Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Foreword by Dick Hobbs, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Essex University Centre for Criminology
1. To the Manor Born and Bred
2. Razor on the Ground
3. Daylight Robberies
4. The Stinger
5. Firms at War
6. Gangsters, Businessmen and Politicians
7. Women, Women and More Women
8. Killing for Cash
9. End of Freedom
10. The Krays and the Richardsons – All Tooled Up
11. The Yorkshire Ripper and Friends
12. A Solitary Voice
13. The University of Crime
14. Unlocking the Future
15. Practising What I Preached
16. The Midas Touch
17. An OBE from the Queen
Afterword from Fred Dinenage: Right, Bobby, said Fred…
Bobby’s Glossary
Bobby’s Poems
A Message from the Open University
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book
This is the gripping true story of how one man ruled his north London manor with an iron fist – and a sawn-off shotgun called Kennedy. It’s a shocking insight into a society where the rules are made by gangland leaders and if anybody dare break them, they have to deal with the consequences.
Bobby was sent to prison for the first time in 1967, aged 16, and over the next decade he established himself as a hardened criminal running protection rackets and robberies against a backdrop of all-out gang warfare, where doorstep slayings and bloody shoot-outs were common.
Eventually Bobby was sentenced to 12 years in Britain’s most notorious prisons, along with the Krays, the Richardsons and the Yorkshire Ripper. Inside, he was introduced to the Open University and on his release he soon got down to business again. Only this time his efforts saw him go from custody of Her Majesty’s Prison Service to meeting with the Queen herself...
I Am Not A Gangster is an explosive account of life in the criminal underworld by one of Britain’s most dangerous men, but above all it’s a remarkable tale of redemption with the biggest turnaround in gangland history.
About the Author
At 16, Bobby Cummines became one of the youngest people in Britain to be convicted of carrying a sawn-off shotgun. After serving 12 years in many of the UK’s maximum security prisons for offences including manslaughter and bank robbery, he went on to become a founding member and chief executive of UNLOCK, a charity which helps people with criminal convictions reintegrate into society. Bobby has also since co-founded the Midas charity, to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Bobby is one of the UK’s leading penal reformers and has advised ministers and judges as well as public and private sector agencies on prison and rehabilitation. Education was Bobby’s liberation and his passion is talking to young people in schools and colleges, deterring them from what they might perceive as a glamorous lifestyle by highlighting the harsh realities of crime and prison. This is his first book.
DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to my wife, Ami; my daughter, Sophie; my daughter, Abigail, who was tragically taken from us; my son, Kai; and Charlie Richardson, who led me on my path to success.
I also dedicate my book to my friends who have supported me on my journey, and those who are on this journey now. I have tried to show that, even in the depths of despair, there is hope. I see this as a book of hope, and perhaps a guiding light for people who have taken the wrong path in life. I took the wrong path but, with more than a little help from my friends, and total backing from the Open University, I was diverted onto a much better route.
In the hands of the brave, anything is possible.
Bobby Cummines OBE, 2014
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I go around the schools, I spread this message: In the 1960s and 1970s everyone went to college and university for free, but we robbed today’s young people of the same privileges. We were all greedy bastards, looking out for ourselves and not their futures.
We moan that our kids don’t respect us. Why should they? We didn’t respect them. We didn’t invest in their futures, and make them leave college and university with massive debts. We robbed their money boxes.
Let’s make sure that they have a proper education and help them to choose the right path in life. I took a long time to find that path; let’s ensure that our children don’t make my mistakes.
Please accept my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has written to me and given their support over so many years. Your backing meant everything to me. Everything.
FOREWORD
by Dick Hobbs, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Essex University Centre for Criminology
I HAD HEARD about Bobby Cummines decades before I actually met him. In the 1970s any Londoner with an ear to the ground could pick up rumours of violence and skulduggery from an adjacent manor – but only those in the know had any notion of the true extent of an individual’s criminal clout.
Working-class London was a cluster of self-contained villages boasting their own distinct occupations, football teams and villains. Local patriotism dominated. For an East Londoner, the three other quadrants of the capital were different, dangerous and ever so slightly exotic. These zones were defined, not by class or ethnicity, but by a familiarity tinged with a sense of difference.
Every neighbourhood had its own villains; theft, robbery and a little light extortion were their crimes of choice. Although drugs were about to dominate the illegal marketplace, this was not organised crime as expressed by Hollywood or the Italian Mafia, but loose networks of criminal entrepreneurs who did not like having to get up in the morning, and would rather risk ‘doing a ten’ – a decade in jail – than doing a nine-to-five day job.
For a non-insider to hear about villains from another part of London was most unusual. But the name ‘Bobby Cummines’ wafted in and out of pub conversations, describing an almost mythical presence located somewhere in North London, and associated with unspecified, violent goings-on.
The big marquee names of London’s underworld had been buried in the prison system during the 1960s, leaving behind a police force intent on obliterating any family-based neighbourhood crime firm. These were attempting to fill the vacuums left by the Krays and the Richardsons.
This became the golden age of armed robbery. Tight-knit groups of armed bandits, some working in league with corrupt detectives, roamed the streets of London harvesting large bundles of cash from banks, building societies and security vans. And this, along with his claim on a considerable chunk of working-class North London, was why even ‘straight-goers’ such as myself were hearing the name Cummines.
Many years later I went through a brief period of being asked to appear in some TV documentaries regarding organised crime. On a number of occasions, although we were filmed separately, I appeared on the same programme as a man of similar age to myself, smartly dressed, straight backed, and speaking with an unreconstructed London accent. It could only be Bobby Cummines.
He spoke of a cold, unglamorous world of instrumental violence. He didn’t exaggerate, but spoke expertly of a violent and mercenary world with which he was more than familiar. However, I didn’t connect this man to the voice that I was hearing at the same time on the BBC, championing the rights of ex-offenders, and who, on one memorable occasion, had hoisted the Home Secretary by his own statistical petard. It took a long time before I connected the violent dynamo of pre-gentrified 1970s Islington to this eloq
uent advocate of social reform.
As a reformer, Bobby has proved unusually effective, and his willingness to bypass polite liberal sensibilities, albeit with a large dollop of charm, has proved innovative, efficient and, most importantly, successful. Indeed, Bobby will avoid a ‘talking shop’ like the plague; as a result, he has managed to improve the life chances of some of the UK’s most excluded.
Bobby Cummines has been a very violent man. He served a long, hard time in prison, where he enhanced an already formidable reputation for violence and confrontation. He then learned the hard way about making a living in the straight world, with a criminal record hanging over him.
The story that he tells in this book, taking him from working-class London to Buckingham Palace via a solitary cell, is incredible. Be warned: not all of his ideas and opinions will fit with the sensibilities of liberal society. Bobby is a traditionalist, and an unapologetic royalist. But, before the sneering starts, look at what he has achieved, not for himself, but for those at the bottom of the heap, whom he describes as ‘our people’.
Bobby Cummines gets things done, and much of his success as a criminal, and now as a campaigner, fundraiser and government advisor, is due to his ability to inspire loyalty in others.
People are proud to be associated with him. I have heard men and women from all sections of British society introduce themselves, or explain their presence at an event, as: ‘I am with Bobby.’
This extraordinary book explains why.
CHAPTER ONE
TO THE MANOR BORN AND BRED
‘I’VE GOT AN idea to make a few quid,’ Maltese Tony told me, as our homemade cart ploughed through a muddy crater. It was one of the many blackened pits scarring the landscape after the war.
This particular cart was top of the range for us. We’d nicked the wheels off a pram outside a posh house. We reckoned the family could afford another pram and, as we had no money, it seemed to be a sweet deal.
The cart’s chassis was a scaffolding plank, and we sat in a banana box. There was a piece of string on the front so that we could pull the thing around, carrying this and that as we wove a path around the stinking craters.
‘We don’t need to go to people’s houses to get their old newspapers for the fish and chip shop.’ Maltese Tony grinned as his plan unfolded. ‘There’s a much easier way.’
‘Let’s do it,’ I agreed, although still unsure of what Maltese Tony was planning. All of my life I’ve said ‘Let’s do it’ – it has always been my trademark phrase.
‘We can get hold of the same day’s papers rather than having to go around looking for old ones,’ Tony said, as I reflected on his many imaginative money-making schemes. ‘We’ll need to get up early tomorrow morning and bunk off school again.’
The next morning we were both up at dawn, waiting for the newspaper van to make its delivery. The job couldn’t have been easier: the van driver threw the load of newspapers, all wrapped up, onto the ground outside the newsagent’s shop; we loaded them onto our cart and we were off, squelching our way through the knee-deep mud.
We lay low for a few hours, collecting what we could find of value in the craters. When the fish and chip shop opened, we were there with our load of newspapers.
‘These are today’s papers,’ the chip-shop owner hissed. ‘I’m not paying for them. You’ve nicked them from a van or another shop. Both of you can just piss off and don’t come back.’
The shop owner, Pat, was a skinny geezer with thinning grey hair. He was from Poland or somewhere like that and I think his actual name was Patryk. He was about forty, I would say, and he didn’t like kids. When grown-ups went into his shop to buy fish and chips, they would get the normal amount. When we went in with money to buy chips, he wouldn’t give us much of a portion – he short-changed us on the chips.
Well, we were also a bit pissed off, because he still kept the papers to wrap up his fish and chips and he hadn’t paid us for our work. We were fed up because the bloke had sussed out that we were conning him; however, we were determined to get our own back.
As we pulled the cart through a bomb site, minus its load of newspapers, we came across a dead cat. It had been there for a long time. All the stuff had come out of its body, but the animal was still furry. To be honest, it looked bloody horrible.
‘What are you going to do with that?’ Maltese Tony asked, screwing up his face as I held up the smelly, disgusting moggie by the tail.
‘Follow me,’ I ordered.
Maltese Tony trudged after me with the cart while I marched back to the chip shop. Still holding the cat by its tail, I threw the hairy mass of gunge into the shop. The cat flew through the air, bounced on the counter, and I was shocked to see it land in the fryer. I hadn’t intended to throw the fucking thing in along with the fried fish.
‘You little bastards!’ Polish Pat yelled, hearing the fizzle in the fryer. ‘I will get you! I will tell your father. I know who you are. I will have to close my shop. You little bastards. That’s what you are. Little bastards.’
That evening, Pat shouted and jumped up and down on our doorstep. He was bellowing at the top of his voice. I stayed in my room as my mum told him that my dad would sort everything out when he came home. Pat hung around for a bit, and reappeared on the doorstep as soon as the breadwinner arrived in the house.
‘They threw a dead cat in my fryer,’ Polish Pat moaned loudly, bleating in a heavy accent as Dad answered the door. ‘My shop has had to close now while we sort this mess out.’
‘For a start, you ain’t gonna stand there and shout on my doorstep,’ Dad snarled, and glared at his angry visitor. ‘You stay there, stop shouting, and I’ll be back.’
Dad bounded upstairs to hear what I had to say. I told him the whole story, explained about the newspapers and all that, and described the mangy cat incident.
‘Robert is wrong and he will stay in his room for a week,’ Dad told the fuming Pat. ‘You’re also wrong, knowing the newspapers were stolen, using them and not paying the kids. I think it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Now get off my doorstep or I’ll knock you off.’
Dad’s imposed curfew for the fiasco involving the mangy cat had little effect on my future activities, while Maltese Tony escaped scot-free.
If any boy was born with genes for being a thief, it had to be Maltese Tony. He stole anything, anytime, anywhere. Nowadays they call it kleptomania; Maltese Tony would even raid the shop that sold broken biscuits.
When we went into a Wimpy for a burger and chips he would find something to nick. Usually, it was the sauce in a tomato-shaped canister, and he even took the knives and forks. At school he broke into other kids’ lockers and stole their lunches. If he didn’t fancy one of the lunches, he would take a bite out of an apple and put it back. It was just to prove that he’d been in there, nicking something.
He was caned by the headmaster for bunking off school. Only Maltese Tony could have come out of the office, freshly caned, and showing off the headmaster’s pen; he’d nicked that as well.
He used to walk through Woolworths, nicking the Airfix models. He made a hole in his pocket to put his hand through. He covered it up with his coat and went down the aisle, grabbing whatever he wanted. There were no cameras in those days, so he took loads of stuff and hid it all under the coat.
The end result was that Maltese Tony and I were banned from the fish and chip shop, so other kids had to buy our food for us. We didn’t care about that.
The episode summed up my dad perfectly. He was a total ‘straight-goer’, the same as the rest of my family; I was the wild one. If you told him the truth he would accept it and tell you off. If you told him lies he would give you a proper hiding.
Dad’s name was Fred. He was small in stature, but a really muscular man. He had his own building company in the 1950s. He had a lot of lorries with Greeks, Italians and Chinese all working for him. The big mistake Dad made was letting people pay on tick, and he lost a lot of money.
Ever
ything was cash in hand, so the tax people became suspicious and paid us a visit. Dad said: ‘Fuck off. What have you ever done for me?’
They didn’t like his approach, so he went bankrupt but kept going as a bricklayer. Dad was a proper stonemason and could carve birds or anything from stone or wood. My mum, Mary, preferred the ‘warm’ wood sculptures, and he had statues all over our garden. She hated the cold feel of the stone ones.
Mum was a little, frail lady with dark brown hair and glasses, and always wore a pinafore. She cooked meals for old people in the street and was always handing out sweets and fruit to kids playing outside. Mum never saw wrong in anyone. She used to say: ‘If you can’t speak good about anyone, then don’t say anything. We all make mistakes, but inside everyone there is an angel.’
Dad and my mum had four boys, including me, and four girls. I appeared on 23 November 1951. The list of children, oldest to youngest, went as follows: Eileen, Fred, Patsy, Pauline, Jack, Frankie, Vera and me. There was a three-year gap between all of us, so by the time I was at secondary school the older children were beginning to leave the family nest at 28 Bemberton Street, near King’s Cross. Only Frankie and Fred were to become full members of my firm later on.
Dad made cash from bare-knuckle fighting on Sunday lunchtimes. I never saw any of those scraps, but Dad used to come home with bruises and black eyes and all that. They used to have the fights on the local green. My godfather, Johnny Rattray, was an illegal bookmaker and a great friend of our family. He took all the bets and, after the fights, they came back to one of the local pubs where they shook hands and shared the money out.
We would sit outside on the steps of the pub and they would come out with bags of crisps for us. Our mums would be outside their houses, shelling peas, and they all had a Mackeson stout while they cooked the Sunday dinner. They used to believe the stout was good for iron in the blood.
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