ABSTRACT
After relations between prison staff and the Home Office had worsened and industrial action disrupted regimes, Mr Merlyn Rees, Home Secretary, announced the membership of the May Committee and its terms of reference. The Inquiry began work in a spirit of optimism, amid hopes that it would not only be able to remove the causes of bitterness among prison staff but would produce a philosophy and programme for prisons with a vision valid for the twenty-first century. The disappointment the May Inquiry Report provoked owed something to the diffidence in which parts of it were couched. It is the context and language in which the results of the inquiry are put, rather than some of the findings, which obfuscate. But on the issues which caused officers particular concern when they took industrial action - claims for payment in respect of meal breaks taken within duty hours - the May Inquiry has done little to cool the anger within the service.
