The Beginning
‘We dropped into Ashby, which was strangely quiet…the first scoots including us parked up the top, the rest slipped into a long line right down the road. The Swad lads went into the pub for a beer, but as yet no Greasers were in residence. Like the rest of us younger ones, I felt both adrenalin and again a fear at what could happen, rumours had it that they carried knives and chains, which did nothing for morale. “We’ll be ok,” said a skinhead, there won’t be enough of them to touch this lot.” “HERE THEY COME LADS,” came a shout. Silence reigned, and all eyes watched as a line of single headlights crept slowly and menacingly down the hill from Moira, and headed towards the town centre and us…’
I never intended to write a book depicting violence, but I think my stories will be of interest to a certain kind of people, this book is aimed at the many who were once, or still are in the British scooter scene. The story doesn’t begin in 1979 but well before that, long before I knew what a Mod was.
I am now 41 years old and often reflect on the turbulent lifestyle a lot of my generation grew up in, the sixties and seventies, like a lot of past eras, were at times and in certain places very rough and ready, compared to now in the new millennium. I am not saying that there aren’t still places where aggression reigns, but in those past eras it all seemed the norm. I grew up as an only child, I had a stepsister but she left home when I was still quite young so you would have thought I would become an instant softy, that was never to be, little did I know it but my attitude to life (which isn’t a bad one) would never have allowed that, nor would my parents. Dad was a serviceman and, like many, answered the call to fight for his country, like most men and women of his generation. He served with the Royal Navy in many theatres of war and at the end of it he was demobbed and sent back home where he worked hard to bring us up, until finishing with ill health in 1977. Due to his job as a brewery worker I seldom saw him for long especially if he was on the wrong shift. My parents brought me up firmly but they also gave me a lot of freedom, this I needed to make my first friends to compensate for the lack of close relatives in our small family.
In the late 60’s I started school at Short Street Infants in Stapenhill, then a small community across the River Trent from Burton-upon-Trent. Within three days I had my first fight with a little bully over a cloak peg, the two of us were marched in front of our headmistress, Mrs Wright, who went on to tear a strip off the two tots who stood misty eyed in front of her. Soon after, the former bully and I became good friends.
As the years slowly progressed, like most boys of my age I was involved in one or two little skirmishes, you know the sort; clashes of personalities, opportunist bullying etc etc. The freedom I was given was, I was always being told, because I was a boy and would have to learn to stand up for myself. My sister never had that sort of freedom, for obvious reasons. I could see that generation’s mentality regarding that subject but we have all learned now that boys can be in danger as well as girls, certain evil people out there wouldn’t give a monkey’s who it was. Still, we also have some of their values, we let our eldest son do more than his younger sister but there is a limit to where and how far he goes, although I am by far the more lenient between my wife and myself, and push for him to go out a little later or slightly farther away. Am I right or wrong? You have to let them roam sometimes, as long as you know where they are and what time will they be back.
My only orders were from mum was, “Don’t go near the Cherry Orchard alone – there’s funny men down there.” We did go there in groups of maybe 6 or more to ride on the bobby’s button roundabout situated over the Ox-Hay, and were aware of old and middle aged men watching us, but we were kids and carried on playing, ignoring the long mac brigade which incidentally some did wear.
One summer evening I stood with mum awaiting dad’s arrival from work across the road from his bus stop, when a tall, lean boy two years senior to me at school passed by. With a cruel look, he hissed under his breath a nasty swear word ending in “Gregory.” Mum said, “What did he just say?” and, with a push, she said, “Go and ask him what he said.” Looking, I suppose, terrified I went after the lout, and quickly a pavement punch up began. The fact that he was bigger and older soon began to take effect, and each punch to my face produced those little lights we know as stars, then the iron-y smell of blood drifted up to my nasal senses. Quickly I had had enough…
“Mum help me,”
“Go on, you won’t always have me round you, give him one,”
I fought back but had little hope of beating him, we were both tiring and resorted to clutching like boxers, with his ebbing strength he shoved me away and with a last side punch blackened my eye. “I’ll have you tomorrow Gregory.” I walked back to mum expecting sympathy, but none came. “You’re an only child our Anthony, you have to learn to stick up for yourself.” Not knowing whether to laugh or cry I let the matter drop.
A similar incident occurred a few months later with, again, an older and fatter lad… again mum never intervened apart from a series of encouraging cries of “Go on our Anthony, hit him!” Again I lost, but my only-child attitude and a possible quiet life due to lack of hustle and bustle with older brothers began to ebb away.
I have for some time been toying with the idea of putting my stories down in a book, and as I write this on a damp, dreary November Sunday afternoon, I take pleasure in knowing that most of them are already written down and just need typing up, as for years I have written notes and kept diaries, and in my time as an 80’s Mod, I have well over 900 photos taken on scooter rallies and of course in my home town. Lastly I have read one or two books about violence-I am never far away from a World War 2 book-but I mean street violence, books written by the football fraternity, and most of them were hard, some of the things they did were most extreme, and our exploits fell well short of theirs thankfully. Also, the difference is I have never considered myself as hard, far from it: a go-in-to-help-your-mates, preserve-your-cause, maybe, but not hard. Last but not least, a Mod of the late 70’s and early 80’s was akin to a rabbit with many enemies of different kinds…our uniform simply attracted trouble.