Audrey Edwards (1934-2025): the first Longford Prize winner
In 2002 the first-ever recipient of our Longford Prize was Audrey Edwards, whose campaign with her husband Paul to improve mental health provision in prisons was prompted by the death in jail of their son. The trust’s director, Peter Stanford, and others reflect on what an impact she made on them and the prison system.
Audrey Edwards was a remarkably-effective campaigner who stuck in the memory, but also an unlikely one, as her husband Paul acknowledges. Audrey was, Paul says, ‘not one to fight on the barricades. By nature she was a sensitive and reserved individual.’ Yet together they sustained a decade-long battle following the death in Chelmsford Prison of their 30-year-old son, Christopher. They wanted to see better and better-informed treatment for those in jail with mental illness. Or, better still, for them not to be held in prisons.
Christopher was mentally-ill when he was detained for breach of the peace in November 1994. At Chelmsford, he was put in a cell with a paranoid schizophrenic who murdered him. The Edwards’ brave and tenacious fight was to hold to account the public bodies who had contributed to their son’s death, and to make sure that no other parents would suffer the same appalling loss in such avoidable circumstances as they had.
The courage to move forward from personal tragedy
In 2002, our judging panel on which I sat offered this citation when awarding Audrey the Longford Prize. ‘Audrey and her husband Paul began a quest to find out what happened to their son that has developed into a campaign to improve mental health care for offenders. The judges were greatly impressed by the courage with which Audrey Edwards had moved forward from personal tragedy to focus public attention on mental health and prisons.’
Remembering her today, another member of that panel, Juliet Lyon CBE, the long-serving director of our partner organisation, the Prison Reform Trust, writes: ‘it takes such courage and generosity of spirit to turn a terrible tragedy into something which could save the lives of others. Audrey’s work with Paul inspired some important changes in prisons from the introduction of basic mental health training for prison staff to assessment of people’s mental health prior to cell-sharing. Sadly the misuse of prison as a place of safety for people who are mentally ill continues to this day.’
David versus Goliath
Audrey received her award on stage in November 2002 from our first Longford Lecturer, Cherie Booth, celebrated human rights lawyer who was also the wife of Prime Minister, Tony Blair. In the same year, Audrey published a memoir, No Truth, No Justice, which described what she characterised as a David versus Goliath struggle to get the police, the NHS and the prison service to address the failures that had led to Christopher’s death.
And in what proved a significant year in her battle, 2002 also saw a case the couple had taken to the European Court of Human Rights upheld. It ruled that Christopher’s right to life had been denied by his treatment after his arrest. Their campaign continued in the years that followed and they worked closely with Martin Narey who ran the Prison Service from 1998 to 2005. He was determined like them to improve treatment of those with mental illness in prisons and, to that end, commissioned a film featuring Audrey which was shown to all new prison officers during their training.
Disappointingly, it ceased to be used after Narey moved on, but the Edwards’ work did not stop, though Paul’s diagnosis with cancer saw it scaled back. They would comfort and advise other families who found themselves in the same dreadful circumstances that they had experienced.
‘Her strength and determination,’ says Paul, who survives Audrey along with their daughter Clare, ‘came from a mother’s devotion to her son, and from her Christian faith. She really believed that we must all try and do good in this world.’ Her example will live on. RIP
