What made us fierce was simple. Unlike previous generations, we had no fear of the English lads. We went to the same schools and shit in the same toilets. One day, in a history lesson, I saw a picture of a pre-war pope blessing the Italian tanks, howitzers and machine guns that were going to Africa to fight the Abyssinian men on horses. I remember thinking, ‘Here’s a priest who preaches love, forgiveness, honour and to worship thy father, and he’s blessing these weapons to fight against black people in their own land.’ It made me question my faith. Up until then, I’d been an altar boy.
In the course of time, I realised that it wasn’t God’s fault, and, instead, it was man twisting God’s word. One day, I got thrown out of a class by a teacher who informed me that South Africa was a white country. When I put him right, he punished me for it.
Then came the tremendously hot summer of 1976, when race riots raged up and down the country. The National Front had been to Bradford and some of their thugs had set houses belonging to the Asian community on fire. Then they had gone to Leeds and set houses on fire there. Now they said they were coming to Liverpool to set us on fire.
George Osu’s brother, Willie Osu – a stalwart of the community – went around rallying a demonstration with a loudhailer, saying, ‘The fascists are coming! Are we going to take it? No we’re fucking not, so get out onto the streets and fight back.’
Sure enough, Colin Jordan turned up with a column of NF storm troopers, all wearing Nazi uniforms and jackboots. They walked tall because they were expecting another easy victory. In Leeds and Bradford, they’d faced the new immigrant population fresh from India, Pakistan and Uganda. This generation still had a fear and respect for the ‘Motherland’ and for the white people in the country. So they took it up the arse and just let the NF do what they wanted.
Consequently, Jordan thought they were coming to Liverpool to do the same thing. But, fuck, was that a miscalculation. We ambushed them at the Pier Head and threw them into the River Mersey. The rest ran for their lives. We left them with a message – Liverpool blacks are militant. We don’t take shit.
Meanwhile, I was still learning the ropes as a villain. At the age of 13, I was getting too big to fit through small windows. So, I recruited an innocent 11-year-old boy called Curtis to take my place. Curtis was reluctant at first, but I simply forced him through the windows. One crisp November evening in 1974, we picked him up from his mum’s in George’s stolen Ford Cortina. To make himself look older so he didn’t get a tug, George wore a black false moustache that was in stark contrast to his ginger afro.
Now, our bag was this: Curtis had the face of an angel and was so light-skinned that he could pass for white. We’d find a big house in the country, get him to knock on the door with a kind of lost-babes-in-the-woods routine, and if someone answered, he’d innocently ask for directions home. If nobody was in, he’d come back to the car and give us the green light to go to work.
That night, after Curtis had established that no one was in the mansion, George turned to me and said, ‘Frenchie, get in the house with him, put the stuff in boxes in the hallway, open the door, then I’ll come and pick the stuff up.’ I was a bit scared, but George spat on me, hit me in the face and told me, ‘Get your fucking arse up there, open the door and stop making excuses.’ That was the nature of our relationship.
As Curtis and I were creeping up the path like commandos, we suddenly heard a little noise. To make absolutely sure there was no one home, Curtis gave the door a loud rap and shouted through the letterbox, ‘Is anybody in? Is anybody in?’ Even at that age, he had an incredible nerve, unshakable confidence and an ability not to panic – whereas, on the other hand, my nerves were already beginning to jingle.
We quickly got the goods: a portable TV, a radio-cassette player, jewellery, silverware – anything that could be carried and sold quickly. As George was loading the things into the car, he said, ‘You haven’t done the kitchen yet. Get in there and see if there’s any cash.’
So Curtis and I went back into the house. We opened the door of the kitchen, and there before us was the biggest fucking monster of a Rottweiler I had ever seen. Curtis flew into the car, leaving me to cop a terrible bite on the arse. That pretty much marked the end of my burglary career.
Curtis, however, stuck with it and went on to bigger and better things. The grounding we had given him must have stood him in good stead, for he went on to become the richest and most successful criminal in British history, worth – by some newspaper estimates – £250 million. According to the authorities, he became the most prolific drug trafficker in Britain, the most wanted man in Europe and an underworld figure revered like a modern-day Robin Hood. Such is his current standing that there are kids on council estates up and down the country named in his honour. He is Curtis Warren. Our paths would continue to cross for many years to come.
Although I had been a juvenile criminal for many years, I remember having a crisis of conscience at around this time. At school, I fought the urge to be bad, excelling academically, at maths, history and sciences. I used the phrase ‘the poet and the pain’ to describe how I was feeling. My essays always got read out in English class, but one lad thought that the flowery metaphors I used made me a puff. Later, he teased and goaded me in the bogs and a rage blew up inside me like I had never experienced before. This guy hurt me in a different way from the violence I had suffered: by destroying something good in my life, something I was proud of. He evoked a new type of pain inside. I got hold of his head and cracked it against the porcelain bowl of the toilet. His head split like a grape, but I continued to pound his skull until it was a mash of blood and bone.
The beast within me had been released.
2
GOOD VERSUS EVIL
After watching my hero Bruce Lee in the film Enter the Dragon, I decided that I wanted to channel my energy into something positive, so I took up karate. But there was only one problem – I had no dough. I had stopped robbing houses and couldn’t even afford to pay for classes. One day, I heard of an instructor at the Liverpool Shaolin Karate Club who let poor lads train for nothing. His name was Ronnie Colewell, and despite being five feet ten inches and weighing just over ten stone he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
Over the next 15 years, he became like the father I never had. Ronnie had trained at a top martial arts academy in Japan and had decided to return to the inner city to give something back. Astonishingly, he had also managed to entice one of the world’s masters to come back with him – 9th Dan Sensei, Keinosuke Enoeda.
Ronnie took me into his office and said, ‘I can see something in you, Stephen, but I’m either gonna make you or break you getting it out. It’s up to you which.’ That was the first time that anyone had ever spotted potential in me, and I was determined not to let him down.
I got my yellow belt within a year and left school at 15 so I could sign on the dole purely to get money for subs. By that time, we were taking our martial arts all over the country to tournaments, so it would’ve been unfair not to pay my way. One day, we went to fight the England international coach’s club team at Crystal Palace in London. The refereeing was bent as fuck. We scored our points clean, but the markers made out they hadn’t seen our world-class jabs and kicks and ripped us off left, right and centre. In desperation, Ronnie turned to his five sons – that was me and the team – and said, ‘We can’t win here honourably, so I’m instructing you to forget the rules and attack them full on. Take them out in the next round. You follow? Let them have it.’
We knew what he meant: forget about no contact, just knock the other team out, full stop. At the end of the tournament, we five fighters stood proud and bowed to the other side. On the other side, only two men just about remained upright – the rest ended up in casualty. Needless to say, we got disqualified.
The club quickly became famous for its toughness and its trophies. Our bright-red tracksuits, emblazoned with the Toxteth LSKC on the back, struck fear into the hearts of our o
pponents. It wasn’t long before news of our infamy got into the newspapers and the magazines.
Ronnie found me when I was a boy and turned me into an adult. I had been brought up by women, but he taught me how to be a man – how to confront my fears and walk tall. He also had a knack for turning out trained killers. The club was inadvertently responsible for creating a generation of super gangsters who would later impose a reign of terror on the world. However, that was not its main purpose, and the club also acted as a sort of social centre where he taught us life philosophies – paradigms I still use today. He gave me the equipment – physically, mentally and spiritually – to deal with anything that life could throw at me. He taught me well. He must have done, because I’m still standing today after seven assassination attempts.
The club was also the place where I met a lad called Andrew John, who would prove to be another great influence in my life. From the first moment we met, we became more than mates – we became brothers, siblings and soul mates. He was an incredible martial artist and the only man I have ever truly feared. From then on, rarely a day went by when we didn’t hang around together.
Soon I was eager to move from no contact to full contact – this meant that you could whack a geezer out and draw blood, so it was as close to reality as possible. Intuitively, I knew that’s where I would come into my own and become a champion fighter. But I still had a long way to go. I was six feet three inches tall but still rake thin. One night when I tried to get into a nightclub called The Timepiece, a bully doorman called Tommy Wall stopped me and said, ‘You’re not 18. My daughter’s got a bigger chest than you.’ He then gave me a slap, and I fell to the floor. I can remember looking up at him from the gutter, knowing that there was nothing I could do, as he was a giant of a man with a legendary rep as a street fighter. Nonetheless, I felt the rage burning and the evil building up inside me. I swore that one day I would get revenge.
Though I was desperately trying to be a good boy, it wasn’t long before the dark side came for me again. Me and a karate mate called Liam became street robbers. As well as a way of getting money, it was an opportunity to practise our kicks and punches on real people. It was kinda like when surgeons practise cutting up dead bodies instead of drawing diagrams.
At that time, all the lads in the neighbourhood were becoming muggers. It was all the rage. According to police records released later, Curtis Warren was also snatching purses on the same circuit. Liam and I started off by ‘queer bashing’: simply waiting near men’s toilets and robbing the ‘cottagers’ who hung around such places for sex. We knew they wouldn’t report it to the police, as it was too embarrassing for them. This taught me the first golden rule of taxing: unreported crime is the best crime, because there is no punishment.
Then we started rolling three or four punters a week. Our secret weapon was a nine-feet-long leather Comanchero whip. Liam would sneak up on a victim from behind and lash the whip – like in a cowboy movie – so it wrapped around the legs and pulled the target down. One night, we attacked an Irish brother who wasn’t a stranger to hardship or street life. He was a man who had evidently decided that he wasn’t going to be robbed by a couple of boys. The fight that ensued eventually became too much for my cohort Liam, and he soon deserted me, leaving me to deal with this raging bull on my own. Once it was one-on-one, the Irishman’s adrenalin kicked in – as is nature’s way – converting him from victim to attacker. The bull rushed me. Time slowed down. A second became a minute. As he charged towards me, I assumed my fighting stance and shaped my fist into a ‘ram’s head’ – I protruded the knuckles of my index and middle finger so they stood out from the rest like two antlers. This uranium-tipped apex – known as the Sekon in Japanese – became the focal point of all my power, and I channelled all my inner chi into this deadly spearhead. Like an arrow from a bow, like a bullet from a gun, I fired a straight right-hand punch to meet the oncoming juggernaut. On impact, the blow landed on the point of his jaw – the target area – at the moment that he was accelerating to his optimum speed. An immovable object meets an oncoming force and collision occurs. As my knuckles crashed into his jaw, his eyeballs rolled to the back of his head. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
This was the first of what would eventually become a total of 39 victorious street KOs. As the Irishman lay on the ground, I took his watch and his wallet, making £17.50 that night – a good score. In 1977, that bought me a shirt, pants and a pair of boots.
Later that night, I caught up with Liam, who asked me for his share. I looked him square in the eyes. ‘Sorry, mate, you haven’t earned it,’ I said, refusing point-blank to hand over any of my hard-gotten booty. For the second time that night, I took up my fighting stance, daring him to challenge my decree. He was a martial artist like me, and deep down I knew I was pushing the boat out by not handing over any cash. But he hadn’t acted honourably during the robbery, so I didn’t feel he deserved a share of the stolen cash. Anyway, he didn’t challenge me or look me straight in the eye. I knew I had won a silent battle. He accepted his defeat and moved on, and we are still friends to this day.
Again, I had learned an important lesson that I would later put to good use: never to think that fellow warriors were of the same calibre as me. If they were not of my ilk, they shouldn’t be rewarded. If they had been soldiers in arms and had left their posts in the heat of battle, they would have been branded deserters.
When I began to run nightclub doors later in life, certain individuals – who shall remain nameless – deserted their posts during engagements. Come pay time at the end of the night, I adopted exactly the same method I had used with Liam all those years before. I would look the culprit right in the eyes and say, ‘There’s no money here for you tonight. Instead, those who have earned with honour are going to share your pay.’ I would take up my fighting stance in my office in the bowels of the nightclub, ready to defend my position. No one ever tried to fight me, and I went on to be a multimillionaire.
Despite committing over 200 street muggings, I was still battling with my conscience. It’s hard to believe, but I didn’t really know that any of this amounted to serious crime, not even the burglaries. To me and my friends, this was just the norm. Therefore, I was still unsure whether I was really cut out for a life of hard-core crime. In a last-ditch attempt to save my soul, I signed up for the Job Creation Programme as an apprentice painter and decorator, along with my oppo Liam. However, it wasn’t long before the temptation of easy money lured us back to our urchin ways. We started robbing the council houses we were supposed to be decorating.
After I qualified, I decided to get away from Liverpool and all its scallywag temptations. In 1978, I got a job as a live-in painter with Grand Metropolitan Hotels in London. It was a good screw, well paid and there were lots of opportunities for skiving. I’d simply find an empty room in the hotel – preferably the penthouse – and pretend it needed a new roll of wallpaper or a lick of paint. Then I’d lock myself in and watch telly all day. In the evenings, I worked a second job as a cleaner in a Blackfriars office block, mopping 13 floors one after the other. My plan was to get enough money to start a new life back in Liverpool – maybe start a decorating business or open a shop. My dream was to move out of the ghetto.
Two months later, I returned to Liverpool with £1,000 in my pocket, the equivalent of about £2,500 today. Sixteen hours after jumping off the rattler at Lime Street Station, my ambitions to start over were in the dust. I was penniless, having blown everything that I made playing 79 kalookie in an illegal gambling den. I’d gone in there wearing rows of gold sovereigns on my hands and come out in my slippers. They had even taken my brand-new adidas trainers. Years later, I found out that the old card sharks – with names such as ‘Leadbelly’ – had cheated the naive young mark who had wandered into their lair. Once again, all of my hopes had come to fuck all – and this time it was mainly down to me. I was angry and bitter. In the maelstrom of confusion, I decided that going straight simply didn�
��t pay. I could feel the beast reawakening inside me.
Gutted with my loss, I went straight into town to mug someone to make up for it. This was the point, I think, when I went over to the dark side for real. The beast had forced his way to the fore and was looking for an unsuspecting victim to prey on. I went into Flannigan’s Irish bar, full of rich Irish punters on their way to the Grand National. I joined the ranks of muggers, prostitutes and pickpockets who had descended on Liverpool to take advantage of the flush racing fans that flocked to Aintree annually. It was like feeding time at the watering hole – lions on the hunt for antelopes. I stood at the bar until I saw a guy pull out a nice enough wad, waited for him to get pissed up and then followed him into the toilet. I gave him a few licks, took his wallet off him and got out of there. I got about £350, which was enough to see me through. That day in 1980 was the last and only time I would ever be flat broke.
After that, all I ever wanted to be was a hard case – to be feared rather than loved. However, I was always generous with my family. When I ate, everybody ate. When I made a packet, I made sure it got whacked out on my family. You could say that’s the penance I paid to appease my own conscience.
Even though I was well and truly on the road to hell, the internal battle between good and evil never really left me. On the one hand, I still had the urge to be a good man and to stop fucking evil things happening, but, on the other hand, temptation was getting too much for me.
3
RAISING HELL – THE TURNING POINT
The Devil Page 2