My cell was searched on a regular basis for a month after that. I was standing on the landing during one of these occasions, talking to my pal, Joe Mooney, when a screw came up to me.
‘Got a minute?’ he asked, without emotion.
‘What do you want?’ I barked back.
‘Just to tell you that your mum is dead,’ he said, looking for a reaction.
‘Thanks a lot. Now fuck off.’
I was ripped apart inside, but in those places you can’t show any sign of weakness. I waited until I was alone in my cell, held my head in my hands and mourned my mother.
Major Bingham showed genuine sympathy after my mum’s death, and he was keen to push for my education. When I applied to do the Open University degree, he and Maurice, the probation officer, spoke up for me.
The governor let me go full steam ahead for my degree.
This was a whole new ball game for me, as nobody in my family had gone to university. That way of life was for posh kids, but here I was – a ‘fresher’ – giving my all to the Open University, and enjoying every minute.
It gave me such a real good feeling inside and I threw myself into the studies. I expected the tutors to be snobs and treat us like second-rate people, but they didn’t; they gave us all the support we needed and went more than the extra mile.
The screws, on the other hand, would try to put a spanner in the works by sending our assignments in late. Many of the screws didn’t have an O-level between them, and they didn’t like the thought of us becoming qualified. The tutors were wise to that trick and gave us some leeway.
I became more and more engrossed in sociology and psychology. I remember one day reading a book about social deviants and thinking, ‘That’s me!’ I knew I was different to most people, but now I could put a name to it. This was interesting stuff; I was reading about what made people like me tick. It wasn’t just about getting a degree; it was about understanding my mind and finding the tools to turn my life around.
I decided to be an example of what could be achieved. I saw my future in front of me.
I was definitely going straight.
I sat in my cell and thought about the wise words of Charlie Richardson. It was a ‘eureka’ moment for me. Everything fell into place after reading that book. If I had all this education, what was the point in slipping back into crime? I paced around my small cell and punched the air. ‘Fuck the past,’ I thought. ‘Bring on my future.’
I wasn’t worried about leaving my mates behind in this new world; I worked out ways of taking them with me. If anyone thought I was going soft, then that was their problem – there was even a rumour going round that I was being nicer to the screws! I knew that changing my entire life around would be the hardest task I had ever set myself.
I began to spread the message that the government spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending people through the revolving doors of prison. I could see that, if they trained more prisoners for employment and pushed Open University courses, it would save the country a fortune.
I was constantly highlighting the importance of educating prisoners. In most prisons, education wasn’t encouraged by the screws and above: the last thing they wanted was educated prisoners organising petitions and all that. Charlie Richardson had been a right thorn in their side with his campaigns and protests, and I was following his example.
You have no idea what it felt like to receive a certificate in prison for qualifying with a Higher National Diploma in architecture, law and a mix of courses. After prison, I kept going at the University of Greenwich and was awarded my Open University degree there.
The Open University concept dates back to the autumn of 1962, when the idea of external degrees for London University was suggested. At the same time, the Ministry of Education and the BBC were talking about a ‘college of the air’, while the Labour Party debated the problems of lower-income groups entering higher education. Again, the idea was to launch a ‘university of the air’ on radio and television.
In stepped Harold Wilson, fresh from his 1964 election success, with enthusiasm for the project. He appointed Jennie Lee as Minister for the Arts and asked her to move the scheme forward.
She was the one who blew a hole in the wall of hostility and indifference facing any future for alternative university plans. I also had to climb that wall while I was in prison.
Such a massive project couldn’t be established overnight. By 1967 Harold Wilson’s cabinet had set up a planning committee to work towards an Open University. In 1969 the first vice-chancellor was appointed. In September of that year the newly born organisation was working feverishly in the new town of Milton Keynes, with a staff of just over seventy.
In 1971 the Open University welcomed its first students. These 25,000 determined souls were about to study subjects including the arts, social sciences and maths. And they did not need prior qualifications to reap the benefits.
Jennie Lee, who continued to back the Open University and became its first founder, said: ‘I knew it had to be a university with no concessions, right from the very beginning. After all, I have gone through the mill myself, taking my own degree, even though it was a long time ago. I knew all about the conservatism and vested interests of the academic world. I didn’t believe we could get it through if we lowered our standards.’
I can confirm that those standards have remained high since I turned my back on crime and concentrated on my education.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
UNLOCKING THE FUTURE
MY FRIENDS AND family staged the party to beat all parties just before I was released for the final time in 1988. I went on a weekend of home leave and was stunned to find that the Prince of Wales pub in Holloway Road had been transformed for the occasion.
There was even a huge cake, adorned with sweet models of handcuffs and a sawn-off shotgun.
Everyone was buying drinks for me. There were so many drinks that I had to pour most of them down the sink. I didn’t want to get pissed, knowing I had to behave and return to jail. Also, with so much time in solitary, I wasn’t used to too much alcohol.
It was like a party for a dad coming home from the war. My schoolboy friends were there: Tony the Greek, Andy the Greek and Chrissy, to name but a few. The Major who’d patched us up all those years ago appeared as well, but he only stayed for an hour or so. He was paranoid when he saw loads of police outside. They were taking pictures of the well-known faces walking in the door, no doubt hoping to nick someone they were looking for. As revenge, I told one of the boys to get a camera and he started to take pictures of the Old Bill!
It was all getting a bit much for me, so I phoned up my girlfriend Lynn and asked if she would come to the party. She agreed, coming over all the way from her home in Kent, and was flabbergasted when she saw the scene before her.
‘This is crazy,’ she gasped, as drinks were poured and people came up to me, handing over ‘respect’ money to give me a good start. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
Every time Lynn had a drink, another ten appeared beside her. She stayed by my side during that weekend and that gave me such a good feeling. She knew that people were assuming I would be back robbing banks. Despite offer after offer, that was never an option. I had decided to go straight.
The feeling of joy when you’re released from prison is difficult to explain. The shackles are off as you enter a new world, and you believe you are ready to start afresh. But the entire planet is against you as soon as loyal companions wave goodbye and the prison gates open.
That first day of freedom, leaving the prison gates at Maidstone on a bright, sunny day in 1988, seemed like a momentous event at the beginning of my new life. A hired Rolls-Royce picked me up and Lynn and I had a whale of a time at another homecoming party. It was a follow-up to the Prince of Wales do, and was the beano to beat all beanos.
When I came out of prison and decided to go straight, things didn’t always go my way. Sceptics wondered when I would be bac
k in prison. I had to remember that I lived in this society and needed to obey the rules.
Ultimately, it’s about your choice and commitment in leaving it all behind. Some people have a stronger commitment than others. Some people have better chances than others – I am lucky because, when I was in prison, I managed to educate myself. I came out and followed an academic career. I did have to start at the bottom rung of the ladder, though. No one gave me any hand-outs. I had three jobs going at once to pay for even more education, and had to work to be accepted in society. Why should society trust me? My track record said it shouldn’t. I had to eat a lot of humble pie in those days. I saw the beauty of life outside prison and wanted to take full advantage.
As I say, I’d met Lynn on the inside – she was the prison librarian, and we had spent hours discussing my poems about the treatment of inmates. She agreed with my plans to help ex-offenders go straight, through education.
Six months after my release, we were married at Maidstone Register Office. Lynn gave up her job so that we could be together. My new wife was one of the most honourable and decent people I’d ever met. However, I had entered her world with all its prejudices against ex-criminals, and the odds were stacked against us from the start. Even her mother and father refused to come to our wedding, although her grandmother, sister and brother were absolute diamonds. Even to this day I get on well with my ex-brother-in-law. We enjoyed a magnificent reception at the White Horse pub in East Farleigh near Maidstone.
We rented a small cottage and I was determined to live a crime-free life. But I soon found that I just was not welcome in this society. And I could also see how, when ex-offenders were rejected by ‘decent’ society, but welcomed by the society that had groomed them for a life of crime, many went back to their bad old ways.
I found that I was still locked in a world that revolved around the date when I was first arrested. One day, as I sat wondering how I would get a job and hating the prejudices out there, Lynn suggested that I should go out and explore our area, and have a few drinks with the locals.
‘Phone me when you’re ready to come home,’ she said. ‘It’ll do you good, and I’ll have dinner ready when you get back.’
It was a strange, strange experience. After being locked up for years, there I was, in a Victorian-style pub, wondering what to drink and how much it would cost. I knew that Charlie Richardson had similar problems: he told me he walked around with bags of change as he came to terms with the changeover from pounds, shillings and pence.
Decisions, decisions. What should I order to drink? In prison they make all the decisions for you. They decide when you should go to bed, when you should wake up and what you will eat each day. Then they release you, and you must make all those decisions yourself. If you make the wrong decisions, you end up back behind bars, and so the cycle continues.
With no crimes to concentrate on, I ditched the bitter lemon but still played it fairly safe with a half pint of lager. I was surprised at how much it cost. Seemed like a rip-off for fizzy yellow liquid.
I sat in the corner, watching the locals. Some nodded, and I nodded back. They were discussing betting odds, news in the papers and the best buys in the motors section. After another two halves I became bored and decided to call Lynn from the phone box outside the pub.
Well, I looked for the slot to put my money in, but there wasn’t one. There was just a slot which looked as if it was designed for notes and all that. What? A fiver to make a call? Too embarrassed just to back out of there, I spoke into a silent phone, felt totally confused and made my way home.
As I walked back to the cottage I tried to work out the odd system in the phone box. In prison, if you wanted to make a call, the welfare officer made the connection for you.
‘Why didn’t you call?’ Lynn asked as I arrived at the door. ‘Didn’t you find a phone box?’
‘There’s a slot for notes – it didn’t take any change.’
‘That’s for a phone card!’ She chuckled. ‘Of course, you won’t know what they are. Come with me.’
Lynn took me along to the local shop and bought me a phone card. I could now communicate with the outside world.
I was learning bits and pieces every day.
I sat in our little cottage writing out job application after job application. I sent out around 200 a week and received setback after setback. Some companies didn’t even bother to reply.
I was totally honest about my past and went into all the details. However, no one offered me a job. On the other hand, our home telephone was ringing all the time with offers of employment from criminal gangs in London. We had no money, but I decided to plod on with my legal job hunting.
I grew more and more despondent and desperate as the weeks went by. ‘Fuck this,’ I thought. ‘Maybe I should go up to London and do a couple of jobs with the gangs.’ I knew that would sort us out financially, but Lynn would have none of it. And she was pregnant with our first child.
‘It’s either a life of crime, or me.’
To be fair, she’d given everything up for me, including her family. So I worked out a new tactic when going for jobs: I had to be dishonest when applying for an honest position! I used my London contacts to provide a list of building companies that had gone bust and closed down. I added the names to my CV, invented positions, and it did the trick.
I applied for a job as a night shelf-packer in Tesco and got it. It seemed to be a big step down from being the head of a criminal gang, with low pay and hard work, but at least it was an honest living.
My first evening, I had my sandwiches packed, my flask of tea ready, and off I went to my night job. I clicked with most of the staff straight away – all, apart from, that is, the night manager. He was a nightmare.
He was around twenty-one years old, and a real nobody trying to be somebody. He strutted around with a plastic folder under his arm, making a general pest of himself. He sucked up to the women, and tried to impress them by bullying the men.
I saw him for what he was, kept my head down and carried on with my work. I needed this job, but it wasn’t long before he’d singled me out and gave me all the rubbish jobs to do. He picked on me for not putting on stickers properly, and showed me how quickly he could use a pricing gun.
I just thought, ‘Don’t worry about how fast you are with a pricing gun. Keep on going the way you’re going and I’ll show you how fast I am with a fucking shotgun.’
I know what you’re thinking: I wasn’t at my ‘turning point’ just yet, despite my efforts to go totally straight.
I ignored the little wanker and grafted away for two months. I remember bringing home my first pay packet of £100. You would have thought that I had brought home the Crown Jewels. Lynn was so proud. We treated ourselves to fish and chips and a bottle of red wine. It wasn’t the cuisine I’d been used to in my heyday, but fish and chips and red wine never tasted so good!
People who were involved in my business operations, during my crime years, had spent all of my cash. We’re talking about a small fortune here – a large amount of money that had allowed me to enjoy the high life as a criminal. I had two choices: I could either go and shoot them and get the money back, or walk away and start a new life. I started that new life with Lynn, even though I’d come out with £1,800 to my name.
At work, however, the little jerk still would not leave me alone. One night I thought, ‘Fuck you. People in here are in vulnerable positions, suffering all this because they need a crap job to feed their families. If you come on to me tonight, I am really going to educate you.’
Sure enough, he failed to read the writing on the wall. It was there for him to read, but somehow he didn’t see it. Somehow he failed to see the need for his own education …
‘Oi! You haven’t shelved the dog food properly. Straighten those cans up. Why do I have to sort out your mistakes all the time?’
He walked away and I seized my chance. I followed right behind him, grabbed hold of the little creep and pushed h
im into the cold storage area. I could tell that he was frozen with fear.
I pressed him up against the wall, slapped his face and snarled, ‘If you ever fuck with me or any of the others again, I will beat the fucking shit out of you and hang you up on that meat rack.’
I headed off to carry on with my routine tasks as the pathetic night manager ran upstairs to his office and locked the door. An hour later a security firm arrived, asked me to collect my gear and leave – otherwise they would call the Old Bill. The last thing I wanted was more aggravation, so I picked up my gear and headed off back home to Lynn.
I told her what had happened, and she was worried, but thankfully the police hadn’t been called in. I felt sorry for the effect it had on Lynn, but I had no regrets about actually threatening the little wanker. He deserved it.
The next morning I was summoned to the store and fired on the spot. I told them what had happened and, fortunately, the night crew backed up my story about the bullying. It didn’t help my case, but at least I’d made my point. The night manager, however, was still frightened and asked to be transferred to another store.
My mate, Nick, was promoted to night manager. He had also been upset by the bullying tactics; he brought me round the wages due and a bottle of wine. Everyone felt the same as me, although I’d foolishly taken the law into my own hands. I’d brought those tactics from my manor and, on this occasion, I’d failed to win the day.
After a few weeks I had another job, selling advertising space in our local paper. Tony Williams was running that show as editor. He was a real Christian with a good heart and full of compassion. Tony is still a dear friend of mine and really is one of life’s beautiful people.
I worked with Tony and his crew for a while, and then landed a job with a housing association. The manager was a woman called Pat Willet. She knew about my past, but she’d still hired me, bless her. And, as I’d be working at a hostel for ex-offenders, she thought that I would be an asset to the operation.
I Am Not A Gangster Page 17