HERE COMES BABYLON SYSTEM
It’s dark and I’m running, running . . . like a school cross-country event, except this time it’s the middle of the night and there’ll be no cake and juice once it’s over. The air is crisp and the twigs crack beneath me as I pound across the woodland. On the boundaries of the trees, in the far distance, I can see pinpoints of light from the villages but here, deep in the foliage, it’s like a jungle. Bracken and brambles and badger sets and earth. Strange musty smells. Mustn’t slip or twist an ankle. Even if they realise I’m missing, they’ll never be able to catch me. I’m fleet of foot and good at hiding and no one is on my tail. I’m desperate to sleep, but I know if I do that I’ll get cold and stiff and won’t be able to run again so easily. I’ve got to keep moving, got to get away. Stay limber; stay on a straight line that’ll take me all the way to Baschurch, where I’ll get a bus that’ll deliver me back to Birmingham.
Mum won’t scold me and Pastor will take me in, even though he said no good would come of my ways, and it’s turned out he was right. ‘Make your bed and you lie in it,’ he said. But at least he didn’t come down hard with any preaching or talking about Jesus or sin. But I can’t just ‘lie in it’. I’m done with being banged up with all those kids going crazy. And all those rules and regulations. Babylon system.
I have to stop for a while to gather myself and rest, even though I won’t let myself sleep. I’ve got nothing to sleep on and no bag. All I’ve got is the clothes I’m wearing and some loose change. I wish I knew how to survive in the wild. Maybe I’d have learned that sort of stuff if I’d gone to Scouts instead of the stupid Boys’ Brigade with all their military marching. At least it’s dry. I can lean against a tree for a while and plan my next move.
My heartbeat gradually slows and thoughts about my life flow freely. Some of the tension of the day falls away a little bit, and I start going over what’s been happening. I shouldn’t have hit that disabled kid, the one who walks with the sticks. I’m usually his back-up. Everyone needs some back-up in that place. I like him. I’ve even been looking out for him. It’s survival of the fittest, though, and if you aren’t fit yourself, you’d better find someone who is.
I shouldn’t have lashed out at him. All he did was say hello and I jumped up and landed a flying kick on him that was so powerful it knocked him out. I really don’t know what came over me. I guess it was the visit from Mum. She’d yet again made that really long journey up here from Aston, with the locals staring at her as she changed buses. They’re not used to seeing black people in Shrewsbury, except when the police wagon delivers boys like me to Boreatton Park Approved School.
We’re all thrown in together. There’s tough street kids like me who have nimble fingers and who can be in and out of a burglary in two minutes, or who have lifted a purse here and there, but some are a few levels up from that – hardened criminals and kids who have killed their parents. But there’s plenty down the lower rungs – lads who have lost their families in car crashes or those no one seems to care about, and weaker ones with disabilities, or the kids who get preyed on and fiddled with.
Take the kid a couple of beds away from me. He’s always getting up in the middle of the night to leave the dorm. We know he’s going to see that pervert teacher and, one time, I felt I had to do something. I saw he was leaving as usual and I got in front of him, stood by the door and said, ‘Listen mate, it’s three o’ clock in the morning, you don’t have to go.’ And he said, ‘I’ve got to.’ He was trembling with fear, like he was hypnotised; he didn’t know how to stop it. I’ve tried to get him to tell me about it but he won’t.
There’s some good lads in there, even though it’s tough. I guess some of us black kids are more used to taking a stand than the white ones. No pervert teachers are gonna be putting their hands down our trousers – they’d get decked. I told this kid we’d take down the teacher responsible; land some licks of justice on him. We’d even go to court and defend him if it came to it. But still he goes to see him and it drives me crazy. I want to shake him out of his trance. If he doesn’t take a stand he’ll be worn down, ’cos that can happen really easily in a place like Boreatton Park.
It may be approved but it certainly isn’t a school. The first day we arrived they gave us a Maths and English test, but that was it. The authorities would say we’re there to be reformed or re-educated, but for us the purpose is survival. That’s all any of us thinks about. They impose a house system, like you get in school, with four houses, and every boy has to belong to one. But I don’t know any normal school with a padded cell in its basement. This is for the kids who lose it and throw a wobbler, explode or get themselves into a crazy state. The staff drag them down there until they go quiet, so they can’t hurt themselves or anybody else, or cause more problems and paperwork. But all the hurt is going on inside.
Me, I can handle it. I’m used to being self-sufficient. I’m healthy and can spot opportunities. But there’s never any peace or quiet. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. Fighting can break out over anything. One day, a few weeks back, there was a massive riot, blacks against whites. It really kicked off – tables turned over, plates smashed, heads jumped on, TVs kicked in. We were outnumbered but we always feel we’re stronger than the white kids. It was such a big deal that the staff couldn’t stop us, so they called the police. When they arrived things got more exciting; we all teamed up together to fight them. Suddenly the people we’d been kicking and punching became our allies and we let the cops have it. We were really fighting because of boredom, I think.
I am an excellent fighter; a slick kung fu stylist from watching so many Bruce Lee films. I’ve been to kung fu classes and I’m ace at kicking. Good luck if you’re trying to get close to me. When it comes to fists, though, Trevor is the king. Punches just bounce off him before he knocks you out. He’s hard. He was already in Boreatton when I arrived, so I’ve got back-up and no one messes.
So yeah, today Mum came to visit, bringing with her, among other things, a packet of my favourite Jamaica ginger biscuits. I ate the lot as she sat in front of me. The smell and taste of those biscuits, and watching my mum watching me, was too much like home, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t say anything but I decided to make my escape. I left through the back of the school and absconded into the forest. I ran and ran and ran and here I am, drifting in and out of sleep in the small hours, up against a tree. It’ll be light soon, ’cos it’s summer, then I’ll slip down into Baschurch and I’ll be free.
Who knows when I’ll next get something to eat. I’m really hungry. I burn calories fast with all my running and general activity. I’ve realised something: I won’t be able to blend in with the locals when I get to the village. I’ll stick out like a sore thumb. They’re bound to know I’m a fugitive from Boreatton. Still, I’m gonna take my chances.
As it happened, I didn’t make it to Baschurch that morning. It had been a long night, my feet were tired and damp from the morning dew, and I was ravenous. When I finally emerged onto a road, I turned to look at the surroundings and I saw Boreatton Park just a couple of hundred metres away from me. I thought I’d been going straight, but I’d been going round in a big circle! So I went back in time for breakfast and no one was any the wiser.
I suppose it was inevitable I’d come up against the punishment system. By this time, 1973, I’d been suspended from a number of schools for being a rudie, and I also got permanently expelled from a few others for being worse, although most of the time I was quite happy. The first school I got expelled from was Ward End Hall when I was about twelve. Until that fateful day, I’d been doing quite well there. Although lessons like History were still entrenched in teaching Victorian notions of empire and colonialism, one place where I didn’t feel so discouraged was on the sports field.
Of the many schools I attended, Ward End Hall was one of my favourites for that reason. Its sports facilities were excellent. It had a long-jump pit, we did rugby and basketball, and it was here that I really flourished as a 100 metres and 200 metres sprinter, as well as doing cross-country running for the first time. I was unbeatable. Not only did I represent the school but the whole region. Certificates of my victories hung on our walls at home, and I became an AAA (Amateur Athletics Association) champion. Running, and later, jogging, became part of my everyday routine from then on.
Then, one day, I was sitting in class minding my school business, when some of the other kids started passing round a porno mag. They were talking and quietly giggling, while I was trying to come to terms with some algebra. Being a boy the magazine eventually came to me, but I didn’t even get a chance to look at it before the teacher spotted me and shouted: ‘You, boy, what have you got there?’ She came over and took the offending publication from my hands and marched me out of the class to the headmistress.
The headmistress took one look at the magazine and said she would not tolerate it. That was it. I was expelled. As I was leaving the office, I turned back and said, ‘I’m being expelled for looking at a magazine I haven’t seen. Could I at least have a look at it so the punishment can fit the crime?’ She did the angry teacher shout and told me to get out of the school and never return.
I was glad to be out of school but I didn’t understand how damaging it could be and would be to my future. The last time I got expelled was from Canterbury Cross, or Broadway Comprehensive, as it had become. I had been given lots of warnings for fighting, misbehaving, truanting and not paying attention in class, but when they realised there was no hope for me they told me to go forever.
As I left the school a teacher told me I was a born failure and that within a short time I was going to be dead or doing a life sentence in prison. I know that sounds a bit harsh but I didn’t take it badly; a few people had said similar things to me and there was a small part of me that thought they could be right.
Not long after I was kicked out of Broadway Comprehensive, I was arrested again and this time it was for one robbery with fourteen others to be taken into consideration. The judge considered everything and then sent me to Boreatton Park. You were never actually sentenced to an approved school; your sentence was to be put in the care of the local authority. If the local authority was imaginative, you could end up in all kinds of interesting places but most of us were simply sent to approved school.
After my secret escape, Trevor and I were put on a course to learn about car mechanics. I did that for a while and found I had quite an aptitude for it. My most vivid memory of being at Boreatton Park isn’t the fights – it’s of me and Trevor stripping down a Ford Corsair engine and rebuilding it. I loved it, and although I never fancied myself as a car mechanic, I’m quite proud of being able to understand how cars work, and being able to fix them. When it was rebuilt it was used for pumping water rather than as a car engine but I didn’t care – I’d learned something that might come in useful.
Later on I apologised to the disabled kid I’d knocked out. I begged him for forgiveness, and told him I couldn’t explain what I’d done. He was so cool about it. Somebody had told him that I’d seen my mum earlier and wasn’t feeling good, and a couple of weeks later he told me that I’d saved him from much worse beatings, so he didn’t mind one kick getting through, especially from me!
Throughout my time there, Mum and Pastor never gave up on Trevor and me. They never abandoned us like some parents did to their kids. They knew how tough it was trying to survive on the streets, and they knew the police were corrupt and racist. I found out later the police said some terrible things to them. They’d sometimes take a couple of days before telling them we’d been arrested. She knew they should’ve done it immediately, as I was a minor, but there was no point complaining. The way the police were back then, it would only have made things worse.
Although approved school was a tough place, it wasn’t like you see in films; there wasn’t really heavy stuff going on all the time. Boredom was the worst thing, although we did have a record player, and by this time I was getting into a more righteous sound that would have a major influence on my life. I had this album by Big Youth, called Screaming Target, and I’d play it all the time. Some older teenagers in Handsworth had brought me into contact with a thoughtful and revolutionary black sound. Burning Spear had just released his first album and black youth in the UK, including me, were starting to grow dreadlocks and learn about Marcus Garvey and Africa. Black consciousness was rising.