WHEN the cell door slammed shut for the first time on Tim O'Kane he little thought there would come a day when he would be sitting on a committee making decisions on law and order issues.

While inside he had property stolen, was told how to rob a supermarket and get away with it, and how to steal a caravan.

Here he tells GAIL ATKINSON about the event that changed his life...

IT is almost 10 years to the day since Clayton-le-Moors ward councillor Tim O'Kane was jailed for non-payment of poll tax.

Although he was staunchly opposed to the charge, which had already been replaced by the council tax, he went to court with the £533 in his pocket in case he decided to pay at the last minute.

In the event he didn't and was given a 54-day prison sentence, the only one out of 70 people appearing before the court for the same thing to be jailed.

But worse was to come because the first-time convict was sent to a category A prison, meant for the most hardened criminals like murderers and rapists.

"I was handcuffed to another prisoner who was coming down off some drug and he was gibbering," he said.

On arrival at Preston Prison, the 38-year-old who had never had a brush with the law had to watch his back because it got around that he was a police sympathiser, having written supportive letters to the newspapers.

"I feared for my safety because I had been supportive of police measures. I had been advocating different regimes, and they read every single piece in the newspaper in prison. They have nothing else to do all day.

"I was thrown in with a pack of wild animals. I had been in about 20 minutes when I had inhalers stolen. They pass as currency in jail. The first night when the door shuts you are totally bewildered, thinking: Is it really happening?

"You are in a cell with a slopping out bucket -- this was 1993 not 1793 but it was like being in a Dickensian jail or the Bastille or something.

"The worst thing was hearing people who had taken drugs screaming in the night and not being able to do anything. You are totally isolated."

To ensure his safety prison officers wanted to put him in an area of the prison reserved for paedophiles.

"Those were the only secure areas of the jail," said the former RAF man.

"They wanted to put me in there -- that was one of the suggestions.

"In six days I was in three different cells because the prison warders were extremely sympathetic.

"Category A is for murderers and rapists, but that was the reality of it."

For a man who had never been in trouble before, prison was an experience that nothing could prepare you for, and idle chit-chat was of the college of crime variety.

"You were told how you could get drugs.

"There were regular swoops on the prison yard because they would catapult the drugs over the prison wall into the exercise area.

"I was taught how to steal a caravan -- how to break the lock inside so you could pinch it -- and we were told the names of people who would fence goods, the best way to get away with robbing a supermarket -- take a change of sweater so you can change into it afterwards -- and I was offered all manner of drugs."

Coun O'Kane was released from prison after five days when relatives paid his bill but the experience would stay with him and eventually led to him to stand for election to the very council that had prosecuted him.

"After I came out, for weeks afterwards I was walking up to a door and waiting for someone to open it. It made me all the more determined to get involved with the decision-making process and stop anything like that happening again.

"Accrington was identified as the town where the poll tax had to work. In fact in Margaret Thatcher's memoirs she referred to the poll tax as the Accrington problem."

Nowadays Coun O'Kane is a leading Labour councillor in Hyndburn, sitting on the cabinet, and getting involved in the borough's crime and disorder strategy.

But even after a decade the memory still haunts the veteran councillor and these days he admits he would let others make the protest.

"I was at a chief executives and leaders meeting in Preston last week and we were just going past the prison. I thought: Ten years ago I was in there, now I'm discussing crime and disorder issues.

"It strengthens your resolve to do something in society to stop any return to that kind of oppressive legislation.

"I was pushing the boundaries, forcing the authorities to take that kind of action to test the system.

"I thought the system failed. Now I'm on the cabinet.

"I think I'm the only person ever to have been in a category A jail for anything and subsequently be elected."

The rules say anyone who has been sentenced to three months or more in prison can't stand for election.

"I don't regret standing up for Labour principles although today I would probably leave it to someone else to do.

"I have done my bit, I don't ever want to see the inside of a jail again."