The Guv'nor Read Online Free PDF Page B

used it we’ll never know, but he was more than capable and it wouldn’t have been the first time. Mum pleaded with him to give Irwin another chance. So for her sake he didn’t use the razor, but told him to ‘Fuck off’ there and then or he’d, as Uncle Jim put it, ‘end up with a face like mine’.
    Now that was a threat because Uncle Jim’s face had so many knife and razor scars that it looked like a map of the Underground. Irwin got the message. He might have been the business when it came to knocking the bollocks out of little babies, but fronted up by a real man that gutless coward went to pieces and buggered off without arguing.
    Uncle Jimmy was a very tough man and in his day was the Guv’nor of Hoxton. He was what they called a ‘ten-man job’, because to bring him down you would have to go ten-handed or turn up with a shooter. I’ve got to say I’ve heard that said about myself and I’m proud to think I’ve inherited that from him. He was a very hard man – a tearaway. He was in one of the gangs that worked the horse racing circuits, running protection. He used to mind the bookies and the number one bookmaker in that area at the time was a Jewish bloke called Lasky. Jimmy would mind all the other bookmakers on the street corners in that area. That was his block and he was a force to be reckoned with.
    I looked up to Jimmy when I was a young boy. I used to love seeing him because he always gave us money and in those days there wasn’t a lot about. He always had money. Jimmy was very powerful and menacing, but a loving man to all his family, and always dressed immaculately – white shirt, tie, the big hat, the Crombie overcoat, and the pinstriped suit – the typical Al Capone gangster. He was the main man. I remember when my father died, Jimmy went round all the pubs and had a collection for my mum. That was in 1953 and he raised a load of money and handed overevery penny. I think that probably helped to feed us until Irwin appeared on the scene. I don’t forget things like that, even though I was only five years old.
    My nan told me a story. She said her brother was down the Nile one day (a part of Hoxton named after Nile Street), when this geezer with a grudge crept up behind him and smashed him over the head with an iron railing. She thought it was one of the Birmingham mob from the Elephant and Castle, who he’d had an upset with. Anyway, Jim stayed on his feet and then knocked the bollocks out of the bloke before wrapping his white scarf round his head and walking to the hospital. When they saw the state of his head they called a priest, but Jim sent him packing, let them bandage him up, then discharged himself.
    He had a run-in with the Sabini gang which got him banged up for a spell. The Sabinis were a force to be reckoned with.
    They’d started in about 1910 and based themselves in the Yorkshire Grey, Clerkenwell. There wasn’t an English man amongst them so they were known as the Italian Mob. Most of their business was done at the racetracks, so when Jimmy wanted to sort out a grievance he fronted up thirty members of the Hoxton Mob and headed for Brighton Racecourse. The battle that followed earned Uncle Jim, as one of the ringleaders, five years in prison. That was in 1936, which in those days meant spending your time breaking rocks, not weight-lifting, watching TV or studying for a degree. I know he changed all the names, but when Graham Greene wrote Brighton Rock , a lot of it was based on what happened that day.
    But Jim wasn’t just a tough old villain; he looked after people. I’m often told of little incidents by people that knew him, like helping an old lady across the road, then slipping her a few quid, saying, ‘There you are, mother, treat yourself,’ or he would buy sweets for the local lads. Reg and Ron Kray would confirm that. Jim was in his local one day when an American film producer,