1980 – Bob Short – extract from his book ‘Trash Can’

Doctor Death (not his real name) was about as bad an advertisement for five years worth of medical training as you could possibly imagine. It wasn’t so much the fact that he was a bad doctor . Whilst he was definitely crap in his chosen field, that was beside the point. It is just that you’d expect some kind of reward for that much work, wouldn’t you? Five years worth of sleepless nights on duty in a public hospital? Years of treating the great unwashed and washed alike? That has to worth something. You’d at least expect a receptionist and a car with the vaguest hope of passing its next MOT.

I don’t know who he’d pissed off in this (or some previous) life to earn his current lot but it must have been some unbelievably evil bastard. The judge’s gavel had fallen hard with a sentence that included a fleet of trucks worth of bad karma. Shit, we’ve all been there, done that and visited the souvenir shop.

Condemned by the local Health Authority to work a dingy basement surgery on a Waterloo council estate, he sailed ever closer to the day of his inevitable striking from the Medical Register. He had little to look forward to. There was the bottle of Sainsbury’s scotch in his bottom desk drawer but that was more of an everyday thing than a treat. Retirement looked good if he lived that long. In the meantime, from dawn to dusk, he received a steady stream of punk rock zombies craving Valium and Mogodon. At least, despite appearances, they didn’t want to feast upon his living brains.

I was not really interested in his problems because I had enough of my own. It was a quarter past eleven on a Friday night and I was wondering whether I dared put my penis in Doctor Death’s hand. I’m sorry but I had to give you a little heads up about his medical standing and the dangers such an act might involve before I got on with the details. Standing over the toilet, inspecting the tell tale signs of newly discovered venereal disease, it was a decision that I, myself, was not taking lightly. There was the clap clinic at St Thomas’ of course but last time I went there, the blood test had revealed a large and diverse range of pharmaceuticals. So large and diverse in fact that the attending nurse had loudly introduced me to all and sundry as the walking chemist shop. Such familiarity is rather inappropriate in such settings but she was cute as far as nurses go. The cutest nurses always work the clap clinic. It is the one place no-one seriously tries to pick you up.

The doctor confirmed the nurse’s diagnosis and assured me such variety of substance abuse represented something of a record in his experience. Not realising this was a bad thing, I was quietly pleased at such recognition . Don’t tell that to anyone. A good drug fiend has a reputation to uphold but it should be spread in whispers.

My main problem with the staff of that venerated institution was that they liked sticking that horrible umbrella thing up the eye of your cock and giving it the kind of good hard scraping that is difficult to forget. A quarter century on and the wince is still there. I still clench my teeth at the memory. If you thought the burning sensation you experienced due to the disease was bad, here was a procedure that would have you contemplating celibacy as a serious life option for at least several days. You have to admit that several days is a long time to consider celibacy.

The other disadvantage with the clinic was that it wouldn’t be open until Monday. The sooner I got onto those antibiotics, the sooner I’d be able to fuck again. The way my dick looked, I didn’t even want to touch it myself so a wank was out of the question.

I knew that I had to deal with the problem and I had a fair idea that I could just demand penicillin from the Death dude and he would oblige. His bedside manner was generally restricted to the phrase “What do you want?” His pen would already be quivering atop the prescription pad in bored anticipation. He positively groaned when presented with an ailment that you didn’t know how to treat yourself.

The trouble would come if he suddenly decided to take his hypocritical oath seriously. (I’m sick of writing sic.) Alcoholics can be so damn unpredictable. Doctor Death could suddenly become overwhelmed with quiet sentimentality towards his patients. Paternally, he would turn to you and tell you that he wouldn’t feed his dog the crap that he was scripting out. I doubted he had a dog or at least not one that hadn’t died of neglect. I figured that he sometimes just liked the company. He had once decided to stare into my inner ear for a good twelve minutes for no apparent reason other than my request for sleeping pills. Maybe he was just checking if I had any brain left in there to damage.

What if he reached into that tattered plastic holdall he carried in lieu of a black leather bag? God only knows what he kept in there. What if he pulled out some rusty hooked device of his own design? I imagined the good doctor downing another healthy swig of whisky whilst trying to work out which one of my dicks he should plunge one of his bent coat hangers into. It was not a thought to inspire confidence.

My course of action was clear. Tomorrow, I had to see the doctor but remember to keep one eye on the door in case he asked me to take my pants off. In the meantime, I had to take lots of downers and try to remember not to fuck anyone. Normally, that would be easier said than done but there was the whole question of how I’d managed to get myself into this situation again. That had not raised my stakes in any of the major popularity contests. The queue to my bedroom door was noticeably thin.  

I had met Toni under rather unusual circumstances. Waking up on the toilet to find a strange girl pumping some unknown chemical into your blood stream cuts through all those usual social niceties one expects by way of introduction. Apparently, she thought I was cute but urgently needed some kind of a pick me up to awaken me from my drug induced stupor. A syringe full of what I can only assume was sulphate certainly caught my attention. My introduction to intravenous drug use thus came unexpectedly and unasked for. Don’t let me try and convince you that I was complaining. I was out of my fucking gourd. Besides, it was a good lesson about not falling asleep in the toilet with the door open. I mean to say… anything could happen and it probably did.

Things had taken a fairly predictable course from there. Within an hour, she had climbed over a fifth floor balcony and threatened to throw herself upon the cold hard courtyard below. In a voice that quivered with existential angst she proclaimed the world cruel and bemoaned the fact that nobody loved her. Well, that was a feeling I at least understood on some level and, not having had sex for a fortnight, my testicles felt swollen like watermelons with backed up sperm. It all made a quiet kind of sense at the time. Who says the age of romance is dead?

The next morning, she scarpered early because she thought her boyfriend would probably be worried, Toni, or Puke as she preferred to be known, strapped on her Docs and headed back to the wilds of Kennington. Unbeknownst to me, I had just secured another black mark against my name in the eyes of the Campbell Buildings sewing circle. It was bad enough that I had copulated outside of the group but no-one had pointed out to me that Toni was only fourteen.

With such a large group of reprobates gathered in such close quarters and with so little to do between ponced cigarettes, gossip was the order of the day. Cliques, sub cliques and secret societies blossomed. An anthropologist would have had a field day.

The sewing circle was a loose collective well known for its member’s skill at needle work of one sort and another. They were the princesses of the block, the in-crowd, the squats’ equivalent of a cheerleading squad. They would squeal with delight if you liberated stock from the local off-licence or illegally rigged their electricity supply. But they were fickle in their favours. They had the skills to cut enemies to ribbons with the sharpest claws south of the river and they weren’t afraid to use them. What good is power if you never use it?

It was easy to fall from grace in a shifting moral landscape. I had initially fallen foul of the sewing circle because I snogged Evelyn under the kitchen table one night. Cold shoulders, tongue lashings and cries of “unclean” taught me that it was one thing to have Crass records and go to Rock against Racism gigs but that didn’t give you the automatic right to kiss women of colour.

Such concerns had not occurred to me. I just liked the way Evelyn hid the most beautiful pair of eyes behind the nastiest pair of granny glasses that the National Health could supply. In her green plastic sandals worn over pink florescent socks, she was strange and other worldly and thus reminded me of me.

I thought racism was the preserve of skinheads and the mentally sub normal. Swastika shirts were ironic rather than iconic. Skin colour had as much significance as eye colour in a world of rainbow hued hair dyes. Of course, I lived in a world where bald headed boys with home made British Movement tattoos listened exclusively to Jamaican records. The nation’s morality reeked of insanity. If any proof were needed, the recent election of Margaret Thatcher underlined it. If I couldn’t follow the rules it was simply because the rules made no sense.

Once again, the news was out all over town. I had been a very bad boy.

This moral outrage did not stop the sewing circle adopting an under aged runaway of their own. This sweet young thing clearly idolised the shop lifting pink Trojan mini-skirt lifestyle and all those who walked it in sharp stiletto heels. She would have crawled across hot coals in a bid to fit in so that is exactly what they made her do. They named her Tea, not through rhyming slang acknowledgment of criminal skill but because it became her duty to make that beverage on request. That along with any other household duties required, demanded or merely dreamt up in a fit of casual sadism. I first met her on her knees as she attempted to scrub a bathroom floor with a nail brush. I suggested she rebel against this task but she feared the consequences. They might not take her thieving later. Lincoln had freed the slaves but not in beautiful downtown Waterloo.

Campbell Buildings was a sprawling between-the-wars estate that Lambeth council wanted demolished to make way for a bus terminal. Quietly, it was probably policy to turn a blind eye to the hundred or so punks who had squatted in the interim. There were a lot of hard core lefties in the Lambeth administration who believed all the homeless should be housed and took this as an ideological stance. It was, however, the pragmatists in the regime who finally reigned. For them, we were a way to save money. It was good we made such appalling neighbours. The existing tenants who had previously held out for the better deal to which they were entitled were suddenly none too fussed about which new hovel they were transferred into.

There was also the advantage that it was cheaper to leave us where we were rather than build a brand new state-of-the-art prison facility. That could wait until the new Tory Government provided funding to open up the internment camps. In the meantime, we were free to make our own Abaddon which is exactly what myself and the others did.

Despite my unkind words, the sewing circle was not wrong all of the time. Sleeping with fourteen year olds is never clever especially when they are fourteen going on fifty. Listen boys, you don’t need a degree in psychology to guess at the traumas you’re complicating when you go there. That said, the squatters of Campbell Building were all fucked up one way or another; literally, figuratively and most often both. We sought comfort not just in the arms of strangers but with anyone who would have us.

The sewing circle was also right about not sleeping with people outside the immediate vicinity. My newly festering penis was ample testimony to that. 1980 was a different world of course. Condoms were the weapons of choice for disgusting old people raised before the contraceptive pill. AIDS was not even a blip on yonder horizon. Disease was defeated and we all lived better through illicit chemistry. We could be the generation who lived fast, stayed beautiful, never died and never grew old; a veritable army of Peter and Petra Pans. It was a grand scheme until its inherent follies were exposed.

Scarecrow had been the first to die. Loaded up on sleeping pills, he went up to the roof for reasons unknown. He might have been bored, depressed or just needed a minute to himself to watch the moon come up over the buildings. Who knows why any of us do anything? He either overdosed or fell asleep and froze. We never found out which. By accident or design, it was a sad and lonely passing. In the morning, the police played a game where they threw tiny stones at his open mouth to see who could score the first point. Grief spilled out onto the courtyard below but the authorities had marked out their patch with strips of Metropolitan Police tape, He belonged to them now.

From that moment on, death watched over us with an icy gaze. It was capricious but it would not be denied. Parents came to reclaim bodies, cut hair, choose suits and re-brand with long abandoned names. Their control, thought long lost, won out in the end. These prodigal sons and daughters found repose in the leafy suburbs and towns from whence they thought they had finally escaped. They had found their little piece of England whether they liked it or not.

The ghosts of those we knew and loved were never laid to rest. No graves marked the names we spoke. Their stories were wiped clean and altered as if Jesus was a real person and he himself had washed and forgiven them of their sins. History is always written by the victor and the battles we waged looked all but lost.

The world was dark and that darkness was rising up against us. It was chucking out time on Friday night at locals across the land; the most dangerous hour of them all. The blackest of hearts were granted courage through alcohol but now found themselves ripped from the nurture of the publican’s breast. Angered by these severed ties, the well worn path between boozer and council flat were littered with half eaten curries, bad intentions and the bodies of unwary travellers.

We were held up in a ground floor flat. The council had boarded up the windows and we left these four ply sheets in place not merely through laziness but also for defensive purposes. Even sunlight was our enemy now. The only access was through the front door and, even there, precautions had been taken. Bolts, locks and chains merely offer psychological defence for those who believe their safe European homes to be their castles. In reality, these devices fail all too readily at the first hint of serious attack.

In all the flats, we removed the kitchen doors and propped them up at forty-five degree angles against the front doorways. This was the kind of defensive installation that allowed you to catch several winks of wary half-sleep if you kept one eye open. Well, it did if it was used in conjunction with a bucket load of downers and a strategically placed blunt instrument left under the mattress. The claw hammer was the Teddy Bear of our new generation.

Though we took many chances, in this we took few. Attacks were common and we didn’t take any chances by offending any deities. Charms and amulets began to proliferate along with spells, talismen and hexes. We weren’t fussy about Pantheons. We made a new voodoo from our superstitions. Certain pavement cracks were avoided whilst walking, matches were always snapped after third light and hats were kept far from beds. Various items of clothing were deemed to be lucky and were thus worn until they rotted from our skin. The line between mental illness and religion is a thin one. Once you convince another of the truth of your lunacy then all doubts are cast aside. Convince a few more and you can start picking up tax deductable donations.

It was a boy’s night in and pickings were scarce. We collected our dole on Thursday and the cash had gone the way of dreams. It had vanished with the dawning. We spent the night with prescription drugs, talking and smoking Benson and Hedges cigarettes. The floor was a gold field of abandoned packets.

There was Cory Spondendce and Quick Phil, Two Tone Steve and me. Fat Phil was off sulking in the kitchen or some other dank corner. He had been pretending he was in a time warp for the last few days and this attention seeking had become rather tiresome. Cory had suggested he go and fuck himself – but not anywhere that we could see him doing it. There were certain things you had to specify in Campbell Buildings. Self help books addressing boundary issues were at least a decade off.

Others came and went over the course of the evening. Ruthless and Jessica asked if we wanted to go to the Marquee and see Cowboys International. As if. There was a group who played no part in anybody’s top ten thousand must-see bands list. Pinki and Blowjob made a visit to inform us they were up to no good somewhere. It involved a group of the local estate lads and we thought it better not to know any more before the event. We’d certainly hear all about it in explicit detail later. That went without saying.

A portable record player spun an endlessly repeating loop of Siouxse and the Banshees singles. After they left the charts, top forty records tended to end up in the local newsagency at forty nine pence a pop. That put them within our price range unless, of course, the sales assistant wasn’t paying too much attention. The discount then grew to be five fingered.

I had been in better moods. Frequently. Life was going the way life tends to go the minute some fool claims that things couldn’t get any worse. Some people have so little imagination that it is scary.

I had only just got up to take a leak when I discovered my symptoms. You don’t need to know the foul details but, suffice to say, if you’re one of these people who believe in divine retribution then I had proof positive that yours is a vengeful God. If I needed any more proof then it came in the form of the commotion at the door. The alarm was raised. The Scousers were coming.

Hang on a second. Who the fuck were the Scousers? Much like primitives who choose to live under the shadows of volcanos, we had set up home at the nexus point between a Mod pub, a Rockabilly pub and a Greaser’s pub. In all fairness, the Greasers just sat around listening to Deep Purple albums but anyone who could do that had to be twisted in some kind of sick and evil way. One had to always quietly suspect the worst. To top that off, skinheads were free ranging ubiquitous troublemakers and Mad Dog’s Faginesque punk troop could also be counted upon to make unwanted intrusions. We couldn’t have planned it better if we tried.

Who were the Scousers? Even if you religiously read NME, in tribal London there were hip fashion trends that could rise and fall in an afternoon. A vague image formed of cleaver wielding Liverpuddlian mop tops serenading us with such ditties as “I want to hold your hand” whilst hacking away at various parts of our anatomy. Stranger things have happened in the big town.

Of course, it could have been a glue sniffing flashback too. Stranger things than that have also been known to happen.

There are a whole lot of theories about why people watch horror films. Some will tell you that horror films desensitise the viewer so that they may overcome their fears and learn to face the horrors life will inevitably throw their way. Others claim this desensitisation leads to sociopathic behaviour and the breakdown of society as we know it. Thus, these latter critics claim, that horror films should be banned accordingly. I think that is all a crock of shit. I repeatedly went to screening of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” because it provided me with a range of educational insights into the kind of situation I had just found myself in.

The main thing you learn from a horror film is that when you do something stupid then you tend to die fairly early on in the piece. If you do something unbelievably stupid you will be lucky just to see out the opening scene. As is so often the case, fact proceeded to follow fiction instinctively. Emerging from the toilet, I discovered that the front door was wide open and everyone was running to the back of the flat. The fact that there was nowhere to go back there didn’t seem to be occurring to anyone at the time. The messenger had been let through the barricades only to see them abandoned in the ensuing panic. This was turning into a frigging bloodbath without even trying.

I focussed my fear on the problem at hand. I was not in the mood for bashings, beatings murder or rape. These things would not bring a perfect end to a perfect evening. I got the door down just in time to hear the first bangs of fists on the wood outside. Sam Raimi couldn’t have timed it better even if he tried. Actually, he did try in the first Evil Dead film but he couldn’t cut his timing any closer to what I’d just pulled off. Now all we needed was a soundtrack by Goblin and we’d have something that would put bums on cinema seats.

An undecipherable blur of drunken accents began to howl something that probably amounted to assorted threats and abuse. Scousers my arse. Drunken Irish builder’s labourers more like with enough Poteen in their bellies to present a fire hazard. They lived over in the next block but I had no idea what their beef was. In life threatening situations, it is often better not to know as there is little time to ponder life’s little absurdities.

“Little pigs! Little Pigs! Let us come in!”

“Not by the hairs on our chinny chin chins.”

That’s about as good a translation as I can really give you. The words were all different but I think I captured the spirit of the piece. The huffing and puffing that followed seemed a little more forceful than simple exhalation. These guys were putting their shoulders into their work big time. I was putting all my weight down on the buttress and still I bounced up with every heave ho. I looked around for the nearest large heavy object.

“Phil! Get your fucking fat arse over here!” I demanded with the kind of voice Marine Drill Sergeants use in the movies.

Fat Phil preferred to be called Phil Free for obvious reasons. However, no-one really wanted to take him up on that particular implied offer. Being told to feel free does not, by definition, demand obligation.

There was, however, a duty to differentiate between him and Quick Phil. We called him Fat Phil because Slow Phil would have been even more insulting than our eventual choice. Besides, he was not merely big boned. He had, despite the most meagre of rations, still retained sufficient padding so as to cover up the fact he was big boned. In addition, he wore the kind of coat that Uncle Fester would only wear in the depths of a Siberian winter. With his thick black eye make-up he looked like a vaguely satanic panda. Satanic Panda Phil would have made an ideal rechristening if not for the fact that it was too much of a mouthful.

“No,” he replied. “I’m scared. They’ll hurt me.”

I felt like slapping him around myself at that moment. My fear had bought out a cruel streak from deep inside. I went with the feeling even though he was a friend who was already close to tears. I could tell you that I spoke for the good of the group but part of me meant every word that I said.

“Listen to me, you fat pile of shit. If you don’t get you’re arse over here right now, you won’t have to worry about them because I will personally come over there and beat you to death myself.”

I must have been fairly loud and fairly scary because even the banging on the front door stopped. The room took on a deathly silence as Phil assumed the position. I glared around the room.

“Now, will one of you useless fucks get me a bloody hammer so I can nail the first cunt who comes through the door.”

Outside, there was a half hearted volley of abuse and a few random kicks to the door. It was all over bar this shouting. What was planned as a simple massacre was turning into something more difficult. Someone other than us might end up getting hurt. The assaulting force vanished back into the night as if they never were there at all. The silence just swallowed them.

The next morning, when the buttress was raised, the front door was shattered and torn from its hinges. Locks and bolts hung off of bent and mangled screws but most of the damage was invisible. It lay deep within us in a place where no investigative surgery, electron microscope or endoscopy probe could find it. It was the kind of damage we all take on one hurt at a time. It’s just that some of us take it harder than others.

There are many who will tell you that the rock and roll dream is all about fast cars, loose women, money and the kind of shit that money buys. In Campbell Buildings, we lived a dream all right – but it was nothing like the one advertised on the box. One can only wonder at how much worse the straight world must have been for us to not just choose the life we did but also to revel in it. Is it better to rule in hell than serve in heaven? To us it seemed better to just live in hell.

Original mugshots from Waterloo station photo-booth courtesy of Leah D…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Short claims he has not only heard the chimes at midnight, he has stayed up past dawn to hear them again the next time around. Before being old enough to drink, he haunted Sydney’s beer barns with proto punk band Filth. Later on, he gained some notoriety in the UK with the band Blood and Roses when he was described as everything from a “shambolic messiah” to a “long, tall streak of piss”. He has been a DJ and worked in a sex shop, the civil service and as Musical Director for a theatre company. He claims the only thing ever to surprise him was seeing his thirtieth birthday. Currently, he lives in exile in the penal colonies of New South Wales with his son, Billy. There he has makes low-budget films such as Makers of the Dead, Kings’ Cross Vampires, Lone Gunman Theory and Bad Animals. He is also working on a novel entitled “Red”.

Available from http://www.lulu.com/content/956220

580 comments
  1. alistairliv
    alistairliv
    November 7, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    brewcrew = boneheads? Maybe… but John Pendragon (RIP) used to blame all the young punks for trashing the scene.

    And Kevin Hetherington – a sociology lecturer- [New Age Travellers: Cassell: 2000] concluded it was a lower middle class movement. He mentions the Brew Crew on page 58 but equates them with ‘crusties’…

  2. Kerr Ray Z. Fokker
    Kerr Ray Z. Fokker
    November 10, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    The second wave of skins were just bald-headed punks with a tad more attitude and less apparent, though not actual, self-loathing than their spiky-topped cousins. Or so I always thought. Both were clearly killed off by the double-edged sword of hard drugs and Thatcherite monetary expansion. Thought the whole hippy convoy thing went the same way, although with a greater mushroom cloud of Crasstafarian self-righteous moral indignation.
    And more mung beans obviously.

    On a personal level, I always thought that Scottish tramp punks were the biggest fuckers of the lot. I am tempted to blame them for most things. They definitely ruined Brixton squatterdom with their bleak oatmeal-infested violence and obtuse caledonian stupidities. Dundee cunts.

  3. jock
    jock
    November 10, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    “And Kevin Hetherington – a sociology lecturer- [New Age Travellers: Cassell: 2000] concluded it was a lower middle class movement. He mentions the Brew Crew on page 58 but equates them with ‘crusties’…”

    Al,is the article or book that the text above is from available to read online anywhere?

  4. jock
    jock
    November 10, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    nice one al,thanks.

  5. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    November 11, 2009 at 5:52 am

    @Kerr Ray Z: “Dundee Cunts”…?

    Aha! You are Frankie Boyle and I claim my free gram of Morningside speed!

  6. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    November 11, 2009 at 5:57 am

    “The second wave of skins were just bald-headed punks with a tad more attitude and less apparent, though not actual, self-loathing than their spiky-topped cousins.”

    For that, read: “any youth cult who hadn’t already got the joke”, to my mind.

    Soul boys, Skins, Bowie freaks, Mods, Rockers, Teds…. they all had lots of actual self-loathing or they wouldn’t have got teamed up in the first place. The attitude only came when they realised what a fucking awful mistake they’d made juxtaposing themselves against other kids instead of the people who were *really* fucking them.

  7. baron von zubb
    baron von zubb
    November 18, 2009 at 11:07 am

    That’s part of the reason the “Free” movement died…

    All the squares (”You think you’re really different, but you’re just the same – you’ve got the same mind, same mind”) saw that the “Free” movement was the next ‘party’ scene, and they killed it…

    From Stonehenge to Studio 4, it’s just a small leap…

    Dunno about that.

    I didnt mean that the bonehead hippies were any more apathetic than anyone else. But the movement obviously got more angry with their added voom voom, and bigger and in the end the state had to change the law to crush it because of the no comprimise stance of those involved – the anti beat music law, forget its name now. I always did wonder about the providence of the brew crew and the more nihilistic chaps n ghals in the convoy. If they were ex boneheads it makes sense.
    Its an interesting bit of underground UK social history, the journey from boots and braces to dogs on a string.
    Kerr Razy Focker care to eleborate? How d’you get from skin to hippie?
    Enjoy BVZ

  8. AL Puppy
    AL Puppy
    November 19, 2009 at 9:04 am

    From Corporate Watch on eviction of 1000 travellers. See http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3454

    As part of a larger traveller site on Oak Lane in Crays Hill, Billericay, Dale Farm has been home to Roma and travellers since the 1960’s, when the first group of Roma settled there. During the l970’s, a number of families were granted planning permission by the then Labour-controlled Basildon Council and by 1996 there were some 40 properties on the site owned by travellers.

    The l994 Criminal Justice Act not only ‘relieved’ local authorities of the duty to provide caravan parks to travellers, a duty imposed by the l968 Caravan Sites Act, but also increased police powers, under Section 62, to evict travellers attempting to camp on roadsides or car parks. The Conservative government at the time advised travellers to buy the land they had been living on to ‘avoid trouble’. Indeed, relatives of those settled on Oak Lane bought an old scrap-yard and other adjacent greenbelt land, including Dale Farm.

    Dale Farm was divided into 52 plots and accommodated some 70 families. The number of residents has since grown considerably with approximately 1,000 men, women and children now living on the site. This expansion has been due to evictions in other parts of Essex, in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire where travellers lost land they had bought because local councils refused to grant them planning permission.

    In 2005, Basildon District Council, together with Tory MP John Baron, started a campaign to “rid the district of travellers,” as a local newspaper put it at the time. Needless to say, the issue has been exploited by a plethora of politicians to win votes, from the Conservatives, through Labour, to the BNP. The district council is now Conservative-controlled.

    All planning applications for plots on Dale Farm were refused and three public inquiries were held. The travellers’ appeals to government eventually resulted in a temporary stay for two years. In May 2005, however, Basildon Council voted to spend up to £4 million on ‘direct action eviction’ under Section 127 of the Town and Country Planning Act, not only of Dale Farm but also of other traveller families living at Hovefields Avenue, Wickford. The Essex County Council has even drawn up a plan to allegedly take more than 100 children at Dale Farm into temporary care as a means of pressuring their families to leave Basildon, or Essex altogether.

    In May 2008, the Dale Farm eviction was put on hold when the High Court issued an injunction against the eviction, ruling that the council had failed to offer an alternative site. The council also took later decisions concerning two other sites and these were subsequently included in the same judicial proceedings. In January 2009, the Court of Appeal overturned the High Court ruling, paving the way for an imminent eviction. An application to the House of Lords to appeal the decision made by the Court of Appeal has recently been refused.

    It is worth noting that the Dale Farm case has been registered with the United Nations Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, which has even sent a special team to monitor the eviction. The Children’s Commissioner has also written to the council to enquire about its plans to avoid further traumatising the 150 or so children living on the site and to determine what alternative accommodation it has to offer them. The council has not been able to provide any answers, even though a ‘huge re-housing process’ is allegedly underway.

  9. Vincent
    Vincent
    November 21, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    How often was the cross tattoo’d in the middle of the forehead? I seen some young lad with it too the other day.

  10. Penguin
    Penguin
    November 30, 2009 at 9:06 pm

    A message sent to Bob and Stewey recently. Can anyone who was living legit or squatting in Campbell Buildings in the summer of 1980 help at all?

    Dear Bob & Stewart

    We have just come across the chapter from Bob’s book ‘Trash Can’ and all the references to Campbell Buildings.

    Do either of you remember Gary Critchley who was found on the pavement outside the squat in the early hours of Saturday June 28 1980 and later accused of murdering Edward McNeill in a frenzied hammer attack?

    Bits and pieces of his story are here on this website http://www.b39969.org.uk/ this being Gary’s personal ‘security barcode’ (his words), or prison number, as he has now been inside for a total of 28 years! Read particularly the Private Eye article that came out in July this year.

    Myself and another librarian have become involved in trying to publicize this extraordinary miscarriage of justice.

    We happened to purchase some of Gary’s paintings and began corresponding with him without ever asking why he was inside. When the Private Eye article came out in July we were flabbergasted to say the least and began our campaign.

    Fifty of his paintings were sent to Adelaide and were in a recent exhibition there. Prior to posting them we photographed them all and have made them into cards to sell, 12 are at present on the website.

    On reading your description of what you did with the kitchen doors, putting them at 45 degree angles to barricade the doors, is word for word, plus diagram, of how Gary explained to us in a letter, of what the police found when they went upstairs but did not believe in his explanation.

    If either of you have ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER that could be helpful could you let us know and we can pass it on to Glyn Maddocks, the solicitor who has taken up his case or we can send you Glyn’s address?

    If you think it worthwhile posting the above on the blog that is fine. Anyone who can provide ANY INFORMATION should be encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.

    Many thanks and we’d like to buy two copies of your book, one to send to Gary.

    Best regards,
    Julie

    Julie Coimbra/Librarian
    Centre for Latin American Studies
    17 Mill Lane
    Cambridge
    CB2 1RX
    United Kingdom
    Tel: 44-1223-335398 (am) 337110 (pm)
    Fax: 44-1223-335397

  11. Sam
    Sam
    December 1, 2009 at 1:51 am

    Wow…that’s ‘Crap’ (as he was known). I’ll let Robbo know.

  12. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    December 2, 2009 at 11:45 am

    Yep. That was the worst of Kennington Police’s many bad deeds. It’s always stunk, that one.

  13. dave
    dave
    December 10, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    i remember this incident, good luck to him and fuck kennington nick

  14. jock
    jock
    December 11, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    was he left paralysed permanantley? horrible sounding incident, nearly wrote horrible story but it aint no tale for the guy.
    good luck to him hope he does really get some justice, never heard about his case until reading it here. i did a quick search and apart from the private eye link theres no info about his case at all.

  15. Sam
    Sam
    December 11, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    I don’t think he was paralysed. I went up to Brum with him just after this and I remember him hobbling about on crutches. Fuck knows what happened. Could have been any of us really. There’s an office block on the site of CB now. Wonder if any of that dark energy still lingers?
    I was in Washington DC with my art class recently and they’ve got part of Rachael Whiteread’s ‘House’ in the National Gallery there. If you’re not familiar with it, its a cast of a Victorian terraced house, using the actual outer shell as a mold. I always find it really moving. Seen as a block of plaster, the space of a room is tiny, with the old open fireplace inside out etc…
    The house is gone but the resonance of the social history remains perhaps. All those layers of London.

  16. dave
    dave
    December 11, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    its strange how for some, this area was like hell to them, and for others like myself it was the happiest of times (one persons hell is anothers heaven) but it has certainly left an impression on all.

  17. baronvonzubb
    baronvonzubb
    December 13, 2009 at 7:16 pm

    sam i thought he was nicked in hospital or something ? but we know your memories good though so i guess you did go up to brum when he was on crutches.
    who was edward mcneal?
    that racheal whiteread piece is a brilliant metaphor for the buildings themselves.
    the crap incident (as mentioned in the very famous and fantastic book joys of work……) summed up the futility of the place. As you said could have been any of us.
    All of us who lived there should try to help.
    though on my part i wasnt actually there during those months.
    jake

  18. Penguin
    Penguin
    December 14, 2009 at 12:08 am

    Baron wrote: “the crap incident (as mentioned in the very famous and fantastic book joys of work……) summed up the futility of the place. As you said could have been any of us”.

    There is also a small passage about the incident in Bob’s second book entitled ‘Filth’.
    Details of the book here and where to get a copy:
    https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=474
    and Jakes book here and where to get a copy:
    https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=1966

  19. Sam
    Sam
    December 14, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    I think he was out on bail at the time Jake. In fact we were living at 66a now I think of it. So it wasn’t shortly after. Would have been winter 1980. Nearly 30 years ago. Amazing.

  20. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    December 14, 2009 at 8:04 pm

    Was watching an old ‘hammer House of Horror’ episode the other night as you do, in it an estate agent and his assistant went to visit ‘The Campbell Buildings’, which looked remarkably like the picture above – could this have been filmed in THE Campbell Buildings? Was it ever used as a TV filming location circa 1980???

  21. Sam
    Sam
    December 14, 2009 at 9:33 pm

    Yeah that’s it Graham. I remember this being shown on tele though I thought it was Tales of the Unexpected. There’s a great shot of it being knocked down with a wrecking ball (I cheered when I first saw it). I seem to remember glimpses of grafitti during that scene.

  22. Tony Puppy
    Tony Puppy
    December 14, 2009 at 10:26 pm

    Excellent work Graham.

  23. Bob Short
    Bob Short
    December 14, 2009 at 11:51 pm

    I’ve been trying to leave this alone but everytime I think I’m out, they drag me right in. Yes Hammer shot at Campbell Buildings in 1980 as the most easterly block was being demolished. That graffitti on the walls, chances are you knew someone who wrote it. The filming was almost guerilla level. Very little set up. They were there for two days mainly shooting at the western side of the estate. I’d like to think the central casting rent a punkette who appears in the episode was a tribute to the bored punk onlookers with nothing better to do with their time than watch real live theatre luvvies in action. We watched them and they watched us. Poetic.

  24. Graham Burnett
    Graham Burnett
    December 15, 2009 at 1:19 am

    The ‘punkette’ was actually called ‘Lolly’ in the story, and it was actually a dream sequence, normally she was the Denholm Elliot character’s dowdy secretary, but in the dream she was wearing all that fantasy gear that she’s got on in the photo. Then she fell down a lift shaft.

  25. luggy
    luggy
    December 15, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Some synchronicity for you, I know Denholm Elliott’s son Mark. He’s ‘punk as fuck’ as you can see from this vid of him singing with his band The Short Bus Window Lickers:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xskusNQU4w

  26. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    December 18, 2009 at 2:44 am

    Re: Gary “Crap” Critchley…

    I got arrested for it too. Difference is, he’s done *28 years* for it. Kennington Police just fucked me around like they always did with scared teenagers. I didn’t think he did it then and I still don’t think he did it now. I was around at the time. That really isn’t the point though: it’s just my opinion. Some of you were around too.. but even if you weren’t, read on… Whatever your opinions are, whether you know anything about this bad time or not, please read the rest of this post…

    Read (as in posts above) http://www.b39969.org.uk/pdf/private_eye_24July2009.pdf

    Once you’ve read it…

    IF, like me, you just simply *don’t* think he did it, then write to the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, or your MP if you have one, right now (that includes you guys overseas).

    IF you realise after reading it and thinking about English Criminal Law that the only good basis for a conviction is a rigid technical relationship between the charge made against the accused and the evidence offered in court, then PLEASE look at the attached link and THEN write to the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, or your MP, right now. That’s to say… they didn’t prove it with the evidence, did they?

    Even if you think that the original trial was fair as presented by the lawyers and delivered by the witnesses at the time… IF you can’t figure out *now* why the Criminal Cases Review Commission didn’t send it straight back to the Court Of Appeal knowing what we do nowadays about blood spatter and the rest of the forensic evidence… then *PLEASE* write!

    EVEN IF you read the attached link and you STILL think you’re not convinced of his innocence, then please realise that he is not being treated fairly by the prison and probation authorities… Nobody should be given an extra 5 years in prison after all this time simply for missing a probation appointment. Please write to the Home Secretary and ask him to exercise his prerogative in this matter.

    Please, please, please… when you are enjoying your time with your families over the Holiday season… Think of Gary Critchley. If you want to know more, or you want to write to Gary, please get my email from Penguin.

    This is one of us. It’s one of the very few things that we’ve all still got in common after all this time. And he needs us. He’s tried to top himself twice lately because he’s alone in there and he feels like he’s got no hope.

    Don’t let this slip by you. Give the bloke a fair go. It’s important.

    Happy Holidays.

    Paul.

  27. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    December 18, 2009 at 3:11 am

    And, btw, that’s without saying a single word about:

    (a) Kennington Old Bill and their propensity to make a decision and stick to it regardless of what actually happened in any given 1980s situation. If you were there then you’ll know what I mean.

    (b) What we now know of the work of Home Office Pathologists in the light of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six terrorism cases.

    (c) The Probation Service just kinda generally really.

  28. Jah Pork Pie
    Jah Pork Pie
    December 18, 2009 at 4:16 am

    @Sam

    This is still very real mate – with respect, and you know I do hold you in the greatest respect brother, it’s not to be consigned to history until the man gets some justice.

    I’m just pretty fucked up about this at the moment.

  29. jock
    jock
    December 18, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    well said pork pie, i’m amazed that its taken this long for something like this to finally start being brought to our attention.
    maybe there should be a seperate post here on kypp about the case, there must i think be a large number of people who view this blog?
    how about using myspace or/and facebook to get publicity for Gary? does kypp have its own page on those sites?
    i will at least write to the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.
    how about getting an address for writing letters of support to Gary, try and keep his spirit up etc.
    something needs to be done about this.
    good luck.

  30. Sam
    Sam
    December 18, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    Not taking it lightly Pork. He’s been on my mind and I’ll write to the powers that be. Wrote to Robbo about it but not heard from him. I’ll give him a ring though.

    Sam

  31. Nic
    Nic
    December 18, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    I tried looking at the website mentioned earlier in the thread when it was first posted but couldn’t seem to load it…
    Having read the Private Eye pdf: it’s abominable…

    Thank you for the reminder Jah.

    Jock has some good ideas: the social networking sites provide ‘profile’ which may increase awareness of what looks like a serious miscarriage of justice…

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