hello and welcome to the street crime uk youtube channel please don’t forget to like share comment and subscribe thank you for joining us today today we’re going to take an in-depth look into the history of the notorious nottingham city as the a453 carves its way between the floodplains on either side of kegworth and wilford leading towards the clifton estate the first clue that a visitor is about to enter the city with a rich history is the welcome song a robbing hood motive this is nottingham a city where for some the myths are interesting and inseparable from reality a city that feels like a village where everyone seems to know everyone else and the people are not slow to update each other on the latest gossip or fable thousands of tourists arrive each year to seek out the legend of robin hood a fable was born from writings from 600 years old and revolves around two characters the sheriff of nottingham and robin hood one cynical overbearing authoritarian figure whose aim it is to take the wealth from the rich buy violent means if necessary and distribute it to the poor nottingham itself dates back to the early saxon time in 600 a.d it fell under the control of a saxon chief known as snot whose peoples populated the ancient caves which still permeate the city and its lace market area today it quickly became known as nottingham the homestead of the people of snot in more recent years headline writers in london would revive the use of the s and labelled the gun plague city shotting them it evolved into a center first for the manufacture of religious artifacts by the 15th century and then by the time of the industrial revolution the river trent which run through the city was crucial to its development marking the divide between the northern and southern england it linked nottingham with the potteries to the west and the humber to the east it was on the trend navigable for some 117 miles that king canoe purportedly attempted to turn back the tides near ganbra in lincolnshire the textile industry also brought a lot of prosperity to nottingham the area’s lace making became internationally renowned and by 1831 the population swelled to 51 000 people but this rapid expansion also resulted in what was reputed to be the worst slums in the british empire outside of india and this in turn led to the riots in 1831 the first reform bill which sought to end some of the abuses and corruption by the electoral system by giving more people the right to vote was rejected by the house of lords and those living in poverty took up arms and burnt down the sheriff’s lair nottingham castle the castle was then owned by pompous an anti-reformist duke of newcastle whose surname still adorns the streets in the nearby park area of the city the castle bore the brunt of several days of rioting and it was another 40 years before it received a replacement roof from the mist of this angry disposed mass emerged a gang called rather inappropriately in the circumstances the nottingham lambs but they were anything but lamps originally the name was applied to early 19th century gang who fought on behalf of rival political masters the yellow wig lambs taking on their blue tory rivals eventually it came to apply to the ale swinging brutes who followed renowned bare knuckle fighter william thompson commonly known as ben dingo who became the champion of england in 1839 such was ben dingo’s reputation that sir arthur conan doyle penned and owed to him entitled pending sermon you didn’t know bending well that knocks me out who’s your board school teacher what’s he been about chock-a-block with fairy tales full of useless cram and you’ve never heard of bending the pride of nottingham bendigo became an icon to the poor of nottingham as he demolished opponents across the country he spent spare hours fishing by the trend on one occasion he rescued three people from drowning though he eventually turned to god preaching fire and brimstone in the streets he was also a terrible drinker and incorrigible brawler and frequently appeared before the court he eventually became a figure of fun taunted by small children bendigo died in 1880 age 69 after falling downstairs at his home in beeston his funeral possession one of the biggest ever seen in nottingham was a mile long with thousands lining the streets to pay tribute in bestwood park it’s a small wooden corpse known as bendigo’s ring where it is said he fought some of his matches and where his restless spirit lays in way ready to extract revenge upon the children who taunted him during his final years by the beginning of the 20th century the city population was 240 000 and nottingham was a major city in commerce the majestic council house which looks over the market square known as slab square was completed in 1928 causing the famous goose fare to be moved to its present location on forest fields but by the second world war profits to be made from the laced industry were dwindling and the city began to rely on other industries for employment such as rally bike and players cigarettes factory which had been built into the national chain by jesse the son of the founder john boot some of the worst crimes in the city were not of human nature the demolition of the black boy hotel in long road in the late 1960s was one such misdemeanor it was a hugely popular watering hole crafted by the renowned victorian architect watson father gill and incorporating a huge tower the bavarian style wooden balcony one of the most striking landmarks in the city center it made way for a dual shot front eventually occupied by littlewoods by 1969 some of nottingham’s older homes had been deemed unfit for habitation by the loking housing authority nottingham was no different to many other urban centers in the post-war period it was built upon a strong effort work hard and play hard the factories boomed as did the hard-drinking image of the city portrayed in alan stilto’s groundbreaking 1958 novel saturday night and sunday morning later filmed starring alan it was the first in a series of kitchen sink cinema dramas focusing on the boozing street fighting womanizing white working-class male and his view of the world it encapsulated his schizophrenic existence the saturday night alcoholic haze contrasting with the sobriety of sunday which preceded the star of the working week the no frills hero of the story arthur seton is a man who coined the phrase for his and the subsequent generation don’t let the bastards grind you down set in the terrorist victorian little palaces of radford where much of the later movie was filmed it captures his life working at the local rally factory where just as at the nearby player’s cigarette factory thousands of nottingham workers would clock in and out during the week and await the weekend it doffed the cap to the country of d.h lawrence’s miner but now instead of working at the coalface he was sweating over a lave to bring home his wages it was also the age of the angry young man and the whiff of revolt was in the air but what mr stilto nottingham and the rest of the country had missed was that this would realize itself initially in antagonism from within the indigenous white working-class community towards the communities who had migrated to britain in the post-war period after the second world war many communities within the british commonwealth and europe which had been alloys in the war effort saw in britain a chance to throw off the shackles of the old world and embrace a new life in a new country the mother country the loss of a large proportion of the young white population of working age during the war created a demand for labour among those who took up the challenge and sailed from jamaica were two brothers vincent and wellesley robinson in nottingham and further afield they would eventually become known by their respective nicknames pg man and doggy man the story of their extended family is a mochainism of some of the roots of social and crime problems besetting the afro-caribbean community in britain today by the late 1950s many afro-caribbean families had made the trip to britain but some caribbean men had already experienced the uk having been stationed as servicemen mainly airmen in the country during the war they found in britain a chance of prosperity which was unavailable back home on the 22nd of june 1948 the steam ship ss empire windrush docked in tilbury essex carrying nearly 500 people from jamaica and trinidad some of them ex-servicemen though it amounted to a mere trickle of migrant those who made the transatlantic voyage were pioneers setting in motion a myriad of social change in post-war britain steve mitchell a former serviceman and passenger on the windruff later described the alienation that he and other male afro-caribbeans encountered when they reached the british city people just took their chance he told radio journalist alan dean i suppose what was the biggest stumbling block to them was being refused accommodation in houses that had vacancies you could see notices in the windows they had vacancies and as soon as they ring the bell or not the door they would shut the door in their face this was the mother country and they expected it to be motherly to them however they were disappointed all i had was a bit of clothing nothing else i landed with five pounds no tools nothing else a couple of suits a few shirts no overcoat no nothing i wasn’t prepared for the cold weather i was given a little job picking shoveling to fortify myself for the winter to come so in that sense i was very lucky mr mitchell described another integration problem which would later lead to britain’s first major race riot black men meeting white women at dances there were a lot of white women who would willingly dance with you black fellas never had no problem getting white women it was the men who were making all the problems you’d go to dances and very few women would refuse to dance with you with britain being so ill prepared for integration it was this tension between the white working-class male portrayed in saturday night sunday morning and the new immigrants from the afro-caribbean which led on the 23rd of august 1958 outbreak of sustained violence in the saint anne’s area there were two different stories about what sparked the riots that night but both involved the perception that a black man should not be with a white woman there were two accounts said the late eric irons who became nottingham’s first black magistrate in 1962. one story was that a west indian was in the pub chatting up a white young lady and when she left the premises he was assaulted the other was that someone insulted a west indian man while out with his white girlfriend i think the police and everybody were shocked by the speed and the ferocity of the west indian response at 10 20 pm police received a 999 call from a pub in the saint anne’s wells road after a black man was severely beaten by several utes with his own walking stick hours later the city was recovering from the devastation caused by more than 1 000 young men mostly teddy boys and west indian males going on the rampage as running street battles continued throughout the night young men were bottled beaten and in several cases men mostly white males were stabbed the whole place was like a slaughterhouse said the nottingham evening post it was clearly an overstatement yet it captured the feeling of shock that the whole city felt the following weekend a larger crowd of four thousand gathered in the saint anne’s wilds road area but the afro-caribbean males stayed away more violence erupted as the white teddy boys turned on each other creating a turf war between the young gangs of saint and and those who dared to venture into the city from the balwell area as mike and trevor phillips point out in their illuminating book winrush the second outbreak of violence was much more significant at the time nearly all the commentators focused as they were on race missed the point which was that if there were no black people available on who to focus their rage the crowds were equally willing to fight each other in that sense it was apparent that the riots were as much about the feelings of exclusion and deprivation experienced by the wide section of the english population as they were about the presence of black migrants the attention that the disturbances claimed for the conditions in which the people lived was in itself a factor for calming the city it was also about young people defining themselves by the area into which they had been born or as young black males from the estates in saint anne’s order meadows would later describe it life in the ghetto by 1958 a belated post-war boom which had brought many afro-caribbean immigrants to britain was drawing to a close and cultural tension many west indians found themselves facing a closed door when applying for jobs in nottingham factories or even when buying a half of their favored style at a local pub on the other hand life for everyone in saint anne’s was tough with poor housing conditions for white and black neighbors alike as milton crossdale another nottingham black rights campaigner pointed out the riots led to change in public housing policy up to 1958 you had a number of people from the caribbean countries in nottingham mr crossdale said they had jobs but they had difficulty finding a place to live or they were in multiple occupations people from the caribbean were being shepherded into saint anne’s and the meadows you had people crowded into old saiyans most of them living in multiple occupations nottingham unlike other cities went on to knock down major estates derby didn’t knock down whole areas and rebuild them leicester didn’t do it either it had a significant effect on the redistribution of people in the city for me the most significant thing was how the employment market was being opened up people began to realize that there was a serious problem who would have thought there would have been riots in nottingham riots on their doorstep you can talk about prejudice but it doesn’t affect them in their front rooms it doesn’t matter at all you can just get away from it it’s like the famine in africa it’s only when it’s on a tv picture and you’re eating a meal in your front room that it actually affects you a week after the riots in nottingham the notting hill area of west london erupted in an orgy of violence which made headlines around the world entered his cauldron of racism and lack of opportunity dropped vincent and wellesley robinson when they arrived in nottingham from their homes in spanish town jamaica in the early 1960s the story has it that vincent was born on the day in 1938 that the governor of fiji made an official visit to jamaica and was so nicknamed fiji man by relatives which over the years became mispronounced as pg man vincent was around 20 when he arrived in nottingham whilst wellesley was a couple of years older before long any aspiration they held were dashed when it became apparent just how difficult it was to get a steady job if you were black every time they went to the factory gates with a vacancy sign on it they were turned away with the words job filled sorry lads they became worn down by the sheer repetition of rejections although vincent who was a dapper dresser managed to get a tiny part as an extra in the film saturday night and sunday morning he appeared on screen only briefly seen in the background in a scene involving albert finney near the city’s castle but such was his pride that he spent a week polishing his shoes for the path many of the new immigrants identified not with england which had held out a hand of false hope to them but with their jamaican homeland and they began to import a bit of caribbean sunshine into them dark days shabeens or illegal drinking and gambling houses began to spring up in nottingham and vincent and wellesley seen this as a way to provide for their growing family the distorted sound system which was always cranked up high enough to vibrate through the neighbors floorboards and there would be some rice and peas yams and curry goat and other tasty jamaican food and of course there would always be a bit of smoke cannabis was an essential to the jamaican soul of the 60s as was the music which boom from the sound system and from this the rude boy was born while most the drug taking white youth of nottingham were downing amphetamine for the most part taken from chemist shots which had been burgled and staying up all night to listen to the who and the rolling stone their jamaican counterpart were easing back into their chairs with a smoke of ganja playing cards or dominoes and listening to the scar of prince buster the blues of jimmy cliff and later the reggae of bob marley and the whalers prince busters hit big five in 1968 would almost certainly have been banned if the controllers of the nation’s radio airwaves understood the lyrics they also illuminated the basic instincts of the jamaican male which would cause a host of social problems in the later years right now i’m feeling irie want a big fat [ __ ] this december night today i smoke an ounce of weed tonight i’m gonna plant a seed in her wamp all right by the late 1960s nottinghamshire police had concluded that it was easier to bust jamaicans for cannabis than it was to bust white use for popping pills they only had to follow the pumping sounds coming from the shabeens and the smell of strong smoke wafting out the houses to know that they could make a quick bus the sound systems were a product of the ghettos of kingston and spanish town where djs would load up their trucks with a generator turntable and huge speakers and would then go on to set up impromptu street parties by the early 1960s jamaican mcs such as count machuki were pumping out music through the wardrobe side speakers capable of delivering 30 000 watts of sound pg man and doggy man were soon running regular blues nights at their homes in nottingham once they had a little money they invested in a sound system they named the v rocket v rocket would live with the sound system called saxon run by a birmingham crew and there would be many times in the 1980s and the 1990s when guns were let off into the ceilings of the shabeen the salute the djs from the two sound systems with cannabis readily available it was a safe bet that they would be busted sooner or later when they were it triggered a chain of events that would lead eventually straight to the front pages of the news of the world the country’s most lurid and popular sunday tabloid pg man was living in burnaby road near to what would become the saint and estate when things started to get hot pg man had already had a few encounters with the police he spent three months in prison in the early 1960s after he was caught of a small amount of cannabis doggy man who lived nearby in alfred street north had also been busted for a small amount of cannabis which resulted in a hundred pound fine then when things started getting much worse pg man began working for the police after his last burst they had told him that he would be able to run his shabeen sao cannabis and stay out of prison if he started informing on his friends and family police raids started to occur on a regular basis and pg man’s friends and neighbors all told the same story drugs were being planted and they were nothing to do with them there were people like keith ansel mclean nicknamed p sun whose home in truman street was raided in september 1968 for a small amount of drugs pg man testified against him in court for the prosecution saying that he got the drugs from him and p’s son went to prison for 12 months in the end even doggy man was busted despite his daughter elaine claiming she had spotted police planting the drugs on top of the radio the courts did not believe he was an innocent man doggy man faced a three-year prison sentence and it became apparent to everyone that mattered that pg man was in fact working for the police by now he had acquired another nickname judas yet he was sick with remorse that he had sold his own brother down the river to save his own skin and vowed to get his revenge on the cops who he fell had forced him into a corner doggy man went to london to see if he could get a gun and planned to come back up and use it on the officers who he felt had used him but one of pg man’s friends adam foster had a better idea he knew a news of the world journalists simon regan and was sure that he could expose what had been going on and hurt the police officers on pg man’s back without resorting to violence mr regan listened to pg man’s woes as he detailed the troubles of a black man living in a white man’s world then he set pg man up with several job interviews in the nottingham area including at the player’s cigarette factory he then watched how each job vacancy disappeared once pg man showed his face for an interview altogether he was turned away for more than 40 vacancies next mr regan moved on to pg manstory of planting drugs on his neighbors for the police by the summer of 1969 mr regan had a wealth of covert tapes which he believed were enough to show that certain police officers had acted corruptly they apparently included pg man going into the police station being given cannabis and then arranging to call the police once he had been able to plant it in august 1969 the country’s biggest selling newspaper ran a story under the headline police plot to plant drugs it detailed in full pg man’s allegations and caused a sensation the tapes landed on the desk of the then home secretary james callaghan who would help draft the race relations act of 1968 mr callahan wasted no time in appointing a senior officer from manchester and salford constabulary to investigate the officers listened to the tape interviewed pg man and many of his friends and associates and believed what they had to tell the inquiry sent shockwaves through the corridors of nottinghamshire police and three officers were charged of conspiring to pervert the course of justice pg man was a cocker hoop as were his relatives and friends the officers went on trial at nottingham crown court in october 1970 opening the prosecution case cyril salman qc told the jury that they were about to hear a saga of corruption which revolved around jamaican immigrants being bullied coerced and intimidated by the police officers into giving false evidence against family and friends police officers he said had threatened to arrest and prosecute jamaican males who refused to become informal and had turned a blind eye to illegal activities of others involved in prostitution and shabeens on the basis that they had became informants and had given drugs to others to plant on their targets however the jewelry was to be denied access to the damaging tapes made by simon regan and pjima the judge mr justice kilner brown decided that there was no proof that the voices on the tapes belonged to the police officers and had ruled them inadmissible the jury then heard witness after witness describe how police had coerced them into informing after their homes were raided by officers who were looking for drugs they included victor speck brown who was arrested over none payment of a fine and sent to prison for 10 weeks he told the court a voice squad officer said to me tell us about anyone who’s selling cannabis and you will walk otherwise you’re going to prison seymour oliver said the police had planted cannabis on him as well then it was 32 year old pg manster he described how he had been forced to write a statement implicating arsenal p’s son mclean into dealing cannabis resulting in mr mclean being jailed for a year he said the police had told him vincent you can continue to deal cannabis and run your sabine if you inform on other jamaican the witnesses went on and on all telling broadly the same story but sometimes there were inconsistencies in their testimony which were then pounced on by the defense barristers an all-white jury found it difficult to follow the jamaican accent after only 38 of the planned 87 witnesses for prosecution had been called to give evidence they sent a confidential note to the judge it was the 33rd day of the trial and the judge ruminated for a while on what the jury had said in the note finally justice kilner brown announced i agree with you members of the jury it seems to me it would be an absolute waste of time to produce any more witnesses who may be regarded as rubbish by you the trial was abandoned and on monday the 23rd of november 1970 all the officers were cleared the judge thanked the jury and commended them saying that the trial had at the very least proved that the coloured community had nothing to fear from the british jury nottinghamshire police authority was quick to tell the local paper what a travesty it had been for any police officers had had to face any charges it is regrettable that the force has been deprived of these officers for so long on the evidence of people who have never done a day’s work since they came to this country pg man his friends and relatives had been publicly humiliated and through successive generations the resentment that built up around the case would prevent many in their community from trusting authority in any meaningful way again some of the young robinsons were more convinced than ever that the way to live their lives was to be a bad black man as epitomized by jimmy cliff in the cool 1972 film the harder they come the story of a jamaican anti-hero who shoots a police officer i’d rather be a free man in my grave than living as a puppet or a slave sancliff in the title track by the late 1970s and the early 1980s some of pg mans and doggy man’s numerous offspring were caught up in crime pg man alone fathered 17 children while by the time doggy man’s eldest daughter elaine had reached 20 she had five children all by different fathers one of doggy man’s sons had fathered seven children by five different women by the late 1980s it seemed to the women that was how young jamaican males behaved they spread their seed and they abandoned you the british scar revival of the late 1970s spearheaded boy jerry damer’s two-tone record late and the popular reggae sounds of the rastafarian movement gave doggy man’s v-rocket sound system a boost and some welcome earning but some of the families seem to see criminality as their only route to financial survival the young rude boys of the second generation were of a much grittier character than their fathers pg man his peers had always been happy to deal cannabis and take in a bit of cash from running blues knots but they generally kept away from violence some had put a few white women onto the streets but they looked after them better than the glaswegian pimp from who they had taken over from the next generation though were carrying knives and even guns robbing people and trafficking prostitutes all over the country if you were in london and picked up a prostitute near paddington or king’s cross during the late 1980s there was a good chance that they came from nottingham and then crack cocaine burst into the ghetto by 1989 nottinghamshire police had began to see symptoms of this new cocaine derivative on the streets of radford saint anne’s and the meadows it wasn’t that they were arresting more people or busting the crack houses which had begun to spring up or that they were making huge sieges of the drug it was the sinister breakdown of morality crack left an inevitable trail everywhere its users went prostitutes beaten black and blue by their cane carrying crack smoking pimps men willing to sell their own girlfriends on the streets to buy more crap and the girlfriends willing participants because they needed their crack point full too robbers who had previously drew the line at stealing a handbag from a pensioner now not only robbing them but beating them black and blue when there wasn’t enough money in the stolen purse to get a rock it was not just that this drug left the rude boys unable to pay their debts it was morally bankrupting sections of certain communities in nottingham bristol birmingham manchester and london in june 1989 the nottinghamshire drug squad made its first major seizure of crack roy scott then aged 36 a small town dealer from denman gardens in radford was stopped in the street with more than 120 rocks after a tip-off each rock of crack from which he got about five smokes was then selling at 25 to 30 pounds mr scott was jailed for seven years it was the largest single seizure of crack cocaine in the country that year and it came straight off the street crack didn’t hang around in lockups for weeks like cocaine heroin speed ecstasy or cannabis where they had dealers waiting for the right moment to shift it at wholesale crack by its nature is consumed rapidly by its users and when it’s gone they crave more it was a high turnover trade mobile phones had also made dealing easy and the dealers distanced themselves from potential arrests further by corrupting the local youth at the bottom of this huge pyramid business promated with crack and heroin the 12 and 13 year olds who rode around saint anne’s on mountain bikes would take all the risks rocks of crack in pocket they would make the handovers and get paid a few pounds by the dealer career paths no longer meant anything to these teenagers they weren’t bothered if the police picked them up what could the police do they told officers that they had found the bag of drugs in the street as youngsters they aspired to be footballers or pop stars not doctors or police officers if they didn’t make it they knew they’d be able to make it as a drug dealer in a few years time then they could too had the bmw and some nice jewelry one of the principal reasons that crack cocaine was turning up with the same regularity and volume as in london was nottingham’s links to jamaica even before crack began to appear jamaican criminals on the run often from london lie low in nottingham with a distant relative or friend but now the violent gangsters known as yadis were appearing on the streets political turmoil in jamaica caused many to flee for the united states and the united kingdom many gravitated first to london then began moving to different cities in the country like nottingham they hung around the black and white calf on radford road and the marcus garvey center on lenten boulevard and swaggered around in heavy gold selling rocks the late night drinking hall in ilkeston road the tally ho later called lenton and then the drum it was popular with some of the black homeboys but even they knew not to push it when the yadis were around they were all unaware that an undercover cop from london was also hanging around too having managed to convince everyone that he was a yadi the tally ho was seen as an ideal shot front from which people to pedal rock without the potential danger of bumping into rival posse members as what was happening frequently in london in addition they had a ready-made market as a tally ho was a favorable horn for white street girls who would sell their skinny bodies every night on the forest road of a few rocks of crack politically and socially jamaica was going through turrid times the peaceful movement of rastafarianism led by bob marley masked deep troubles corrupt politicians working for the two main political parties the people’s national party known as the pmp and the jamaican labour party the jlp were recruiting crack dealers from the ghettos of kingston and spanish town an alarming rate these politicians needed the fear of yadis brought to enforce their will and keep the lid on their own criminal activities this was complicated further by the fact that jamaica had become a stop-off point in the shipment of cocaine from south america to the united states someone on the island had discovered that if you boiled down the cocaine with some baking soda in a pan you could remove the impurities and create a hard rock which if smoked could take you to the moon but only for a brief few minutes young jamaican men soon didn’t care if smoking this stuff was like putting a gun to your head they were ready to sell their souls for the next hit it was just about the most addictive drug that the enforcement agencies had ever come across and pretty soon it was making its way to the uk and it would soon be taking a leading role in the most violent crimes in this country the three things you could be sure of if you had bumped into a yadi in the early 1990s whether they would have had a wad of cash on them some rocks of crap or access to them and most of all a firearm close to hand the first evidence of a wave of mayhem that crack would bring came in the quiet street in a wallington area of october 11 1991. ian bedwood a 28 year old homeboy has succumbed to the drug and the paranoia he had brought on made his tentpesterous relationship with his partner sophie robinson dougie mann’s granddaughter her mother was the eldest daughter of elaine with whom he had three children even worse still mr bedwood was involved in armed robberies in the city and had robbed some drug dealers of their cocaine he had armed himself fearing that they would come after him one tuesday after a round sophie left their house in whitby clothes for a few days to go down london leaving the children with him they rambled on about how some of the robinsons were mixing with yadi and mentioned a gunman from called eaton green known as leon who was selling crack around the housing estates of saint annes and radford like a candy store salesman mr bedwood became more and more distraught in the hours as the hours ticked by he lined up his three children and shot them through the head as they lay on the sofa he then sat beside them pulling the trigger of the cult 45 resting against his head the bodies were discovered on friday when neighbours worried that they hadn’t seen their children and had been unable to get an answer from the house called the police sophie arrived home the same day just as the police had made their grim discovery and ran down the street screaming hysterically two of the children had been killed by the same bullet one of the letters mr bedward left said see you in heaven because down here is hell detective peter cole who later became head of cid said the horrific scene was one of the worst he’s ever encountered in his police career it was really truly sad and shocking to see just how distressing we had the letters examined for intelligence purposes as some information was extracted which proved useful next it was pg man’s family who had tragedy knocking at their door some of his sons had formed the gang with friends from the saint anta state now known in ghetto terms as stans and they called themselves the playboy posse in the early 1990s they got into a war with the meadows posse who would also become known later as the waterfront gangs it was the beginning of black on black gang violence that was to blight the city intermittently over the next 15 years at the heart of it was a territorial drug business and in particular cocaine and its derivative crack a number of the robinson clan had succumbed to crack by the early 1990s and had turned to crime to pay for their drugs some of the robinson girls took to street robbery and prostitution as a means to buy their next rock organizing gangs of shoplifters who would fleece design aware from the city’s fashion houses or carry out street robberies the rude boys of the 1980s with their neat clothes and flash cars who had earned themselves a significant living off the street gills and weed they traded in the crack had created a major economy in its own right as the consumption of those little brown rocks spread like a cancer through the getter one of doggy man’s son eaton bubsy robinson went to prison for six years for robbing women on the street to fund his crack habit 23 years after tasting his first crack point bubsy was still at it in 2008 he pleaded guilty to shot lifting from gap and mad house closed door to buy crack cocaine another son had been lifted by the police for attempted murder after violence erupted in the black club where two birmingham-based dealers had stolen crack from one of the robinsons dealers against this backdrop the men were still able to maintain some celibates of togetherness an organization through memberships of posses these small tight-knit groups gave those living in the ghetto of saitans and meadows a sense of meaning an order among all the chaos that surrounded them they knew what constituted their patch and who to be wary of and the playboy posse knew they had to be on the lookout for the posse from the meadow no one knows quite how it all started but in the early 1990s gang life within saint anne’s and the meadows estates was flourishing one of the major flashpoints between the gangs which acted as a catalyst for the war was ignited when some of the playboy posse were ambushed by one of pg man’s sons and slashed and had needed 60 stitches four weeks later the playboy posse took retribution and attacked five members of the meadow gang as they came out of a club leaving one with his school fractured in two places then the rape of a 14 year old girl against three of the playboy posse more violence then followed finally on the 1st of august 1993 pg man’s 21 year old son lloyd who had taken to carrying a machete for self-defense got into a dispute with some of the meadows gang one of lloyd’s friends had stolen a bike from a youngster and the meadows crew were not happy about it pg man’s family had gathered at his house to celebrate the birth of his latest grandson and after a while lloyd and his brother daston aged 19 went off to a nearby afro-caribbean center near hunger hill road just after midnight the pair were about to leave the club when they were confronted by around 15 youths looking for a fight dastan went to raise his father from bed but before bg man could intervene the meadows gang had attacked lloyd striking him so hard of a baseball bat that the force almost split his head in two he died three days later in hospital pg man was a broken man from that day on i saw a boy holding a baseball bat walk behind the crowd come up behind lloyd and whack him on the head he later told nottingham evening post as he collapsed to the ground i fell to my knees and i put my hands on my head from that lick i knew he is dead because it went right through me i could still hear the crack of the baseball bat against my boy’s head i was broken down bad by lloyd’s death i am not the same person no more the young man who struck the fatal blow gary mayer a 19 year old amateur boxing champion was jailed for life for the murder in 1994. three more gang members sean cope age 20 dean johnson who was 19 and simon robottom who was 20 received between three and six years for manslaughter [Music] you

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