Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories

by Davies, Julian

  I left home, and travelled around in my van looking for whatever work I could find. I must be honest here and tell you that I would go around stealing copper, lead, brass and any other metal that I could weigh-in to the scrap man. I never stole anything big or directly off anyone, never broke in someone’s house or anything like that. Sometimes I would steal the copper back from the scrap man’s yard and then sell it back to him a few days later but that’s all. I was sleeping in my van at night, then out working all day long. I liked Leicester town and settled here, in fact my family did as well.

  I never had any real mates before, due to the fact that I never settled down in one place long enough. Here I was a young lad in Leicester, and now I had loads of friends. Most of them were villains, but they were my friends and we stuck together. I was a little shy and new to having so many people around me. I had spent my early life in the fields and woodland areas. Every Saturday night we would go into town to the dances and that. There would always be fights going on. I would just stand in the background, weighing the situations up. If a few of my friends started to beat one guy up then I would help the guy against them. My friends sometimes didn’t like that but there was no way I could stand for it, it wasn’t called for. One of the guys was sort of a leader in the gang that I went around in. He would brag to me about how he would have just beaten someone up, but he always had others around him to help when he did it. He was bigger than me and was very fast with his head in a fight. Once he knocked two guys out just with his head. He could really have a scrap.

  One night he decides to have a go at me. Everyone said he was so fast. Well, he was the fastest man I ever put away. What he didn’t know was that I was fast with everything, hands, head, elbows or my feet. He came at me and I headbutted him twice. As he fell, I left-hooked him, which kept him down.

  Now I was known as the hardest fighter, just because I had beaten him. Everyone thought not to mess with me because I wouldn’t take it. I was out one night with my girlfriend Colleen, who I later married. We were sat at this table in the White Swan pub. Well, Colleen was a tall girl of about six foot; she stood out a little, being so tall compared to me. On the next table there were four sailors. They kept clocking my missus, so I asked her, “What’s up with them, are you looking at them?”

  “No I’m not,” she answered. “You go and tell them.”

  Well, me being the jealous type, I jumped up and landed in the middle of their table. Well, we started to fight and I beat the four of them on my own. The word got around about the fight and people were amazed that I had beaten them all.

  When all the bareknuckle fighters would be fighting up at Doncaster [during St Leger race week, a big gypsy gathering], they would be told that they may be fighting men but there’s a little man in Leicester who fights sometimes up to ten times a week, not once every couple of months. People couldn’t understand how I could beat men who were well over six feet tall with hands as big as shovels, but I did.

  There was this one nightclub bouncer, a big guy who everyone was scared of. He had a reputation of being a big fighting man. I’m out with my mates one night and I spot him in this boozer with his friends. This big guy had crossed me years ago, and I wanted to settle it with him.

  I shout over to him, “You’re supposed to be the best heavyweight in Leicester, maybe you are but how about me and you getting outside in the back yard?”

  “I’d kill you if we went outside,” he shouts back.

  “Well,” I said, “Stop your mouth, let’s go out and see what we can do.”

  He shouts to his mate, “You go outside with this man. I can eat him for my breakfast.”

  I look over and his mate is about six foot six with great big hands. I’m thinking, how the hell am I going to tackle you? I shout over, “Yeah, that will do, let’s go outside.” I couldn’t back down, that’s one thing I wouldn’t do with any man.

  We get outside and it’s been snowing. The whole backyard is covered in snow. I turn to face the big guy, he runs at me and he’s gone to kick me. He slips on the snow and ice and comes crashing down on the hard ground. I look at him and within seconds I’m on top of him. I absolutely destroy him; there’s no way I was letting a guy as big as him back off the floor. I walk back in the pub, I’d only been outside for a few minutes. The whole pub is shocked to see me in one piece.

  “Right then,” I shout to the big bouncer, “your henchman is outside, and I don’t think he will be back for quite sometime. Let’s me and you go out now.”

  “Come on now Lamby. Let’s have a drink. Let me get you a drink.”

  There was another little mate there with me who shouted out, “You got a reputation as a bouncer but you’re not worth a Woodbine.” We never did get to go outside and I just left it like that really.

  Back in the old rock ’n’ roll days I was always getting into one fight or another; there was always someone wanting to have a go. I was out drinking with this mate of mine, he wasn’t a fighter but was a big lad. At the bar this guy wanted to go outside with him, my friend didn’t want to and was made to look a fool. I told him, “Look, go outside with him, the worst that can happen is that you get a hiding. At least go outside with the man.” Out he goes, a short while later he comes back with just a bloody nose. He lost the fight but at least he was brave enough to go outside. As we were standing by the bar, I move along closer to the guy who had fought my mate and his friends. One of his mates, a real big lad says, “Well, at least you’ve got the guts to go outside.” Now I know he was having a dig at me so I tell him, “What do you mean? I hope you don’t mean me, because I don’t give two hoots about you.” As I said it, I can see him bringing his hand back to backhand me. I duck his hand, jump off the floor and head-butt him, which splits him open. There’s blood everywhere. We take it outside into the market place. They tell me he was a good fighter but every time he comes at me I knock him down. He was so big and strong he just kept getting back up. I shout to him, “Stay down or I’ll finish you.” He gets up and I hit him again and as he goes down I kick him and he’s beat.

  As you know, I liked to weigh-in a bit of scrap now and again. I pull into the scrapyard and there standing with the gaffer and his mates was the guy I had fought a few days before.

  “Do you think you can do the same thing to me now, when I’m not drunk?” he shouted to me.

  I tell him, “I got to admit, you were drunk. But I can do things a lot better when I’m sober as well.”

  We arrange to go out into the countryside to fight. He follows my car with his lorry and off we go. I park my car in my dad’s yard and the lorry pulls up behind it. There’s an old lane at the back of the yard which leads to a few fields and that. Off we walk down the lane. We get to this field and we start to fight. It’s an all-in fight and he’s having a go. He’s a big powerful lad but I’m a bit fast for him so his big haymaker punches can’t land on me. I step back off him and kick him straight in the knackers and down he goes. Remember, there are no rules in streetfighting. You must do what you can to win.

  I get back to where my old dad is standing smoking his pipe. “How did you do boy?” he asks me.

  “I think he will stop by and tell you on the way out, Dad,” I answer and drive away.

  Sure enough, on the way out he stops by. My dad asks him how things went. “To tell you the truth Joe, whenever I threw a punch he weren’t there, and before he moved he would hit me with everything.” Well I’m glad he took it all in good faith and we became good friends from that day on.

  A load of us travellers go up to Cambridge Fair. I’m stood there with my friends watching the boxing in the boxing booth. My mate says to me, “Lamby, would you fight that man in the ring?” and he points to one of the booth fighters.

  “Yes I would, if I had to I would,” I answer. I didn’t want to fight any man, but if I had to then I would fight. My friend keeps going on about me fighting the boxer and to be honest I could have used the £5 they were offering. When they ask, “I
s there anyone in the crowd who wants to fight in the ring?” my hand goes in the air. Next fight in the ring is me against this ex-pro boxer.

  First round, and he gets me down quick. I jump up and keep out of his way until I can work him out. He’s a bit clever at the boxing job so I have to try and figure out how to beat him. All the travellers were watching the fight and I could hear a few saying that the boxer would kill me in this round. Bell’s gone, my plan was to throw a few haymakers then get in and smash him up in close, not box him just fight him. I come straight at him and throw this haymaker which hits him off his feet and out for the count. I don’t know how I did it but I beat him. The gaffer on the booth arranges for me to fight him again at six o’clock. I turn up to be told that the boxer hasn’t turned up, he won’t fight me again. Well I ended up with the £5 winnings and gave everybody something to talk about.

  I’ve always been a fair bloke, never wanted to fight but sometimes I just had to. When it came to fighting I’ve always had a big heart. I’m only a small guy so it’s my heart that’s got me through all the fights I’ve had. Like my dad, I got married and had kids, but I never took my hands to any of them. I got divorced, which was my own fault entirely, I take full blame for that. I remember once when my boy was 16, the same age that if you remember I challenged my father. I was going through a bad patch in my marriage and was in an argument with my wife of the time. My son jumped up and said he wanted to fight me. Now I wouldn’t hit him for the world. I told him, “Son, I’m going out into the garden, if you want to fight me then I’ll be out there. Just remember that when you come out, be prepared to fight your dad.” I waited in the garden, but he didn’t show. I’m glad because there’s no way I could fight my own boy. Anyway, I get back in the house and ask him what he was waiting for. He says, “I’m not ready for you yet.” My boy’s a grown man now and I still tease him about that day and how he wanted to fight me and wouldn’t come outside.

  These days I don’t travel around so much. I buy and sell cars to get by. My family all live near and if ever I need them they are here for me.

  BILLY PREECE

  Maesteg, South Wales

  Hardened by life, a streetfighter, boxer, martial artist and doorman – there’s nothing this guy hasn’t seen. Undaunted by any situation, his pleasant nature masks a natural fighting man who has had to battle for everything he has. He has always been a friend of the underdog, and his sense of humour can make you forget how harrowing his story is.

  I WAS BORN one of ten. I’ve always lived here in Maesteg, in fact I was born in one of these three cottages that I now live in. Life was hard for my family. We had no electricity and the only water we had was from the stream that runs not far from here. I can remember us all having to take turns fetching water up from the stream in buckets. Of course, my mother wasn’t working, she had her hands full looking after us lot. My father was a collier so he wasn’t always around. It wasn’t the fact that things were hard for us that made me start fighting, it started with the local kids and the kids at school. Because there were ten of us, we had to wear hand-me-downs and the kids would tease us. Now I suppose I could have turned the other cheek but even from an early age that was something I just couldn’t do. At Christmas I’d walk past other kids’ houses and see all the presents and decorations, things our family never had. I was never jealous of them but there was no way I was going to stand for them teasing me about it all.

  With me fighting the other kids, I started to get a name for myself. Whatever school I went to, they knew me as a fighter. Other fighters would want to have a crack at me. I’d fight them and beat them but would never be happy of the fact that I’d hurt them. Sometimes I couldn’t get to sleep at night worrying about the damage I had inflicted on someone. Thing is, when I started, I wouldn’t stop until I finished it. I have always been known as a fighter but I’m also a soft-hearted bugger as well. I never wanted to be a fighter; it was the way that life was that changed me. When bigger lads from town would come up here, they would chase my friends away but I would always stand firm. Don’t know if it was pride or courage that made me fight them, but fight them I would.

  Sometimes we would have to go and get sacks of coke for the fire. We had to climb up the ash tips to get it all. The sacks would be filled up and we would take turns to carry it all. I can remember when it used to rain and I’d be carrying the heavy sacks with all the dirt running down my back, down the crack of my arse to my feet. My father would sometimes wait for us in the Royal Oak pub and if we hadn’t filled the sacks up enough, he would give us a belt.

  My father was a very intelligent man – no common sense, mind you, or he wouldn’t have had ten kids when things were so hard. He always kept diaries. I still have them here today with all the details of our everyday life wrote down. I never saw eye to eye with him; in fact, if one of my brothers did something wrong then he would batter me because he couldn’t catch them. Nothing I did could ever make him happy, he was always coming down hard on me. He was a well-respected, proud man who could do anything he turned his hands to. He stood about six foot two and was a handsome man who all the other miners looked up to. Even though he came down hard on me, I sort of respected him and tried everything I could to please him. But he still came down hard on me. He would think nothing about breaking a brush handle over my head. Once my mother came running out of the house convinced that he had finally killed me. “Ivor,” she would shout, “you’re going to kill that boy one day.”

  The coal train would travel through a tunnel not far from the house and my father, brothers and myself would steal the coal off it before it went through the tunnel. I would run alongside the train and jump on the wagons which had the bigger lumps on. I would then throw them off before the train disappeared into the tunnel. I had to be as fast as I could, throwing the lumps of coal off. I remember being too slow once and having to go through the tunnel. It was a nightmare for a 13-year-old kid, as I was at the time. The steam train was high up, so all the hot steam was beating down on me. I have never been in a place that was so totally black in my life, couldn’t see a thing. I was still throwing the coal off when I raised this one big lump and as I threw it my hands caught the steel sides of the train. Every finger had the skin torn off, my hands were bleeding and the coal dust was all in the cuts. I still had to throw the coal off because my father would have gone mad if I didn’t. The train stopped at the end of the tunnel and I jumped off and hid from the guardsman in the alcoves. When the train left we had to collect all the coal. I had to do this with my hands all busted open. Now this was all done at night time, so you can imagine how hard it was. We would get all the sacks onto a push bike and be back and forth all night. The way we got the coal was a very frightening experience for me. On one occasion I threw off enough coal to last a few weeks, so I wouldn’t have to do it again for a while. Thing was that we had to pick up every lump of coal, so that nobody would know what we had been up to all night. We finished at about three in the morning, only to have my father beat me around the head for getting too much. Just couldn’t win, could I.

  Once, I had just thrown the coal off and was hanging off the sides waiting to drop off before the tunnel. All of a sudden the guardsman appears and, before I could leave go, he stamps down on my face. I fall off into the snow. I never did find out who he was but if I had, I would have battered him. How could someone do such a thing to a youngster? I just can’t comprehend it.

  I never knew why my old man was the way he was. Maybe it was because I was the oldest or because my other brother was his favourite. My father was also a good mechanic and always allowed my brother to go in his garage and use his tools. If I set foot in there to get maybe a spanner to fix my bike, he would scream at me, “What do you want? You don’t know how to use a spanner, now get out.” But the love that my father never gave me, my mother more than made up for.

  It was through my father that I had my first real fight. I was about ten years old and had to travel through the forestr
y near here to get to a farmhouse to buy fresh milk. I had been arguing with this lad who lived near and he whacked me over the head with a bottle. I still have a small bald patch on my head from it. I get back in the house crying my eyes out, with blood pouring down the back of my neck. I thought I’d get a bit of sympathy off my father, but he whacked me across the face, grabbed me by the back of the neck, dragging me out of the house and threw me into the field by the forest. “You fucking wait for that boy to come past here,” he shouted to me. I was more afraid of my old man than the boy who had hit me, so I waited for the boy to show up. I beat the boy, because of fear of my old man more than anything else.

  When I was about 17, I got into a fight with one of my brothers in front of our house. He tried to stab me with a screwdriver. I blocked it with my forearm but the screwdriver went right into my arm. I was still fighting him with this screwdriver dangling in my arm. The fight progressed against a barbed wire fence, which ripped into my shoulders. He stepped back and kicked me straight in the knackers. For some reason – I don’t know why, maybe shock – I went completely blind for about ten minutes. I managed to sit down in this old chair in the garden and the pain from my injuries was making my whole body shake. I couldn’t see and thought I was blind for life. I was covered in blood but slowly, like a fog clearing, my eyesight came back. I look at my brother and I pick up this hatchet, which was near me. “Right, that’s the way you want to play it, is it?” I scream at him. With that he races off before I can get to him.

  I leave school not long after and get a job in the Forestry, doing all sorts of work, right across the board from planting trees to cutting them down. I loved the job; it was just my thing. The only downside was that, no matter where in the forests I had to go, one mile or eight, I’d have to walk all the way, in all sorts of weather. My wages at the time were £3 15s a week, which was all right but I’d just been caught drinking under age in the Royal Oak. I was fined £5.