Читать книгу Booted and Suited - Chris Brown - Страница 10

I read somewhere that Bristol could have been as glorious as Rome, except the locals couldn’t be bothered, or that it could be Britain’s equivalent of San Francisco. Certainly, the geography resembles the Californian city and Bristol’s got an amazing bridge – and a prison – but that’s where the similarities end. San Francisco was the birthplace of the free-loving hippies, Bristol the birthplace of Methodism; somehow, I can’t see the connection.

Since the 1950s, coffee bars have played an important part in the life of the British teenager. From ‘Coffee An’ off Wardour Street in London to the ‘Cona Coffee Bar’ in Tib Street, Manchester, teenagers flocked to them in their droves – it’s amazing what a jukebox, pinball machines and a Gaggia can do. Warm, inviting, slightly racy, with a hint of the Continent, British youth is easily pleased.

In Bristol, we had the ‘Never on Sunday’ in Fairfax Street, just around the corner from Woolworth’s and the Co-op and just a stone’s throw from the Central Police Station in Bridewell. Good thinking, lads.

Iain McKell, the well-known fashion photographer who learned his trade back in the Seventies and Eighties through shooting skinheads and new romantics, and who photographed Madonna for her first magazine cover, recalls, ‘I remember skinheads the first time round, in 1969, when it was really hardcore. I must have been 12, 13 and I was in a café in Bristol when this bloke walked in, hair cropped, wearing a Ben Sherman shirt, braces, Levi’s and DM boots. Then another one… and another one. And I thought, Hang on a minute, there’s something going on here, this is a scene, there’s some kind of code. And in those days, it was shocking to see something like that.’

A public schoolboy with working-class parents from Weymouth, McKell was awestruck by the skinheads’ defiance and aggression, and it wasn’t long before he wanted to be part of this ‘scene’. ‘This big firm of lairy skinheads would stand behind the goal at Bristol City’s ground [no accounting for taste], so one day I joined them, just to experience this feeling, this roar. They’d bang their boots against the corrugated tin wall behind them, then they’d surge forward in this big wave.’

‘Defiance and aggression…’ It’s easy to see how the movement roared through Britain in the summer of 1969, a bit like Concorde had done in April that year on its maiden flight… from Filton, Bristol, for the record.

This ‘scene’ was being repeated up and down the country. Chris Welch, the esteemed rock journalist, writing in Melody Maker in 1969 made a similar observation: ‘it’s a curious thing that whenever… a pillar of our bewildered society wants to cast stones, they instantly start talking about long-haired louts/yobs/hippies/students etc… Yet anybody who has ventured on the streets will instinctively know that they have nothing to fear from the long-haired youth who merely wants to turn on in peace to his favourite band and chick. The sight of cropped heads and the sound of heavy boots entering the midnight Wimpy bar or dancehall is the real cause for sinking feelings in the pit of the stomach.’

Strangely for someone who supposedly had his finger on the pulse of Britain’s street culture, Welch identified the new breed as ‘mods’. It’s probably easy now to look back and be critical but, as the modernists first kick-started their Lambrettas some six or seven years earlier, it’s difficult to see how he arrived at this tag, but then again ‘post-modern mods with big boots’ just doesn’t put the fear of God into anyone.

Welch wasn’t the only one who was unsure what to call this new breed of cropped-haired adolescents roaming the streets of Britain. As mentioned previously, the media of the day, although aware of the new youth phenomenon, were also unsure what to call them. During the period of unrest that erupted during the summer of 1969 on the streets of Bristol, the Evening Post constantly referred to them as ‘the Cropheads’ with their enemy of choice being ‘the Rockers’, as if they were two distinct street gangs in the mode of ‘the Jets’ and ‘the Sharks’ in West Side Story, not that Bristol’s city centre resembled Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen and it certainly didn’t feature Natalie Wood singing ‘I Feel Pretty’.

Although there had been sporadic clashes between these two groups throughout the year, it appears that the catalyst for all this mayhem was an assault on Saturday, 19 July 1969 inside the Never on Sunday itself. A 19-year old ballsy greaser (the more common reference of the day for the rockers, or ‘greebo’ if you really wanted to chance your arm) from Knowle West entered the café and assaulted one of the Never boys. In court on the Monday, he admitted that he ‘butted the youth in the face, threw him to the ground and kicked him’, claiming that the youth had ‘kept interfering with him and he just lost his head’. He had six previous convictions and was fined £30 plus £2 costs.

This assault quickly resulted in a revenge attack by the enraged cropheads on the 63 Club,* the motorcycle gang’s café in Old Market less than a mile away, but this was just a prelude to the mass battle which took place on the following Tuesday when up to 300 youths fought in the city centre. Under the headline GANGS AT WAR, the Evening Post reported with as much relish as the modern-day Daily Mail gleefully informs its outraged readers of yet another attack on a frail pensioner by a hooded thug: ‘About 300 youths from rival gangs were involved in a series of running fights near the centre of Bristol… a number of “nasty implements” were later found to have been discarded, including iron bars, sticks, broken bottles, knives and a scalpel. A number of youths faced charges including assaulting a policeman, malicious wounding, threatening behaviour and carrying offensive weapons.’

Detective Sergeant Peter Webster, who opposed an application for bail by one youth, stated, ‘There is concern by the prosecution that they haven’t heard the last of these incidents…’ – an understatement if there ever was one. Most arrested that night were teenagers; in fact, nearly all were just 17. Most ended up with £25 fines while others were put on remand. The most serious offence by a 23-year-old greaser of an assault on a police officer resulted in a two-month prison sentence – or ‘gaol’ as it was commonly called back then.

In an entirely separate incident, the Evening Post also reported a 21-year old man being shot and two other people suffering stab wounds at a party in woods in nearby Stroud in Gloucestershire. Of course, this was the period of ‘peace and love’ – the Rolling Stones were performing for free in Hyde Park in the name of love in a concert which got hijacked by London skinheads, while John Lennon and Yoko Ono were singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’ from their hotel bed. It sounds like it was falling on deaf ears. Well, in the West Country at any rate.

The following Thursday, the ante was well and truly upped. Barry Cowan, an 18-year-old greaser from Stoke Gifford, was killed when his 650cc Norton motorcycle was in a collision with another motorcycle and a Triumph Herald car in Temple Way. His distraught mother denied that Barry had ever been part of a gang, saying, ‘He wore a flying jacket and jeans when riding his motorcycle but never dressed way out, and behaved well at home… and as for the German helmets and swastikas [common regalia for the bikers of the day] he never wore anything like that and knew his father and I would not allow him in the house like that.’

Undoubtedly, the incident was related to the troubles of that week and perhaps this was a step too far. The next day, the cropheads and the greasers met on College Green in front of Bristol Cathedral for a ‘truce’. Under a photo of the two warring tribes shaking hands, the Evening Post’s headline proclaimed: GANGS RELAXING BUT POLICE STAY ALERT. The report went on to say that a crowd of 120 gathered and the truce was signed with a handshake, and the two gang leaders collected £3 from their own members for a wreath for Barry. The Evening Post continued, ‘Many members of the motorcycle gang seem to think his accident was an indirect result of their war with the cropheads. Police said it was being treated the same way as any fatal accident and that witnesses were still being interviewed.’

What you can’t fail to notice about the photo is the difference in both age and physique of the two gangs’ members – the fresh-faced cropheads barely reach the shoulders of the greasers and while the bikers proudly display moustaches and sideburns the short-haired cropheads haven’t got as much as a bit of bum-fluff between them. One other curious thing about the photo is that, if you look very closely, you can make out a couple of black guys among the cropheads. More of them later.

After a week of reflection on the events, the Evening Post took its eye off the Apollo 11 moon mission which was enthralling the nation and ran a half-page interview with the Bristol Police. The headline read: THIS UGLY RASH WILL BE STAMPED OUT. The report by the esteemed reporter Roger Bennett went on to say, ‘First there were the Teddy Boys. Then came the Mods and Rockers. Now, in Bristol, it’s Hells Angels v Cropheads. The names change. So do the uniforms – from drape jackets and crêpe-soled shoes to crash helmets and swastika-emblazoned jackets. But the disease is the same – an ugly rash of teenage terrorism. The battleground has moved from the dancehalls to the streets over the years. And this makes police all the more determined to stamp out the new wave of juvenile belligerence.’

Chief Superintendent George Fisher, commander of the Bristol Police ‘A’ division, discounted the suggestion that the teenage gangs should be put in a field and left to fight out whatever they are fighting about, ‘whereas in the Teddy Boy era, most of the trouble was among young people in places frequented by young people. Over recent years, it seems to have moved into the streets. The general public, in particular elderly people and the very young, can be badly frightened by this kind of behaviour, and we cannot allow it to continue. I must make it clear that, if these young people continue with their course of conduct in the centre of Bristol or elsewhere, they will be dealt with firmly by the police.’

Another senior police officer, the aptly named DS Frederick Clash, commented, ‘The increasing use of weapons like sticks, knives, chains and stones also increases the danger that someone will be seriously hurt. But it is unlikely to spiral into the use of firearms.’ Then, in a sentence that could be lifted from any of today’s tabloids, he states, ‘The teenage gangs are composed of youths with juvenile minds influenced by films and TV.’ However, he then tries to lighten the picture somewhat, by saying, ‘This isn’t gang warfare. It’s two little groups of silly kids.’

The night before this report, in a scene reminiscent of the film The Wild One, over 60 of one group of these ‘silly kids’ – with names such as Danny the Pervert, Doc Puffer, Maverick, Big Jim, Ruby and Tank, all members of either the Bristol Nomads or West Coast Chapter of the Hells Angels – rode into Keynsham on their Triumphs and Nortons where they stayed for an hour before leaving without causing any trouble. However, the following evening, 30 of them rode into Chipping Sodbury where they fought with local youths. ‘Beer glasses were thrown and there was fighting and swearing under the clock tower.’

Contrary to the police’s optimistic message, this ‘teenage terrorism’ was not about to fade away – the tension of that blisteringly hot summer continued into the flame-red autumn. On Friday, 5 September, the violence erupted again, youths fighting toe-to-toe on the streets culminating in a near riot. When 200 youths clashed in the Centre, one lad was seriously injured when he was thrown through a plate-glass window; a police officer also received a broken arm in the disorders which lasted for over an hour and also saw the overstretched Bristol Police having to call for reinforcements from across the region – the truce was well and truly forgotten.

The aggro wasn’t confined to Bristol, though, as the same weekend saw 13 ‘soccer hooligans’ from London arrested and fined after trouble flared at the Aston Villa v Millwall match in Birmingham. The cult of bovver was well and truly on the march.

* My research threw up several names for this café, many seemed to think it was called the ‘63 Club’ but others offered up the ‘69 Café’, while one of the few bikers who I managed to talk to from that era thought there were two cafés, the ‘66 café’ and the ‘99 café’ while someone else suggested it was the ‘Route 66 Club’. There was certainly a motorcycle gang called the ‘63 Club’ so it seems logical that they were named after the café they frequented.