Among the Thugs

by Bill Buford

  A few weeks later, I received my second letter. A trial date had not been set, but DJ was hopeful that he would be out in time for the next Millwall match in October: ‘That might be a good one for you,’ he wrote, recalling that the last time he went, a team of twenty people in jeans and trainers had arrested a number of supporters from West Ham after provoking a fight, having pretended to be from Millwall. He mentioned that he was practising his French and learning Greek and improving his cooking. By now he had the prison guards in his employ, doing his shopping.

  But the situation was grave. Three Egyptians in prison with him were also up for trading in counterfeit currency—in their case, American traveller’s cheques. For the ringleader, the prosecution had asked for a life sentence.

  I WANTED TO attend DJ’s trial, but months passed and no court date was set. In the meantime, I resumed my contact with Tom Melody.

  I had met Tom the previous year in Turkey during one of the qualifying matches for the European Championship. He was the landlord of the Bridge, a pub in Croydon, and four of his regular customers—Dave, Mark, Gary and Harry, all Chelsea supporters—had put up the money to take Tom along on the trip to Turkey with them. In the event, one lad, Gary, was apprehended after tearing up some Turkish money, and Tom and I got to know each other trying to prevent the Turkish authorities from using the full force of their military might against him, however much Gary might have deserved it.

  I next saw Tom at the Leatherhead Recreational Park in Surrey. Tom’s pub had a football team which, despite the sheer volume of alcohol that its players carried in their bloodstreams, had reached the final of a London competition. Tom asked me to come along.

  The event began with only one policeman. He had been called out in response to an appeal from a driver whose bus had been stolen: the pub’s supporters had come by bus, which one of the lads had taken for a joy-ride. The policeman was polite and stood on the edge of the pitch facing the stands, asking the clandestine joy-rider to return the keys and urging the others to ‘desist’ from their hooligan conduct. He was pelted with eggs.

  Two panda cars appeared; more police were then called out after the Bridge supporters’ club embarked on their banana attack. The rival team was from north London and its players were black; so, too, were the supporters, who were not lads, like the lot from the Bridge, but mainly families—parents, brothers and sisters—who were well-dressed, dignified and serious. The bananas were meant for them. So, too, were the copies of National Front News, which Mark, a skinny, highly nervous zealot of fascism, had entered the visitors’ section to sell. By the end of the match the lone bobby had been supplanted by three hundred hardened riot police. It was the first time that riot police had appeared at the Leatherhead Recreational Park in Surrey.

  We returned to the Bridge for Sunday-afternoon celebrations: Tom Melody had prepared home-made sausage rolls, barbecued hamburgers and grilled sardines. The girl-friends and wives and families—kept away from the match itself; a lad outing—were welcomed here, and this was where I met Harry and his family.

  It was impossible not to like Harry. He resembled the lion in the Wizard of Oz, with a walrus handlebar moustache and goofy affectionate eyes. He had an easy, infectious laugh, and a line in witty repartee. His wife, short and affectionate, was irrepressibly cheerful. She was also very forthcoming. She was happy to analyse her husband’s ‘eccentric’ behaviour, although she did not fully understand it. It had started, she said, around his twenty-fifth birthday. Before then, he had never been in trouble. He had never even been arrested: she stressed the idea, as if it were now impossible to contemplate. He had a good job—Harry is a self-employed brick-layer—and they were about to have their second child, when something in him changed and Harry, in her words, became a wild man. She laughed uproariously. She couldn’t take it too seriously, which was probably a good thing: she viewed the regular trips to the police station or the magistrates court with a droll, ironic detachment. Harry looked at me and shrugged, but said nothing. He had one of his daughters clinging to his leg. She was standing on his shoes, with her arms wrapped round his thigh.

  Since that time, Tom closed the pub. I discovered this when I tried to reach him shortly after DJ’s arrest and was unable to get him on the phone. The line was dead. I drove down to Croydon to investigate and was told by the newsagent across the street that Tom had simply walked away one day, but that he had a new pub, the Axe on the far edge of Hackney, in East London.

  The Axe turned out to be a large, dark Victorian monstrosity, several storeys high and costing more than a quarter of a million pounds; Tom had bought it. A Rolls-Royce was parked in front, the only car in view. Was this Tom’s as well? I announced myself and, although I had phoned beforehand, was made to wait forty-five minutes before Tom appeared. The last time I had seen Tom he was wearing the friendly fuzzy jumper that I had always seen him in. He was now dressed in a tailored black suit. He had an immaculately pressed white shirt and a dark silk tie. He had large diamond cuff-links and gold rings on his fingers.

  We talked openly, but not entirely comfortably, and Tom never smiled. His eyes were always shifting, fixing on various spots just over my shoulder and then moving on. Behind me was a mother with a baby. Tom snapped his fingers and bowed his head in her direction. He had many people working for him. She was fetched.

  No babies.

  She pleaded.

  No babies.

  But her man was expected any minute. It was raining outside.

  No babies, he repeated, but he was already distracted and looking past her. She had become invisible.

  Someone else appeared, asking if a bloke whose twenty-fifth birthday was next month could be served. Tom, apparently, had set up his own age limit for drinking.

  Permission denied.

  Someone else asked for a snakebite—a notorious alcoholic combination of lager and cider.

  Permission denied.

  There was some kind of deal going on in the corner. A black man was involved. Tom pointed in the direction of the corner, and the black man was removed. Tom, I discovered later, did not like black men. He also didn’t like Asians.

  I was finding this all a bit much to take in, when Lorraine appeared. I was introduced. Lorraine did not acknowledge the introduction. Lorraine was not interested in me; Lorraine wanted me to show the good grace to disappear. Lorraine, Tom informed me, was Norwegian. She had attractive high cheekbones, long blonde hair that had been plaited at the back and she was dressed in black leather. Everything about Lorraine expressed one thing: sex. This one thing was expressed with considerable power. Lorraine wanted to go upstairs, but Tom was not ready. Tom, still watchful, said: Not yet.

  Lorraine, however, didn’t move.

  Later, Tom said, a hint of irritation emerging in his voice. He was busy. Couldn’t she see that he was busy? He told her to go upstairs and wait. He would join her.

  Lorraine went upstairs.

  Tom had left the Bridge in Croydon, he finally got around to explaining, because he couldn’t take it any longer: he had had too much trouble from ‘young people’. It was a recurrent phrase. Every week, the pub got trashed by ‘young people’. There was not a Friday or Saturday night without violence, and, when there wasn’t violence, there was theft: he couldn’t hire a young person who didn’t end up robbing the till.

  So he moved to a new area. In his eyes, East London was ‘up and coming’, a good investment, an area filling up with people from the City. It was where Tom wanted to be.

  And then the first fight broke out. Ten patrol cars and five vans appeared, but the police never made it past the door. Tom mentioned catching the arm of one lad just as he was about to crack an officer over the head with a heavy motorcycle chain. The police were then chased outside, where their vehicles were overturned. By the end of the evening, the Hackney Fire and Rescue Emergency Service was involved—a van had burst into flames, and many policemen were injured. One officer was in a coma. Tom had been in business for
two days.

  Perhaps, he wondered aloud, he had misjudged the area after all. He then discovered—he had been in business for all of six days—that a petition, signed by more than two thousand local people, had been submitted to the Council demanding that the pub be closed down permanently.

  ‘Something is happening to young people,’ Tom said. That phrase again. ‘There is something crazy about them. The old East London no longer exists—everyone can see that. Everyone except young people, who still believe in the East London code of violence. They all want to be East London gang leaders, living out East London myths of fighting.’

  To my mind, what Tom was finding in East London was no different from what he had left behind in Croydon or what I had found in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford or Cambridge. Whatever it was that Tom was finding wrong with young people was not confined to specific districts in his A-Z. His difficulties were not, in fact, with any set of ‘young people’ in particular but with all young people. This was why Tom would not admit anyone under the age of twenty-five into his pub—English law allows eighteen-year-olds to drink—because he was hoping, in effect, to ban the entire generation. He would have preferred to have set the age limit at thirty. He would have been happiest if he could have made it thirty-five.

  I asked about the lads from Croydon.

  For a while, the lads from Croydon had stuck with him, Tom said. There were problems, however. By the end of the evening, they were so drunk they could get home only by taxi. Hackney to Croydon is a long run, and the fare was more than twenty pounds, but the lads were so abusive and threatening that no one would take on the job. On one occasion they beat up their own driver and then, seeing that he was too hurt to carry on, pushed him out of the door and stole his car.

  I asked about Harry.

  Tom shook his head. Harry was in jail. He had been convicted of affray—four counts.

  The first conviction resulted from a Friday night visit to the Cartoon, a Croydon rock pub. Harry had gone there after work with his friend Martin, a short, compact, intense man who said little—I had met him once—and who had aspirations to be a professional boxer.

  On this particular night, Martin and Harry were not admitted to the pub. The place was full, and so the two of them went round the corner to another one. I don’t know how long they were there, but when they returned the Cartoon was still crowded, the entrance blocked by three people—two bouncers and the landlord. Harry knew the landlord and asked if he would wait where he was for a minute or two—he had something for him—and went off to retrieve it. Harry walked to his van parked across the street and returned with a spade. He used it to hit the landlord—twice, a full swing, crack, against the side of the head. Then he hit both doormen. He then picked up a park bench, lifted it over his shoulders and threw it through the window. Shattered glass was everywhere. The pub was packed, and the people inside started screaming and ran for the door. In the crush, there were several injuries. Harry waited until the pub was empty, entered it, picked up a stool and used it to smash the bottles of spirits and beer, the glass doors of the refrigerators and the wine bottles inside. Then he threw the stool into the mirror behind the bar. He turned, picked up a chair and smashed it against a table. He picked up another chair and did the same. And then he walked home and went to bed.

  The next morning, on waking for work, he realized that he had left his van by the pub. When he returned to pick it up, the police were waiting.

  The second conviction also involved his friend Martin. Martin had been working as a bouncer, but was unexpectedly fired, and the incident filled Harry with so much indignation that he felt it demanded some kind of retribution. It was the same routine. The spade; a rubbish bin (this time) thrown through the window; the broken bottles inside, the mirror, the chairs. When he left the place, every bottle was broken and the carpet was inches deep with drink. Harry then walked home and went to bed.

  He was not arrested and for two months stayed out of the way of the police. And then something else happened.

  This time it involved Mark—the skinny salesman of National Front News. Mark was on his way home, the hour already past closing time, and having run out of cigarettes, noticed that the local Turkish restaurant was still busy—a private party of some kind—and knocked on the door to see if he could get a packet of Benson & Hedges. The private party was being held by the police—a celebration thrown for the local CID—and the detective who answered the door recognized Mark. He obliged the request, fetched the cigarettes, but couldn’t resist a little rudeness. ‘You’ve got your fags,’ he was reported to have said. ‘Now, hurry up, you cunt, and get the fuck out of here.’ Mark was offended. He described the incident and the offence that he had suffered to Harry, who was indignant, and, vowing revenge, led Mark back to the restaurant, where he forced open the door with his shoulder and then shouted abuse at the people inside for having insulted his friend. Harry did not realize that the party was being held by the police—a little detail Mark had neglected to mention—but by then it was too late. Harry was already into his routine—the spade, the furniture through the window, the broken bottles and so on. In the fight that ensued, Harry wrestled one of the policemen to the ground, lifted him up by the chest and then head-butted him—inflicting a hair-line crack across the forehead. With the blow, the policeman must have lost consciousness if only because he seemed to offer so little resistance to what Harry did next: he grabbed the policeman by his ears, lifted his head up to his own face and sucked on one of the policeman’s eyes, lifting it out of the socket until he felt it pop behind his teeth. Then he bit it off.

  Harry rolled off the policeman, stood up and walked home.

  I have come to conclude that Harry existed as two people. I don’t believe that he was schizophrenic—no more than any of the other lads—but I do think that he had cultivated behaviour of this kind to such a point of refinement that he could effortlessly achieve the state of mind where it was possible to be almost limitlessly violent: I say almost because, while biting out the eye of a policeman strikes me as about as violent as a person can get—exceeding even Shakespeare in his own excesses; after all, Gloucester had his eyes pulled out by hand—Harry did not kill the man. He knew the state he wanted, and then, once in this state, his various goals achieved—no other object or person against which to be violent, the subject exhausted, the restaurant emptied, every breakable item destroyed—Harry grew calm again, resumed his lion-hearted Wizard of Oz manner and returned to, being a friendly lovable sort of guy.

  Harry was hungry and so he went home and persuaded his wife that, with the children asleep, she could join him for something to eat. She agreed, steadfast supporter, ignoring the fact that his T-shirt had soaked up so much blood that it stuck to the skin on his chest. And so they slipped out and Went round the corner for a basket of legs and thighs at the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  And there they sat, nothing to hide, a bright light overhead, the two of them, husband and wife, huddled round a formica table-top mounted on a plastic podium, eating chicken with their fingers, in full view of the High Street. By the time they had finished, the place was surrounded by police. It was as if Harry were a terrorist or a bank robber. The police, having closed down the street in both directions, stopped all traffic and pedestrians from entering the area. Harry was arrested.

  Tom later offered to help me find Harry, and in fact I would eventually meet up with him again. But I had heard enough. I never asked him about the fourth conviction. I wasn’t interested. I was watching my clippings file come alive—over and over again in the flesh, the same desultory violence—and it was starting to make me feel very uncomfortable. I was no longer feeling anxious that I didn’t know enough.

  DJ’S TRIAL WAS finally set for 13 April 1989 and was to be held in a small, one-room open court-house along the waterfront on the island of Rhodes. His entourage of family, friends and legal advisers numbered ten people, and fell into two teams.

  The first team con
sisted of people with money and social standing and was led by DJ’s mother. For a number of legal reasons, I will refer to her as Mrs DJ. Mrs DJ was a large woman of Italian descent with a propensity to over-heat and to talk too much: by her own admission, she was a bad listener. Her admiration for her son was of the unquestioning kind, reinforced by her conviction that he was his father’s favourite—it was the rebel in DJ that everyone seemed to be drawn to—although she was always made a little uncomfortable by the company he kept. Mrs DJ put it this way. Everybody is welcome in my house, she said, everybody. And my son knows the kind of people who are not. London, she said, amplifying the point, is a very large city, and there are many people in it. There is no need to meet all of them.

  Martin Roche, DJ’s co-defendant, was not someone she had met. Martin Roche was not, she added, someone she would ever have met.

  Mrs DJ’s team put up at the Grand Hotel Astir, a large establishment, which, judging from the number of Daily Mail readers I found eating breakfast on my first morning there, catered mainly to package holidays from Britain. I sat next to Mrs DJ, who pointed to the people nearby. There was a family from Liverpool and another from Manchester: you could tell, I was told, by their accents. In fact most of them were from the north, and I didn’t need to be told, I was told, what kind of people they were. Can you believe it, Mrs DJ asked me, sotto voce, that there were people sitting in this breakfast room who still had their toilets out in the garden and who regarded this hotel as luxurious because they had something to flush? That was why, she added, you will always find them here in the restaurant at meal-times: they actually regard this cooking as good food. It was true, she said for emphasis and then apologized: the accommodation had been arranged at very short notice. She reassured me that she knew that I was different and that, like her, I was used to international travel.