School had always been a constant in my life, but as time went on I started to go off it. I’d been growing up pretty fast and it became increasingly hard to see the point in studying when I had so much else on my mind. ‘Just getting on with it’ was all very well, but when I was around 13 I realised school was no longer much of a priority for a number of reasons. For starters, I was no longer a boarder. I’d become a dayboy so I could be around for Mum a lot more, but the change meant I no longer felt part of the school’s team spirit. It was all a bit depressing; my heart simply wasn’t in it any more.
Things weren’t looking too rosy outside school either. The sixties had been an amazing decade. Everybody had money in their pockets and the good times had rolled in our pub and elsewhere besides. But, as the seventies loomed, all that joie de vivre started to slip away. In its place you suddenly had the three-day week and a feeling of austerity everywhere. Maybe it’s just me, but it felt like everything changed almost in the blink of an eye. Where you’d once had a world exploding with colour and noise, you now had one filled with darkness and gloom.
Slowly but surely business dropped off at the pub until it wasn’t the same place any more. Gone were the days of players and pretty ladies filling its four walls on a Friday. There were some nights where it just felt dead, with Dad’s jukebox playing to just a couple of regulars. And the deader our beloved little pub got, the more we were reminded of the good times with Dad. Happy memories that also made us sad.
Nostalgia’s all well and good, but Mum didn’t want to hold on to a business for the sake of it. Financially it wasn’t making sense, so we took the hard decision to sell up. We needed a clean break, not so we could forget Dad, but so we could stay focused on building a future with him when he got out. It would be sad to say goodbye to the place, but a relief at the same time. You can’t hold on to anything for ever.
The pub sold quick enough. It was time to move and, thanks to Dad, we had somewhere to go. Before he went away, he had invested in a beautiful five-bedroom house in Red Post Hill, Dulwich, and now it was to be our home. We moved in and it felt good to be in a new place where we could give attention to each other as a family without the worries of running a business. There was the inevitable financial pinch of Dad no longer bringing in money, but, although times were lean, we had each other, and that’s all that mattered.
My routine didn’t change much after our move, but Mum soon sensed my lack of enthusiasm for being a dayboy at Christ’s College. She was willing to take the strain of finding the money for my school fees, but only if I could look her in the eye and say it was worth the trouble. Christ’s College had been a true education, and the school was so helpful and supportive of me through everything that had happened with Dad. Still, I’d simply lost interest, and had also been bunking off, so I made the decision to leave the school that had meant so much to me. It was time to go. A time for new beginnings.
It was suggested that I go to the local comprehensive in Dulwich, but there was no way I was going to do that. It sounds terrible, but I didn’t like the look of the kids I saw coming in and out of the place. Me, a working-class kid, had turned into a right little snob. The fact that they didn’t do the sports I was into was also a real turn-off. I was 14 years old, I’d been through a fuck of a lot and quite simply I didn’t think I had much to gain from the place. So I decided to take my chances, bide my time and see what life might have to offer elsewhere.
After I quit school I spent a lot of time being the man of the house, helping Mum out with this and that and taking my sister to school. Once I’d dropped Danielle off at Dulwich Hamlet Primary each morning, I suddenly found I had a lot of time on my hands. I’d hang about and my mind would wander. I’d daydream about what I might start doing for a living, but I’d daydream more about my dad.
The more I thought about him, the more I started to wonder just who Freddie Foreman was. I’d heard rumours about what went down, whisperings about what kind of a man my father was when he wasn’t being a father, but I’d spent so many years being protected from the details. Now I was a teenager, my mind became more curious to know the truth, whatever it was.
One day I decided to start finding out, so I went to Brixton Library to do a bit of detective work.
From the moment Dad had been arrested, I’d been told many things by many people: Freddie Foreman was innocent, he’d been fitted up, the authorities had been trying to bring him down for years and finally they’d managed it. I believed what I was told – I heard it all from my nearest and dearest and had no reason to doubt them. Not until I started sniffing around in the library, that is. What I discovered changed everything.
According to the newspapers, my dad was a ‘monster’, as guilty as sin. At the library, I spent hour after hour poring over acres of newspaper reports kept on microfilm, reading anything pertaining to him. If I’d ever had any doubts about whether my dad was innocent or guilty, well, just taking in what they said about him put them to bed. I sat there in awe of what I was reading; it was nothing short of a revelation. My dad was a South London gangland boss. A killer at the centre of the most powerful crime organisation in Britain. He was accused of being the ‘Man Who Held The Key’ in some of the Kray twins’ most nefarious deeds. Fucking hell! I knew my dad was a ‘face’, sure, but until then I’d had no idea how massively he had been involved in the whole thing. The way the papers put it, he sounded less like my father and more like the Godfather. He was Britain’s Al Capone.
As I devoured every column inch available, the picture of him grew bigger and bigger. Dad’s trial had been part of a huge showdown between the establishment, the police and the Krays, and at the time it was the longest trial in British criminal history. It ended in my father being convicted of disposing of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie’s body. That was the ‘accessory to murder’ bit. Jack was a troublesome member of the twins’ firm who was brutally stabbed to death by Reggie Kray.
The papers were certainly right about Dad knowing the Krays – I vividly remembered Ronnie and Reggie babysitting me when I was small. From time to time Dad had left me with them at their East End snooker hall when he had business over that way. They were always so lovely to me, and made sure I was well looked after. That was my experience of them, but I didn’t need Brixton Library to tell me the Krays weren’t angels to everyone.
Everyone knew the twins were notorious criminals, but if you were on the right side of them you were all right. Being who I was meant I certainly was. To my dad they were allies and friends. Dad was very much his own man, but he’d helped the twins on occasion, mainly out of loyalty to one of his best friends, Charlie Kray. Charlie was a lovely, lovely man. He certainly didn’t have the same dark, dangerous nature of his brothers. Anybody who knew him will tell you that. Nevertheless, he was unjustly tarred with the same brush. I am proud to have had the honour of reading the eulogy at his funeral. I loved Charlie and miss him very much.
After years of being kept in the dark, I suddenly had the whole picture of who my dad was, how he was perceived by the public and what he had done. Technically speaking, I’d been lied to by those close to me. Dad wasn’t innocent; he hadn’t been fitted up. He had done some terrible things, and that was that. But I wasn’t angry about the lies, because right away I understood that the truth had been kept from me for my own protection. Those ‘lies’ were born out of love. At the age of ten there’s no way I could have dealt with the facts I was now facing at 14. No way at all. God knows how that little boy would have reacted to the truth about his father.
But how did that boy react at 14? Did he feel angry, ashamed, all messed up? Was he thrown into a terrible dilemma? Did he hate his father for the things he’d done, for the fact that he’d put himself in a position where he had been labelled a ‘monster’?
Not guilty, dear reader. Not guilty.
My father wasn’t just the man I thought he was – a good, loving father. In my young eyes, what I’d found out made Dad more of a man than I’d thought he was. I a
lready had so much adoration for my dad and, if I’m honest, discovering how notorious he was only strengthened that feeling. The press might have condemned Freddie Foreman’s actions, but there’s no denying that they created a certain mystique around him. Whatever villainy he’d been up to, my dad was presented as a hugely powerful figure at the top of his game, a man both revered and feared in many echelons of society.
The public has always been obsessed with criminals – gangsters in particular – and rightly or wrongly the baddies have been romanticised in films and literature since time immemorial. They go from villains to heroes to legends. Perhaps there’s a part in all of us that lives out deeply hidden dreams of power and lawlessness through such characters, I don’t know. At 14, I’d seen plenty of gangster films, and to discover that my dad was the real deal undoubtedly gave me a buzz. When it comes to that 14-year-old boy, I think he was rather glad his dad was a man at the top of his particular tree.
But my reaction was more complex than a schoolboy fantasy come true. I suppose some might say I had two choices: I could either demonise Dad for who and what he was, or I could idolise him. Well, if it was one or the other, there was no way I was going to write my own dad off as an evil man. In fact, it didn’t even occur to me that he was anything of the sort. To demonise a man who had never shown me anything but love and kindness would have been absurd. Besides, I understood that, in the world my father moved in, certain deeds went with the territory. There were men out there who he might have hurt – killed even – but those men would have just as happily got him first.
As far as Dad’s guilt went, perversely I wanted to believe he was guilty. It helped me. To see my own dad suffering for years in prison, to feel my mother’s and sister’s pain, and to deal with my own demons would have been so much harder had I genuinely believed he was innocent. If he was guilty, at least there was some reason for all this misery.
And it had been misery. Not that I blamed Dad. He did what he had to do and was willing to pay the price. The rules of his world. My dad was my hero, no matter what he’d done. In his absence, I loved him more than ever and was willing to pay my price for him not being around. Perhaps I even romanticised him a touch too much – nobody’s perfect, after all. But back then, with Dad away, all I had to go on were my memories of his strength and kindness during those visits, and the wonderful stories I was told about him, his loyalty to his friends, the people he had helped over the years. Dad was larger than life to me and I adored him all the more for it.
It always astounded me when I heard other kids badmouthing their parents. To hear one of my mates say, ‘I hate my dad’ baffled me. How could you? I’d think. For one, I couldn’t relate to having anything to hate a parent for, and secondly it made me mad seeing other kids take for granted what I craved so much: a father, at home, where he should be. See how you hate your dad when he’s snatched from you and thrown in jail, I’d think.
I didn’t blame Dad for anything, but I was still angry that he wasn’t in my life. My discoveries at the library did lessen the pain, if only a little – at least I was no longer in the dark about why my father had been taken away from me – but, like anyone who’s angry, I looked for a scapegoat. If my father wasn’t to blame, someone was. And in my mind that someone turned out to be two ‘someones’: the Kray twins.
The more I read about the twins, and the more I spoke to my parents’ friends about Dad’s relationship with them, the more I came to think it was their fault that my dad was in prison. For years Ronnie and Reggie had run the East End of London, and there’s no doubt they were powerful men whose influence went deep. They made a lot of money and for quite a while did it without drawing attention to themselves. Then things started to go wrong.
Bit by bit they started to lose the plot. Some people reckon it was their public profile and taste for celebrity status, others blame Ronnie’s ego and increasingly unstable mind, but for one reason or another the twins began to run amok and stopped covering their tracks. It was like they just wanted people to know what they were all about, and all professional caution went out the window. They were shooting people in broad daylight, for fuck’s sake, making a completely unnecessary name for themselves. But that was up to them. The problem was, they dragged my dad’s name along with them.
As I said, Dad was never part of their ‘firm’, but he was associated with it. The twins had done him good turns, put him on to some good touches, and out of loyalty my dad did what he felt was right: he stuck by them. Others turned their backs on the twins to save themselves, and I know that people who loved my dad had urged him to distance himself from them. But Dad’s sense of duty to return a favour was too strong. Unfortunately, his sense of honour was his downfall.
I took this information and ran with it. As far as I was concerned, it was the twins’ fault for taking liberties with my dad’s loyalty and getting him in too deep. Through their sloppy, unnecessary actions, I felt they’d stuck it on my dad. The very mention of the Krays would make me livid, and my mum too. It was a very sore point for a very long time.
The truth is, I cherry-picked the negative comments I heard about the Krays so I could weave a protective web around my father. The Krays were my scapegoat for some time, but over the years I came to realise that I was wrong to blame them for Dad’s actions. Call it six of one, half a dozen of the other, the truth is my dad did what he did and no one made him do it. But still, I could never be angry with my hero.
Never.
It was around this time that Dad was moved from Leicester Prison to Wormwood Scrubs. Mum had relentlessly campaigned for him to be relocated nearer to London, bombarding the Home Office with letters, and eventually it paid off. Dad had been very much alone up in Leicester, and the strain of those visits had been getting to all of us. Having Dad closer to home was a godsend. He was still locked up, yes, but in the Scrubs he was suddenly around men he knew and trusted. Men he went a long way back with. A lot of the Great Train Robbery chaps were in there – my godfather Buster Edwards, Gordon Goody, Jimmy Hussey, and other old friends Billy Gentry, Roy Hilder and Alan Gold. The other prisoners called them the LGs – London Gangsters. Knowing Dad was in good company eased our minds a lot, and visits became a lot less painful. Going to Leicester had always been a long, miserable journey, and now we only needed to travel across town to White City to see Dad among his friends.
Perversely, I have some pretty fond memories of visiting Dad at the Scrubs. He was still a Category A prisoner held in D Wing, but he and the chaps all worked in the laundry, so whenever we saw them they always looked smart, even in their prison uniforms, which they made sure were clean and pressed. Seeing my dad make the best of a bad situation, and managing to look smart and respectable even in Her Majesty’s denim trousers and shirts with wide stripes, made a lasting impression on me. Dad always had his head held high, was always clean shaven and neatly coiffured, and it said a lot about his strength of character.
I’ll always remember Dad walking into the visiting room, stopping to hold his arms out while the screws rubbed him down, and acting as though it was all so normal. He never let the bastards get him down, and would look over to us and wink and grin. He looked so strong and in control, no matter what the circumstances. I’ve taken that example and always tried to be the same in front of my sons.
Mum and I used to make a packed lunch for every visit on the premise that it was a long day for me and I had to have something to eat. But it was really for Dad. We took smoked-salmon sandwiches, on brown bread of course – Dad’s nickname is Brown Bread Fred – sweet and sour dill pickles and a prawn cocktail in a flask cup. The flask itself was filled with a good dry white wine. The wives and friends of the other chaps would all do the same, including my darling godmother June. She and Mum have been great friends since they were young and always laughed and giggled together. They still do today.
We’d always sit at the back of the visiting room. None of the other prisoners would occupy those tables. It seemed a
s if they were reserved just for us. The screws never bothered us, even when someone dropped their flask one day and the contents – gin – spilled all over the floor. It smelled like a distillery, yet they turned a blind eye. These men had a lot of influence over the smooth running of the nick, and if they kept certain prisoners sweet it was easier all round.
It was marvellous seeing the chaps together with their wives all dressed up, wearing their best jewellery and looking lovely, and most of the screws were very polite to us during our visits. They’d exchange pleasantries with us, ask us how we were and say how nice it was to see us again. Those guards were no trouble, and once the visit began they just kept an eye out from a distance, knowing there’d be no grief if the chaps were given a bit of leeway. Sometimes we’d be having such a good time that it felt more like a social occasion than a prison visit, and that was partly down to decent screws cutting everyone some slack. But there was one screw I’ll never forget.
I had never seen him before. When Mum and I handed him our visiting order, he just growled at us to take a seat. I took an instant dislike to him for being so rude to my mother. The screw was a big lump with a surly manner, a right miserable bastard straight out of a Dickens novel. He sat at a big wooden lectern – a reading chair with a desk attached – which was raised up so he could look over the whole room. Still, we had better things to worry about and never gave the bloke the time of day.
On this occasion we were with one of my dad’s oldest friends, Ronnie Oliffe. Ron and my dad go back a long way. He was always my father’s wing man in his clubs and pubs. Whenever there was any trouble and Dad ‘went to work’, meaning got into a fight, Ron was always at his shoulder. They had never lost a fight. There are some legendary stories about how, with just their hands, they’ve left five or six big lumps spark out. Years later I saw them in action with my own eyes, and everything I’d ever heard was true, believe me. A real dynamic duo.
Gangsters, Guns & Me - Now I'm in Eastenders, but once I was on the run. This is my true story Page 4
