Still Breathing

by Donnelly, Anthony; Donnelly, Christopher; Spence, Simon

  2

  BENCHILL BOYS

  Anthony: The way I was described in my school reports was, ‘Anthony could always do better, he’s lacking in concentration. His mind is somewhere else.’ I was always five years in front of myself. I was always in a different place. The teacher asked the class, ‘What do you want be when you grow up?’ Everyone else was saying I want to be a postman; I want to be a fireman. I said, ‘I just want a big fuck off till and I want to sit behind it taking dough all day – not a till as in a shop, I just want everyone in here to pay me.’

  Christopher: At school for me it was, ‘Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy.’ I just wouldn’t do anything at school. I wasn’t interested unless it was sport or art. When I joined school they used to have these books called Wide Range Readers. They put me on Range 1 and I was still on Range 1 when I left four years later. I would just not read it and they couldn’t make me read it. I just wasn’t interested in it. They couldn’t do anything for me [it was only as an adult that Chris discovered he had dyslexia].

  Anthony: I got a lot of accolades playing football when I was young. My dad never turned up for one game! I played football at Wythenshawe Park later on for the local pub and we weren’t your normal team – it was basically every criminal off the estate. People called us the ‘Strangeways eleven’. At half time we used to have whiskey and spliffs. We had a manager called Joe who used to keep shouting instructions onto the pitch. He was like a social worker. Joe was shouting at my mate Basil off our estate and the next thing Basil stopped running towards the goal, turned towards the sideline, ran over and butted Joe and knocked him unconscious. It was hilarious at the time.

  Christopher: I used to run for south Manchester and my dad never turned up at a race. When I got on the football team my mum took me to the Civic Centre and bought me a pair of football boots with yellow Gola stripes on the side. I went to school and I was buzzing my socks off with these boots. The next week my dad came home with a pair of Adidas Beckenbauer but not with the white stripes – with yellow luminous stripes! Where the fuck did he get them from? You just couldn’t get that sort of shit and then my Timpson boots were elbowed. That’s how it was. I had the best boots going but he still never came to watch me play football.

  Tracey: My mum went to the football games when she wasn’t working. I’d finish school, go home and go back out to see them play football. My dad was wrapped up in earning a living; home was mum’s domain. Our dad couldn’t tell you what school we went to. He’ll know the primary school because it was across the road but he won’t know anything else, really. I know he regrets not being as involved as he could have been when we were growing up. They were very young parents and they definitely didn’t conform to how things should be done. My dad never took anyone’s word as gospel. I suppose you could say he had a problem with any authority. Through this we had the freedom to make our own decisions and forge our own way.

  Anthony: You were dealt your cards … whatever life threw at you. I had to know how to react to violence because of my dad and my experiences at the scrapyard. I had to understand that it could happen so I had that installed in me. That was just the way it was. There weren’t really any dark moments for me apart from I was always being threatened with being put away in a children’s home – that was my number one fear, getting caught. The family was famous on the estate. We were the kids who were getting run over by our own dad, being shot at by our dad, always fighting, always involved with the police … notorious people.

  My dad bought my mum a café called Tony’s Café in Moss Side on Claremont Road near the Claremont pub. As well as the scrapyard, he also had a tyre shop on the corner of Kippax Street [which ran alongside the then Manchester City ground] called Kippax Spares. We also had a butty [sandwich] bar in town, in the Northern Quarter, called the ‘Butty Bar’.

  All the [Manchester] United and [Manchester] City players would come down to the Ancoats scrapyard to visit: Stanley Bowles, Georgie Best, Martin Buchan, Lou Macari. My uncle was hanging out with Muhammad Ali, Angelo Dundee and Phil Lynott – so it was not unusual for us to see famous people.

  Christopher: There was a man called Shine who had the newsagents opposite the yard. He was a top, top geezer, Jamaican. I was mad for a saxophone because of The Muppets. I got one for Christmas and my dad sent me to Shine to learn how to play. I went down there on Sunday afternoons, with all these black geezers jamming. I was in the middle with my saxophone. I came home saying they were all passing a cigarette around. They were all stoned out of their minds. I never learned saxophone but I had fun. The geezer who used to take me to Shine’s was called John and he lived above the café we had in Moss Side. He was really, really camp – he wore pink flares like John Inman in Are You Being Served? Then he just disappeared. Three months later I saw him in a town eating out of a bin. It was a very bizarre but very open upbringing.

  Anthony: Crazy Steve was another character that was around. He wore a crushed velvet suit – black geezer from Moss Side. He had top of the range cars and was nuts. We saw him one day in Moss Side running with a baseball bat, with his hat flopping and his leather coat and velvet flares. He stopped when he saw us. He’d just battered four people with his bat and then he started having a normal chat with us, ‘Yeah, I’ve just fucked some people up.’ Crazy. The windows in his car were smashed. He was dressed like something from Starsky and Hutch. He had the ribbon round the hat and a baseball bat dripping with blood. But he was part of the jigsaw, as were Tommy and Georgie [Davies], Ginger’s sons. They were the same, crazy, driving the best cars but you knew they were up to no good. I idolised Tommy and George.

  Christopher: We drove through Moss Side when I was child and Crazy Steve was lighting and throwing bangers at people out the window of the car. The Dummy used to work for my dad at the yard. He was built like a brick shit house but couldn’t speak. He was deaf and dumb. It wasn’t very PC calling him the Dummy. He used to take me to the shops for toffees. Every dog they had in the yard was called Sabre. If one died they’d call the new one the same name, Sabre.

  Anthony: We had one dog that was a killer. Only one man could feed him. They had him in the shed with a chain on his neck. My dad used to feed him with a pole. The chain was buried in his neck. He had to get the flesh off it and get the vet out to stitch his neck up. It was ferocious a dog. It loved eating dashboards.

  Christopher: I saw that dog rip someone’s arm off. It was on a chain but a bloke came in the yard and he was warned, ‘Don’t go to the back of the yard, the dog’s down there.’ Next thing I’ve heard a scream. The dog had him on the floor and was dragging him by his left arm. From his wrist to his elbow you could see bone. He kept passing out. We phoned the ambulance and then my job was, ‘Quick get the paint out and get a load of “Beware of the Dog” signs painted.’

  Anthony: Everyone had something going on but it was my dad and other friends who owned nightclubs, car pitches and pubs who were ‘the firm’. [Suspected of being the most powerful criminal group in the city’s history – Manchester’s top ‘faces’ – and under almost constant police surveillance.] My dad was always like the man on the ground doing the work. The name Quality Street Gang comes from an old advert for Quality Street chocolate [a limo rolls up to a bank, men with long coats, fedoras and dark glasses march in and the frightened cashier hold up her hands. A man with a fat cigar slips his hand inside his overcoat and pulls out a box of Quality Street chocolates]. I heard some of the old firm walked into a bar in town one night and somebody turned round and said, ‘Look at them, they look like the Quality Street gang.’ It stuck but it was a label given to them by other people. They never advertised themselves. Chris and I have been brought up in and around it. They don’t call themselves the Quality Street Gang – they’ve all bought and sold off each other all their lives. They’ve all relied on each other and they’ve all watched each other’s backs. If that’s what people want to call them I’m not here to destroy the myth. But as kids, we would know the name Qual
ity Street, yeah, course we would.

  Christopher: It wasn’t something to aspire to. Your family’s associated to this thing – yeah, so what? It wasn’t something that governed our lives by any means. I’d go down the yard and some of them might be in a Rolls or some in a Jag. Someone’s got a bag full of swag that they’re selling and there’s loads of cash knocking about …

  Arthur: The police thought we were up to all sorts, but I was buying and selling houses. We employed half of Manchester; we looked after everybody. We weren’t notorious for knocking people about; we were notorious for earning money. We’d only fight when we had to. There was the odd policeman: always somebody taking a back hander. The Quality Street Gang, if you want to call it that, probably goes back to the ’30s, it is fathers and sons in Ancoats. The police were jealous. They knew we were grafters, entrepreneurs at the time and they didn’t like it. They didn’t like it when you answered back.

  Anthony: What we were seeing and experiencing was affecting the way we were developing. I always say we were cultivated by violence, music, money and fashion. I was a difficult child. I was stealing – or making – money from wherever I could to pay to go away with my friends. I was always hanging out with older lads. I was only eleven and they were all on YTS schemes, they had wages. It was becoming impossible to control me. I was growing up very fast. I was an adult but my parents still saw me as a child. So there was a war between my mum and dad and me. I knew every crack in the pavement, every window to escape from. I was observant. I bought a ticket for a coach to Blackpool to go and watch City. When my dad found out he ripped up the ticket. I was furious. But then he turned round and said my friend does trips for football – why don’t we organise something? Better the devil you know. His friend was a probation officer and he took United fans away on his bus – they called it the Wythenshawe War Wagon. The bus was considered to belong to United’s hooligans.

  So when I was eleven, I took every football thug from Manchester City to West Ham’s ground – including some of United’s boys – on that bus. It was not unorthodox for United and City to team up and go away together – it depended on your circle of friends. Chris was always United but he went to as many City games as I went to United games.

  On the way down to West Ham, we found all the United firm’s craft knives in the ceiling of the bus. Before we even got to London there were two stabbings at Knutsford services. Service stations would often be frequented by opposing fans heading for away games and we bumped into another mob from a rival club that night. We drove through the night and got taken to a house that belonged to another probation officer. They fed us. They were hippies, they thought they were doing a good thing, taking the kids to football, but they didn’t know we were armed to the teeth. At the house we found a tool bag and we took hammers and blades. We were the thing they were trying to change – poor, uneducated no-hopers – but they were never going to change us.

  We decided to go to West Ham’s ground early in the morning. We were the first there. We sprayed the ground, it was a big thing to put your mark up – just Manchester slogans and ‘Fuck West Ham’. There was a wine shop and we robbed it and then we sat in the park drinking. Word must have got out that we were there and this mob came over and said, ‘Are you from Manchester?’ I had a large pebble [the size of half a house brick] behind my back. I pulled out the pebble, ran toward this kid and threw it. It went off. It was a famous football fight, evidenced I believe in another book.

  Football was always a weekly thing. It was an activity; there was nothing else to do. We lived for football. To go to the football and search out the opposing fans’ lads … that was it. Leeds, Liverpool – it didn’t matter. The objective was to cause as much trouble as humanly possible. I would go anywhere with anyone, but we were never affiliated with any one hooligan gang. Our little firm was a bit aloof. Wherever the violence was there was usually theft. While everyone was fighting we were the ones putting billboards through the jeweller’s window. In 1977 Man United beat Liverpool in the FA Cup final. When they were parading the cup in the city – the homecoming – I took Chris on his first day out stealing. My intention was to go to town to cause trouble. When we got home we had hats, scarves and posters. We went to town with nothing and came back with all this stuff. Nobody asked where it came from.

  Tracey: Anthony got into football and by going to football he was never interested in being with kids his own age – he was knocking round with kids five or six years older than him. So I think that’s what kind of turned him into a bit of a hooligan, robbing and everything. But that was his thing and it was all about how you looked and how much money you had in your pocket. Bands and magazines – that was my thing. I just really got into going to gigs. I was massively into a Wythenshawe band Slaughter & The Dogs. Through them I went to the Sex Pistols at the Free Trade Hall [in 1976] – not the famed first gig but the second one. I used to drag Anthony to gigs at Cavendish Hall [Manchester Poly]. If there were any big acts in Manchester, they’d stay at the Posthouse Hotel in Wythenshawe. I’d be twelve or thirteen and Roxy Music were staying there. We hung about all night just to get in. We sat with the band and they put us on the guest list for the gig.

  Anthony: It’s all dropping in at the same time … football, punk, the Sex Pistols on the television with Tony Wilson. In my head I just wanted to be older. That was how my life was, always spent wishing it away. I went to the Anti-Nazi League Rock Against Racism gig in Alexandra Park. It was a nice day out and all the football thugs were there, drinking beer and smoking pot. Then they were going on to clubs that I couldn’t get into. But I could get into gigs. It was all happening very fast at that time.

  At Rock Against Racism I saw two kids from Ardwick that I knew from football, Bobby Gillette and Barry Valentine. They had straight-leg jeans and plastic sandals. That’s when I wanted my plastic sandals. The next time I saw them was at a Buzzcocks gig at Belle Vue. I was the punk joke – twelve, very slight, all the gear on. I’d made this badge board out of a piece of wood and foam. One of the older lads, Pubby, had given me badges to sell. You have money creeping into all aspects of our lives.

  I could see that the same people who were attracted to the football were attracted to the music, the style and the money. You had the normal kids on the estate in flares like David Essex, and then the five or six of us who were punks – my pals and me. We were into anything that was anti-authority and punk had violence and attitude.

  Christopher: I was nine or ten going out with all these punks. I was in school with my Doc Martens on, a pair of jeans all ripped up, a Mohair jumper, our Tracey’s school blazer all ripped. I was dressed like a punk rocker at school. We were punks – obviously all down to Tracey. But I was into clothes at that age. After primary school, all my mates went to Yew Tree [High School] and I went to the school Anthony went to, South Wythenshawe – which then became South Manchester High School.

  My mum and dad took us suddenly on holiday for six weeks three days before I was due to start there – so when I got back people had made friends. I turned up with a tan, a pair of Indian moccasins, button-down shirt and a pair of electric blue cords – I was suspended from school twenty times over the cords. I took the school uniform letter into the headmaster. ‘It doesn’t say you’re not allowed to wear cords, it says blue – it doesn’t say what shade of blue. I’ve got blue on.’

  The first year, I was hardly ever there … never went. Then I started driving to school in a Hillman Imp. I was driving at twelve. My grandma had a New Year’s Eve party in Hattersley and my mum and dad got absolutely legless. My dad put me in the driver’s seat and I drove them home to Wythenshawe. We were wild, when you think back.

  The teachers gave up on me. If I turned up for history, the teacher would say, ‘What are you doing here, you might as well go.’ If it was triple games I’d be there. I was put in one of the bottom classes out of the whole year because I was so unruly and I was constantly bored in class. But I had the best trainers, the be
st whatever. I was always the coolest kid. I would sign in school in the morning and then get off. I was out doing a bit of thieving. I got into the Mod revival so I was turning up to school in two-tone suits, a trilby, Fred Perry and fishtail parka. I’d be coming home late at night through the Civic Centre and there was still ‘Joy Division’ and ‘Buzzocks’ sprayed on the walls. Our house had ‘Buzzcocks’ right down the side of it.

  Anthony: I was causing a lot of stress. I was sent home from London, found by the police jibbing trains on Euston Station with Eddie Beef and Ivo, who were a couple of United’s main lads at the time. I ran off to Blackpool. I was with kids that were older than me. We raised money for a phone call and some chips. When I rang home, it was eleven at night, no buses and dark. I was pointed in the direction of my dad’s pals – the Mancinis, who were from Manchester and had bought a big hotel in Blackpool. There were three of us. We went over, the night watchman let us in and then he fell asleep so we helped ourselves to the bar of booze. In the morning we’d been given the bus tickets by the night watchman to get us back. He was left in charge, and as he was getting ready to drive us to the bus station, he opened a garage at the back of the hotel. There was a big bottle of champagne and he had his back to me so I took the champagne and ran off. I sold the champagne and just went off again. My dad got a phone call saying, ‘Your son is wild and out of control.’