For a man to truly achieve his destiny, his life must not be lived in isolation. It must be wrapped up with important events going on in the wider world, on a collision course with history.
For me, the point of impact occurred on 3 July 1981. Britain was in the grip of a massive recession, nobody had a job and I was fighting grinding poverty. I had just settled down with a girl I had met about a year before, shortly after I got back from London. Her name was Maria Sampson, and my first son, Stephen, had recently been born. I was trying to get work, do the right thing and fight against the evil inside me, but it was a dustbowl out there.
Beneath the surface of the city, incredible tension simmered between the police and the black community. False arrests were run of the mill. This was before racism became a mainstream issue, and I knew, like every other black lad, what it was like to be on the other end of a policeman’s boot. I was 11 the first time Merseyside’s finest assaulted me and 42 the last, with at least a dozen incidents in between.
It was a summer’s day in 1981, and our Stephen was a month old. I was out with my brother Andrew John. We were at the stage of trying to physically outdo each other. We were T-shirted up, it was warm and we were hanging around on a street near the perimeter of the ghetto. Suddenly, a police officer my age – thin, naive and wet behind the ears – stepped out from one of two police cars and attempted to physically and verbally abuse us. He told us to move on, when there was clearly nowhere else to move on to. Babylonians they were, flexing their muscles.
Another police officer said, ‘Monkeys, get back to the zoo. Go on, get your arses back to Granby Street,’ meaning that we were to get back to the heart of the ghetto and stay there.
A lad called Leroy Cooper was with us. Leroy was the most eloquent lad I knew and today is a well-published poet. He verbally slaughtered the bizzies, and they retaliated by resorting to their old stalwarts of, ‘You dirty black bastards! You nasty niggers, get back to Africa!’
At this, Leroy became incensed. Andrew and I, accompanied by another mate called Ivan Freeman, watched as he rammed the police car with the bicycle he was riding. Three policemen came at him and attempted to arrest him. At this point, Andrew gave me ‘the look’ – one that painted a thousand words. We were veteran martial artists, in complete control of our bodies and minds, and we were prepared to step into the arena of combat – even if it was against the storm troopers of Margaret Thatcher’s establishment. Leroy cried out, ‘Enough is enough!’ Thus, the touchpaper had been lit. An uprising had begun. The rest, as they say, is history.
Though the papers called it the Toxteth riots, what happened next wasn’t really a riot; it was a rebellion against oppression and injustice. One of the police cars, a Panda or Rover, I think, was pushed into some roadworks, then down a hill, before being set alight. The three injured officers escaped in the other car. The ferocity of our retaliation swept through the ghetto like a whirlwind; never before had such a force been seen in the UK. Leroy marched through the streets, like Spartacus through the villages, as the ranks rapidly swelled behind him.
Andrew John and I fought side by side against the pigs. Terrified Merseyside police were forced to bus in officers from outside the region to put on the front line. The poor bastards never knew what hit them. However, it was not about race: both black and white joined forces in the battle against oppression and police brutality.
I ripped the stripes from a sergeant’s arm, took his helmet and wore the spoils of victory like a Zulu warrior wearing a British red coat at the Battle of Isandlwana. They were badges of honour: proof of my courage and valour in the face of the enemy. Then I took a bin lid as a shield and broke off a table leg as a weapon. The army of people around me followed suit. I started to rhythmically bang the bin lid on the ground to warn my attackers off. Soon enough, my soldiers in arms began to do the same, making an unholy racket. Our aggressors turned heel and fled.
There is something about watching the sight of your enemy flee that gives you a feeling higher than any drug. Although it was short-lived, I will never forget the glory of that victory for as long as I live – the screams, yells and dances of celebration. I was 21 years old, and for the first time in my life I felt truly free. I was the all-conquering lion of my tribe. I raised my head up to the blazing sky, let out a primeval roar of victory and felt a wave of sensation go through me that was better than sex.
Nothing I have achieved since that moment comes even close to the feeling of power and strength I had that night in 1981. I felt like a Roman gladiator who had won his freedom in the arena. However, that was not the end of the battle. Full-scale rioting blew up over the next nine days, in which the police used CS gas for the first time in mainland Britain. The resulting damage amounted to 468 injured police officers, 500 arrests and at least 70 demolished buildings.
Like a phoenix from the fire, I rose from the ashes of the riots a different man – the first of many epiphanies. It was then that I was reborn as the Devil – officially. I won the title off a guy called Lloyd Johnson, who had been the Devil before me. Amid the smoking ruins and tensions of the post-riot landscape, he had abused my sister in the street, because he thought she was white. Me and my brother rounded their whole family up, and I presented Lloyd ‘the Devil’ Johnson to her, like a dog at her feet. I told him to kiss her feet and apologise. So, it was from that day on that the name the Devil passed from him to me. He was evil and dark, but now I was the new ‘King of Hell’. Power, domination and control would be my watchwords from then on.
But, as always, I faced a dichotomy of feelings. Kindness and love sat beside hate and violence in my soul. At the same time as being christened the Devil, I took it upon myself to adopt a poor orphan child and bring him up as my own. The baby’s name was Danny, and his dad – a wanted man – had been forced to flee abroad after the riots. Later on, his dad was killed in tragic circumstances, so I vowed to look after his son as if he were my own.
After the riots, we in the black community wanted to appoint our own leaders. However, Militant-controlled Liverpool Council and their leader Derek Hatton wanted to parachute their own man into the job – a black race-relations expert from London called Sam Bond. Needless to say, we were having none of it. Everywhere Bond went, he was attacked and abused.
Like many radical parties, Militant relied on muscle to help impose their influence behind the scenes. Enter Stephen French – or ‘The Frenchman’ as I was sometimes known – a young, up-and-coming hoodlum who was getting noticed by the white chieftains who controlled the levers of power. One day, I was secretly approached by some rogue Militant members, without the knowledge of Hatton and co., who wanted me to do their dirty work. Thanks to my flair for martial arts, I had a bit of a reputation as a hard-hitter. They paid me £500 to protect Sam Bond at an upcoming meeting at Toxteth Sports Centre. The way I saw it, they were bribing me to turn against my community and endorse their man.
I agreed to the job, but when I got to the meeting I stood up in front of Bond and the crowd and tore up the £500. I told someone to turn the lights off, and Sam Bond and Derek Hatton were assaulted in the ensuing chaos. At that time, I could’ve done with that £500, but I also knew that some rogue Militant members were as bent as a nine-bob note. They had the working man fooled, and they had just tried to have the black community off as well, by forcing a leader on us whom we didn’t want.
But none of this really mattered in the greater scheme of things. As the politicians busily rearranged the deckchairs on the sinking ship, they failed to notice massive and sinister changes taking place in Toxteth, as well as in the wider world. The post-riots landscape was becoming a breeding ground for organised crime on an industrial scale and was nurturing some of the biggest gangsters that the UK would ever see. Several factors relating to habitat and lifestyle came together by chance, creating a unique environment that allowed crime to thrive.
First, you had a group of black lads, aged 14 to 24, who were physically fit and strong – they
trained, played football and did boxing every day. They had no opportunities and no money, but they were clear-headed and they banded together because they had to. Second, there was a police no-go area, where dealers could sell drugs with impunity. This gave the dealers on the front line an area of incubation where they could grow as big as redwoods without fear of being cut down. The mentality was very much anti-police and anti-establishment – one which justified crime as a political action and a form of self-help for an oppressed minority.
Simultaneously, there were macro changes in crime outside the ghetto. You had a group of white, middle-aged former armed robbers who wanted to invest in a more profitable type of crime. In addition to this, there was a new generation of leaders who were taking control of old crime families: young lads who had none of their fathers’ hang-ups about selling drugs. For the first time, they wanted to make strategic alliances with black gangs, who had the ‘narco’ expertise they were looking for, in order to distribute drugs on a mass scale.
Geography also played a vital role. Liverpool was a port where the crime gangs were world experts in trade-based crime. They had been smuggling contraband and robbing the docks blind for centuries. The docks were controlled by them – an advantage that would allow them to steal a march on rival gangs in the UK and the rest of Europe.
On a world level, there was an explosion in the production of cheap drugs, due to mass-production farming, and the Colombian Cali cartel was looking to open up new markets in Europe. This dovetailed nicely with a general increase in the spending power of the ordinary consumer, who could now afford to buy drugs. New technology could also be added to the equation: mobile phones, faxes and cheap international air travel all helped to facilitate the life of the drug dealer. And the ‘Big Bang’, financial deregulation and the property boom of the 1980s made it easier for drug barons to move money across the world and launder their profits.
The success of Liverpool Football Club in Europe in the 1980s also provided a good cover for scallies who travelled far and wide across the Continent without raising suspicion. They consequently made contacts in cities such as Amsterdam and settled in all the major distribution hubs, such as Rotterdam, Paris and Hamburg. The bottom line was this: Liverpool had become the number-one drugs capital of the UK and was starting to give even Amsterdam a run for its money. At its centre were the black gangs, who for the first time were able to take control and get more than just a few crumbs of the cake.
All the variables fell into the same orbit at the same time. The scene had been set, and a new type of graft had changed the criminal landscape for ever. Bag robbers would become multimillionaires within months. Armed robbers that owned fruit-and-veg shops on the boarded-up streets of Liverpool would soon have enough money to buy oil fields in the Caspian basin, banks in the Far East and football clubs.
However, before you could enter the super league, you had to pay your dues and get a kitty together to fund the drug deals. This was commonly called armed robbery. In 1984, a job opportunity came along. The Solid Gold Posse was Britain’s first all-black gang of armed robbers. The head of the SGP was a mate of mine called Edgar. I had already done a little bit of work with him on a security van at a cash and carry. He liked my style, because I’d hit the guard so hard that his visor had come off his face, and we’d got away with all the money. On just that little stunt, we had made seven grand, worth about £20,000 now.
Edgar would spot a security van, rip out his notebook and log the date, time, location, registration number and details of the business that the van was servicing. Then he’d return the next week to see if the van came back, to determine if it was a regular pickup or not. He’d do this for a month until he got a complete picture of the routine. Using this intel, he’d plan to rob the van around that scheduled time. He planned everything down to the last detail, even the getaway. Usually, this consisted of a quick burn away from the bank in a car to a pre-assigned safe house, where we changed our clothes and left the money. Then it was out of the back door and we were gone. We never had the problems of street cameras or high-tech surveillance. It was all pretty basic back then, and if you got away from the scene, you got away with the robbery.
Edgar’s firm was difficult to get into, and there was a kind of waiting list. Nonetheless, Andrew John had started doing jobs with them. One day he was caught during an armed robbery and remanded to jail so a full-time spot became available to do another job with the SGP.
To join the SGP or not to join – that was the question. I wrestled with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The stakes were high, but so were the risks. I knew it was a step up the ladder, possibly even a route map to the big time. So, who would triumph? The angels of my better nature or the infernal serpent?
4
THE DEVIL MAKES WORK FOR IDLE HANDS
It was 1984. I was 25 and about to pull off a series of high-profile armed robberies. As you may have guessed, the temptation to earn my stripes was too irresistible to turn down.
The first one was with the SGP. Four or five of us went into a bank armed with pickaxe handles – I don’t even think we had a gun. We went in – masked up and wearing balaclavas and boiler suits – smashed the counters and robbed the money in broad daylight. Game over. Now, during that type of job, I always made sure I had a little trick up my sleeve – literally. I wore a jogger’s kit underneath my overalls: shorts, a vest and a pair of trainers. It was a simple stunt that saved my bacon on many occasions.
As we got in the car and pulled away from the scene of the crime, a police car suddenly appeared behind us. But it was just a coincidence, and they had no idea what they had stumbled into. All of a sudden, the people in the street who had just watched us run out of the bank started making signs to the policemen in the car, trying to get their attention. They were pointing at us and shouting, ‘Get on them, they’ve just robbed the bank.’
The alarms were going, and there we were, five gangsters with masks on in a high-performance car. The chorus of have-a-go heroes who wanted to get us nicked had now reached a crescendo. Twenty people were now shouting, ‘They’ve just robbed the bank.’
Our driver was called Val, a phenomenal jockey who did his stuff under pressure and got us away. Soon we ditched the car and found ourselves in a railway station. We got on our toes, and I ran down onto a railway embankment. By then, the bizzies had tippled and were in hot pursuit. All I was thinking was, ‘Where’s the best place to hide?’ So I jumped into a load of nettles – dense and jungle-like – thinking that there was no way the bizzies were going to follow me in. But when I rolled over and looked up, lo and behold, a police officer was standing there at no more than an arm’s length away. ‘How the fuck did he get there?’ I thought. Although he was onto me, he was stuck in the nettles, hassled and half-trapped, so I decided to put some space between me and him as quickly as I could. However, I was running out of options. The only way I could get away from him was literally to throw myself down the embankment. In one bound, the Frenchman was free.
I bumped into one of my crew called Peter Lair, who was also busily looking for an outro. Peter Lair was one of the main players in Curtis Warren’s crew. He was an incredibly violent street fighter, and though we had grown up together there was always a simmering rivalry between us. Other members of the gang were here and there, so I quickly rounded them up before confusion set in and said, ‘Look, gentlemen, it looks like it’s time to get off. We need to split up.’
Lair scrambled up the embankment, another lad called Nogger dipped into a tunnel and I ran up the line into a cargo station, hiding myself in a shed. I soon heard the cackle of police radios getting nearer and thought, ‘They’re going to search this shed, so I’ve got to get out of here.’ I took off my boiler suit, ditched my balaclava, climbed on top of a railway carriage, jumped a wall and landed on a main road.
This was where my little disguise came in. I began to run along the road wearing a red pair of Nike trainers, a red athlete’s vest
and a bright-red pair of silky adidas shorts. Pure ‘Marathon Man’. By then, the police cars were flying past. But the fact that I was out of breath and sweating profusely from the armed robbery and my recent wrestle with the nettles didn’t mean anything to them. I was just a jogger. My cold, concentrated nerves of steel had kicked in and had given me the bottle to pretend that I was just out for a run – subterfuge and misdirection. The police posses were steaming towards me in a blaze of blue lights and noise in their riot vans, patrol cars and motorbikes, and I was just running past them in the opposite direction – sweating but calm as you like. In their urgency to get to the scene of the action, they had to give me a pass.
Later that day at about 5 p.m., I heard the customary whistle that we all used at the door of our gang’s HQ. I looked out and there was the rest of the gang. Edgar had got away, as had Peter Lair, but Val had the most interesting story to tell. During his Hoffman, he had found himself exposed, running along a deserted road with bizzies all around him. So, with lightning wit, he had climbed under an articulated lorry at a set of traffic lights and grabbed the axle, hiding in a box of dead space close to the exhaust. The truck had driven for several miles, and he had rolled out from underneath just as it had stopped at a junction – pure prisoner of war stuff. His face was covered in fumes from the exhaust. He reckoned he had looked like Sooty on his walk back home.
So, everybody escaped and we got about £20,000 in the robbery – £4,000 each. The story of the job was even on the telly, which was always a buzz. It described how we had all escaped, how much money we had nicked, how daring the raid had been and how close the police had come to catching us. It was a great thing at that time – if you were a firm – to appear on TV for something you’d done. We would all sit down afterwards, watch it, have a good laugh and say to each other, ‘Yeah, that’s our graft. We actually make the news in our graft.’
The Devil Page 3