William had been on hunger strike (see  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/05/429663.html) for more than 2 months following the withdrawal of his medication as part of a wide-ranging cost cutting measures introduced by a newly appointed prison doctor. Numerous complaints were made to the prison governor, MPs, the Scottish Government and the General Medical Council, initially to no avail. The governor even boasted in one letter that “It may be of interest that when I went to see William not a single prisoner questioned me or challenged me about our care of him. I do not know how familiar you are with our prison culture but I can assure you if William's fellow prisoners had even the slightest concern about him, I would have been vigorously and directly taken to task”.

This was a mistake; and when the prisoners on William's wing found out they organised a petition to the governor, which they all signed, condemning his actions. The Prisoners Advisory Service also arranged to send a visitor to check on conditions there. In the end it seems that the pressure from both inside and outside took its toll on the prison's resolve and they had to give in to William's perfectly reasonable demands.