The slaughter and accompanying horrors of the First World War created a worldwide revulsion to war and a sense in the 1920s and 1930s among many people that peace was worth virtually any price.

That sense led to the Munich peace settlement of 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart gave away the Czech Sudetenland to Hitler's Germany to avoid war. Chamberlain returned to London declaring he had achieved "peace in our time".

As every schoolboy knows, he was disastrously wrong. Europe was plunged into the Second World War just a year later and Chamberlain lost his job just nine months after war broke out. The lesson - peace is not worth any price.

Still, a similar mood of appeasement overtook the Government last week when it "settled" the prison officers' strike. Anyone hearing Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister speak in the House of Assembly on Friday could have been forgiven for thinking Government had achieved a great victory in ending the strike.

Nothing is further from the truth. This strike was mostly of the Government's own making and the "settlement" itself was a craven cave-in that has created the worst of all worlds in the prison service and meted out a death sentence to any coherent and sensible policy on prisons for the foreseeable future.

Keep in mind that Commissioner of Corrections John Prescod was appointed by the Government to cut recidivism and to set a new tone for the service. Until a few days ago, his policies were supported to the hilt by Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister and, by extension, by the whole Cabinet.

This position was taken in spite of Mr. Prescod's tenure in the same position in Jamaica, a tenure that was marked by strikes, dismissals and problems, many of them prompted by Mr. Prescod's "dictatorial" approach and others by his prisoner-friendly policies, which included the sensible but controversial decision to issue condoms to inmates to halt the spread of AIDS.

In spite of this past record, Mr. Prescod was judged to be the best candidate for the job. That begs the question of who else applied. Nonetheless, Mr. Prescod took up his post. It took just months for the prison officers to follow the lead of their Jamaican colleagues, suggesting that Mr. Prescod had learned nothing from his previous job about getting "buy-in'; for his policies from those who work for him.

The point here is not that Mr. Prescod's policies are right or wrong; it is that he cannot seem to get anyone to go along with him, a fatal flaw for any manager.

Last Monday, the prison officers, having failed to have their concerns heard, and angry that recommendations from a 2001 board of inquiry were not being implemented, went on strike.

On Thursday night the strike ended, with the prison officers getting everything they wanted short of Mr. Prescod's own departure. In fact, they may have achieved something more than the latter; the Prison Officers Association is now in effect running the Prisons Service, or to give it its official name, the Department of Corrections.

And the Commissioner of Corrections, Mr. Prescod, is in charge in name only. Under the terms of the deal, he must implement the terms of the Board of Inquiry and he must undergo "localisation training" to fit him better to Bermuda norms. (Lesson one: Do everything the union tells you. Lesson two: Do not expect the Cabinet to back you when things get hot.). The key condition is that the Premier will meet with the Prison Officers Association (not Mr. Prescod) every quarter to mark progress on the implementation of the 2001 recommendations.

This means that Mr. Prescod is no longer chef executive officer of the prisons. Policy decisions and executive authority now lie not with Mr. Prescod or even Mr. Lister, but with the Premier.

That Mr. Prescod's position is untenable goes without saying. Indeed, discipline within the service is already falling apart, as evidenced by the refusal of the officers on duty to pass on remand prisoners' requests to see him on Thursday. He has clearly lost the confidence of his staff and of his employers. He should resign.

So should Mr. Lister, who has apparently been judged unfit to run the prisons since the Premier has taken control away from him. Knowing Mr. Lister, he won't. But he has clearly lost the confidence of the Premier and should wash his hands of this whole sorry business and at least keep his honour intact.