The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (45 page)

The majority of people at the Edwardian Club were a lot older than us and seemed to be either drape-suited Teddy boys or
leather-jacketed
rockers with little in between. Me and my mates were dressed in a 1950s style at least, which I think is why we were
tolerated
, but there wasn’t a drape or a leather jacket between us, which made us stand out a bit. I made up my mind that I was going to steal enough money to get a drape suit made before I came to the club again. I wanted to immerse myself.

That night I came across a phenomenon, for the first time, that would always make me feel slightly uncomfortable in rock ’n’ roll clubs. When the records were playing the dance-floor was full of dancers, but as soon as the band came on everyone would either head for the bar or outside the club for a breather, leaving only a handful of people in front of the stage. No one seemed to want to dance to the live music, only the records. I don’t really know why this was because some of the better bands could produce a sound that was so close to the original as to be almost indistinguishable. It had just somehow become the tradition that no one danced to the band, but if the band were exceptional then plenty of people would gather in front of the stage to watch them perform. I sometimes felt sorry for the bands, particularly the young ones, as they gave their all for an ungrateful and undemonstrative crowd, but that was the tradition.

Around 10.30 I was feeling pretty drunk and happy. I even ventured on to the dance-floor to hop about a bit when Tommy played Johnny Kidd’s “Please Don’t Touch”, which was my
particular
favourite. I noticed that Dave spent most of the evening chatting to a couple of giggling Teddy girls in one corner of the club and seemed to be getting on famously with them judging by their body language. The heat was stifling inside the club and I decided to pop outside for a couple of minutes for a bit of fresh air.

The stairwell was crowded with couples sat talking or kissing and I had to step over people to make it to the street. It was dark outside now and a bit cooler, but the street lights cast a warm orange glow over everything. I lit up a cigarette and saw Big Nose Eamon and John Carey talking to a mean-looking biker with “Road Rats MC London” on the back of his cut-down denim jacket. I walked over to take a listen and found they were talking about motorbikes. The biker was very well spoken, which seemed completely at odds with his huge straggly beard, tattoos and oil-stained denims. I was later to find that this was the case with a lot of bikers: they were not all
wild-eyed
criminals and some of them held down very well-paid day jobs. I was admiring the sleek lines of a jacked-up Ford Zodiac that was parked along the street from the entrance to the club when I became aware of raised voices down at the corner of the street. Three young Teds came bombing around the corner at top speed and shouting an alert. “The niggers are coming! The niggers are coming!”

Brixton was a predominantly black area and since the Notting Hill riots of the 1950s there had been no love lost between black people and Teddy boys. Having a Teddy boy club in what was essentially the heart of Brixton was a bit too much for a lot of the young black kids on the surrounding estates and sometimes there would be trouble. Bopper had told me that the week before the Johnny Kidd night a couple of Teds from Shepherd’s Bush had beaten up a Rasta in one of the cab offices after leaving the club. Now it seemed there was a gang coming for revenge. I didn’t know what to do. One of the Teds ran into the club and within about a minute crowds of Teds and rockers were piling down the stairs and out on to the street. I got carried along with the excitement of the crowd as we spread out across the street and began marching up towards the junction. I noticed that a lot of people had produced weapons and there was everything from sheath knives and
cutthroat
razors to motorbike chains and broken pool cues. I felt a bit naked without a weapon of my own but I was up for a punch-up.

There must have been about sixty or seventy of us by the time we reached the junction. I noticed Eamon, John, Lee and Peter in the crowd, faces glowing with drink and excitement, and the only one who was missing was Dave, who was still inside the club chatting up the girls. I had been in gang fights before but nothing on this scale or with this amount of weaponry on show. My heart was racing and my mouth was dry but I was eager. This was it; we were going to show these fuckers that you couldn’t mess with the Teds. As we turned the corner I saw a group of about forty blacks, all armed with sticks, bats and knives, and my excitement reached fever pitch. Someone had found a plastic crate full of milk bottles outside one of the shops and was passing them out to those in our crowd who didn’t have a weapon. I grabbed two bottles, one in each hand, and holding them by the necks I stood shoulder to shoulder with my people. This was what it was all about, a
brotherhood
, us against them; it didn’t matter who the enemy was, if they weren’t us they weren’t anything.

The two groups stood facing each other over about twenty feet of street. A big Teddy boy, whom I later found out was called Cut-Throat John, stepped forward and shouted towards the blacks, “You fucking golliwogs! You fucking want some? Come on then!” He then ran towards the blacks with a roar and waving a cut-throat razor above his head. The Teds followed suit, roaring and running up the street towards the enemy group. The blacks hesitated for a moment and then, realizing that they were outnumbered, broke ranks and began running back the way they had come. In their panic to get away, a couple of blacks tripped and fell and were quickly swamped by kicking and slashing Teds. I heard the screams above the rest of the noise but I carried on running with the crowd. As we realized that the blacks were getting away, the crowd began to slow down. I launched my milk bottles, one at a time, over the Teds in front of me and heard them smash on the road behind the retreating blacks.

The walk back to the club was the march of a triumphant army, all back-slapping and laughter at our victory. We had “run” the Brixton blacks and that was worth savouring. Even I, novice as I was, knew that at some stage, maybe next week or next month, they would be back in even greater numbers and things might not go our way then. But for now the Teds were riding high. I noticed a pool of blood on the tarmac near the junction and knew this was where one of the black gang had been caught and battered. As I walked by, the orange street light was reflected in the blood and it made me feel slightly sick. I wondered where the owner of that blood was and how badly he had been hurt. Then I was caught up in the moment again and dismissed the blood and any thought of the victims. I caught up with Eamon, John and Peter who were in very high spirits and we all went back into the club to take the piss out of Dave for missing all the excitement.

Looking back, I realize that the Teds were what would now be described as “institutionally racist”. In those days a lot of people were and, if the truth were known, a lot of people still are, and not just white people either. I think we’ve just got better at hiding it these days. I’m not a hypocrite and I won’t sit here and pretend to have an attack of the vapours because I fought and verbally abused black gangs when I was younger. It happened, and I took plenty of stick from the other side as well. The 1970s was a pretty confused decade. You could hear the words “nigger” and “honky” on
television
most weeks and the National Front (NF) was openly recruiting and marching on our streets and football terraces, as was the Anti Nazi League (ANL). A lot of the Teds were NF members, and a few were members of the ANL, but I never joined any of these organizations. My reason for not joining any of the right-wing groups was because both my parents were Irish and the likes of the NF had plans to kick the “paddies” out of England as soon as they had dealt with the blacks and Asians. I had a couple of black friends and there were even a few black Teddy boys, such as Black Bill of Tooting, Olly the Cat of Streatham and Jester of the Shepherd’s Bush Rebels. So, although I may have been casually racist, my loyalty was to rock ’n’ roll and my hatred was for anyone outside of that sphere, whether they were black, white or brown.

The Johnny Kidd Memorial Night at the Edwardian Club will always live in my memory as a golden time. I was on the verge of getting into something to which I felt I belonged. I believed that rock ’n’ roll was here to stay and that, like Tommy Hogan and the rest of the originals, I too would be bopping and jiving my way into middle age some day. I was proud to be part of it all and to have met such great characters and been accepted at face value. We all ended up pissed that night and singing rock ’n’ roll songs at the tops of our voices as we made our way home. It was a great summer to be a teenager.

M
ASSIVE HYPE AND
publicity surrounded twins Ron and Reg Kray’s deaths and funerals, as well as the demise of their older brother Charlie Kray. In this remarkable chapter Steve Wraith, a close friend of all three brothers, describes (with writer Stuart Wheatman) attending all three funerals of Krays – the most
notorious
gangsters in modern-day British history. Steve first contacted the Krays in 1990. He had sent a letter to both twins after the end credits of the film
The Krays
revealed where they were being held. Reg was the first to reply on the 14 November 1990. A second letter, from Ron, arrived shortly after. From then onwards they wrote a great many times, eventually leading to prison visits and good friendships.

Reginald “Reggie” Kray and his twin brother Ronald “Ronnie” Kray were born on 24 October 1933 in Hoxton, East London. Reggie was born ten minutes before Ronnie. Their parents Charlie and Violet Kray already had a six-year old son also called Charlie, who was born on 9 July 1927. A sister, Violet, was born in 1929 but died in infancy. In 1939 the Kray family moved from their home in Hoxton to nearby 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green.

The twins were to become the most famous gangsters of their generation and were involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, violent assaults including torture, and the murders of Jack “The Hat” McVitie and George Cornell. During the 1950s and 1960s Ron and Reg Kray, along with their elder brother Charlie, were the foremost perpetrators of organized crime in London’s East End. Although Ron Kray suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, in the 1960s they became big celebrities; the nightclub they owned attracted stars and entertainers including Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and they were photographed by David Bailey and
interviewed
numerous times on television.

At school the Kray twins showed none of their future criminal tendencies. This all started to change after their grandfather, Jimmy “Cannonball” Lee, led both boys into amateur boxing, which was at that time a popular pursuit for working-class boys in the East End. The Kray twins had then formed a gang and were achieving a degree of local notoriety for the trouble they caused. In early 1952 they were both called up for National Service in the army but deserted a number of times and on one occasion the twins assaulted a police officer who had spotted them and was trying to arrest them. They were initially held at the Tower of London (they were among the very last prisoners ever kept there) before being sent to Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset and jailed for a month awaiting courts-martial. They ended up being given a dishonourable discharge from the army after throwing tantrums, upending their latrine bucket over a sergeant, dumping a kettle of hot tea on a prison guard, handcuffing another prison guard to the prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs and burning their bedding.

It was during this period in military prison that Ron started to show the first signs of mental illness. He would refuse to eat, shave only one side of his face and suffer wild mood swings. Guards at the prison were convinced he was dangerously psychotic.

Their criminal record and dishonourable discharge ended their boxing careers and, as a result, the twins turned to crime. Together they bought a local snooker club in Bethnal Green, where they started several protection rackets and by the end of the 1950s the Krays were involved in hijacking, armed robbery and arson.

In 1960 Reggie Kray was incarcerated for eighteen months on charges of running a protection racket and while he was in prison, Peter Rachman, the head of a violent landlord operation, gave Ronnie Kray a nightclub called Esmeralda’s Barn in Knightsbridge, London, which significantly increased the Krays’ influence.

In the 1960s, they were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and a large part of their fame was due to their non-criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit. “They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world … and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable”, said Ronnie Kray in his autobiography,
My Story
.

The police investigated the Krays on several occasions, but the twins’ reputation for violence meant witnesses were afraid to come forward to testify.

On 12 December 1966 the Krays assisted Frank Mitchell (
nicknamed
“The Mad Axeman”) in escaping from Dartmoor Prison. Once Mitchell was out of Dartmoor, the Krays held him at a friend’s flat in Barking Road. However, as a large man with a mental disorder, he was difficult to deal with and they decided that the only course of action was to get rid of him. His body has never been found and the Krays were acquitted of his murder.

Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. A gang war between the Richardsons – the Krays’ rivals who controlled crime in south London – and the Krays had previously started when an associate of the twins, Richard Hart, had been murdered. Ronnie Kray swore to avenge Hart’s death. When George Cornell was seen at the Blind Beggar, Ron took Reg’s driver John “Scotch Jack” Dickson and Ian Barrie, his right-hand man, over to the pub and killed George.

In October 1967 Reggie was alleged to have been encouraged by his brother Ron to kill Jack “The Hat” McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1,500 contract paid to him in advance by the Krays to kill Leslie Payne. McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington, on the pretence of a party. As he entered, Reggie Kray pointed a handgun at his head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge. Ronnie Kray then held McVitie as Reggie stabbed him in the face, neck and stomach. McVitie’s body has still not been recovered.

When Inspector Leonard “Nipper” Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad, his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. By the end of 1967 he had built up substantial evidence against them, but still not enough for a convincing case on any one charge, mainly because most witnesses were too scared to testify. However, Scotland Yard eventually decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968 the Krays and fifteen other members of their “firm” were arrested. Once the Krays were behind bars and their reign of intimidation was over, many witnesses came forward and it became relatively easy to gain a conviction. Both Ronnie and Reg were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of thirty years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey at the time. Their brother Charlie was jailed for ten years for his part in the murders.

Ronnie was certified insane and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire, dying of a massive heart attack on 17 March 1995, aged sixty-one. Initially Reggie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. However, in his later years, he was downgraded to Category C and transferred to Norfolk’s Wayland Prison. He was finally freed from Wayland on 26 August 2000, at the age of almost sixty-seven. He was released on compassionate grounds as a result of having
inoperable
cancer. The final weeks of his life were spent with his wife Roberta, whom he had married in July 1997 in a suite at the Town House Hotel at Norwich while in Maidstone prison.

Elder brother Charlie Kray was released in 1975 after serving seven years, but returned to prison in 1997 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine worth £69 million (US$103 million) in an
undercover
drugs sting. He died of natural causes on 4 April 2000.

A few months later, on 1 October 2000, Reggie Kray died in his sleep. Ten days later, he was buried alongside his brother Ronnie, in Chingford cemetery, Essex.