'IT'S A WRAP' - 7/25 - 'Keep Right On'

Historical crime fiction book by Stephen Burrows & Michael Layton - Book Three of the ‘Made in Birmingham Series’. This book is a sequel to ‘Black Over Bill’s Mother’s – A Storm is Coming’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1916168043/

It’s 1976 in Birmingham - Aston Villa and Birmingham City football clubs are both in the First Division. They are old rivals, whose hooligan ‘football firms’ are locked in a vicious struggle for supremacy. Two criminal families, the ‘Murphy’s’ and the ‘Carters’, control the two firms, and they hate each other.

Corrupt police officer Rob Docker, from ‘Black Over Bill’s Mother’s, returns, and this time he wants revenge.

In the background, the National Front fight on the streets, racism is on the rise, and it’s the hottest summer in living memory.

In the 1970s, the ‘beautiful’ game was tarnished by the scourge of football hooliganism across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, as rival gangs fought each other for the accolade of being one of the ‘top firms’.

Saturday afternoons became the focus for some of those emboldened by alcohol to engage in mindless incidents of disorder and violence, whilst the younger ‘up and comers’ sought to establish their place in the pecking order. At the core of this activity were groups of men who inflicted pain and injury on a routine basis. For the most part they were hard, calculating, organised and brutal in their quest to both maintain ‘territory’ and to take it from others. Status and belonging were everything.

This historical crime fiction novel features two such groups of organised hooligans who operated in Birmingham.

In the days before ‘Apex’ and the ‘Zulu Warriors’, Mike Carter ran a team of hooligans with affiliations to Birmingham City Football Club. His archenemy is Colin Murphy who leads a like-minded group affiliated to Aston Villa Football Club.

Their stories are told against the backcloth of the 1975/76 football season, with factual accounts of many of the games, when the names of stars such as Trevor Francis and Andy Gray were revered by the supporters.

Battling the violence is a third tribe – the police – and Detective Inspector Rob Docker makes a return from ‘Black Over Bill’s Mothers’ to use every means possible, whether lawful or otherwise, to destroy both groups, as the ever-increasing levels of violence lead to murder.

On the streets of Birmingham, another struggle is being played out as the National Front try to seize the hearts and minds of some of those whose first love was the ‘beautiful’ game.

Whilst hooligans commit what are routinely so-called ‘mindless acts’, the reality is that they live, breathe, think and feel pain and emotion just like another other ‘normal person’ does. Some of them even fall in love, and this story focuses upon the emotional awakening of a vicious thug, tamed by a pretty girl, as raw emotion clashes with raw violence.

‘Keep Right On’ is also a love story entwined with football hooliganism and has plenty of surprises along the way.

In the drought year of 1976 Birmingham City and Aston Villa football teams were both in the First Division and Britain’s Second City was a hotbed of passion for one club or the other.

‘Keep Right On’ is a historically accurate crime fiction novel set in this period when the two clubs were ‘blood rivals’ whose hooligan ‘football firms’ were locked in a vicious battle for supremacy.

The book recreates life in Birmingham in the mid-70s and lovingly describes some of the iconic locations that formed part of its rich history.

Extract One: One example of this is described in the following extract from the book which describes in detail a well-known nightspot, ‘The Locarno’ in Hurst Street:

‘The Locarno, just next to the Hippodrome Theatre, also had a very strict code on under-age drinking, as well as a requirement for males to wear a shirt and tie…….as invited friends and family gathered in the private (Bali Hai) party-room, surrounded by false palm trees and tropical wall murals.

Upon arrival Joy had entered through the front double doors, down four steps and into the reception area past the cloakroom, a hangover from the Locarno’s ballroom dancing past and the toilets. A short corridor and through double doors into the main dance hall, with its sprung floor, now occupied by disco dancing, not Salsas and Tangos.

The glitter balls were still there, casting a constellation of coloured lights as they span, and she suddenly realised that everything glowed white in the beams of several cleverly positioned UV lights.

Towards the entrance to the Bali Hai the resident band ‘Red Sun’ were on stage playing their cover versions. As she traversed the main room, they had struck up the new and fast-selling future number one, ‘You to Me Are Everything’ by the ‘Real Thing….’

Locals may well recall the following events detailed in the book:

On the 8th May 1976 a noisy vigil took place outside Winson Green Prison in Birmingham in support of race campaigner Robert Relf who had begun a hunger strike in his cell.

Relf had been jailed for contempt of court for ignoring a court order to remove the ‘For Sale’ sign outside his house in Cowdray Close, Leamington Spa. The sign read ‘For sale to an English family only’.

Just over a week later the media reported on the ‘Battle of Winson Green’ as fifty police officers were injured, several seriously, when race riots erupted.

In the worst scenes since the Black Country riots of 1962, rival demonstrators fought police outside Winson Green Prison over the jailing of Robert Relf.

Twelve officers were taken to Dudley Road Hospital and twenty-eight arrests made, with prisoners being taken to Handsworth, Ladywood, and Smethwick stations.

Police trying to prevent the Winson Green demonstration from turning ugly first faced hundreds of National Front supporters as more than one thousand Left-wing supporters approached the prison from the opposite direction.

The main battle was in Franklin Street and Foundry Road and police ranks bulged until a baton-charge by mounted police forced the mobs back.

As if the heat generated by violence was not enough, on 27th June 1976 the media reported that the Midlands were at melting point.

British heat records had been smashed the day before as the temperature hit 95 degrees in London, the highest temperature ever recorded. Birmingham hit 88.7 degrees, the hottest since 1886.

As temperatures soared thousands of people headed for the coast. Those not at work formed jams on the motorways as cars overheated, and the RAC and AA struggled to cope with breakdowns. The M5 jammed solid and there were queues to leave at the Weston and Minehead junctions. Weston police reported every parking space in the town taken.

On Saturday 9th October 1976 Villa Park and Birmingham city-centre suffered some of the worst scenes of football hooliganism witnessed in the West Midlands in what was ironically classed as a ‘friendly’ game between Glasgow Rangers and Aston Villa.

As the fictional characters in the book play their roles in the violence, excerpts from the book remind readers of life in the city-centre:

Extract Two: ‘One shop, Peter Dominic in Priory Ringway reported a roaring trade in drinks sales whilst other angry Birmingham shopkeepers fumed and cursed Aston Villa for arranging the game which was designed to fill a gap in the First Division schedule….

Eight buses were vandalised with windows smashed, and in one case a roof damaged as Carters firm engaged in running battles in Corporation Street.

One woman and her seventeen-year-old daughter had their hair pulled and milk showered over them by another mob in the Bull Ring.

Teddy’s the city-centre pub was cleared by police after one hundred and fifty fans started hurling glasses in a bar brawl…….’

Six years after the hottest summer on record the character Mike Carter found himself on the terraces of Maine Road, watching his beloved Birmingham City play Manchester City. The new Blues ‘firm’ on the block those days was ‘Apex’ but something happened that day which would change the history of Birmingham City’s hooligans forever.

From the terraces several Blues fans swept towards the home terraces intent on engaging with Manchester fans – shouts of ‘Zulu – Zulu’ were heard, their impact as fearsome as those heard during the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879, when around one hundred and fifty British and Colonial troops successfully defended the mission station at Rorke’s Drift on the Tugela River, Natal Province, South Africa against over four thousand native Zulu warriors.

Birmingham City’s ‘Zulu Warriors’ were born.

‘Keep Right On’ should prove of interest to Blues and Villa fans alike, and to those who like a big dose of Birmingham nostalgia. #birmingham #football #historical #crime #fiction #police #gangs #lovestory #BCFC #AVFC #bostinbooks