'Violence Is Nothing More Than A Form Of Communication. It Is The Greatest Leveller. The Poorest, Those With No Negotiating Power, Have One Last Fallback. The Fist'

It's 1981, Billy is back on Merseyside, Liverpool 8 is burning and the city's young scallies are gearing up for class war in Thatcher's Britain. Good Guys Lost, part 12

Read part 11 of Good Guys Lost here

A Town Called Malice

“There have been seven murders in the family. One was at sea, where the fella was lobbed overboard. One was a scrap in Cape Town that went wrong. The rest were here. One of the early ones was a bare-fisted fight around the turn of the century. Is that a murder?”

Billy was sitting in the Green Man opposite me. It was a Sunday night early in July, well past last orders. The door and windows were open because of the heat and humidity. Normally, this would invite a patrol car to stop and investigate. After-hours drinking would be stopped and the pub closed down.

There were no police visits that night. Liverpool 8 was burning. Radio City was on behind the bar and most of the customers were listening intently. Billy wanted to talk.

“We’ve got High Rippers in the family. The High Rip caused a national sensation, you know. Jack the Ripper nicked their name. Or, to be more correct, the dodgy journalist who coined the name stole it. One of ours was involved in the Blackstone Street killing of a Spanish sailor. They hanged one of his mates for it. Can’t claim that one because they say he only hit the Spic with a belt.”

I wondered whether he was counting his own incident in the murderous tally. It was that time of night when awkward questions get asked. “What’s it like to kill someone?”

“It’s difficult,” he said. “Go get another round.” He nodded to his mate behind the bar. “You destroy things. There’s no going back. You lose so much. At least I did.”

It was hard to comprehend. Billy lost so much? What about the guilt?

“The guilt is hard to live with. I let a lot of people down. A lot of people suffered. I’d do it all differently if I could.”

Did he think about his victim? Did he have nightmares about the gargling last moments of the man, when the severed artery and skin made raspberry noises and the blood plumed into the cold night? It seemed we were talking about a very different conscience.

He laughed loud and unselfconsciously. “The Divvy? I’d cut his throat again now. He was a cancer in the neighbourhood. He should have been taken in hand long before. My dad would have killed him. Your dad would have killed him. Duke was planning to run him over but it came to a head too fast. I have never missed a minute’s sleep over him. I couldn’t have lived with myself if he had done anything to your mum and you kids. That’s the way people like him were always dealt with round here. It used to be that they were scared off – or killed off – before they became too much of a problem.

“Does anyone care? People know I did the right thing. It’s not like I’m a pariah, is it?”

That was true. Everyone in the area seemed glad to see him back after four long years. A steady flow of wellwishers came over to our table and quite a few drinks were sent across. It was not quite the returning hero treatment but the affection for Billy was clear. It was also obvious that it was not inspired by fear.

He told me his story in a shortened version. After more than two months in Talacre he was driven south to Dover and inserted on to a coach of Liverpool fans heading towards Saint-Etienne for the quarter-final of the European Cup. There were no checks at border control on either side of the channel and he entered France unnoticed and unrecognised. It was galling for him. Billy was an Everton fan. He did not go to the match.

After leaving the coach, he took a train to Amsterdam where the Gasman had been living for a couple of months. There was a small Liverpool contingent in the Dutch city and, for a while, he hung around smoking weed and doing the sort of odd jobs that can’t be advertised in a newspaper. He assiduously avoided Gazza. In late spring he took a plane from Schiphol to New York. His brother had jumped ship in Manhattan and had set up home in Greenwich Village. Billy joined him and, within days, had a job bartending in a folk club that was soon to turn gay. There were substantial Scouse and Irish communities to slot into and they could always find a paid position for a newcomer. Bar work was easy and he was comfortable in the changing environment of the Village – he was an ex-seaman, after all.

There were still enough music outlets along Bleeker for Billy to start performing again as soon as he had saved enough money to buy a guitar. He was miserable, though.

Once he was out of Britain and on his own, he called the office on Denmark Street and asked for Missy. She was long gone.

There was no other way of contacting her. He could not even remember where her family’s house was located. He had been led there drunk in the early hours of the morning and invariably left hungover and giddy with love the next afternoon. His thoughts were focused on the girl, not the surroundings.

In his dreams he trawled the London clubs: the Marquee, the Vortex, the 100, ending up in The Hole, looking for the person that had metastasised into his ideal woman. It was all fantasy. All he could do was sit tight and wait to be told it was safe to come home. He would linger miserably in Sonny Newcome’s bar on 56^th Street and yearn for a return. Sonny had sympathy. He was a friend of Duke’s who had done something so unspeakable that there would never be an opportunity to go back. They would talk of the Honky Tonk and the Foot Hospital, of Anfield and Goodison, and mourn for the places they’d rather be. Billy could never let slip that he longed for Fitzrovia.

“Sounds like the Southenders are giving it to the busies,” the barman said after a particularly frantic broadcast from a reporter on Upper Parliament Street. That brought us back to the present. A small cheer went up. Someone said: “We should go to town and help ourselves. There’ll be no one protecting the shops.” There was a laugh. “While they’re still serving here?” another voice asked.

Billy became serious again. “I think she’s dead.”

“Who?”

“Missy. The girl I met.” I didn’t have much to say so I let him talk. “She just vanished. There has to be a reason. I was in London and went round all the places we used to drink. We used to go to a place called the Spanish Rooms. We called it The Hole.” For a moment he was misty-eyed.

“It was great. Salsa music, Colombians dancing, Jamaicans on the weed, London wide boys, working girls and rent boys…”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said with a laugh.

“It was. But there was a fire. Some fella got thrown out and put petrol though the letterbox and set the place alight.”

“Jesus, When?”

“Last year. Nearly 40 dead. I think she’s one of them. It would explain why she disappeared without trace.” He looked away and settled into a long, mournful silence, oblivious to the frantic updates from the south end. There was little to say. We sat, mute, while the radio cackled away in the background with a running commentary of urban insurrection.

Then Billy turned back to me. “How’s Duke. Could I go to see him?”

* * *

If you don’t want to wait for the next extracts, the paperback is available here

I’d seen Duke twice in the four years since his conviction. He had waited a week after the killing until he was sure his companions were safe. Eventually he walked into Rose Hill and surrendered. He stuck to his principles and never said a single word to the police while they interrogated him. “Don’t say anything,” he always stated. “Get into a discussion and they’ve got you. Don’t take a ciggy off them, don’t tell them you need a piss. Do it in your kex. They’ll get the hang of your hand gestures after they see the puddle on the floor.”

God, Duke could have been anything in life. You wanted to listen to him. He was funny, self-depreciating and optimistic even in the visiting room of Wakefield Prison. He was sincere, too. Leaning across he said: “Never feel sorry for me. I had ten years coming. It was my job to protect your mum and you kids.” There was a moment of silence. “And the people who were helping me. You tell anyone who asks that I have no regrets. I would do it all again.”

I looked across at his infant son squirming on his mother’s knee and wondered how that kid would eventually compute his father’s words; whether he would feel cheated of a relationship and how he would react to his dad’s return. By then the toddler would be a fully formed person. Duke’s sense of responsibility was admirable but his child might see it differently.

Try as I might, I can’t remember the high security jail as the fearful gothic monstrosity I want it to be. I recall it as part school gymnasium, part refectory. Duke’s wife wore a huge coat with a number of inside pockets full of contraband and passed food and drink to him throughout the visit. When we arrived, the couple kissed passionately: she was passing £20 notes from her mouth to his. They repeated the clinch before we left. I suspect more money changed tongues.

He pointed out some of the other inmates with pride. This was the all-star game and Duke was proud to be in such exalted company. “There’s my mate,” he said. “One of the Birmingham Six. Didn’t do it. Fitted up and beaten up by the bastards. He’s not got a bad bone in his body. It’s criminal what they’ve done to him.”

He scanned the room. “There’s another of my buddies. He’s one of the Bank of America crew. He did do it. He’s got millions hidden away. Not doing him much good in here, like. But you’d like him. Stand-up fella.”

It was obvious he had a good relationship with the robbers and hard-cases and he seemed very friendly with the screws. He introduced me to a passing prison officer. “Our Joey’s lad.” We shook hands. “Don’t you end up in here young fella,” the prison officer said with a smile. “Even if it’s in uniform like me.”

Duke laughed. “He’s going to university, right?” It was not really a question. There was an element of threat implicit. “Maybe,” I said.

“You’d better. I’ve started an Open University degree. It’s great. I can’t wait for the summer camp.” He let me digest that. It took a while for the penny to drop.

There was a moment when he seemed to realise that his charisma had almost made jail fascinating. “I look at you and I think about the fun you can have going to college. All the girls you’ll meet, all the books you’ll read, all the beers you’ll drink. I’m doing my learning here. You do it while you’re free and make sure you never come to a college like this.

“I want to be the last of the Morans who end up in places like this. Go to university for me, eh? Get a degree before me. If you ever think you owe me anything, you don’t. But that’s what I want.”

Did I see a tear in his eye? He changed tack quickly. “Did I tell you about Christmas? There’s a fella in here called the Beast of Barnsley. He did horrible things to two young girls and killed them. Well, on Crimbo day the screws had a little drink and some of my mates bumped into the Beast even though he was supposed to be in isolation. They poured a kettle of boiling water on his balls and broke his legs.” He laughed loudly. “That’s the way fellas like that need to be dealt with.”

For all he tried not to, Duke had a way of making prison seem glamorous. He could not help himself and I was too young and too stupid to know any different.

* * *

No one had ever mentioned university to me before that moment in late 1977. I was still 16 and not highly regarded at the Brothers’ school I attended. There were no jobs available that summer. No apprenticeships. So, with a paltry five O levels I went into sixth form. “You might,” a teacher said, “get lucky and get two A levels. A Poly will have you.”

The mood was changing. Punk was a symptom of something bigger and more powerful happening in the country. A shift in the psyche of the British people was taking place. We didn’t see it because we were part of it.

Like Billy I was swept away by The Jam. I joined Eric’s and became a regular at gigs. There was a substantial group of young men frequently seen at concerts who were also matchgoers. Football and music became twin obsessions.

Actually, there were three. Politics was beginning to feel important. As Liverpool slipped into decline, the young men around me embraced socialist beliefs in an unfocused, vague form. The National Front targeted football fans as recruits. They figured angry, dispossessed youngsters with a predilection for violence were perfect fodder for right-wing thuggery. They picked the wrong city when they turned up outside Anfield and Goodison selling their filthy fascist newspaper. They were punched and kicked senseless. I had no qualms about putting the boot in.

By then I’d realised something. There is no English working class. The English have a foreman class, a corporal class, a sergeant class. They take and obey orders and need someone to command them. It is a legacy of Empire. No matter how poor, stupid, disadvantaged and hopeless Albion’s lower orders are there is always someone below them to look down upon: an Irishman, an Indian, a West Indian. A Mick, a Wog, a Nigger. After all, the term Scouse was originally an insult aimed at the most impoverished Irish immigrants around Scotland Road. Some might forget that but I never will.

The NF was trying to exploit the anger and fear built into England’s NCO culture as it became increasingly clear that the immigrants and underlings were no longer prepared to be bossed around. At Chelsea, West Ham and Leeds it worked. It didn’t succeed in Liverpool. On the Celtic fringe, there was a real working class and we knew that the English despised us, too. By the time I was in my teens I understood that I was lined up alongside the ranks of Micks, Wogs and Niggers. You insult them, you insult me.

The NF’s papers and faces got torn. They wanted disorder on the streets and they got it from us. The fascists just didn’t expect that we would direct the violence at them. They wanted hate and easy targets. We gave them the hate and they provided easy targets for us.

I never enjoyed violence for its own sake. It is exhilarating, win or lose, but it’s not fun unless it’s got a purpose. It was entertaining when you caught the Paki-Bashers and Nazi boot boys at their own game and left them in an agonised heap.

The foreman class looked down on Scousers. We were thieves, half-Irish aboriginals, fodder for heavy labour, bred for battle. Well, us young lads wanted combat but it would be on our own terms, not those of generals or governments. We wanted to be outside the pale of British society.

It always amuses me that people disapprove so much of violence. It is nothing more than a form of communication. It’s the most simple, most effective way of getting a message across. It is the greatest leveller. The poorest in society can use it. Those with no negotiating power have one last fallback. The fist.

That worries the wealthy and powerful. They bully people with status and money. The upper and middle classes use their articulacy and education to make the disadvantaged feel small. Their social mores are designed to humiliate those further down the economic scale. It is institutionalised bullying. Of course, they don’t see it that way. Politely, with calculated passive aggression, the middle classes will assert their superiority wherever they can. That was the only thing I learnt at university.

But many of the uppity Scouse teenagers I knew were ready to fight back whatever way we could. Instinctively we knew we were outsiders.

When football took us to other cities, we could see the contempt the locals had for us. Even before the phrase was used, we knew we were the enemy within. It made us swagger more, steal more and express our pride more volubly.

It was a glorious time to be young and Scouse. Liverpool Football Club were dominant at home and abroad and the team were a focus for civic pride. The iconography of the club suited our political beliefs. The shirts were blood red, with a Liver Bird symbol over the heart. Billy Shankly, the man who transformed Anfield’s fortunes in the 60s, talked about socialism and the importance of everyone working for a common purpose. We believed it.

Everything in life was political. From the Rock Against Racism concerts to Saturday afternoons on the terraces, the bloody skirmishes had a clear social component.

Football hooliganism? It’s the most misunderstood concept in modern British history. Mostly, it was young, lower-class men placed in confrontational situations, often after consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol. Certainly, in the late 1970s and 1980s I never saw any evidence of organisation. It was an organic expression of Scouse power for us.

Me and my mates tried to avoid knuckle if we could. But we were not inclined to back down if confronted. We were class warriors, not hooligans. At least that was our story.

* * *

How do I look back on that young man that I no longer recognise? Like many kids from a poor background, he craved status. How do you get it? Duke earned it with his toughness. No, that is not true. Yes, the power in his forehead and fists brought a certain glamour but there was much more to his persona. The money he spent freely garnered him friends and admirers but that was the least of it. He had a winning personality. He listened to people. He seemed to care about them. I believe he did. Why did people love him? In the end, you could only say he had charisma.

Young, dumb scallywags like the one I once was did not see the wider view. We got respect from going the match, especially away games.

Most of those who followed Liverpool across the country took the Football Special trains from Lime Street. Those transports went direct to the city where the game was taking place, were comprised of the oldest, most decrepit rolling stock and were shoehorned in around the regular timetable. Journeys took longer and the trains were met at their destination by a huge police presence. Fans were disembarked, formed into columns and marched to the ground under heavy escort. Generally, the police kept the local thugs at bay. Specials were a relatively safe way of attending away games.

Those who craved danger and adventure took the regular, timetabled trains that were part of the normal service. The opposite of special is ordinary. So we took the ordinary trains. Ideally, we would plan to arrive before the police had set up their reception operation at the railway station.

This was not just a Merseyside phenomenon. Across the country groups of youths banded together and spent Saturdays travelling up and down the rail network to watch football and, sometimes, cause havoc in someone else’s town. Hooliganism became a national scandal and some of the bands of wannabee street warriors created names for themselves to exploit the publicity. West Ham’s Inter City Firm generated huge headlines. Leeds called their mob the Service Crew. We had no truck with these vainglorious titles and PR-hungry mythologizing. We referred to ourselves as Ordinary Boys but it was a generic, non-specific term, not the moniker of a mob.

We enjoyed the subversion of language. We were the elite. When you walked into the Yankee three hours after the special had returned, drinkers would murmur “the Ordinary’s in” and the inevitable question would be posed: “Any trouble?”

The best answer was a smirk, a shrug and a rolling-shouldered strut. “Nah, it was a doddle.”

That’s how I see the boy sitting opposite Billy in the Green Man while L8 burned. He is wearing a modish, black, three-buttoned leather jacket, a burgundy John Smedley crew neck jumper over a pale blue buttoned-down shirt. On the sweater, over the heart, there is a tiny, quarter-inch, circular enamel badge with a Liver Bird on it.

He is clad in 501s, bought in New York and shrunk to fit in the bath in Burlington Street and then bleached pale in the same tub. On his feet are a pair of grey Hush Puppy suede boots.

I like the way he looks. The hair is short on the sides and back but the fringe is still long enough to hint at foppishness. He is thin in a way that no longer seems to exist. It is a 1980s leanness; vaguely undernourished but wirily strong from manual work. There was no need to go to the gym. It is a body shape that belongs to the past: men his age today have either a comfortable chubbiness or display weights-room sculptured torsos.

Earlier in the Scally era the fashion was for labels – Lacoste, Fila and Kappa – in bold primary colours. By 1981 that look was discarded by those at the cutting edge, the bright clothes handed down to younger brothers. Now he wore muted shades. It was symbolic. I imagine him at the cusp of a darker, less flamboyant era when political vindictiveness would blight an entire city.

The clothes he wears are not designed to attract women but to signal to other, like-minded youths (for or against) that he is not to be taken lightly. He has enough prestige to feel content.

Of course, he would not have been dressed like this in July. I see him in his winter, matchgoing gear. I visualise him as the essence of Scal.

To the outsider, he looks nihilistic. He is not. He worries about the future. Even now he can foresee a time when the confrontations will move beyond concerts and terraces and his enemies will be the authorities. The bloodletting in the south end confirms his concerns. He is certain a clampdown is coming and ready for the challenge. Idealism and anger course through his being. I shall now drive him from my mind, the little prick.

• On Sunday: Life in a city that’s shutting down and shocking news about a local hero