How Did All This Happen?. John Bishop
as I would forever be doing sit-ups, one night doing 200 straight, which is a bit mental for a seven-year-old child who is not in a Chinese gymnastic school. We would often then end with a boxing match. This involved my dad going onto his knees and from this position we would hit him, wearing boxing gloves, while he would just jab us away wearing the one glove that was his size. Eddie and I would then spar. One time, Eddie knocked me flat out with a right hook. I got up, dazed, but instead of stopping the session my dad just put on his glove and put Eddie on the floor. We both learnt a lesson that day: neither of us would ever be able to beat my dad.
My dad and his twin brother, Freddie, played football locally, where it was clear they had some form of a reputation. I don’t think they ever sought a fight, but you can tell when people think your dad is hard; it’s just the way people talk when he is around, and the sense of protection that we had as a family when we went anywhere with him. I still have that feeling now, and he is 72. My dad always told us as kids that you should never look for trouble, but never walk away, particularly if you’re in the right. He also said we should never use weapons (Uncle Freddie had nearly bled to death as a youth after being stabbed in the leg), never kick someone when they are down, and, if you’re not sure what is going to happen next, you’re probably best hitting someone.
I think for the life we lived at that time that was sound advice, but it’s not a conversation I have had to have with my sons – they have not lived the same life. To be fair, I have not lived the life that my dad lived, but he could only pass on what he had learnt. My nan had been married before to a Mr Berry and had had three sons: Charlie, Billy and Jimmy. By the time Mr Berry died, Charlie had also died, aged nine, of diphtheria, and been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, and my uncle, Billy, had lost a lung to TB. She then married my dad’s father, Fred Bishop, and had Janet, Mary, Edna, Carol and the twins: my dad and Freddie. With eight children in post-war austerity, things were inevitably tough – in one of the few photographs my dad has of himself and Freddie as children, only one of them has shoes on. There had been only one pair of shoes to go around, so they had a fight and the winner wore them for the picture.
Although my mum lived just around the corner, growing up, she never seemed to suffer the same degree of hardship. She was one of three for a start, with older siblings (in the form of John and Josie), and fewer mouths to feed makes a difference to any family. Her mum and dad divorced and her father died the same year I was born, which is one reason why I am named after him. Her mum, my other nan, was married to Granddad Bill, a caretaker of a block of flats in Toxteth, for all the time that I knew her. As children, Eddie and I would play for hours around the flats with Stephen, my uncle, who was in fact not much older than us. Pictures of my mum in her youth reveal a slim, beautiful, dark-haired girl with plaits who grew to be a slim, beautiful woman with a beehive. My mum has always stayed in shape, and I would guess that her dress size has hardly changed in the more than fifty years that she has been married to my dad.
There are not many pictures of my parents before we started to come along, but I love the ones there are. My mum was as close to a film star in looks as could be without actually being one. There is a softness to her features that belies the toughness inside, a toughness that would often hold the family together in years to come. My dad looks strong in all the pictures, with a handsome face and tattoos on his arms and a stocky frame that suggests that he was made to carry things. My dad is of the generation of working-class men who have swallows tattooed on the backs of their hands. He has often said that he regrets getting them done as they give people an impression of him as someone who wants to look tough before they actually get to know him. The reality is, he said he got them done so that people could tell him and his identical twin Freddie apart – not the greatest of strategies, as I don’t know anyone who looks at a person’s hands first, but at least it beats a tattoo on the face. Personally, I would have just worn glasses or perhaps a hat. In truth, my dad has the hands of a man who suits such tattoos. He was born into a world where social mobility was limited and it was essential that you protected what you had, as there was nothing left to fall back on.
If men like my dad were to ever progress through the social order, it was to be through hard graft, and by being prepared to fight your corner in whatever form that fight took. It was the week before Christmas in 1972 when I became completely aware of what it meant to be a family and the cost of standing by your principles. I was six years old and I recall my uncle, John, my mum’s brother, sitting us all down in the living room. My mum was sitting next to him, and we four children were squashed up on the couch.
‘Your dad has gone to prison.’
The words hit me like a train. I didn’t completely understand what they meant, but as everyone else seemed upset I knew it couldn’t be a good thing. One thing I don’t remember is anyone crying; it was as if it was another thing you just had to deal with. My mum sat there with the same inner strength that I always associate with her. No matter what was to follow, I knew she would make sure everything was going to be all right. She had managed to hold the family together when Carol was literally starving to death in hospital and her own father was dying of cancer. She had managed to move as a young mother away from all she had ever known for the benefit of a better life for her children. Her husband going to prison was not going to break my mum, particularly as she supported everything my dad had done.
Uncle John, his voice clear and strong, carried on: ‘Some people may say bad things to you, but never forget your dad did the right thing. You need to be proud, and you boys have to stand up for your mum and sisters.’ For the first time ever, I was given more responsibility than just being able to dress myself in the morning.
My dad had been sentenced to a year in prison as a result of an altercation with two men outside a chip shop. He had had a run-in with the same two men the week before, so when he’d stopped with my mum to get chips on the way home from a night out they had started another argument. When my mum had intervened, they had pushed her so hard she had bounced off the bonnet of a car onto the ground. My dad had reacted to the provocation and, as had happened the week before, both men ended up on the ground and my dad walked away.
To this day my dad is very bitter about the sentence, and even the arresting officers said the case should have been thrown out. On both occasions, my dad was not the aggressor and was defending himself, and on the second occasion was defending his wife. But for his defence he had not been advised very well, which is something that can happen when you are limited financially in the professional advice you can seek.
Months earlier, my dad and Uncle Freddie had been playing in the same football team, and my dad was sent off by the referee for something his identical twin had done. They appealed against the decision and the local FA had upheld their claim that the referee had sent the wrong man off because he could not tell who had committed the offence.
Had my dad just stood in court and simply relayed the events as they happened, there is a very good chance he would have walked free, or at least only been given a suspended sentence. However, it was felt by many on the estates that people who had moved to Winsford from Liverpool would be unfairly treated by the local police and courts. As the other two men were locals, or ‘Woollybacks’ as we called them (an insult to sheep that I have never really understood), he tried to use the same ploy in court that had worked with the local FA. As both men had ended up pole-axed on the ground, it would be impossible, so the plan went, for them to know which twin had hit them. As the judge could not send both my dad and Uncle Freddie to prison, he would have to throw the case out, and that would be the end of that.
The defence didn’t work and, as my dad was sentenced for violence, he was sent to a closed prison. At first he went to Walton Prison in Liverpool and then on to Preston.
He told my mum not to bring us children to visit him, but by the time he had been transferred to Preston he was missing us too much and asked her to bring us in. I remember that day as if it was yesterday. My Uncle Freddie drove us and we arrived early and had to sit waiting in the car, opposite the prison. There were all four of us, Eddie, Kathy, Carol and I, along with my mum and Freddie in the front, yet I don’t recall anyone saying anything as we just sat and waited.
To my six-year-old self, Preston Prison looked like a castle. It was a stone building with turrets and heavy, solid, metal gates that had a hatch, through which