Banged-up Drummer

This is the story I wrote at the time of my arrest to get it out of my head. It was driving me mad trying to make sense of it all.

"The eye-level letter-box-style window in my cell door slides opens with a metallic screech. “I’ll bring you some water, says the voice of the officer who took my finger prints. And hand prints. Drummers often use hand prints in their publicity material. Maybe they’re preparing a new logo and business card for me.

Arrested. I got arrested by the City Police on the way to the Global Trade Show. Twelve hours in jail. My car was seized and my master drum was broken. My home was searched and my laptops confiscated. I’m the drummer who got banged up. The one with the silver wings. This story begins on September the 1st 2021 and ends on November the 5th. Two months under investigation.

Two months in limbo.

Team building drumming. That’s what I’m known for. They call me the Rockstar Activator in the world of international corporate events. Why? Everything I learned from playing drums with Scritti Politti, Madness and David Bowie in the 80s, I now apply to current business challenges.

But I can’t do it handcuffed, especially if I’m in a cell. No

phone, no devices, no belt. Why?

Stuck teams get curious, stressed teams get creative and bored teams get engaged. That’s what it says on my website. It also says, according to the European President of HERTZ, “Tom is an interactive genius”.

I’m managed by the ‘Speaking Office’ agency, alongside Sir Sebastian Coe, Shappi Khorsandi and David Lammy. I’m paying ￡1000 a day for a stand at the ExCel Exhibition Centre near London City Airport. They’ve printed my eight foot high artwork ahead of time and are ready to run my promo movie on rotation beside the bar. It’s two grand out of my pocket and two days out of my schedule but it’s all looking good in terms of ROI.

At 8.45am on Guildford Street I’m driving past the Tate Modern Gallery in London thinking about my heady days at art school where we formed Scritti Politti. Art schools are magnets for creative people who haven’t yet found their place in the world. Mick Jones from The Clash, Lady Gaga, David Byrne from the Talking Heads, Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine. Silent artworks aren’t enough for us, we want sound too. Lights flashing and horns blaring. And here they are in my rear view

mirror, I’m being pulled over by a yellow and white police van. They jump out and do their, “Hand me the keys and step out of the car please driver” thing. Eight of them, milling around me on the pavement. But that’s not enough, they have to call in a special team who give my car a thorough check to see if it’s roadworthy. After twenty minutes they reluctantly admit that it is. Meanwhile the others are asking me, over and over, where I’m going and what I’m planning to do there. On my phone I show them the CONFEX 2021 website, my pre-paid parking spaces at

ExCel, my Rockstar Activator listing in the CONFEX schedule and my own Tom Morley website. They’re impressed, and begin to treat me like a star.

“Wood Beez. I love that song” says an older officer. “But John over there, he preferred your earlier stuff”. He points at an officer in a peaked cap who has arrived in a dark blue van. His uniform has gold trimming. He’s tucking into a puff-pastry Cornish pastie, “Hey John, over here. ‘Songs to Remember’. The drummer, it’s him”.

I reckon this will all be over in 15 minutes. I text ahead on FB Messenger to the CEOs of Delegate Wranglers, a 20,000 strong corporate conference networking group, whose stand I am sharing.

“Hi Diane and Neil, I’ve been detained by the police who, having seen the drums in my car, think I’m going to support Extinction Rebellion! 20 minutes from venue. Will be there ASAP. Crazy huh? Tom x”

Twelve hours later a screenshot of this message is shown to me by my two interviewing officers miles away in the other direction. It’s been cropped to say, “think I’m going to support Extinction Rebellion! 20 minutes from venue. Will be there ASAP. Crazy huh? Tom x”

But that cropped message isn’t from my phone, they’ve gone to my home in West London, let themselves in with my keys and

seized my studio laptop.

Let’s reel back a bit. The star treatment stops to when I arrive, handcuffed, at Charing Cross police station at 11am. I’m allowed one phone call which goes to my wife’s voicemail. I’m also allowed to speak to the solicitor they assign me on the yellow phone that’s clamped to the wall in the arrest hall. “My best advice is to get some sleep” she says. “It will take them several hours to establish a case against you. I’ll be here when you wake up though, so don’t worry. My name is Jess”.

But I’m not sleepy. In my cell I’m doing some Tai Chi, performing to the camera in the corner of the ceiling as if I’m filming a YouTube tutorial. Next I do some of Donna Eden’s energy exercises in a similar way, wondering if they got a discount on the paint they used to decorate this cell. Gloss purple, the colour of a ripe bruise. Easy to wipe down I suppose. At least it’s not red. As my imagination gets active I feel pretty lonely pretty quickly. My wife is working abroad and probably didn’t get that message. No one knows I’m here. It’s quite a thing to realise. No

one knows I’m here.

I’m dressed dead smart all in black with very shiny patent leather shoes and rockstar chrome wings on my jacket. I’m ready to make sales after all. But eventually, spirit broken, I just want to lie down on the rubber mattress. Without any natural light,and no devices to check on, I’m losing track of time. I reckon it’s around 5 o’clock, which means the first day of CONFEX will be winding down, but as my next cup of water arrives I find it’s 9 o’clock in the evening. The networking party is in full swing and I’m not there. Not drumming up business as planned. This day has most

definitely gone wrong. I cover myself with the stiff blue blanket that has all the comfort of a sheet of cardboard, shielding my eyes from the strip light with my jacket over my head. To anyone watching on a surveillance camera, I’ve given up.

Bang! The metal door swings open and two plain clothes

officers come sweeping in. “Interview Room Mister

Morley. Come on, now!”.

It’s just like a cop show on TV. Plain grey room, stack of recording equipment, sturdy table and chairs. “You’re allowed one call with your solicitor on this phone, we’ll wait outside”. The shorter one puts a mobile phone face up on the table and says, “Imran are you ready? Let’s get this done, it’s a busy night.”

Imran? I thought Jess was my solicitor. “She went home hours ago Mister Morley. She didn’t leave me any notes I’m afraid. Shall we start from the beginning?”

I give him the low down after which he says, “Just talk to the officers like you’ve spoken to me. You seem articulate enough. I’ll be listening in”.

It seems I’m under arrest for two things:

1) Conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

2) Having articles with intent to destroy or damage property.

“We have 15 photographs of the items in your car. I’m going to show you each one” says Karl, the more excitable one, dressed in a sweatshirt and trainers. They both have an air of young Dads who’ve been called away away from coaching their local five-a-side football team.

“Spray cans. You were going to spray Extinction Rebellion messages on the road with them, right?”

“No. I can show you every area on my car that those cans relate to".

"What about this sledge hammer that you were going to do criminal damage with?"

"I bought that in Framlingham, along with a fence post, to hold up my Mother-In-Law's garden trellis. She'd been quoted ￡150 to replace the whole thing so I thought it was worth investing ￡15 in a sledge hammer to prop the old one up, even if I only used it once. I discussed it with the guys in the hardware store. At first I selected a big rubber mallet but they laughed, saying it would just bounce off. Do check with them.”

“We will. The cage, padlocked on the roof. You were going to lock someone in it and block the road weren't you? Why are all the fittings glued up?”

"My previous drum van, which cost me ￡23,000, was torched by vandals a year ago. The car cost me ￡600 and the roof rack is worth ￡100, I glued up the fittings so the local teenagers couldn't nick it. They have a reputation, ask anyone in Isleworth".

"Why have you got a disco ball hanging in the cage?

“Hard times call for furious dancing. I believe we should all dance more."

“The drums. Why have you got four drums in the back, to whip up the XR crowd?”

“To demonstrate at the trade show how easy it is to bring people together with a beat”.

“Are you a supporter of Extinction Rebellion?”

“I’ll support any organisation that acknowledges the threat of climate change and campaigns for practical solutions within the law”.

“Are you a supporter of Extinction Rebellion? Yes or no?”

“In the areas where it matches the personal criteria I’ve already outlined, I can answer in the affirmative”.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes”.

“We see, from your music studio laptop, you’ve been looking up today’s action on the Extinction Rebellion website”, says the standing one with a forthright stare. No I haven’t. Have I slipped into a badly acted police drama?

I’ve had nothing at all to do with Extinction Rebellion since 2019, the year of the pink boat. They whip out the aforementioned screen grab in a choreographed move. “Explain this Mister Morley. It was found on your laptop alongside the Extinction Rebellion website detailing today’s street action in London.”

“think I’m going to support Extinction Rebellion! 20

minutes from venue. Will be there ASAP. Crazy huh? Tom

x”

Unfortunately they don’t quite see the humour of Diane, a CEO of The Delegate Wranglers, writing underneath in a reply, “Do we need to bail u out Tom?! xx”

"This Neil and Diane Thompson, I suppose you realise we'll be following up with them to see if they corroborate your story."

“Please do, but can you do it fast because the second day of CONFEX is tomorrow and I'm already a thousand pounds down.”

Oh yeah, and I was arrested for a third thing.

3) Use of a motor vehicle on a road without third party

insurance.

Let's reel back to this morning on Guildford Street. My arresting

officer is saying, “I’ve spoken to your insurance company and eventually they agreed with me that, as you are going to a prestigious business event, and you have over ￡1000 worth of drums with you in your car, you should have business insurance, not the leisure insurance you currently have, so I’m making a third arrest”.

“But you don’t believe I’m going to a business event. You think I’m going to block the road in support of Climate Justice.” I say. He furrows his brow. He’s very young.

Some older officers who are listening in turn away. I suspect they were driving down the street, spotted me and said to him, “Here’s an easy one for you son. We’ll pull him over and let’s see what you can do”.

But this is getting into the realm of fantasy. If it was just that one police stop-and-search ‘mistake’ I’d leave it there. A dinner party story. However, they keep my car in a pound for a month and

charge me ￡20 a day for holding it while I’m a ‘CUI’ - currently under investigation. When I’m finally allowed to collect it, the fee, more than I paid for the car, is mysteriously dropped to zero. “Someone has had a word,” says the cashier at the pound, raising his eyebrows. However, the drums and tools are gone and nobody onsite can tell me where. A month later I’m allowed to collect one of my laptops and my iPhone from Lambeth Police station. Several days after that I’m allowed to collect my ‘found’ drums from Charing Cross Police station. They’ve been in a police warehouse in Kent. The skin on the ￡700 Master Drum is split from side to side. I’m advised to claim insurance. I’m close to tears at this point. I love the sound of that drum, I can still hear

it.

The tools and my second laptop are returned to my home five days later by two plain clothes PCs, on November the 5th, over two months since my arrest. The laptop looks like it’s been dropped onto tarmac, one corner is seriously scraped. Later that day I receive an email saying the case has been dropped too. However, the official pdf document attached says, "Although there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction, a prosecution is not in the public interest. You should note that your name will be retained on police records against the offences shown above. Should any further evidence become

available in the future , you may be re-arrested."

So this isn’t a dinner party story any more. It’s an attack

on my career.

Visual art, fashion, film, dance, music and theatre are some the UK’s biggest exports. Based on the Arts Council England report commissioned from the Centre for Economic and Business Research in 2016, the arts and culture industry was responsible for:

? ￡21.2bn in direct turnover

? ￡10.8bn in Gross Value Added (GVA), with ￡8.6bn of this generated by the market segment of the industry and the remaining ￡2.2bn contributed by the non-market organisations

? 137,250 jobs

? ￡6.1bn in employee compensation.

I could go on...

“So, tell us more about these spray cans” says the taller one. “You say this is an ‘Art Car’. What does that mean?”

“If you look up ‘The Creative Mile’ in Brentford you’ll see my car is going to be featured in an art exhibition this coming Sunday the 3rd of September, until the 5th. It’s a collaboration between local businesses and local artists in West London, to present it like East London as an up and coming creative place to hang out. Art studios, cafes and new riverside apartments. You know the kind of thing. Gentrification”.

“The officer will take you back to your cell.” says the shorter one.

“I need to be at CONFEX at 9am tomorrow morning. When will I be released?”.

“The officer will take you back to your cell.” says the taller one.

It’s gone midnight, 12.30am on September the 2nd. and I’m on the Strand with my exhibition stand wheelie bag. I can’t call an UBER because they’re keeping my phone along with my laptop for further investigation. Luckily I have my business credit card with me and I get ￡100 out of the wall. I hand ￡20 to a street sleeper who looks a little worse for wear.

“Where did you come from?’ he says. “Look at you with

your silver wings. You appeared out of nowhere like an

angel!”

So, here’s the thing. I work with organisations in a way that re-connects them to their creativity. I believe if they’re connected to their hearts they’ll make better decisions for the world. But right now I need to connect to my own heart to answer this question. Should I lower my profile and keep out of trouble?

Do I carry on with my wings clipped?

Or should I spread my wings and fly higher?

Many of the officers I spoke to that day, and in the following months, are good people. We all know this could have been sorted on the side of the street in 15 minutes and I could have been on my exhibition stand at 9.29, ready to go at 9.30. But there was a police process that had to be followed. At least twenty officers were involved in my arrest for driving down the street, looking a bit different.

If the UK relies on the creative arts as a main export maybe that process needs to be reviewed. If there’s any wisdom in Whitehall I should be offered a police escort to CONFEX next year."

After a year of thinking about it I'm suing the police. This unlawful arrest has been costly to my business and my mental health. If you'd like to help me pay for my legal fees there is a CrowdJustice page here, completely legit. Thank you for reading this story. Tom

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/just-a-drummer/