Читать книгу Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing - Johnny Adair - Страница 11

I was never going to stay the course. My constant fighting with Catholic lads meant that I was always in trouble at school, and in the end I pushed it too far and was thrown out in my last year.

Fighting every day with Catholics was what I did and I told myself that by doing it I was helping our community. I was naive to think it would make any difference, but I was desperate to do something useful.

In an effort to get me on the right track, my dad sent me to Crumlin Road Opportunities. This project was part of a scheme introduced across Belfast to tackle the sectarian problem by bringing Protestant and Catholic youths together and teaching them a trade. The guy who ran it was Davey Payne, an ex-UDA leader from the north of the city and a real hard guy. He had been in at the start of the scheme and the government wanted people like him to front workshops in the hope that youngsters like me might respect them and take on board what they had to say. In theory, it was a great idea, but not even Payne was able to stay away from the paramilitaries in the long run.

In January 1988, he was caught helping to transport a massive cache of weapons that had been brought in from Lebanon. Payne was in the lead scout car, followed by two Ford Granadas packed full of weapons, including 61 AK-47 assault rifles, 30 Browning pistols and 150 grenades. He ended up getting 19 years.

For a year I mixed and worked alongside Catholics at the project. Before going to Crumlin Road the nearest I’d got to Catholics was fighting with them in the street. Now I was being forced to work alongside them. For six weeks you learned a new trade, for instance joinery or upholstery, and they hoped that you would then go on and use it in the real world and settle down. The money was rubbish, though; my first pay packet was just £19.50.

When the weather was bad, the rain would pour in through gaps in the roof, but I couldn’t really complain too much about that. Years earlier I’d been taken to court after being nabbed stealing lead off the roof to take it to a scrap dealer and make a few quid.

At first I felt bitter about just being made to be in the same room as Catholics. They were the enemy and were making our lives a misery, so why should I be put in this situation? The theory was that once we got into the workshop everything else was to be left at the door. It could have been a chance for things to go in a different direction for me. I spoke with the Catholics and realised that on their side of the peace line it was very tough, almost a mirror image of our side. But it always came back to the same thing: fighting and rioting. I went through the motions, while at the back of my mind there was always suspicion of the Catholics alongside me.

It was the early 1980s and tensions in Northern Ireland were at their very worst. The IRA hunger strikers were trying to get better conditions granted to them while behind bars and violence was erupting on the streets every night.

The skinhead revival had also kicked off in a big way and I was right in among it. It suited me to join up, as the skinheads were real tough nuts, much more than the mods. By this stage, every Saturday night without fail I and the rest of the gang would get loaded up on cider and take a bus into town to look for trouble. You had to be properly prepared, so before leaving the house I would get my best jeans on, polish up my boots and shave my head.

A lot of the time the fighting would be with the Catholics who were on placement at Crumlin Road Opportunities. If they were voting for Sinn Fein or giving them any sort of support, they were killing Protestants, so that meant they were fair game.

As well as the music and the clothes, for a lot of us the skinhead thing included signing up for the National Front. In Belfast at that time there were no black people or other foreigners, so being in the NF wasn’t about race hatred but about being British and the fact that it gave us another way of targeting the IRA.

For three years it was a big deal to me. Sam ‘Skelly’ McCrory, Brian Watson, Julian Carson and I formed a band called Offensive Weapon. I played – well, tried to play – a bass guitar for which I’d paid a massive £200. I was rubbish and could manage only two chords. When we started playing gigs, Brian would have to keep me right and make sure that I was doing something vaguely like I was supposed to be.

For us a lot of it was about the excitement of renting big amps in town, handing out tickets and putting up posters. Then hundreds of people would turn up and we would play six or seven songs. It didn’t matter that we were dreadful; the crowd loved it. We wrote about what was going on in Northern Ireland at the time, songs like ‘Gestapo RUC’, ‘Smash the IRA’ and ‘Bulldog’.

It was through the skinhead scene that I met Gina Crossan, who later became my wife. I was at a party and spotted her, with her head shaven apart from a small bleached blonde tuft at the front. She was from Shankill Parade, not far from where I lived. Before long we became very close, as were very well matched. On 23 August 1984, we had our first child, Jonathan, born at Belfast’s City Hospital. We gave him the middle name Paul, after Gina’s brother, and Samuel after my mate Skelly. I was 21 when Jonathan came along, which might seem young to some people, but it wasn’t that big a deal, as there were plenty of couples in the same situation.

We got a small flat on Shankill Parade, upstairs from Gina’s mother, and did it up. It was a very happy time and we would go out drinking with her mother every Saturday night to all parts of the city and have a laugh. Like everyone, we had our ups and downs, but Gina was always my rock.

At this time I was still hanging about with the boys from the band and we would travel out to places like Bangor in County Down, to get away from the city. On one of the trips I lost the top of one of my fingers. I was full of cider, really hammered, and we were getting on the train to go back home when someone slammed the door of the carriage shut on my hand. It was agony. Sam picked up the severed bit of finger – about a centimetre long – and put it in his pocket, hoping that when we got to the hospital doctors might be able to save it. There was nothing I could do until we got back to Belfast except try to deal with the pain. A member of staff had phoned ahead so that when the train pulled into the station the police were there to take me to hospital, but by the time we arrived at A&E it was too late to save my fingertip.

As a result of the accident I got £1,900 compensation, and Gina and I felt we were the richest people in the world. It was the most money either of us had ever had and we set about enjoying it. Although I worked, I’d never earned enough to go away on holiday before. For our first holiday together we had a brilliant two weeks in Blackpool and returned home with our bags packed full of new clothes.

The fact that I was now a dad didn’t stop me from going to National Front meetings. These had to be held in secret, as the RUC would have stepped in if they had known what was going on. So Sam and I would meet up at a pub and wait to be told where the meeting was about to be held, to prevent details of the venue being leaked.

In September 1983, I helped organise a National Front march from Belfast City Hall to the Shankill. But the real home of the NF was London, so I travelled there a couple of times to attend meetings, go to gigs and buy the latest skinhead fashions. The Last Resort on Petticoat Lane, in the East End, was the shop to go to, and you weren’t a real skinhead until you bought your gear from there.

London was also the place to see the best skinhead bands, like Skrewdriver. In November 1983, after seeing a gig, Skelly and I got caught up in some heavy fighting. The result was an assault charge and an appearance at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court, where I was ordered to pay £100 compensation.

I went over to London on the bus a couple of times to see Skrewdriver play, and on one trip there were some Catholic skinheads from the Falls Road. All the way there they were begging me and Sam not to tell the English skinhead crew we were going to see where they were from, as they were petrified they would get a real going-over.

The first time I went there I couldn’t believe London. It was so different from Belfast and I’d never seen anything like it before. The skinhead thing at the time was to share a squat, and I would have loved to do that. Skelly and I even got to meet the lead singer of Skrewdriver, Ian Stuart. I was infatuated with the whole movement, and here I was sitting in a cafe with the singer of the band I loved and he was buying us toast and tea. I couldn’t believe it was happening. But the problem was that I had a job and I couldn’t just jack it in and disappear to London.

My parents weren’t happy that I was involved with the skinheads. Every weekend they knew I was going out fighting, and they had no idea what injuries I would come back with. Between my first conviction in July 1981 and my appearance at Camberwell in 1983, I was done 16 times, for disorderly behaviour, criminal damage and assault, but none of my court appearances had resulted in prison. I just picked up a fine every time.

At the time I was only ten stone, but I was game and had no fears about getting stuck into whatever was put up in front of me. I regularly woke up in hospital with new wounds, and that would get me more grief from my mother about the fighting. To this day I’m covered in scars from being smashed over the head with bottles or police batons.

When I was 18, my parents decided there was no talking to me, and they were probably right. Instead of going to the youth club and playing snooker, we preferred to get some cider and head for the city centre, on the lookout for a fight.

By the time I’d reached the top of the UDA and was serving time for my involvement, I tried to keep my parents from knowing more than they needed to. The fact that I’d ended up in prison was nothing to do with them at all. During all the time I was locked up, I think I sent them only one access pass to visit me. As far as I was concerned, the Maze wasn’t the sort of place that my dad would want to be seen. It was my fault I was behind bars, and there was no way I was going to bring more shame on him by making him come there.

My father and I were completely different. For years he worked away at the timber yard and did his best for the whole family. Once I’d completed the course at Crumlin Road Opportunities, he made sure that I got the first vacancy that came up at the yard.

Both Protestants and Catholics were working there and I clearly remember my first day at the job. By this stage I’d built up a bit of a reputation for fighting, but of course that wasn’t the case with my dad. He could walk through Catholic areas like the New Lodge without any trouble. We walked together to the timber yard, but for me it wasn’t the most comfortable way to get to work, because if I’d been spotted I would have been dragged up an alley and got in all sorts of trouble.

It got worse when we reached the yard. There was an RUC reservist who worked alongside my dad, and the first thing I heard when I arrived that first day was one of the other workers saying to him, ‘I think I know his face,’ to which the copper replied, ‘I know his face – from the back of a police Land Rover.’ Thankfully, it was a joke, but my card was marked.

The trouble I’d been getting into backfired on me when I tried to sign up for the Ulster Defence Regiment. I wanted to do more than be a street fighter, as I was sure I had other skills to offer. My plan was to sign up for the UDR on a part-time basis and do something legitimate to fight our corner. By giving a couple of nights a week to the regiment, I thought, I’d be doing my bit to take on the IRA.

To start with, I went to night classes at the UDR centre on Malone Road, where they assessed if you were the sort of person they wanted in the regiment. If I made it through the selection process, I would then act as a back-up for the regular forces and the RUC. The prospect excited me and I was determined to make the grade. I knew that my convictions would be a problem, but a guy who was already in the UDR took me aside and told me he had made it through selection despite having a few marks against his name. That really got my hopes up. I would be doing something on the right side of the law, protecting the community

It didn’t happen. Instead I got a letter saying that I had been rejected. I’m sure that Special Branch had a hand in it. They would have known who I was and that I was fighting all the time, and warned the UDR that I was trouble. What made the knock-back all the harder to take was the fact that I’d been given a bit of hope that my convictions wouldn’t count against me. I’d convinced myself that I would make it despite my record. Now there was only one option left if I was going to take the fight to the Republicans.