Booted and Suited. Chris Brown
estimate a hundred of us began a march on this little café. Funny really, the beat cops began to scurry away and call for help, as did most of the locals. Businesses would lock their doors. Vandalism reigned.
‘Upon arriving at the café, a steady stream of us began to enter through the front door. Once the place was jammed tight, with all of the greasers confined to the back of the café, with no avenue of escape, all hell broke loose. I cut one bloke’s face open with a razor knife. He may well have lost the use of that eye, but he has a spare. That was the feeling then, anyway; today, it would be different (I hope)!
‘Blood covered everything. You didn’t dare go to the floor for fear of being made part of it. Chairs and table legs were being used as clubs. Some of the lads went over the counter and began throwing crockery and others helped themselves to the cash register.
‘The scrap went on for maybe five minutes and then the call went out that several Panda cars were seen coming our way. Exit stage left! The stream of bodies that exited that café was something to behold, lads were running this way and that so as not to get caught. Those that couldn’t get into the café knocked over bikes and smashed them as best they could, and slashed the tyres. I later heard from a friend travelling in a Morris Minor with three others from the Never that they were pulled over by a single cop in a Panda as they tried to head out of Weston towards Brean Down. He said that a certain individual wanted to get out and do the cop in, but he was talked down by the other three! They were able to bullshit the cop and get on their way, although several were caught and arrested. I was able to get out of Weston with my buddy Paul, Skippy and a few others. We went out past the old pier and high-tailed it through the country roads back to Clevedon and Portishead.’
I had unearthed stories in the Evening Post which confirmed Phil’s recollections. The Bank Holiday weekends of 1970 in particular saw large-scale outbreaks of violence, with the Easter weekend signifying the start of the aggro season. After a long, dark winter, it would be inevitable that the youngsters from the cities would want to stretch their legs, grab some rays and breathe in the sea air… and cause mayhem. The Evening Post reported that an estimated 200 youths were involved in disturbances in Weston over the Easter weekend of 1970 and that nine were arrested and charged ‘after clashes between skinheads and rockers’ broke out on the town’s seafront. At least the Post was beginning to get the hang of the terminology, even if they were still confused over what they should call the bikers. ‘Extra police had to be called in when steel-helmeted and crop-headed youths were seen converging in packs on the Promenade. Officers posted near the pier went into action immediately fighting broke out near the pier entrance… a running fight ensued and spread on to the nearby sands – several youths were arrested on the sands and frogmarched across the Promenade before being bundled into police cars.’
Superintendent Gerald Lockyer of the local police believed that their decision to break up the gangs of youths had in the main been successful. ‘If it had not been for our prompt action, I believe a very nasty situation could have developed.’
Not that the bovver was confined to the beleaguered Somerset town. There were outbreaks of violence at many seaside resorts around the country; any beach town with the misfortune to be within a motorcycle or train ride from a large city was likely to be targeted by the greasers or the boot boys. That same Easter weekend also saw trouble break out in Rhyl, North Wales, between a 200-strong gang of bikers and a much smaller gang of only 30 skinheads. This in itself was unusual as, in the main, the bikers were usually heavily outnumbered, but what made this attack even more bizarre was that, among the standard terror fare of weapons used to inflict damage – wooden posts, metal rods, studded leather belts and motorcycle kick-starters – an ‘animal bone of unknown origin’ was also used. Six ‘long-haired youths’ subsequently appeared in court where a Nazi steel helmet was confiscated and fines totalling £165 were handed out.
The Whitsun Bank Holiday in May saw a repeat of the trouble at Weston when up to 500 teenagers caused a ‘frightening scene’, according to the police, and, in Brighton on the south coast, skinheads wrecked the train they had been travelling on from London and knocked over people as they strolled along the Promenade.
By the time the Bank Holiday season drew to an end, the boot boys were in the mood for a last huge hurrah. The police estimated at the time that around 2,000 skinheads from Bristol invaded Weston on the August Bank Holiday Monday of 1970 and around 200 were involved in an afternoon of running battles, assaults and general mayhem. Under the headline SKINHEAD BATTLE – TOWN COUNTS COST, the Post went on to report that, ‘at one stage, a bunch of bovver boys and girls, complete with reinforced bovver boots, were parading down the seafront clapping and chanting, “We are from Bristol.” The police were less than impressed. Nevertheless, vicious fights still broke out all over town but those tended to be between various gang members. More frightening were mass charges by packs of howling teenagers which bowled over any unfortunates who happened to get in the way.
‘Skinheads hurled bottles, stones, dustbin lids and clods of earth at the police who were trying to confine the gangs on the beach. One policeman was cut on the face and others badly bruised by the missiles as the battles moved into Oxford Street and the roads leading from the seafront. A gang of 50 rampaged through an outfitters in the High Street grabbing anything they could before police arrived.’
Another incident occurred in the famous Forte ice-cream parlour on the seafront where one youth went into the toilet and stole the pipework, presumably to use as a weapon. Miss Olga Forte, owner of the parlour, told the Post, ‘This youth came out of the toilet. He didn’t buy anything. He just said “Thank you” and left. Five minutes later we had a flooded toilet and we have to get new pipes fitted.’
At least he had the manners to say thanks. More disturbing was the group who ‘enjoyed frightening the ponies and donkeys on the sands’… I mean, you wouldn’t want ‘animal worrying’ on your police record, would you? People might think you were Welsh!
The Evening Post continued, ‘Twenty youths were arrested and twelve detained. At a special court the following day, one was sent to a detention centre for assaulting a policeman and seven were fined for obstructing police, blocking the highway and threatening behaviour.’
No doubt, many of those involved in the disturbances that day frequented the Never. Like the outraged Evening Post, I sensed with Phil Peacock that, although he was very much part of this ‘scene’, he wasn’t particularly enamoured with the Never boys. ‘Quite a few out there saw them as nothing but a bunch of yobs who stole everything in sight and beat the crap out of everyone that either crossed them or had something they wanted. I walked up on one lad and a few of his cronies mugging a bloke just off the Centre one night. Not a pretty sight… the poor bastard looked like raw meat in a suit. This geezer saw me and told his buds to split; he then told me that I’d better not say a word to anyone, stuffed a fiver in my hand then high-tailed it towards the fruit market. I picked the bloke up, took him into the Unicorn [a hotel on the waterfront] and cleaned him up. Then I gave him his fiver back and got him a cab.’
After my meeting with Jimmy Dee, I knew that to get a sense of what drove these lads on, I needed to talk to the real ‘movers and shakers’ of the day. I wanted to know what attracted them to the Never but, more importantly, what attracted them to the skinhead movement in the first place.
Lloyd Sutherland was one of the black ‘kiddies’ that Jim had mentioned and whose young fresh face can be seen in that famous photo of the ‘truce’. Lloyd was astute, meticulous on detail and, at 58, a few years older than Jim. His memory was unfailing and, best of all, he had an impressive, if faded, collection of photos circa 1969–71 featuring the Never gang, one of which he permanently kept in his wallet. Those days obviously meant a lot to Lloyd; he loved that sense of camaraderie and loyalty with his mates, many of whom he still counts as friends to this day.
He was now employed by the prison service, working with young offenders; you could tell he had a real sense of responsibility about him, so was he trying to give society something back? Not that I was suggesting that he took anything out in the first place.
Lloyd brought along one of his good mates from those days,