I Am Not A Gangster

by Bobby Cummines

  One day she called me into her office and said I was on call. That was an added bonus, as the on-call person worked during the day and carried a pager at night. You were paid for being on call and received extra money if you had a callout.

  Pat knew I had a baby on the way and wanted to do her best by me. She was a real diamond who cared about the people in her care and would help anyone out. Her husband, Stewart, was the same.

  After a while working for the association, Pat said one day: ‘Here are the keys to all the buildings and the safe.’

  I couldn’t believe that Bobby Cummines, ex-bank robber, was being given all those keys! I said I didn’t really want that responsibility in case anything went wrong: the last thing I wanted was for anyone to nick money from the safe, with the finger of suspicion pointed at me.

  ‘You are now a member of staff and I trust you,’ Pat told me. ‘You’re being treated the same as everyone else. Take the keys or leave the job.’ I took the keys, and my time at that job lasted for a couple of years.

  It helped to be working with an old friend from my past, Dave Smith, who came from South London and was a few years younger than me. His previous job had been working at a used car garage with a well-known South London villain. Dave and I worked well together and he became like a brother to me; even to this day, we are always there for each other. There’s nothing I enjoy more than working in a comfortable environment with my own people.

  Lynn and I plodded on and nature took its course. My daughter, Sophie, was born in 1990; I was so proud and possessive that I wouldn’t let anyone hold her.

  I cradled Sophie in my arms all the time. I took her out of her cot and into our bed all the time, and enjoyed feeling her breathing next to me. I would carry her for miles rather than have to put her in a pram. If members of my family – apart from my wife, of course – wanted to hold her I would resist. My Sophie was the most beautiful thing in my life and I didn’t trust anyone with her. I knew that, with me, she was totally safe.

  Even when Sophie was a teenager we would cuddle up on the sofa. If she had a problem with a boyfriend I would say, ‘Tell me all about it.’ Sophie was the jewel in my crown all the time – my life had been so ugly, and then Sophie came along, and my entire life revolved around her.

  I knuckled down, earning as many crusts as I could, but tragedy was not far away.

  No parent ever imagines that a child could die before them. Even if you meet another parent whose child has passed away, you never know how they really feel. We all deal with a tragedy in the best way we can. I have been shot, stabbed, imprisoned and left to rot; I lived through it all, but nothing prepared me for the death of Abigail. I’ll brace myself and give you the story.

  Everything was going so well, with the Tesco incident behind me and forgotten. I remained active in the jobs market and became stock control manager for a cash-and-carry company in Kent. Because I was so used to being ‘the fixer’ in prison, I found the job really easy. I saved them thousands of pounds by reorganising their systems – and then an electronics company heard about my way of working.

  Yes, I was headhunted! They wanted me as their stock control manager. I made a deal with them: take me on for a month and, if I saved them money, they would employ me with a larger salary. If I failed, then I would walk away. I used the same finely honed techniques employed in the prison and at the cash-and-carry store, and saved them a small fortune.

  Could life get any better for an ex-con? I adored tiny Sophie, and my wife Lynn was heavily pregnant again. Then, one day, the phone rang in my office. It was Mike, my next-door neighbour. ‘They’ve taken Lynn into hospital. The baby must be due any time … you’d better get home as quickly as you can.’

  I had been expecting the news. After all, Lynn was due to give birth at any time and we were all looking forward to welcoming a new brother or sister for Sophie.

  I didn’t drive at the time, and so the warehouse manager took me home. I was packing bags for Lynn and bits and bobs for myself when the phone rang. It was one of the senior nurses.

  ‘Mr Cummines, could you come to the hospital straight away? Your wife needs you.’

  The taxi couldn’t come quickly enough. I could tell from the nurse’s voice that something was seriously wrong. I feared the worst but, as the taxi sped towards the hospital, I couldn’t get my head around what the worst could be. Was there something abnormal about the child?

  I entered the private room, saw my wife’s face and knew that my baby was dead. I sat with Lynn for a while and then went to the hospital chapel to see Abigail. There she was, resting in a small wicker basket. Tears flowed down my face and my head felt like it would explode at any moment. I could hardly breathe.

  ‘Can I be of any help? Would you like to talk? Perhaps you will pray with me.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I snarled at the priest. ‘Do you want me to nail you up alongside your guv’nor?’

  OK. I should never have said that. But I had caught a whiff of booze on the priest’s breath; I thought he was just going through the motions as he didn’t know me, and I wanted to be left alone. To be fair to the priest, he shot off out the chapel and left me to my misery.

  After a few minutes of reflection, I stomped out of the chapel and into the car park.

  ‘Why have you done this?’ I tried to reason with God. ‘I even packed shelves in a supermarket. I didn’t have any money, but refused to go back into crime. Why the fuck have you done this to us?’

  Swearing at God was a poor response, and I asked for his forgiveness. I also asked him to forgive me for slagging off the priest.

  I walked slowly back towards the hospital. The sky was dark and an eerie cloak hid the stars. I approached the hospital’s main doors and saw they were locked for the night. I went in through a side entrance that took me on a different route to my wife’s room. I passed the windows of the baby intensive care unit and looked in to see beautiful angels with their parents standing guard. Those people were drained of all energy, crying and filled with fear.

  I could see that other parents were about to follow my route to hell, while others would be spared that horrendous journey. I was not alone; I could see that clearly. All those people with the same nightmares gave me comfort; I had a daughter on Earth and another in Heaven, waiting for me.

  The beautiful babies of this world are our future and we should nurture and cherish them because they really are our priceless jewels.

  I still feel that Abigail is with me. I can sense her presence all around. Grieving sent me into a place I didn’t want to visit, fuelled by too much alcohol. My behaviour wrecked my marriage. The break-up and subsequent divorce in 1998 were entirely down to me.

  So, what to do for Abigail? I made a promise to turn things around completely and dedicate my work to her – but how would I go about it?

  Back in civvy street, after all my hassles on the job front, I was determined to fulfil that promise to Abigail. I heard about a bloke who was starting up an organisation called Unlock – it was brought to my attention by Maurice, my old probation officer from Maidstone who’d done so much for me in the past. I was intrigued.

  I contacted the founder, Mark, and arranged a meeting with him in London. When we met, I had the shock of my life. It was Mark Leech, a fellow ex-inmate at Maidstone. Although also classed as a problem prisoner, he was well educated and knew more about prison rules than any barrister.

  In fact, he was every prison governor’s nightmare. In prison, he had helped people to write about their complaints and was known to us as the prison ‘lawyer’. Mark and I had a good laugh and he told me about his scheme to help ex-offenders live a normal life outside prison, with all the training, rehabilitation and counselling that went with it.

  I knew from his determination and commitment in prison that he would give it a real go. Funding was the main issue, so we set about getting a structure in place. As it was Mark’s idea, it was only right that he should be in charge, with me as his deputy.


  We worked night and day to get the project off the ground: we were in and out of TV and radio stations up and down the country. It nearly killed us both – Mark was in poor health anyway, which only added to the strain on him.

  Unlock was a charity run by ex-offenders for ex-offenders. Our message: ‘We live that life that others can only guess about; and we are living in an unforgiving and sometimes brutal society that is not willing to give us a break.’

  From my garage we applied for grants to the Tudor Trust and the Wates Foundation. That helped us to run a proper office and paid us a salary, too, so that we could look at our positions as full-time jobs. These two charities totally supported us for many years, which allowed us then to really set the wheels in motion.

  We did it. Unlock became a respected charity, run by ex-offenders for ex-offenders. We began with £6 and ended up with a turnover of £100,000 a year. As time went on we had to employ more staff, and the charity was finding it harder to pay for everything. But we just kept going, against all the odds.

  Mark was excellent at dealing with the media, solicitors and everyone. He wrote articles in newspapers, outlining the problems facing ex-offenders and putting forward a compelling case. The next thing, we were getting phone calls from TV and radio stations asking us to comment on what was happening in prisons and the problems of adapting to life on the outside.

  We had to prepare for all these interviews: we made sure we said all the right things, we were always armed with the right statistics, and we put our points across in an articulate way. Mark and I handled all the media ourselves, and it was a 24/7 operation.

  Not only was my business life taking off, but so was my personal life. I met Ami in a club in the mid-1990s. Her husband, Paul, was a roadie for a heavy metal band. He was a lovely guy and they had a young son, Kai. Sadly, Paul died from pneumonia when Kai was only six years old.

  Paul’s family came from Newcastle; my Ami is the only Japanese bird I know who speaks with a Geordie accent. I lost touch with her for a long time until I went onto Facebook around 2004, six years after my divorce. I was just chatting to people on there when she popped up, and I started asking her what was happening in her life.

  We started talking and became really good friends. She was in Japan at the time, and I invited Ami and Kai to come to visit me in Kent. They came and we all spent Christmas together.

  Things just developed from there. The next time they came over, Ami and I started talking about the future. I just knew that this woman was the only one that I ever wanted.

  I said, ‘Look, Ami, we get on good and we aren’t kids any more. What do you think about us getting married?’

  She answered, ‘What are you saying to me?’

  ‘I’m saying, will you marry me?’

  Ami’s pretty face looked at me quizzically: ‘Are you serious?’

  I told her in no uncertain terms: ‘Yes, I don’t talk to give my mouth exercise.’

  There was quiet in the room and then, after a while, she said, ‘If you are serious then yes, OK.’

  And that was it.

  When the media first came to us at Unlock, they thought they would be dealing with mindless thugs who, they presumed, wouldn’t be articulate or a match for MPs and so-called specialists in prison life. ‘What do these people know about after-care for prisoners?’ seemed to be their general approach.

  We wiped the floor with the lot of them. Mark and I were well read, we’d studied our subject, we’d lived the prison life and we were confident during interviews. Also, the MPs and specialists couldn’t get away with telling lies; we knew the truth, whereas they were only guessing.

  It soon became obvious to the journalists and the media in general that our firebrand approach was being well received by listeners, viewers and readers. They couldn’t get enough of us. Unlock was seen as a force to be reckoned with in print and on the radio.

  We became familiar names on Radio 4, Sky, ITV and the BBC when we went to town about prison overcrowding and all that. As well as news stories, we took part in documentaries and televised conferences. We became keynote speakers and, I feel, deserved our place on the airwaves.

  On the personal front, my mother-in-law, bless her, came over from Japan for our wedding in 2008 despite being poorly. She stayed with us for a few weeks and we took her around all the places she wanted to visit. We all got on really well. I really did like my mother-in-law.

  Japanese people are very family orientated. To start with Ami’s family were understandably concerned about my background and everything that they read about me on the internet. Ami told them that was all in the past and I now ran a charity for ex-prisoners.

  Our marriage itself was a quiet affair. It really was a private do at the Archbishop’s Palace in Maidstone. Only close friends and family attended.

  Japanese people are totally respectful and law abiding and I wanted my son to grow up in that environment. I was glad that Kai had taken on a lot of Japanese values; in fact, he preferred those to the English way of life.

  Kai travelled all the way from Chatham in Kent to his Japanese school at East Acton in London every day. That was quite a commitment for a twelve year old, on top of his school work. He appreciated that I paid his fees, and he rewarded us with good qualifications. Ami and I always attended parents’ evenings and any plays he was in. We wanted him to know that he was fully supported and loved.

  When Kai finished the Japanese school in London, aged fifteen, he was due to go to a sixth-form college. However, I’d been lecturing at schools in London where I saw glue sniffing, kids being robbed of their mobile phones and trainers, and many of them carrying an assortment of weapons. Kai is a gentle soul and I didn’t want him exposed to those horrors. I’d grown up with all of that and knew what would be coming his way. The only way I could achieve that was to send him to a school in Japan where crime was almost zero and respect for others was top of the agenda.

  We applied to the Doshi School in Japan; it was an expensive option, but the right one. All the money from my criminal years had gone, but I’d worked hard since my release and ploughed the proceeds into Kai’s education. I raised funds, giving advice on security and carrying out lots of media work. Kai had to sit various tests to ensure that he could cope with the high standards expected of him.

  Normally most men who marry a woman with children see the kids as baggage. I didn’t see Kai as that; I saw him as the son I chose to have. In my mind Kai is my son. At the same time, I maintained a really close relationship with my daughter Sophie, who was developing into a fantastic young woman. Yes, I really did have everything going for me. Everything.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PRACTISING WHAT I PREACHED

  AS MARK’S HEALTH deteriorated, he thought it best to stand down and hand the organisation over to me. Not long after this, our first president, Judge Stephen Tumim, died, and Sir David Ramsbotham (later to become Lord Ramsbotham) stepped in to take his place.

  I liked David from the first moment I met him in his role as Chief Inspector of Prisons. He was an old general with good principles and a strong sense of what was right and fair. He was like a Rottweiler with the heart of a lion. Judge John Samuels, another absolute diamond, acted as vice-president. We had other high-profile patrons who were strong voices in our organisation and provided solid advice for the government.

  With Lord Ramsbotham’s backing, I took Unlock to another level, making it a charity that most admired and some envied. I had turned it into a ‘doing’ charity, unlike others that were just talking shops. I carried on appearing in all the media, and went into schools to give talks on deglamorising crime.

  I was invited to sit on many government think tanks and committees. I was appointed specialist advisor to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act chaired by John Denham MP. I was also a member of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee.

  I pressed on with my plans as chief executive of Unlock. I had
so many issues to tackle. Prisoners stood no chance of living a normal life on the outside.

  I discovered that, if you let someone with a criminal record live in your house, your home contents and building insurance became invalid. People had been paying out thousands to insurance companies without knowing this. Insurance brokers Roy Clegg and Nick Graham campaigned on my behalf and, lo and behold, policies were changed to reflect our requests.

  How do ex-offenders get jobs? I used my own example of how to do it, but I had bent the rules on my application forms. I managed to find jobs for some former prisoners, but more obstacles appeared. Employers said they couldn’t employ ex-criminals because staff were paid through the BACS system and former prisoners usually didn’t have bank accounts because they were ex-offenders. Outrageous! They wanted to take people on, but couldn’t pay them!

  To make matters worse, prisoners leaving jail received their benefits by giro and could only collect their money from their local post office on a certain day. This was dangerous for women ex-prisoners, often with violent, abusive partners who would prowl around the post office waiting for the cash. With the help of Barry, a financial expert, and Morag from the Bank of Scotland, we changed all of that. Following our success with insurance, we started on a small scale with bank accounts. While inside doing my bird, I’d handled all the deals and financial stuff, so I just continued that work, legally, on the outside. Soon all the banks came on board. Job done.

  Unlock really took off at the start of the new millennium. To start with, the organisation was known as ‘the gangsters’ union’. People in politics, newspapers, the police and everyone said we would be involved in organised crime. They said it was a front for the British underworld, similar to the Krays’ plans to have a Mafia-style operation in England. The Old Bill said I was slippery and always covered my tracks. I even heard that there were fears about us corrupting politicians. I was more worried about politicians corrupting us.