My Career As An Arms Dealer

A trip to Rome led me to buy and sell weapons. I was 14

My preposterous life: A series

LET ME TELL you about my short career as an arms dealer. It started in Rome. I was 14.

Cardinal Godfrey had a trip to the Eternal City for the Holy Year in 1975. When the idea of going on this school trip was mooted in September of the previous year, my dad was in relatively good health. He had a cancer on his neck but it was treatable. The cost of the excursion was £30 – we were travelling on the school coach, driven by the headmaster, Brother Cowan. You could pay in instalments.

Less than a week before Christmas, when we were all paid up. my mother found out her husband was terminal. He was dead by the end of January. It was a strange time.

So off we went to Rome. Each kid was allowed to bring a maximum of £30 with them. Because I was sympathy case, quite a few friends and neighbour slipped me a few quid before we set off which I hid away from everyone. Those pound notes would come in useful later.

The first night was spent on a boat between Southampton and Le Havre. It was a lovely experience. A girl from a southern school sat out late with me on the deck. I was too scared to kiss her. She got bored eventually but it was the first time I’d had interest from the opposite sex. Or any sex.

Then we skirted Paris and stayed at Chalon-sur-Marne. Next up was Frejus, where we all got excited about being close to St Tropez, the topless capital of the world according to the red tops at home. The last stop before Rome was Marina de Massa, where we discovered a gay bar called Angela-Oh-Oh-One that served us but, once we realised there were no women in the place, we fled drunkenly back to the youth hostel. The clientele, frankly, weren’t interested in us when they found we were so young and so stupid.

Rome. We stayed at a Christian Brothers’ school or something, sleeping on the floor. And what did a bunch of teenage Scousers do in the mid-70s? We robbed the place soft.

All the presents for those back home – Vatican Square ashtrays, faux marble Pietas – we robbed. We needed our money for alcohol. And flick knives.

In an age where knife crime triggers people and is a genuine problem, it might be hard to understand our obsession with blades. Flick knives were cool. You’d see them in American films. Press the button, the blade comes out.

They were banned in Britain but freely available in Rome. We all bought them. We’d sit with each other, flicking, imagining we were James Dean. There was no chance I’d produce mine in a violent situation. I wasn’t scared about being stabbed or stabbing someone. I was worried someone would overpower me and nick my status symbol.

After Easter, we retraced our steps. Angela-Oh-Oh-One welcomed us back before a panicky stampede when fear kicked in again (I got a weird virus after Easter that put me in hospital for three weeks; the doctors at the Royal blamed bathing at Marina de Massa; they were guessing). We swam at San Remo and a few of us got caught in a wave and roughed up like we'd been caught by Mancs. In Chalon we were introduced to Pernod by two sailors. Not good.

Brother Cowan spoke to us just before we boarded the boat. “I know you’ve all bought knives,” he said. “Throw them overboard. I’ve warned the authorities. You’ll all get searched and be in big trouble.”

Yes, Irish Brother Cowan. A Republican to the core. He'd tipped off the Brits!

There was a collective shitting of pants. There were a number of conflabs where decisions were made. I had a fiver left. I made a decision. I offered everyone 25 pence for their flickies.

They couldn’t wait to take my money. I forget how much they’d cost in Rome – maybe the equivalent of 75 pence – but everyone was keen to cut their losses. The only cutting these knives would ever do.

Now I had 21 flick knives. I’d like to say I wasn’t scared going through customs and immigration but that’s not true. I nearly threw the lot overboard before the breakwater.

But no one even looked at us twice. Brother Cowan, you dirty lying git!

All the boys flocked round me. “Ee-ar, mate, here’s the 25 pence. Giz me knife back.”

Bollocks to that. The price was a quid. I knew a couple of them were deciding whether to kick my head in, but the Brothers were pretty protective of me because of the bereavement and my class had attended the funeral and seen the plethora of bouncers and hard men in attendance. Word spread.

After the Easter holidays, there was real competition for the knives in school. Those who couldn’t afford to go to Rome found £1.50 for a prestige item within their range. For the first time in my life I was rich. Weapons were the way to go.

I recycled the cash into an air pistol and rifle. Everyone wanted the pistol. I sold it for an outrageous profit and bought two more air rifles. My customer base was expanding, too. I shot my cousin in the knee, firing the rifle from the hip (he was throwing darts at me, it was the fucking 70s), and he was so impressed that he introduced me to his Wirralite friends who paid me money outside the dreams of Cardinal Godfrey boys for guns. I bought more.

By the summer, I had six rifles, two pistols and one sentimental flick knife. I was plotting out a future. It was the only period of entrepreneurial activity in my life. And then my auntie Annie cleaned under my bed.

She might have been expecting jazz mags. But she found a air-rifle arsenal. My mother was still deep in grief so she never told her. I invented a blag story they weren’t mine and someone was coming to pick them up. She didn’t believe me.

A friend’s cousin turned up to take the bag. I sold everything at a knock-down price. Annie gave me that look: never do anything like that again.

It was just as well. Within a year we were involved, as a family, in a very serious criminal case where the police turned over our houses in the most brutal manner. Knives and guns, however innocent – and I was fucking innocent – would have made things uglier.

Yet I envied Adnan Khashoggi. Jeez, how stupid was I?

Epilogue

A member of my family was convicted of murder the following year. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that he didn’t do it, but he was there and he never complained. After the sentencing, his wife got a call from someone who claimed to be from the News Of The World. They were almost certainly from an agency. The voice said, “I have it on good authority that your husband was running guns to the IRA.”

She slammed the phone down and no story appeared.

When this individual got out of prison, I asked him about that allegation. “It wasn’t guns,” he said, lightly.

Jeez, imagine if I’d had air guns under the bed in early 1976. I’d probably still be in jail.

I’ve used may of my experiences in my novel Good Guys Lost. It’s available here

The story of my life as a Liverpool fan is told in Far Foreign Land. £10 UK, £15 Europe, £18 Rest Of World