I can remember a time when we were walking through Handsworth and Barrington looks across the road and sees this guy. He says, ‘That guy over there used to bully me when I was at school,’ and he hadn’t seen him since then. But obviously since then his confidence had built up. He walks over to the guy, who was several years older than him, and says, ‘Oi, pussy! D’you remember me? D’you remember you used to bully me at school?’
And the guy’s looked at Barrington and I think he could smell the fierceness of him. He just scurried on as fast as he could!
When I was a kid at school I did get bullied over my eye, but years later I’d bump into certain people and give them a slap for it. That’s how long I hold a grudge – for years.
RUPERT & TODD
Todd: When we were 17, we used to mess about in the Pallasades shopping centre, sometimes we used to do the security’s heads in. There was one security guard called ‘Shotgun Tommy’ and we used to take the piss out of him all the time, even though he was a really nice guy; we used to call him Urko because he was built like the gorilla from Planet of the Apes, I’m telling you. Solid! One day he just says to Barrington, ‘If you think you’re tough let’s go round the back for a straightener!’ and I’m telling you, that was a fight and a half. He looked at us after and looked at Barrington and said, ‘Him tough!’ I know Barrington thought, Well, this man’s tough himself, but Barrington was only 17.
Rupert: I remember when they used to have the cameras there and there was this one security guy we used to call ‘Shitty Batty’. He must have told us to move on or something; it was late at night because the shops were closed. Someone must have started arguing the case, saying, ‘There’s no one around, so what are you moving us on for?’ So they’ve got into a bit of a set-to and Barrington and him have decided to sort it out. Barrington’s moved the camera so that it’s facing the other way. Then he fucking mullahed him!
Todd: ‘The Bear’ was this lad who used to knock around within the firm but he was a lot older than us – he was the biggest by far. A few lads in the firm kind of feared him because he was a bit of a bully at times to some of the weaker crew members, but he came in very handy at times when we had problems with rival firms. Some of them stayed away from him and some of them let him buy drinks for them to try to buy their friendship that way, but he always ended up turning. Probably the last day he ever turned on anyone was when we were walking back to the station and he started picking on Rupert a bit. Everyone was getting a bit concerned; you had to be careful because if you picked on certain members of the firm then the other lads were going to feel like, ‘You’re picking on me as well.’ Some members of the firm carried a bit more clout and they weren’t meant to be bullied. Rupert was one of them.
I think that day Barrington had no other option but to fight him. They had a fight and a half. There was this place called Wade’s, they used to sell carpets and they had a balcony there. Barrington chucked him over the balcony then went down and carried on. The Bear bit out a chunk of Barrington’s arm and they had a serious fight that day, but in Barrington’s head it’s never ever been over. He always says to me, ‘See what I’ll do – if I ever see him again I’ll batter the head off him!’ Me and Barrington were working together later in security; I actually brought him back to Birmingham to work. There was a problem in my mate’s shop with some of the young gang members; the gaffer was having trouble with them so we came back to Birmingham to try to solve the situation. That’s when The Bear stopped coming to town – when he found out Barrington was back in Birmingham.
Rupert: It was because he had that fight with Thomas first, do you remember?
Todd: Thomas Coley was Barrington’s partner from when he first came to Birmingham. I think at the time Thomas was actually tougher than Barrington, he was a nasty piece of work – but he became a very good friend of mine and still is! When you saw him coming and you saw Barrington behind him, you thought, Thomas Coley was Barrington’s partner from when he first came to Birmingham. I think at the time Thomas was actually tougher than Barrington, he was a nasty piece of work – but he became a very good friend of mine and still is! When you saw him coming and you saw Barrington behind him, you thought, Shit!
Rupert: They were in the same class at school and they both got expelled.
Then we got to know some of these skinhead guys and we started talking. Before you knew it, the fashion changed so quickly that by the next football season you would notice all these dressers come into town wearing Tacchini, Fila, Ellesse and all that. Then the London club guys would come in with their Pringle and Armani and Lacoste and we’d think, We can’t afford all those fucking things! But they were on our manor so we taxed ’em.
At most of the matches we’d go to, we’d have a little earner. Sometimes we would send the lads to have a fight so that they could distract the police; we would leave them and go to the pub, wreck it and break open any fruit or fag machines. The same if it was a shop – we would go in to steam it, grabbing whatever we wanted.
It was around this time that there was a major problem within the black community. We were treated like shit, the police had no respect for us, and all the black and Asian families were dumped into the ghettoes of Birmingham. I guess it had happened in other places as well, like Toxteth and Brixton, but we were acutely aware of the underlying issues as we experienced them day after day and we were involved in the Handsworth riots. We had the idea that, if we created enough chaos, we could make some money – as all the shopkeepers would abandon their shops. That was our way of life. We came about 20-handed and all we were interested in was breaking into shops and taking what we could.
Sometimes you just wanted to destroy things; other times you’d run into a shop and come out with things you didn’t even need, running straight home, putting it away in the house and running back out again. You would have maybe one room full up with stolen goods, including quite a few things you’d never had before. Then your house would get raided.
That first night of the riots, we all arranged to meet up at the top of Handsworth and plan what we were going to do. The police had the SPG (Special Patrol Group) at the time and they were just bastards. All they wanted was to beat people with their long truncheons, and you knew that when the SPG were coming you had to run.
Everything was directed against the police. We just wanted to tell people what they were like and what they were doing, but nobody wanted to take it onboard. It was like a cry for help – people knocked Handsworth, Toxteth and Brixton, but all they remember about those areas is the riots. If they hadn’t actually lived there, then they didn’t know what they were like. Handsworth had as nice a community as anybody else’s area.
It was a nice feeling too – people were trying to put their point across because the government were not interested. Everyone was trying to get the aggression out of themselves, because in those days a black lad could be walking down the street and he would get stopped for no apparent reason. Or he would be told to get out of his car; the black guy would turn round and say, ‘Why? I ain’t done nothing,’ and the police would hold up a bag of weed and say they found it in the car. They were well known for planting drugs on people and saying it was theirs.
Most of the towns that rioted back in 1981 did so for a reason – not like the recent riots around the UK in August 2011, after the police shot and killed Mark Duggan. People just wanted to be heard as they were putting up with a lot of shit in those days. But for us it was just about money, money, money. We weren’t into that aspect – we were into the looting.
Riots are riots at the end of the day, but they’re not like they used to be years ago. Some of the guys go over the top with the rioting – setting fire to people’s houses and things like that. When we were rioting we were just grabbing things, we weren’t setting light to the premises; we were just providing things for our families – or for ourselves, or whatever. Fuck burning down a big store when there are people living on top of the fucking building!
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While the riots were on, we made a lot of money. We looted shops of their stock, including food, fags, booze, furniture, TVs, anything that we could. But one of the sad things that came out of the riots was that my good friend, Thomas Coley, got jumped on by the SPG and beaten very badly. Thomas had a promising career ahead of him as a boxer and was due to represent England; his beating changed that and he’s never been right again. He was one of the guys I used to look up to, coming from Handsworth. He was a wicked fighter, but when the SPG got him in the riots they fucking hammered him.
RUPERT & TODD
Todd: Barrington came from Handsworth and when he came up into the city he had the Handsworth mentality; they used to go up to the skinheads and take their boots off them, and their laces! But Barrington kind of turned. He left the Handsworth lot and started to hang around with us lot in town. He started going to the football, shoplifting, everything that we were doing as kids, which progressed into the football violence and meeting women, and his life kept on accelerating to where he is now.
Rupert: Barrington always had money, he always worked. I wish I was like that. Anyone he met or had a bond with, he would keep in contact with.
Todd: He had a job, he always had money, and he always had a missus. His only downfall at the time was gambling, he’d always be across the road in The Night Rider and he’d be playing cards: blackjack and brag. Barrington was our mate but we couldn’t get in the way of his gambling, because if we went to the pub where he was gambling with the older lot he’d tell us to piss off! But he was the only one who had a job and he was in a stable relationship; he thought so much of the girl he was with at the time, I’m surprised he never ended up marrying her. She was a blonde-haired girl from Erdington, wasn’t she?
As kids, we never really knew about designer clothes and, even if we did, we couldn’t afford those things. I remember your Adidas four-stripe and wearing an Adam and the Ants T-shirt. We’d go to school in plimsolls with the cardboard pushed down inside to try to stop the water soaking through, and side-pocket trousers with a big utility belt.
When the shops finally took notice of all this designer stuff and started to stock all these smart tracksuits, a big sports shop opened up. On the first day it opened, we broke into it and robbed all the tracksuits – Ecko, Ellesse, Sergio Tacchini. Before that I was wearing Adidas, with the four-stripe trainers, and in town people would be taking the piss out of me. People all around, including us, started to come out of wearing Sta-Press and brogues and became a bit more casually dressed.
It had mainly been a music scene, but then all the casual clothes started coming in. You had all these shops opening in Birmingham like Cecil Gee and other shops were selling Gabicci and all that. As soon as the shops opened, we were breaking into them and robbing them. On a Friday or Saturday, you’d just walk in and take a handful of clothes. You’d walk out and nobody could stop you. We continued steaming into designer shops and taking all the stock out – Armani jeans, Nevica skiwear, Tacchini and Fila tracksuits. In and out in one minute, that was our aim. Then there were all the guys coming from London wearing Tacchini and Fila. We just taxed them and took it off them.
Now that we’d started to go places, some of the ex-skinheads we knew would ask, ‘Why don’t you come to a game?’ So we started to go down to the football match; that was where it all began.
RUPERT & TODD
Rupert: I remember when we were playing Arsenal; we’d just come off the bus and we were walking up towards the ground. We had a little set-to with some Arsenal fans but the funny thing about the story was that they’d come running up behind us, Barrington’s done a roundhouse, knocked the geezer out and one of the lads that was with us started rifling through his pockets!
That was about ’82. The big turning point was when we started getting the lads from Birmingham town, the Townies, going to Birmingham football games. Mickey Francis wrote about it in his book, Guvnors. Man City, who were called the Cool Cats at the time, came walking past McDonald’s in the centre. We’d already had word, because in those days there were no mobile phones so we always had spies out. Some of the lads have come along and said, ‘City are here and they’re walking through the shopping centre.’
Todd: In those days, it was individual firms on every corner; sometimes it would get a bit frisky and we’d interact with them and get shirty, ending up having a fight if one person had a problem with someone else from another firm. This was before the Zulus, when we were generally fighting with the Apex who were Birmingham’s City’s firm at the time, along with other local firms.
Rupert: A lot of the time when we’d come uptown, we brought a lot of attention to ourselves. We were young and we all came from different parts of Birmingham, so at the time some of us were Villa, some of us were West Brom, but we weren’t that interested in football.
Todd: At the time, I don’t think we really cared about the football; we were more into violence and raising money. We got into the football violence because the fans would have to come through New Street station and the first people they got to before they found the Apex were us – the Townies.
Rupert: When Man City came walking through, it was the first time I’d ever seen a black firm come into Birmingham. We just swamped ’em. Those that didn’t get away got slapped. They try to make out that they came back later and did us, but they didn’t because we were there till 11 o’clock at night on the ramp. They got smashed. A few weeks later, we played Everton; they came through and there was this Rasta on the floor, the police had him and pulled his locks out! Now Everton appeared from out of nowhere and chased a few lads around the corner: guess who was there? They were running into it so fast that they got it big-time, they got the worst beatings. Barrington was always there, he was always involved. After Man City and Everton, the other teams that came through were Tottenham and Millwall.
The last time I went to Man City was about five years ago, on the anniversary of the 1982 formation of the Zulus. A big firm of us went up there and took their main fucking pub.
We met up with a black guy called Fanny, originally from Birmingham but now living in Manchester, who supports Man City. There were no rows before the match but afterwards it kicked off quite a bit. We later heard from Fanny that Man City admitted no firm had ever gone there and taken them on like we did – not even Man United.
RUPERT & TODD
Todd: Even when we were still in small groups we would be chanting, ‘Zulus!’ when we were running into people. At that time, the football was still predominantly white.
Rupert: We were the first generation that went down there to St Andrew’s. I remember me and Barrington walking to the ground and suddenly realising we were surrounded by Villa. Barrington was at the front because at the time he was the most recognisable to the Villa fans; if he ever came into town he was always getting spotted by other firms. He had this almost mythical thing about him, so people were always wary of coming up to him because he would stand there toe-to-toe and have a row. So we’re walking up and Barrington’s gone, ‘There’s Lloydy,’ who was one of their top boys, and I’ve thought, Oh shit! Barrington looked round to me as if to say, ‘I’m going to swerve him – he’s my cousin!’
We would fight football fans on Saturdays and I always noticed the black skinhead. We got talking and started going down to the matches together. This was around the same time as black ska fans and white punks all started mixing together due to our common interests of fighting, music and football. Before then I’d had no interest in football. There were no black people down at the matches, apart from us Townies and the black skinhead. So we linked up, which was how the Zulus were formed.
I remember the first match I went to. I thought, Fucking hell, it’s just full of white people! You could count the black people on two bloody hands! But it was a good game and there was no trouble. We started going to watch football from then on and did so for years. The first game where I had a row was against Arsenal. I was outside the ground and I g
ave this guy a spinning hook kick. He just landed on his head and from that point all the fighting started.
The 82/83 season was when the Zulu thing started with Manchester City. We were all individuals. Even though I was from Handsworth, I came with the Townie lot; we had guys from Chelmsley Wood, which is a main place for skinheads. We had the little Acocks Green firm and the Sheldon firm. All different lads from different areas.
When people hear about the Zulus, they think it’s a black thing, but it’s always been a multiracial thing – a Birmingham City thing, and that’s how we’ll keep it. We used to just meet up at a couple of pubs via word of mouth. We’d go down to where Villa drank, give it to them down there and go back to our pub. Everybody always said that the city was divided between Blues and Villa, but it’s never been like that. It’s always been a Blues place. They used to come down to our manor and they’d get hammered and sent back out of town.
There are certain places in Birmingham that Villa won’t come, whereas Blues will go anywhere in town, like the Arcadia club. The same goes for the players: Blues players will go out anywhere in Birmingham but the Villa players won’t; they’ll probably go to places like Sutton Coldfield, but in Birmingham they’d get ‘clattered’.
One-Eyed Baz Page 3