Powder Wars

One night at Caesar’s Palace Paul had a chance meeting with a gangster called John Haase. Haase was an armed robber who led a notorious gang of raiders dubbed the Transit mob, a name derived from their trademark use of Ford Transit vans. The gang terrorised Britain in the ’70s and early ’80s, targeting post offices and security vans. It was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship.

PAUL: One night a man called John Haase was trying to get in Caesar’s. That night I met him for the first time, but he would go on to have a very big effect on my life over the next 20 years. I was in Caesar’s doing business with the owners. There were two lads on the door downstairs and I was sorting out a problem upstairs. The bell went, signalling trouble downstairs. Probably a crew of tweed-clad scallywags trying to blag a late one after a midweek away somewhere. But the owner and the other heavies upstairs wouldn’t go down, because of who this John Haase was and what he could do. Terrified, they asked me to sort it out.

When I got down there, there was a feller called Johnny Oates, one of the lads, with another smartly dressed mush, this John Haase, giving all sorts of abuse to the girl on the door till. My two lads on the door were stood off as though this feller in the suit was some kind of untouchable bad lad or something. He was a notorious shooter merchant who would think nothing of coming back and shooting up the place, so they says.

So I asks him what the problem is. He turns to me and tells me to fuck off. Here we go, I thought. Going to have to administer some sleeping tablets to this young fellow. But I notices he’s got a plaster-cast on his leg and think twice, seeing as it wouldn’t quite be cricket, notorious shooter merchant or not. Obviously, he’s a bit of a player so I just says to him: ‘Listen I don’t give a fuck who you are but you are going to have to leave now.’

It turns out that he’s supposed to be some kind of rooting-tooting armed robber or something. Hardcore and all that. About half an hour later there’s a knock on the door again. It’s Johnny Oates.

Only did it because Johny Oates’ dad was mates with my auld feller and that. I can see this Haase is fuming. This is a big humiliation for him, to be fair. He’s a big feller in the scheme of things, could just tell, knowmean, and this is pure doing his head in, but he says he’s sorry and they go in. He wasn’t in there long before he gets off again. On the way out, he gives it a big, mad ‘We’ll meet again’. Trying to be chilling and what have you with the big gangster veiled threat.

Five months later me and Mick Cairns are having a little drink in the Fairfield. It was a nice little boozer, which we used to have little meets, no hassle and that. No one went in there. No gangsters, no doormen, no nothing, just ordinary working fellers. By that time the busies were on our case badly. Putting surveillance on us at every opportunity, nicking us for little things. So the Fairfield was a little den for meets where no one knew where we were.

But one night Mick and I go in and it’s like a gangsters’ convention. It’s like a mini fucking Appalachian for the Scouse Mafia, knowmean? There’s the Hughsie brothers, a feller called Tommy Smith, this cockney gangster (who later turned out to be a big grass; who’d been put into them by the busies), a few other notorious scallies, and lo and behold this John Haase is there, too.

Straightaway me and Mick are looking at each other thinking: ‘What the fuck is this? These are going to bring it right ontop for us in here.’ Plus we didn’t like the cockney straightaway. Definitely, skewwiff him, la, knowmean? Had him sussed staightaway. We happened to be there ’cos we were planning a one-off, a bit of graft which we had come across, to tell you the truth. So we were using the Fairfield as our most secret and low-key HQ and that.

So we’re looking over at this crew aghast. Tommy Smith spies us, cutely, not looking too happy, puts his ciggie out, looks up through the swirls of smoke and bombs over. Shakes our hands and all that gangster carry on. I’d known Tommy for years. He was sound. Allday, he is, Tommy. He was a handsome bastard, Tommy, though he was always sullen and reserved. I liked that. He’d been through the mill over the years and I had time for him.

At an early age he was cut up, his tendons beneath the knees were severed. Later he was shot by the busies while attempting to rob a PO’ey [Post Office] with the Hughsies. But talk about front. He sued the busies and got compo, la, after the busies were forced to reveal that they had targeted him deliberately. Cheeky or what? He married into our family later on, to a girl called Deborah, who was Joan Mellor’s daughter. Dick the Stick became his driver.

I didn’t want them bringing waves down to our patch with the auld bill and that. It was that touchy with the busies, at the time, in all fairness. Get to hear about a little meeting involving several well-known community leaders and next minute they want to know what’s going on in the boozer. So they start watching it and next thing is we’re fucked. And I couldn’t be doing with that at the time. As well as my one-off with Mick, I was doing a few little warehouse robberies all to myself on the sly. Is right and that.

I was looking over at Haase. He was dressed in a suit talking to the cockney, who was also sporting a whistle. Haase is looking over at me. I didn’t like the look of the cockney at all. I knew that Haase’s head was wrecked because I knew all these so-called Top Boys. Not only that, they were suckholing me and all, too. He was gobsmacked that I knew them and that I did not give a shit about them. Little signals mean a lot. Underworld office politics and that.

When I first came in he probably thought he was intimidating me, being with these cronies and that, but it purely backfired. Trivial I know, but loaded with meaning if you know where I’m going? So on the way out he slides over, shakes my hand and apologises for the carry on at the nightclub and this little faux pas that was going on as well.

As I says, the Hughsies later discovered the cockney was a grass. I knew I was right and it justified me overreacting to make them fuck off from the boozer. It was a golden rule never to discuss work in front of strangers. Careless talk costs lives – ironically in this case his own. Needless to say, shortly after that it was discovered that he was a grass and the cockney was zapped. The brakes on his ‘motor’ were cut and the steering was ragged. Very professionally, mind you, so no one would know. Pure Princess Di-style, knowmean? After a night out, he went round a roundabout near a nightclub called the Coconut Grove and crashed. By the time the busies got to him, he was dead. It had to be done that way, made to look like an accident, so the busies didn’t get suspicious. After all, they’d put him onto his killers in the first place.

A few weeks later I was out with Joey Duvall and we bumped into Haase. He was bevvied and we got talking. He told me that he was constantly at war with the Ungis. That they were causing him untold and that. As I got to know him I began to like him. He was a shotgun merchant, an armed robber into post offices and security vans and that. Give him his due, he was a pro. Not one of these chancers. People were afraid of him. Physically he was nothing, but people were afraid of what he could do with the hardware.

At the time, I was getting more and more involved with my legitimate businesses. The tipper wagons were turning a profit. Basically, it was shite removing. Taking away rubbish from households and business and tipping it in the countryside. Of course, we fly-tipped as much as we could so we didn’t have to pay landfill and that. We tipped thousands of tonnes in the disused docks down the Southend. Cunts we were, but, in all fairness, we knew no better.

We had adverts in the Yellow Pages and all the papers. A good few wagons and a few lads working for us. Me and Mick both took £60 a day in drawings and left the rest in to expand the business. John Haase then asked me if he could invest in the business. He said the busies were on his case and he wanted to cover his money, so people wouldn’t question his illegal income. So he put some dough in the kitty. It was only £170 but it was just a token gesture. In between robbing post offices and that he’d turn up for work, as though to prove he was a regular blue-collar guy, but he’d wear a suit. Even though it was shite removing he’d wear an expensive suit and an ironed white shirt and that. He insisted on rubbing barrier cream on his hands to keep them smooth. Vain wasn’t in it. Mind you, he did graft. I’ll give him that.

Sometimes he’d disappear for weeks, on bits of work he was taking care of, knowmean? Or he’d been nicked. The business was sound for him as well for alibis and that. Obviously, now he was on the firm and that, I’d vouch for him when the busies came asking where he was on such-and-such a date, but one time a private detective I knew turned up and said: ‘I believe you’ve said Haase was working for you on the day such-and-such a warehouse was robbed. Just to let you know we’ve got him on camera doing the job. You’ll end up going inside yourself for perjury, if you are not careful.’

So I had to pass on that, knowmean? Meanwhile, his feud with the Ungis and Fitzys was hotting up good style. I’m in Caesar’s one night and I gets a call from Haase asking if this Fitzy lad was in.

Haase picked up his trail and followed. Then he jumped the lad in question and cut him up ruthlessly with a Stanley knife. He never used his fists. Haase repeatedly slashed him across the arse. It was all because this Fitzy lad had punched Haase’s bird, Vera, in Black George’s pub on Park Road. Then Haase went to prison on some charge. After he got out, I gave him £300 and told him that that was his stake in the business. There was no point him being involved in my legitimate businesses. He was too ontop and I was getting some big contracts at the time, which the likes of his reputation could jeopardise.

Six weeks after he was out I gets a visit from him. It was February 1980 and it was bitterly cold. I’d just won a big contract in Bootle to clean out this huge warehouse that’d just burnt down. Get paid, it was. Pure bundles. But it was murder working near the docks at that time of year, with the freezing winds and that coming in off’ve the Atlantic. So I was literally on site, in my overalls and that, taking care of business. Was enjoying being a well-off legitimate businessman, in all fairness. Meeting a different class of people. Straight-goers, other businessmen like my good self. Was feeling half-good about the achievements of my good self, in all fairness.

But one day John turns up with his main hombre Bernie Aldridge, who was Vera’s brother, and says that he needs me as back-up to help him sort out two Ungi brothers. Haase is fuming. He’s going off’ve his head saying how he’s going to kill the Ungis and that. Fair enough, I thought, it saves me the hassle.

Bernie was trying to calm him down a touch. He was sound, Bernie, in all fairness. I knew him from being in the jug with him. He robbed warehouses in the early days, like me. He was a likeable fella, who just liked getting drunk with the lads and that. But Haase was always treating Bernie badly. Bernie never once slighted or betrayed him, but behind his back Haase would always call him ‘a piece of shit’ and take him for a bit of a cunt. Order him around and that. I was a bit thingy about it, to be honest.

As far as the fight, I thought it was just gonna be a straightener with these Ungis. Just fists, iron bars and maybe the odd machete and that – no shooters, knowmean? So I grabs a couple of pickaxe hangles for good measure off’ve one of my wagons. But Haase is getting more and more angry. He then decides he wants to shoot everybody. He asks Johnny One Eye, who was working for me, to go and pick up a shooter from his house and to meet us in Kitchen Street, near the Dock Road.

I didn’t mind this in all fairness. Haase shooting these lads and all. It’d be one less headache for me and if he was pulling the trigger, then there’d be no financial comebacks for my good self or Billy. Sound as, in my book. The Ungis had it coming to them, to be fair.

Haase found out that Joey Ungi was at a mechanic’s garage owned by our old friend and top gobshite Tony Murray. When we gets there he and Johnny One Eye steam inside and started smashing the place up looking for them. John was dressed like he’d just walked out of Burton’s window as usual. Tweed jacket, black kecks and a nice white shirt. Of course, they’re ballied up and that.

It turns out that the Ungis had well fucked off by the time we got there. So Haase and One Eye were trying to scare Murray into telling them were they’d gone. First they smash up Murray’s car. Then Haase was pointing the shotgun at his head threatening to blow him away. As usual Johnny One Eye gets impatient with the talk, grabs the single shooter off’ve Haase and blows a hole in Murray. He was aiming to kneecap him from the back of the legs, IRA-style, but he just ended up shooting him in the back of the leg. Blood everywhere, la. Murray’s in bulk. Murray’s sidekick, a feller called Desmond Fox, also gets a thrashing. They smashed his kneecaps in with an iron bar because they were busy reloading. All the while I’m stood outside in my ovies with the pickaxe hangles to make sure no one gets in. Suddenly, Haase and Johnny One Eye run out and we get off. I’m not arsed, by the way. This kind of thing, shootings and that, happened all the time.

Haase’s bird was called Vera Aldridge, Bernie’s sister. She was a grafter, a shoplifter, whose full-time job was to basically rob nice suits for Haase. They had a kid together. She was a good woman, sound and that, but she had a drinking problem. Often, when Haase was in the jug, she’d drop the kid off at ours and disappear for days on end, in the clubs in town and that. That was her way of coping with the stress of the lifestyle. Was not arsed myself about her letting off steam, but I did worry about her and the bin lid, to be truthful, on occasion, with the firewater and all.

Anyways, we thought no more of this shooting in the garage. It was one of them. Allday. I went back to my clearing out contract in Bootle. Haase went back to planning his bank capers. Little did we know, la. The thing blew up out of all proportion. I mean, out of all fucking proportion. You’d have thought we’d shot the president by the way the papers were going on.

Murray was rushed to hospital and a surgeon battled to save his leg. As though the cunt was worth saving. The papers made it into a big soap opera as though he was hanging onto his life by a thread and that he was just a nice feller who’d come a cropper. They described him as a garage boss. The busies said it was a big, mad gangland attack which they were going to stamp out. The papers were making out it was a fucking massacre or something. Was even on Granada Reports and that with that cunt Tony Wilson making out Liverpool was full of savages and that. Cheeky twat, that Anthony H. Wilson.

The busies said they were determined to get the fellers who did it. Bit over the top, in all fairness, in my book. Three days later Haase and Bernie get nicked and charged with attempted murder on Murray and GBH on Foxy. They were sent to Risley Remand Centre. They are looking at a total stretch, in all fairness. Not that Haase was arsed. He was totally unfazed by doing bird. But we felt that John was being hard done by. So we started plotting and scheming how to make this go away.

The most obvious solution was to sit down with the Ungi’s and get Murray paid not to turn up in court. I could have straightened it out myself without any money changing hands. They owed me one for the other business. But it wasn’t my problem – I never liked being in debt to anyone, especially for someone else’s devilment. Going cap in hand to them would start a chain-reaction of doing each other favours. Not today, I thought. So I didn’t mention it. In the end, Billy Grimwood got it sorted.

Billy summoned Murray to a meeting. Murray goes out of respect and all that carry on. Billy points at his leg, which is in bandages and plaster-cast and all that, and says if he turns up in court his whole body will need a fucking plaster-cast, knowmean? Plain as. Murray rolls over and tells him he ain’t prepared to point the finger. Billy sweetened the poison by promising to do him a little favour he was asking about.

On the day of the court hearing in July Murray went missing, of course. The papers ran a story begging him to come forward and give evidence. They even had the prosecution barrister pleading with him in court to come back, saying that his leg would fall off within seven days if he didn’t, as it had a big mad infection. Then they said he had peritonitis, which would kill him if he didn’t get to a doctor fast, but Billy had made sure that he was well out of the frame. On the lam he was and not coming back until the case well and truly disappeared. The court said that if Murray didn’t turn up within seven days then they’d discharge John and Bernie.

The busies are furious. They’re going round the city turning people over and putting the heat on people to try and find Murray. They’re saying that Haase had had him kidnapped not to turn up or that Murray was a lamist because Billy Grimwood was putting the scares on him. The bongos were in overdrive.

With this in mind, so as not to bring it ontop for Haase, Murray is wheeled out of hiding and told to give himself up to the busies the next day. He goes to his solicitor and told them that he was defo going in the box before the seven-day court extension expired. The busies are made-up now. Making sure he doesn’t leave their side and that and rubbing their hands saying that it’s a definite ten for John.

But on the day of the court Murray goes and has a freak accident, doesn’t he? Can you believe that shit? Yes I can. Why? Because it was all done on the instructions of Billy. The car crash happened at dawn (no witnesses) as Murray was on the way to court. Unlucky or what? But instead of going into the box, he’s rushed to ozzie with his shot-up legs even more mangled. Pumped full of drugs by the docs. Result: he’s in no fit state physically or mentally to give evidence in a court of law. Get paid. Game over.

Don’t know whether Murray knew he was going to be a crash-test dummy, but the night before the accident I was told to keep tabs on him as he went around town on the piss. He came into the Lucky Club. Me and Mick Cairns followed him in there. We kept an eye on him from the next room until he got off home.

When the busies are told in court that Murray won’t be turning up they are totally sinkered by this. The papers call it a drama. The busies bomb down to the hospital and virtually try and drag him from his bed to court. But the docs are like that, telling them to fuck off dragging him back in, saying he’s a fucking sick fella and how dare they and that. In the end, they have to leave it. In a last-ditch attempt to keep Haase behind bars, the most senior busies in the city pleaded with the court not to drop the case, but they’re told no way, the case is discharged. Haase and Bernie walk.

Haase was getting a reputation as someone who could beat cases. After the Murray shooting, the Ungis were more low-key and let their heavies do the dirty work. One of them, a big feller called Eddie Palmer, used to come in Caesar’s. In fairness, he was a bit of goer, a big feller with a menacing air about him. Evil, he was, to be truthful. Mind you, I never got no trouble off’ve him. When he came in, it was one of them: ‘I know who you are. I know who you run with and I don’t give two fucks. Give me behaviour and there’ll be untold, knowmean? End of.’

A short while later Palmer was stabbed to death in a bar-room brawl. All the gangland caper – the stabbings and the shootings, the tie-ups, etc. weren’t always bad for business, to be fair. In fact, you could turn it to your advantage if you wanted, to make a raise. What it did was make my good self totally indispensable to likes of the fellers who owned the clubs. All this random savagery put the shits up them good style and they needed me to protect them from it. Hence the protection rackets. But it’s a bit more subtle than that, in all fairness.

It’s more like what politicians use to start a war. It’s a phoney pretext. The fear factor. I used every little battle and threat to increase my influence on the club, to run the place but without actually taking over it. No way I wanted the hassle of managing a gaff like that, but I was interested in maximising the dough I could squeeze out of there. Anyways, there was no way someone like me could get a licence for a place like that. Caesar’s was turning into a goldmine and I was makin’ sure that I continued to make good bunce out of it.

One such incident happened in 1982. The management had brought in a feller called Dennis Kelly as a doorman. But one night he flew off’ve the hangle and murdered one of the punters, a newsagent called Billy Osu. Billy was a bit of a bully, but all right, knowmean? It brought a lot of heat on the club. The police launched a massive manhunt. An incident like that could get you shutdown, no back answers.

Only a few months before, the owner, a feller called David Tonner, had asked the busies whether he could turn Caesar’s into a pub and change the licence and that. This was to cool the aggro down a bit by deterring the late-night gangster crowd. But the busies fucked him off because they wanted to keep track of comings and goings which the signing-in process did.

Dennis had some beef with this Osu. Literally, it was over some throwaway banter on the door and that. Osu had insulted Kelly or looked at him bad, but even that could get you killed in the club. That’s how easy it was for a guy to get whacked. Everyone was getting killed for no reason. Kelly and his mate Austin McCormick go looking for him. They drive down to a bar in Chinatown called the Kowloon. They hit him with a hammer and a bottle and Osu was stabbed three and a half inches into his heart. Osu didn’t even know he was dying because these types of fights were normal. He jumped in a cab to go home but the driver took him to A & E instead. He died there.

It would have been worse if Dennis had killed him inside Caesar’s. Luckily for us he had done the deed in the Kowloon. Kelly got life and McCormick went on the run for two years, where he survived dealing drugs under false names. He was eventually caught in London. The owners thought that they might lose the club over this caper, but they asked me to step in and sort it out. Make sure there was no comebacks. Take a bigger role running the place. Of course, I did. I was also taking over the doors on a lot of pubs as well. Any excuse would do.

Me wife Chrissy got a little job in a pub to get her out of indoors. It was a rough pub full of seriously heavyweight villains. It already had a door team. The manager was up the wall trying to keep an eye on these villains, who were always running amok, as well as his staff. One Sunday when I was minding the kids she come back, crying her eyes out saying that the head barman had called her a robber and all that carry on and sacked her. So I walked into the pub and this fat cunt was behind the bar and I said to him: ‘There is only one robber in my house and that’s me. Don’t accuse my wife of having the till off or I’ll blow your pub up.’

All of these supposedly big-time villains who were there didn’t like that I walked into their gaff and shouted the odds. I could have done them all in there and then and smashed the pub up, but to tell you the truth I couldn’t be arsed. It’s all a load of hassle. So I told the fat cunt to get the manager and I said to him: ‘If that fat cunt is here tonight I’m smashing the pub up.’

So that night I went in and the fat cunt wasn’t there and neither was their door team who were too terrified to turn up. The manager asked what I would have done if the fat cunt was still there. I said that if he was here I would have done him and then I would have smashed the pub up. The manager, who was pissed off that his own team had not protected him said: ‘Nice one. You can have the door.’

So I took over the security of the pub. All the villains used to come in, like even the old timers Poppy Hayes and all that, and they knew me and they all respected me. So from then on there was never any hassle. So I just used to pop in a couple of times a week, have a look behind the bar, get me tank and fuck off. I was getting paid from a lot of pubs like that.