After the court case, we went back to my dad’s flat. His wife, Colleen, gave us a good feed and put us on the train back home.
From that day, I started to build a relationship with my dad. We kept in contact, and I always used to visit during the school holidays. Colleen treated us well and I looked forward to those visits as a kid.
I was going out to get money myself and I’d ring my dad sometimes to say I was coming to London. At the time, my dad was working as a presser in a laundry, while Colleen used to work emptying fruit machines; so I used to go down sometimes at a weekend and do some work with Colleen, then come back and spend some time with my dad. He’d take me round the area of London where they were living, telling me stories about how he used to be a rude boy in the area. I’d keep going up there but my brother and sisters weren’t really interested in my dad at all; I was the only one who kept going backwards and forwards. I was just doing my own thing anyway. But even before my dad died they weren’t really bothered, they wouldn’t go down and see him.
Still, to this day, I have a close relationship with my step-mum. She will always be a big part of my life and she says it’s strange how I’m so much like my dad, considering I grew up without him.
He was a bodybuilder and he was into martial arts – it must be in the blood.
I started getting braver and venturing out of Handsworth into the big city of Birmingham with my good pal Thomas Coley. We were part of a gang called the Handsworth Wanderers who used to go to the Bull Ring in Birmingham and hang around the ramp and fountain, at the entrance to New Street train station where all travellers into Birmingham had to come. (This is where I would base myself in my Zulu days, later in my life.)
At the Bull Ring, we were fighting, robbing and taxing whoever we could. Our numbers swelled and there were now over 50 of us. My reputation was growing too; I wasn’t aware of it, as I was a follower not a leader, but people were scared of me and did what I said. I used to have dreadlocks, little picky locks, as was the style if you came from Handsworth. Our gang had some terrifying people – whether we were Rasta, Asian or white guys, we feared no one. We just loved to fight and make money. We would attack every football fan that came into the centre, no matter where they were from. People used to hate coming into Birmingham because they knew the risk of getting taxed, or of a knife being pulled and them getting slashed by us.
I can’t play football to save my life. It had never really interested me and it might have stayed that way. But football came to me when I was a rude boy, hanging uptown on a Saturday night during the early eighties. My pal Horsemouth ran with the rude boys; we would wear the two-tone gear and pork-pie hats, short trousers and brogues, so we were a kind of mixture of mods and skins – but we didn’t really get on with the mods or the skinheads, with their long Parka coats or big Doc Marten boots with coloured braces. We were into ska music, the Coventry band The Specials, The Selecter and all that. We’d go to gigs in town to see bands like The Beat; we’d steam the clothes shops for our gear and be wearing it the same night. One lad would walk in the shop and steal a rack of clothes; nobody would chase him because he’d have five lads behind him to stop anyone when he walked out. We were the rude boys, we did what we had to do to make a bit of poke for ourselves and to enjoy ourselves.
There used to be about five of us from Handsworth and we’d meet up with other lads to go out on the town on a Friday and Saturday night, or fight with the skinheads and mods on a Saturday afternoon. Town was our base and that was where we used to hang out and earn our money.
We were now part of a larger gang with more clout, called the Townies, and we used this as cover for ‘draipsing’ (taking designer clothes and jewellery off the rich kids). This led to us running the town; it was our manor and no one could trouble us. We were about 20-to-30-strong, with people like Rupert, a really good friend who’s been like a second brother to me, plus Todd, Rupert’s cousin who lives in Tamworth, Louis, Skan, Sharkey and Curly. As Birmingham was our domain, we used to rob football supporters – sometimes even the Apex, who were Birmingham City supporters. We had no morals.
I used to notice all these skinheads coming into town and wonder where the heck they were all coming from. We soon learned they were Apex and as rude boys we just said, ‘Fuck ’em, skinheads are racists,’ but we’d see this black skinhead with them from time to time and say: ‘Hey, what’s that nigger doing with them skinheads?’ We’d chase him as well and, to be honest, he would get a worse kicking for being black. So, after every match on a Saturday, when all the skinheads used to come through town, we’d have it off with them – even some of the Apex. We used to have it with their lot all the time – that’s how we got into the football. Then we started attacking all the away fans that were coming to town.
At that time we weren’t really interested in football. We were Townies and only interested in making some fucking poke and having fun! The Bull Ring shopping centre was the place where we hung out, fought and earned our money before and during the match, which was why more police were brought into the Bull Ring, as on most Saturdays while everyone was out shopping, you would have people running and screaming.
RUPERT & TODD
Rupert: We liked The Specials
Todd: It was the Two Tone ska, the old blue beat music, and it was kind of like a switchover where white and black music met together.
Rupert: From the Midlands you had The Beat, The Selecter.
Todd: I think at the time we were quite heavily into that. But Barrington, because he was from the ghetto, it was only natural to put a beret on his head and a pair of short trousers on and be a Rasta. Barrington was the only Rasta I knew who ate pork – LOL! – and I think that’s what made us kind of know that he was from round there but he was more like us! It didn’t take him long to become like us, I can remember when Barrington joined the firm.
Rupert: It didn’t take him a long time at all.
Todd: I think this punk lad who disappeared, called ‘Luke’ (Robert Luca), was Barrington’s friend. I saw Luke’s mate Lamb the other week and he told me that Luke had died from a drug overdose. When we were rude boys in town it was because of Luke and Lamb that we could interact with the punks and the skinheads.
Todd: I know that Luke was very influential with the punks; he was one of the main punk lads. I used to go down there all the time, because at the time you had all the rude girls and the half-skinhead girls, but when you wanted to interact with the punk girls, who you never saw much of because they were with the skinheads, you could go and talk with Luke who was mates with them all. There was one black guy who was a skinhead; when the skinheads and the punks and rude boys started to mingle then the blacks came in.
Rupert: If the Birmingham skinheads would fight with anybody they’d fight with us, and we’d fight the mods.
Todd: It was massive! Down by the library we used to have running battles; there were probably about 300 on each side and the rockers were getting it too. I can remember times when we all used to go down there: me, Rupert, Barrington and a few more of them; there was a guy called Terry, who used to think he was ‘the face’ of the mods, and he used to come up and try to mix with us and find out what we were doing but, depending on what mood we were in, he’d probably end up getting a slap! Nine times out of 10 it would be Barrington who gave him a slap.
Rupert: He was older than us, he was twice our age.
Todd: It was a really crazy time! I can remember once I took his Parka and we all went down to Bingley Hall. All the rude boys stayed hidden and I walked up towards the mods, dressed in his Parka, saying, ‘The rude boys are coming!’ As soon as the mods got near, the rude boys jumped out and we had a running battle with