally, you know, kind of good life.
And I just thought I was above all this shit.
TDM: Yeah, yeah, I get it, I get it, I get it.
JB: You know, when really, you know, I had no idea of the serious trouble that I was in. But I didn't know. And it's the same thing after they released me from, you know, when they arrested me in September and then released me and I went on holiday with Brett.
If I'd have known that I'd come back from that holiday and be arrested and do the next 40 years in jail, I wouldn't have gone on holiday. I'd have been working with solicitors and the media and talking to them, but every once in a while I'd talk to the media. And the one time I did, they stitched me up and said I was trying to sell Sheila's photographs.
You know, just had no concept about, you know, how bad journalists and all that were.
But that was then, this is now.
TDM: Yeah, we've got to get you out, mate, this year.
JB: I mean, I do believe it, I do. I genuinely believe that we're going to, that we've already sent the evidence to the CCRC and I know I'm probably going to have to wait till March now, which pisses me off.
But by the end of March, they're going to make a decision one way or the other.
And that'll do us.
TDM: It just seems like, you know, it's the climate. The climate seems right, doesn't it? It's like, you know, they can't keep putting their head in the sand, can they? I hope not. I just, you know, with everything else that's going on, you know.
JB: Anyway, mate, I'm going to go.
TDM: All right, mate, OK.
JB: You know, I'm hanging in there. Bye, bye, bye.
Jeremy Bamber was convicted on a 10-2 majority verdict in 1986.
A CCRC committee is scheduled to make a decision on Jeremy’s appeal in March 2025.
Jeremy Bamber has maintained his innocence for the entire 39 years he has spent in prison.