Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror (18 page)

Ours was one of the three crimes of the century. The others were the Great Train Robbery and the Richardson torture case. These trials stood head and shoulders above any others, and as the years have passed the aura of glamour around them has overtaken the real and serious aspects.

People remember the sixties more vividly than any other recent decade. They remember the Beatles, the drug scene, the permissive society, the quality of life, the whole free-and-easy and exciting time of change. The Great Train Robbery, the Richardsons and the Krays were just as much a part of that era as the mini-skirts, just as much a part of the whole atmosphere, just as much a part of the continuing nostalgia.

The Great Train Robbers came out of their case in a very romantic light, and people still think and talk about them in that way. The public also remembers the torture trials and, especially, the Kray cases. The twins have passed into legend, and that legend is never going to die. There will always be books and films about them. The Krays and the Richardsons gave England, for the first time, what the Americans had: a Chicago of its own, an Al Capone, a Jesse James, a Wild West. And people still seem to relate to this in a lot of ways, even though it’s history. I’m not going to say it’s a very illustrious history, but we’ve got it and we’re always going to have it. Nothing can happen now to change that.

I
mmediately after our convictions, my wife brought Karen and David to visit me in Wandsworth with her father, Flip. Karen was very proud to have a brother. By now David was three months old, bouncing around. I said to Pat in front of her father and the kids, ‘Now look, don’t even think about waiting for me on this sentence. I’m giving you the door and I advise you to take it.’ You cannot ask a person to wait that length of time.

But I already knew her answer; I knew she was going to stick by me. From that day onwards she never missed a visit, and she did her best for me. I watched the kids growing up around the prison. I never encouraged that, but I don’t believe I discouraged it either.

Pat was acting with the best of intentions, but the marriage was doomed. She and I would both change a lot over the course of the next fifteen years. Chris finished with his wife, Carol, straightaway, because he didn’t think it fair for her to have to wait that length of time. He said, ‘That’s it, I don’t want to know no more.’ They’d had one kid, a daughter called Angela.

Neither Chris nor I could see any further than the sentences we’d been given. Not in our wildest dreams could we visualise ourselves
coming out the other end. We weren’t the sort of blokes to sit down and serve fifteen years like good boys, without saying a word. Some of the most dramatic and rebellious events of our lives were to take place during the prison years….

We started our sentences as Category A prisoners in
maximum-security
blocks, away from the ‘regular’ cons, because we were considered to be a danger to the public and the State, and had to be heavily guarded at all times so that there wasn’t the faintest possibility of escape. I was escorted everywhere. I had to take a book with my photograph in it wherever I went, and I was ‘signed over’ throughout the prison. For instance, if I went from the workshop to the wing where the cells were, I was signed out of the shop, handed over to the escort and taken to my destination. Out in the grounds, I was accompanied at all times by an escort and a doghandler.

There was special security in my cell. Everything was reinforced, and there were bolts on the door as well as the usual locks. It was impregnable. I was checked every hour throughout the day and night: the authorities had to know where I was at all times. Every night, I had to be seen at least once by the Assistant Governor, the Deputy Governor or the Governor. I always had a red light on in the cell, and it was searched every day. There were also frequent personal searches, which could happen at any time. My clothes were kept outside the cell during the night.

I was taken for bathing separately from everybody else, escorted out to collect my food before the rest of the cons, and locked up during mealtimes. Prison exercise was under maximum supervision. Visiting was subject to approval by the Home Office and the police. They checked out my visitors, who had to submit photographs. If, for any reason, they thought a visitor was a security risk, that person wasn’t allowed to see me. And outside contact – the chance of meeting civilian people coming in and out of the
prison – is kept to a minimum for Category A prisoners because of the fear of hostage-taking. The whole system is devised to stop you from escaping at all costs.

There are four types of prisoner within Cat. A, as we referred to it. These are dangerous criminals, political criminals (who are usually terrorists), sex offenders and grasses who have to be kept apart and protected from the main body of prisoners, and ‘prison Cat. A’ men – people who are uncontrollably disruptive within the system.

You’re not considered for parole – conditional release – while you’re Cat. A. The authorities went through the motions of assessing us for it – but when you think about it, you can’t be considered a grave threat to society on one hand and be given parole on the other. There’s no appeal against being on Cat. A, other than petitions. I regularly received the same reply: ‘The Secretary of State feels that, in this case, you should remain in Category A for the foreseeable future.’

Being an A-man carried either a stigma or a certain status, depending on your point of view. It went to some people’s heads. I always felt that if you had any sense, it was the last thing you should want to be. Also, a lot of non-A prisoners were impressed – ‘Oh, he’s in the A-book.’ From the beginning of our sentences we were not only in the A-book, we were also on what was known as the E List. This meant we were considered to be an escape risk and had to wear a yellow patch on our trousers so that we could be quickly spotted at all times.

Category A prisoners can be moved to another prison at any time, without any warning: ‘As you are, come with us.’ You were never told where you were going. They usually came for you at four in the morning. You’d wake up and see seven uniforms standing there, and it could be a frightening thing. You’d be half asleep, and you could see the weakness in yourself. There was no other con at
large to help you out if the screws got up to any villainy. Any time I was woken for a move, I would bang on the walls to let my neighbours know I was leaving the cell.

You could have breakfast in Durham, dinner in Leicester and tea in Parkhurst, and when you reached your destination you were taken straight to the wing, not through reception. They’d never move you in vans but in police cars, with other police cars in front and behind, and the police who nicked us always came along on these transfers to see that we were securely delivered to the next prison.

On one memorable occasion in August 1969, Chris, Ronnie Bender and I were being taken from Brixton prison to Leicester. We’d been in London for our Court of Appeal hearings – the token three members of the firm whose cases were being reconsidered. It was like a royal parade coming along the Mall – we had a heavy, heavy escort. We had to go through Hyde Park, and Marble Arch was sealed off.

We reached the M1 in this convoy, each of us in a separate car, cuffed to a screw on either side. Fifteen miles along the motorway, we came to an obstruction in the fast lane where workmen had been carrying out repair work. One car in front of us saw it too late and veered off to the left. All of a sudden, cars were crashing into each other. The screws and the police thought a mass escape was taking place, and before anyone knew what was happening there were armed guards standing round every car in the pile-up with their guns drawn. Chris was going mad inside his car; he’d got a bang on the head. The motorway was sealed off, and when we finally resumed the journey to Leicester we saw three police cars stationed on every bridge we went under. They had doctors waiting for us at the prison. Chris was a compulsive complainer, and this was a tailor-made meal for him: ‘Get them fucking cuffs off me! You tried to fucking murder me on the motorway!’

Later we heard that the appeals had been turned down – though we only discovered this by accident, through the one o’clock news on the radio. It was stated that reasons would be given later; I still haven’t heard any. It was a bit of a sad time, although none of us let our disappointment show. We were back on Category A with nothing to hope for.

The twins were still in Brixton prison, attending the Old Bailey on the Frank Mitchell murder charges, of which they were eventually acquitted. I was to have very little contact with them in the following fifteen years. I overlapped with Ronnie for a week in Durham near the beginning of my sentence and found him typically uncomplaining; everyone seemed to like him. I didn’t see him again until 1974, when I was in Parkhurst. The twins were there too, in maximum security, and the Governor arranged for me to have a special visit with them in his office. It was the last time I ever saw the twins together, and I never saw either of them again until I came out of prison.

When the rest of us started our sentences, I was on one wing at Wandsworth with Ronnie Bender, who was in the hospital, and Chris was on another with Ian Barrie. After a period where I didn’t see my brother for three weeks, I got a VO – the Visiting Order you send out to friends, which invites and authorises them to come and see you – and I posted it to Chris on D-wing. Next day Beast, as we called the Governor, called me up and said, ‘I can assure you that your brother is doing well. He wrecked the visiting room the last time he was there, and he’s in the [punishment] block.’

This was just a sign of things to come, and the Wandsworth prison authorities realised it. Not only did they have us, they had Frankie Fraser in there, one of the most notorious villains in the country, and a lot of bank robbers who went on to commit twenty of the biggest robberies of the eighties. Their whole operation was
popularly referred to as the Gartree Connection, because the men had planned it all out in Gartree prison – which itself was known as the Crime Connection.

The authorities at Wandsworth could see the type of prisoners they had on their hands, and they didn’t want the trouble. The idea was to get us farmed out to different prisons as quickly as possible. Within two months Chris, Ronnie Bender and I had been transferred to Durham. We remained together through our next moves, to Leicester and Hull, before splitting up for a few years in the winter of 1970.

We were hardly model prisoners. Chris and I were never going to take our sentences lying down. We were both young men, we had many years ahead of us in prison, and we weren’t the type of blokes to sit there and take orders. To us, that would have been giving in. I was rebellious, out to cause as much disruption within the system as I could, just out of frustration at the sentence. My attitude was, ‘If I don’t get what I want, I’m gonna give you aggravation.’ Chris had to find some way of getting through a sentence that he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place, and his way was to cause as much trouble as possible. He was looking for it, even more than I was. Sometimes the screws sent for me to calm Chris down because they didn’t dare attempt it themselves.

One morning in Durham prison, Chris went into the Chief Officer’s office in his pyjamas. Ten minutes later, the CO came down to my cell. He said, ‘Have a word with your brother. He should wear his uniform when he comes to the office.’

I said, ‘Then you tell him.’

He said, ‘Are you fucking joking?’

Chris was a very explosive man, and he was feared. If someone upset him in prison, he would never forget it. If Chris didn’t like what was on the television, he’d kick it up in the air. He did that to about five TV sets in the nick.

We felt we had nothing to lose. We didn’t give a damn, either of us. To get any peace, to gain any satisfaction out of our situation, we had to do things our way, do what we wanted. If we didn’t feel like wearing the uniforms, we’d set fire to them and throw them out the window. It happened so many times. If we didn’t want to go to work – if we didn’t like the labour we’d been allocated, mailbags or whatever – we didn’t do it. We’d stay in bed, or listen to the radio, or play cards with any other cons who’d decided not to work.

Apart from a direct refusal to co-operate, we had other ways of getting out of labour. We were always taken back to the wings if the temperature in the workshops fell below a certain level. So we used to put the thermometer in a bucket of cold water and repeatedly complain it was too cold to work in the shop. If that didn’t work, then we’d down tools. If we didn’t like the food, the lot went up in the air, and there would be a sit-out if it was the summer, or a demonstration in the television room at colder times of the year. If 150 men don’t want to go back behind the doors, if they refuse to leave the exercise yard for three days, there’s not a lot the authorities can do about it. If we saw anything we thought was an injustice, we’d take the side of the underdog against the authorities. Chris, in particular, was a great man for taking up causes. Say one of our pals was having problems with the screws – well, we’d make sure the screws had a problem with the lot of us too.

Anything we could do to get a blow in against authority, we’d do it. Most of the hard men were the same. Charlie Richardson had a kick against authority. He saw himself as being hard done by, getting sentenced to twenty-five years after the Richardsons’ ‘torture’ trial, and he was a complainer just like the rest of us. He wanted his rights and he made sure he got them.

Frankie Fraser, similarly, had a fierce dislike of prison rules, and was a very hot potato within the prison system. He was quite small – a stocky bloke of about five feet two – but he was game, he was
hard to handle, he was not afraid to speak out and fight for his rights, and he was more than capable of doing what he threatened. His word was his bond. People knew they should never say to Frank, ‘I want to chin a screw,’ unless they meant it, because he would expect them to do it, and rightly so. Yet he was a very respected man, admired by everyone, the screws included, for his principles. He had a friendly word for everyone – and, again, he would be one of the first to stick up for the underdog.

Another con, a bloke called Paul Seabourne, struck a most dramatic blow against authority. He said to Ronnie Biggs one day in Wandsworth, ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’ By God, did he! He didn’t get paid for Biggs’s escape. He organised it because he thought the authorities had taken a liberty and he wanted to kick them. He kicked them OK - right in the bollocks.

In prison, politics didn’t come into it. It didn’t matter that there were IRA terrorists amongst us. We were all together, and we were all anti-authority, pure and simple. We would have done anything to fuck the system – me probably more than a lot of people.

I spent more than three years of my fifteen in punishment blocks. At different times throughout the sentence I was done for assault, breaking and entering within the prison, and stealing. I was involved in riots and attempted escapes. I was generally a troublemaker, a bloke who didn’t take orders, and I couldn’t have cared less what punishment might result. What could they do to us? Put us down the block? We were already deprived of our liberty. The block was just a less privileged form of imprisonment. It was no deterrent. You were behind a locked door, whatever part of the prison you were in.