Fishers of Men - The Gripping True Story of a British Undercover Agent in Northern Ireland. Rob Lewis
over the railway line. The police arrived and dragged him off the line just a few moments before the Merthyr to Cardiff train would have sliced straight through him. The town had built up a notoriety that was soon to be brought to the attention of the gangs in larger places like Cardiff and Caerphilly. A showdown was destined to happen. Late on a particular Friday night the packed-out Cardiff train pulled into the local station and spilled out its load of invaders. They were greeted with a hail of bottles, bricks, iron bars, and whatever else was throwable. The large crowd that had come to give the youth of our town a lesson were soon on their way home.
From the very start of my teenage years life was just good fun, marred only by the unfortunate requirement to attend school. The school had been founded at the beginning of the century and had started its career in the higher elementary role. It was regarded as a fine specimen of selective education for post-primary pupils. It had been formally recognised as a secondary school some years later, and had become a grammar school in the years just after the First World War. To me it was a large, daunting, redbrick building where the only objective of the black-gowned teachers was to see how many times a day they could have me standing outside the headmaster’s office for an inevitable caning. From day one it seemed that every teacher knew me intimately, the unfortunate legacy of having an elder brother at the same school, a brother who had gained a reputation that was too easily passed on. I was destined to be the target of certain teachers’ attentions, but not always to the benefit of my education. In my fourth and fifth years at grammar school I would regularly wear two pairs of underpants, my swimming trunks and a pair of rugby shorts under my grey school trousers in an effort to minimise the stinging pain of the bamboo stick. This was all very well until the headmaster who dealt out the punishment, a red-faced authoritarian, changed his tactics and administered the cane across the palm of the hand. I would bend over in readiness. This worked sometimes, but on other occasions the sight of my well-padded buttocks probably influenced his decision to dispense the penalty across my fingers instead.
Our little gang would get up to all kinds of mischief and misdemeanours, which were probably to stand me in good stead for the future. My home town and the surrounding area were an excellent training ground for a potential life of running, hiding, sneaking about and being able to talk oneself out of a dilemma. Our pack of friends consisted of about ten lads. To any adults, teachers and outsiders who knew us then, what our band of scoundrels managed to achieve in later life would probably convince even the greatest sceptic that anything is possible for subjects of a misspent youth. Our merry bunch of no-hopers managed to turn out two special forces soldiers, an executive with Plessey in New York, a teacher in Canada, an Olympic athlete, a recipient of the MBE, a first-class rugby player, a commissioned officer in the army, a company director in London, a police inspector, and another who has a ‘shady’ job in Whitehall. Not bad going for a bunch of lads from working-class backgrounds in a high-unemployment area of the South Wales coalmining valleys. There were many others from the same background living in the same town who ended up in correction centres and prisons for their various misdemeanours. It could easily have gone that way for any of us. Being a somewhat outgoing and boisterous bunch, we were more often than not involved in some kind of nonsense which could quite easily have led us into trouble on many occasions. More often than not, though, we were able to get away scot-free.
Most weekends we would engage in the usual local teenage prank of setting the numerous gorse bushes up on the mountain on fire. After the initial thick grey smoke had run its course, the fire would then take full hold and burn ferociously. It could easily be seen for many miles – when you have about ten bushes burning simultaneously it is quite a sight, an absolute Mecca for trainee arsonists. We would head for the nearest telephone, ring the fire brigade in the town and test their reaction times in getting to the area and putting the fires out. We would even go and talk to the firemen and give them detailed descriptions of non-existent youths whom we had seen running away from the scene of the crime. Maybe it would be naive to think that they believed a word we said. However, even when the police arrived to see what was happening, we always kept to the same story, although we always made a point of dumping the matches along the route first in case they decided to tell us to turn our pockets out.
One of our little gang’s regular Saturday afternoon activities was ‘nicking’. The general idea was to split into groups of two lads, make our way into the town and steal the most useless or the largest item we could get away with within the timescale laid down, and then return to the park shed to compare our booty. Howls of laughter came from the shed when the various trophies were presented. I still smile at the memory of seeing everything from pineapples, sets of cutlery, bicycle pumps and even a pitchfork laid out in front of us while we compared notes on how we had nearly got caught, discussed how a particular shop-owner was getting wise to us entering his shop every Saturday, and what the plan would be for the following weekend’s nicking trip.
This hobby was to progress to the stage where many years later two members of our gang, at a friend’s stag party, relieved the local transport company of a fifty-six-seater luxury coach. After demolishing a bus stop en route, the said article was last seen in the middle of an Essex county cricket ground with its four-way flashing hazard lights on, and in the distance yells of ‘Fares, please’ from the two culprits could be heard as they fled into darkness, pursued unsuccessfully by the local constabulary. As can be imagined, that night’s activity has often given us a great laugh since. It also reinforced a point that had been our gang’s adopted motto for many years. Rule one: don’t get caught.
Unfortunately getting caught did happen on one or two occasions. One time I remember being caught out well and truly was at the local mine-workers’ institute. This was another typical South Wales valleys redbrick building, where the miners had a snooker hall upstairs and various function rooms downstairs, including a ballroom that doubled up as a bingo hall for a few evenings a week. Two or three of us had been playing snooker upstairs when it was noticed that the man who ran the place, Old Maxwell, was nowhere to be seen. As quick as a flash my two companions moved to the far end of the hall where the doorway to the caretaker’s accommodation was located, while I grabbed a chair and very quickly started to empty the glass case over the counter of all the Aero and Mars bars I could lay my hands on. I looked over at one of my mates, who gave me the thumbs-up. It was still all clear. Just as I was about to move to the area that contained the cigarette packets I heard a shout of ‘What the hell are you up to?’
Fucking hell! Old Maxwell had come into the hall through the back door. My comrades had not seen him coming. He came directly over to where I was standing on the chair and swiftly grabbed my leg. I did my best impression of a forward roll off the chair, slapped the floor with my hand, and began to yell out in pained agony. The initial grim and annoyed look on his face turned to one of sheer panic. I rolled about, yelling loudly and pretending to have an asthma attack. Old Maxwell became extremely concerned, and it was a real effort for me to carry on the charade. I tried hard not to laugh out loud. One of my friends walked in and made it quite clear to Old Maxwell that he was really in the shit for grabbing my leg and accused him of hitting me, which of course he hadn’t. My mate told him that it was likely that, when my father was told of this, he would probably come and give him a good hiding for attacking me. The man was apologetic in the extreme. I sobbed, limped and gasped for breath as I asked him for a drink, and suggested that if I could move to the door for some fresh air it would probably help my breathing recover. He agreed this was probably a good idea and told me to go outside, adding that he would fetch me a drink of water. As my two comrades assisted me to the door one whispered to me, asking if I was okay. I said of course I was, I was putting it on; at this point the three of us turned and shouted at Old Maxwell, telling him what a gullible old git he had been, and ran off down the street. No Equity cards required here. We were all natural actors. It was quite some time before I returned to play snooker though.
Another great expedition that we embarked on from time to time was to venture down to the area of the local colliery. My grandfather had worked at this colliery in its heyday. It was situated in the valley of the local river to the east of the town, and the works area stretched over several miles, consisting largely of heavy machinery houses, pithead baths, mineshafts, dynamite stores and blacksmiths’ shops. To a bunch of young teenage lads like us it really was an Aladdin’s cave, although in reality it was an extremely dangerous place to be.
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