Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror (13 page)

I was present on various occasions when Reggie and Ronnie had to administer their own swift form of discipline. There was a pub party one night in the Old Horns in Bethnal Green. Ronnie had just come back from a trip to New York where he had met some Mafia people and the boxer Rocky Graciano, who had given him a portrait. He was in good spirits; he had brought some American friends, the Kaufman brothers, back with him, and wanted to show them the real East End.

The firm was all present. David Bailey, the photographer, was there with his Roller parked outside. There was a Wakefield boxer called Johnny Guitar, and an Irish minstrel called Kevin O’Connor, as well as a couple of midgets whom Ronnie liked to have about. The Clarke Brothers were dancing on the stage.

I was watching their routine when all of a sudden I heard a bang, and I saw the Clarkes’ eyes widen in absolute horror. Something had happened behind me. As I turned around, I saw a fella fall backwards off a stool and start writhing around on the floor. Ronnie had done him in the eye with a glass. We grabbed this geezer and chucked him out of the pub. What he’d done was march up to Ronnie and stare him straight in the eye. That was a direct challenge. He knew full well who Ronnie Kray was, and Ronnie couldn’t let people do that to him.

Another night we went into this club in Knightsbridge, a little drinker. A man called Johnny Cardew was sitting in there, drunk as a sack. He came from a well-known family of brothers from the Angel.

He said to the waiter, ‘Get some drinks over to that table, including the fat one.’

That was intended to be a reference to Ronnie, who didn’t hear it. So we had a drink and left. We were in a car passing Marble Arch when one of Ronnie’s friends said, ‘Do you know what he said about you?’

‘What’s that?’ Ronnie said.

We turned the car round and drove back there. Ronnie told us to wait outside the door. He went in there on his own, called Cardew into the toilet and never said a word to him, just gave it to him right down the face.

Afterwards, obviously, there had to be a meet with Cardew’s brothers over it. Ronnie called them round and told them why Johnny got it. And they said, ‘We accept that what he did was out of order.’ And that was the end of it.

The Cardews used to come to the Carpenters Arms regularly after that to see the twins, and there Johnny would be, with a big, broad groove in his face. He was given a new nickname: Tramlines.

Ronnie said to me one day, ‘He deserved what he got, Tony’, and I understood. Someone was taking a liberty. If no one had taken action, he would have got away with it. But the twins had to be on top of things like that. It was very important.

A similarly insulting comment spelled trouble for two brothers called Billy and Jimmy Webb in another Old Horns drama. My Chris had known the Webbs during the late fifties, and we were all having a drink together when something was said to him. He walked over to Ronnie and said, ‘If it wasn’t for respect for you, Ron, I would have shot him,’ meaning one of the Webbs.

Chris then left, and the next day when I phoned the twins they asked to see me. Ronnie said, ‘What’s the trouble with Chris and these Webbs?’

‘I really don’t know,’ I replied.

The next night I walked round the corner from Blythe Street to the Old Horns and saw Ronnie, Reggie, my Nicky, Scotch Jack Dickson, Ian Barrie, Teddy Berry, Tommy Cowley, Sammy Lederman and the Webb brothers. Ronnie and the Webbs were on high stools at the bar, and Nicky was standing by them. At the other end of the pub was a man called Ivor, who was a sort of groupie around the villains. He said he knew the Richardsons. He came in with the Webbs but sat at a different side of the pub. He was always coming to me with little business deals that amounted to nothing. He really wanted to get in on the fringes of what was going on.

I walked over towards Reggie. He was talking to this Ivor, who was shitting himself. Reggie then turned to me and said, ‘When it goes, I’ll grab hold of him.’ I knew it was going to be heavy.

By the time I got back to Ronnie’s end of the bar, Ron had hit one of the Webb brothers in the face with a pint glass. He’d said to Ron, ‘I was in the nuthouse, same as you was.’ As soon as he said that, he was right off the stool. A couple of the boys were setting about the Webbs, and I turned round to see Reggie with a gun, telling Ivor, who was against the wall, ‘You move and you’re dead.’

The Webbs got a hiding and I dragged them both out of the pub and round into an alleyway. They were going to get it anyway because they’d upset Chris, and the twins would not let that pass. But the comment about the nuthouse sealed their fate. That was something you didn’t say to the Krays.

The hanger-on, Ivor, had insulted Reggie earlier in the evening by getting over-familiar, which was strictly not on. Reggie had asked me, ‘Do you know who this geezer is? He keeps asking questions.’

So it didn’t surprise me to see Reggie giving him a good whack
while, on the other side of the bar, Ronnie, Sammy Lederuran and my Nicky were kicking the hell out of the Webb brothers. Reggie had decided not to use the gun, but all of a sudden the knives came out – Albert Donaghue and Ronnie Hart wanted to cut Ivor to pieces. Ironically, they were two of the people who later stood in court pointing the finger at other members of the firm for violence.

Reggie stepped in when he saw the weapons: ‘That’s enough.’ He was capable of dealing with the situation himself, in his own way.

I’ve seen Reggie hit numerous people on the chin, but I’ve never, ever known him to fight with Ron. They argued a lot, just like any brothers, and you were always convinced that something was going to happen – but it never did. However, Reggie did come to blows with their brother Charlie at least once that I know of.

There was a party in Mansell Street, Bethnal Green, for the firm and the Kaufman brothers. One of the guests was the nephew of Billy Hill, a gangster who, with his partner Jack Spot, had controlled London in the early fifties. The nephew was a bit drunk, said something to Reggie, and Reggie pulled him up on it. The next minute Charlie and Reggie were arguing, and they disappeared outside to have a fist fight.

A girl, who was with one of the boys at the party, was standing nearby. She said to me, ‘Separate them.’

I said, ‘If you feel that strongly about it, separate them yourself.’ I knew better than to step in between two brothers. Charlie was indoors with a black eye for three or four days after that.

If you were called round to see the twins, you went – otherwise you would be visited personally. Because they could be so easily offended, if anybody ever did them wrong my advice to that person was always, ‘Straighten it up with them as quickly as possible. If not, don’t ever bump into them.’

Someone once said to me, ‘You don’t fight them, they fight you,’ and that was how it was.

Reggie was more accessible than Ronnie, more open to an discussion about problem situations. To upset Ronnie was to bring things down on your own head. He had his morals and he acted upon them as a matter of honour; I’ve always respected him for that. He saw things one way only. There was no in-between with Ronnie. If he had the needle, you knew it, and there was no reasoning with him. If he had the hump with someone who was in a crowd of a hundred people, he’d go in there and do what he had to do, regardless of the odds against him.

Ronnie was well known for his unpredictability, and could be spontaneous with his violence. You knew just to meet him that there was something different about him. He was a sociable man, a mixer, but at the same time he was aloof. He had an air which seemed to say, ‘Don’t approach me too closely’.

The stories about him were legion. It was said that he branded a man on the cheeks with a poker in a pub called the Grave Maurice. He may well have done, but I never saw it. And then there was his famous hitlist, the list of people he was going to do. Around our circles, they used to say that it was easy to get on it and very difficult to get off, but I never saw any list.

When they did their villainy, the twins didn’t hide it. It’s been written that when Ronnie killed George Cornell in the Blind Beggar in March 1966, he did it openly because he wanted everybody to know he was the murderer. Ronnie actually did it on the spur of the moment because he was angry. Same with Reggie and the McVitie murder. That moment of anger, and it was done.

I often advised people in our company to leave a club if I saw any danger signs. I’d say, ‘Don’t get invited to the private bar downstairs for a drink.’ Some of them went against my advice and took a drink and a beating. Even worse, of course, was to be invited to a party at
a private house. That was a serious business. As the saying went, ‘You go there, you walk through the door, and you’re carried out. Feet first.’ On the other hand, if you were invited round to the house in Vallance Road, or to Braithwaite House in Old Street, where Reg and Ron later lived with their parents, you knew you were safe. They never carried out any acts of violence at the family home.

You couldn’t fool the twins, couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes. They had a grapevine second to none. People reported everything back to them, usually to curry favour. I’d go somewhere one night, and I could bet my bottom dollar Reggie or Ronnie would say to me the next day, ‘We hear you were in such-and-such a place with so-and-so.’ They never directly asked you not to associate with certain people, but if they disapproved of somebody you were friendly with, they’d say, ‘We don’t particularly like him.’ And you got the message. You stood by their rules.

In my own personal experience, they were never bullies. On the contrary, the twins were scrupulously fair. There have been all sorts of rumours about them – that they took the flowers off the flower woman, that they had to have their whack out of every job that was done locally. It’s not true: it wasn’t in their nature to be like that. They didn’t go charging round the East End insisting on half of every load that fell off the back of a lorry, or percentages out of robberies committed by other firms. I never saw that happen. It wouldn’t have been political. It would have made enemies. They were all for making friends, because it was important that while they were feared, they were also respected.

It was all done very diplomatically. I never once heard them make a direct demand for money off anyone. They had a way of handling people tactfully, never with a violent attitude. They didn’t just march into places demanding 30 per cent of the takings. Most of the protection business they did came to them. They never had to ask for work. People wanted them because they were the best.

Club owners, publicans, restaurateurs and arcade proprietors were people who knew that their premises naturally attracted trouble, the wrong ‘uns, the ‘Friday night gangsters’. There were a lot of these people who worked five days a week for a wage and on Friday night would go out drinking with their mates and want to tear the place up, to wreck the business. The only way to stop that was to protect it with heavy people. The fact that the Krays were known to be involved in a business was enough to prevent any further problems. We did a lot of good in that way. It was in everybody’s interests to have the twins about. Publicans, club owners … they were guaranteed safety. They had no aggravation.

Once they got into the heavy game, the scene of involving known criminals in their businesses, obviously they had to pay for it. But it saved them money in the long run. It was a good investment. Because the East End was like the Wild West, and the twins’ word was law. They were the sheriff and the gunslinger rolled into one.

W
alk anywhere in the East End with the twins, and everybody knew ’em. ‘All right, Reg?’ ‘Lovely day, Ron.’ As much as they were feared in criminal circles, they were very well liked by the local population. The twins were genuinely pleasant and polite and, towards women, charming and respectful. When they moved to Braithwaite House towards the end of the sixties Ronnie used to come out every Sunday for a stroll, impeccably dressed as always, and walk up towards City Road and across into Ironmonger Road. Every person he passed would call out a greeting.

Much has been said and written about the so-called Robin Hood syndrome and, yes, it’s an accurate parallel. Although the Kray twins pursued a legitimate career in clubland, they earned much of their living from crime and violence, and most of what they got they gave away. They gave so much that people must have thought they were potty. They were very generous men, very charitable indeed.

They never forgot that they came from a working-class background, and they were determined to put as much back into the community as they could. A lot of people in the East End have reason to thank them. The twins handed out a huge amount of
money every Christmas. They looked after women whose husbands were in prison, and they insisted on certain ways of going about it. For moral reasons, you never knocked on the door of a woman whose old man was away. You put the money through the letterbox in an envelope, or you passed it to her via a third party. On one occasion I was driving along the road with Ronnie Kray when he pulled up, took off a brand-new Crombie overcoat and gave it to a dosser.

People have been suspicious in the past about the twins and their charity work, suggesting that it was designed to gain them a good image in the press. No. If they took up a cause, they genuinely got involved in it. When he was later questioned about it in the Old Bailey, Ronnie refused to blow his own trumpet. He said, ‘I don’t think I want to talk about that.’ They were very sincere with their charity. I’m not trying to paint them white, but if we’re going to talk about the truth of the Krays, it has to be said that there were good intentions as well as bad, kindness as well as villainy.

They raised a substantial sum for the Aberfan Disaster Fund, set up after a slag heap engulfed a Welsh village school and killed the children; and they kept the Hackney Road Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in funds and donations. They also did a lot of work amongst the old people in the East End and they supported all the boxing charities. Members of the organisations were invited to one of the twins’ clubs or pubs, where the money would be handed over. The twins never had a tanner of it.

Reggie and Ronnie were fascinating people, very moral men in many ways. They had a code of ethics which stated that you didn’t interfere with other men’s wives, although it did sometimes happen in our circles and it caused a lot of friction. You never stole off your own. Sex offenders, heroin dealers and ponces were not acceptable.

The twins also believed in a certain honour among thieves, something which has gone out the window today, and were
prepared to help any criminals suffering hardship. They had a pension fund for ex-cons – a protection fund, if you like. It was known that if you came out of prison and went to the twins, you’d get a bit of help with no ulterior motive. It was sometimes said of the twins that, once they’d done someone a favour, they’d hold that person in debt. That was never the case. The only thing Reg and Ron ever gained from helping former inmates was the chance to expand their grapevine. They were running a business, after all, and it was in their interests to know what was going on.

They were happy to lend, as well. Various celebrities and society figures borrowed money from the twins to get themselves out of trouble, so all in all a fairly wide cross-section of people had cause to be grateful to the Krays.

In a social setting, they were very friendly and likeable. They were always the first ones to buy a drink for the company. If you were ever short of a few quid in the pub, they’d take care of you. When they went into a pub, the guv’nor would place the phone on the bar for their convenience, and a buffet would always appear. He knew he’d get good trade and no aggro – unless something drastic happened.

Ronnie was the more flamboyant of the two: he had a very dry wit, and he could be quite eccentric. Sometimes he’d say, ‘I’m having one of my parties tonight’, and you’d turn up to find that dwarves, giants and big fat women were the star attractions. He used to sit one of the midgets on a stool, put his hand behind him as if he was a dummy and pretend to be doing the talking.

I found Ronnie’s humour hilarious. He used to keep an Alsatian, and one day when we were about to leave the house I said, ‘Are you going to feed the dog, Ron?’

Ron went to the cupboard, picked up a tin of dog food and threw it out the window. He said, ‘If he’s that fucking hungry, he’ll open it himself.’

But at the same time, you knew you had to behave around Ronnie. You knew you were dealing with someone
different
. You were on your toes. With Reggie you could relax a bit more, especially if he was on his own. I remember one night at a party in the pub, a young geezer was trying to get past old man Charlie Kray and he just pushed him out of the way. Luckily for the young guy, Ronnie Kray didn’t see this. But Reggie did. He let him off with a warning because he was a boy. Reggie went about things in a more considered way.

In their personal habits they were clean-living men. They were early risers who used to work out regularly. They liked a drink, but they never had anything to do with drugs; they stayed well away from that scene. And their home was spotlessly clean: you could eat your dinner off the floor in Vallance Road.

They were two of the smartest men London ever turned out, and a lot of people copied their style. I only ever saw Ronnie once in casual clothes. I was walking up to my mate Peter’s café on the corner of Blythe Street one day, when all of a sudden a car pulled up alongside me and in it were the twins with an old friend of theirs, Dickie Morgan. Reggie and Dickie were both wearing blue suits, but Ronnie was dressed in a pair of blue slacks and an
open-necked
shirt. It was a rare occasion.

The twins were meticulous in their dress without being flash. You would never see the same suit, shirt or tie two days running. They were very influential on me that way. I took my cue from their dress sense, and they would be the first people to come up and say, ‘I do like that suit, Tony.’ We were all expected to be smart around the twins, especially in company. They hated scruffiness. They also used to call the barber over to the house to cut their hair, and I took a leaf out of that book too.

The whole style of the twins was sure to draw women. Women were never involved when we were out drinking on business
evenings, and they would not be invited into the company, but if we were holding a purely social gathering then they would join in, know their place and be chivalrously treated. A lot of girls liked Reggie, but he paid very little attention. He loved his wife, Frances, and he was inconsolable when she died. Reggie was more of a man for regular relationships.

Some of the men, however, and I’m thinking particularly of Albert Donaghue, regarded the more obvious of these women as ‘fringe benefits’, and used their status as members of the firm to succeed with them. Albert was not the most faithful husband in the world. He was a handsome bloke, always with different birds, and he had an affair with Lisa, the girl who was called in to keep Frank Mitchell happy after his escape. Albert always liked club-type girls, the ones who were well known in our circles. Today they’d be called gangster groupies, for want of a better term, and we attracted quite a few of them. They were typical of the period, with beehive hairdos and black eyelids.

A great many women found Ronnie Kray very attractive. He was a good-looking man, and had he wanted, he could have had girls every night. Ronnie was not ashamed of his bisexuality, but he made no big deal of it. It was a personal thing and he kept it that way; he never forced his opinions on anyone. He wasn’t a camp person by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the opposite: he didn’t like ‘gayness’. He was a man’s man. He would knock himself, sometimes, in a joking way – ‘I like the boys over in America’ – because that was his personality, but none of us would ever volunteer any wisecracks. Ronnie’s preferences were his own business, and that was respected throughout our circles. The subject was only ever mentioned if Ronnie brought it up himself.

When George Cornell called Ronnie a ‘poof’, it was a direct challenge. This was one of various crucial incidents leading up to
Ronnie’s killing of Cornell. In many people’s eyes, Ronnie had no choice but to do what he did after that.

Occasionally, Ronnie would have young men round him. I wouldn’t call them boyfriends, I’d call them friends. Sometimes there might be three or four, and whatever relationships they had were kept exclusively within that private circle. It didn’t involve anybody else. Ronnie would think nothing of buying one of these friends a suit or a piece of jewellery. He was as spontaneous in his spending as he was in everything else. Whatever he had, he would give you.

The twins’ mother, Violet, was invited to all the dos and functions, although old man Charlie wasn’t always encouraged into the pubs. I don’t think the twins were too happy about their father’s drinking habits. On family nights, or when the twins invited women or personal friends to join them in the pub, you knew that nothing unpleasant was going to happen – not even bad language was allowed. You always knew how the night would be by the people who were there. No matter who the twins had the hump with, they would never do anything in front of Violet. Whatever they did, they never brought it home. Their family ties were very, very strong, and we got to know all the Krays well. I liked old Cannonball – the twins’ grandfather, Jimmy Lee – and I was friendly with their Aunt May and her husband, Albert. They were a lovely couple, who always had a smile and a good word.

I used to see Violet often at May’s house in Vallance Road. She was a very quiet, easy-going woman who always made you welcome: ‘Hello, how are you? How’s the family? Would you like a cup of tea?’ When the twins had their mansion, ‘The Brooks’, in Suffolk, she always did a Sunday dinner, no matter how many were invited. She idolised the twins.

Smallish, with blonde hair, and always smartly dressed, she was a
real East End woman. First and foremost she was a mother who loved her family – very homely, always in and out with her shopping bags. I never saw her lose her temper. She wasn’t like that. The twins adored her, and the boys on the firm respected her greatly. We’d all have a little chat with her when we saw her.

Old man Charlie was the guv’nor, because in any East End family the husband was the head of the household. He was always very aware of the twins’ standing in the community, but I doubt if he knew exactly what was going on. When we were all nicked, I think his reactions were much the same as my father’s. They didn’t want to believe what had been happening around them. Same for Violet. What mother would want to believe it? She didn’t say a word about it in public after it happened. She never commented, just looked the other way.

Charlie Kray, the twins’ brother, was very well liked indeed and got on with everyone. He had a nice personality about him and he was a socialiser, a man who liked a good time. He was always smiling. You could have a laugh with Charlie, whereas Ronnie and Reggie you had to take seriously. Charlie’s wife Dolly kept her distance from the Kray family. She seemed not to be part of them. He’s since split with her and is now with a lovely, friendly, outgoing woman called Diana.

When the firm was at the height of its power, Charlie never took an active part: he wasn’t seen around, except on social occasions. He had his family, he had his own career as a businessman and he only ever helped his brothers on the business end of things. But he was aware of the twins’ position, and he was loyal to them. I always got the impression he was closer to Reggie than he was to Ronnie.

They were very staunch family people, the Krays, and the twins were always fiercely proud of their roots. Much has been made of all their nights out clubbing with celebrity friends, but the twins liked nothing more than to be among their own people. They’d
sooner spend a night in the pub in Bethnal Green than glam it up in the West End of London.

Any celebrities they came across, they brought into their own areas of life, not the reverse. Contrary to what has been written about them in the past, they didn’t seek to glamorise themselves, although they eventually became glamorous because of their show business connections and their club ownerships. They never forced themselves on showbiz people; it was the other way round. Many celebrities knew the twins could open doors for them socially because of their legitimate club interests and sought their company, although when the cameras came out Reggie and Ronnie undeniably saw the opportunity for good public relations. Other well-known personalities, of course, were aware of the twins’ notoriety and wanted to know them for that reason. Wealth and crime tend to mix, and showbiz and crime mix even better; wealth, crime and stardom are an eternal triangle.

Entertainers, actors and actresses and sportsmen spent hours with the twins in clubs. I met Sonny Liston, whom I found to be a little bit aloof, among a host of champion boxers, and I shook hands with singers Lenny Peters and Joe Brown, both very likeable chaps. Christine Keeler, who sparked the Profumo political crisis of the sixties, was photographed with Reggie and Ronnie.

Some lasting friendships did grow out of these celebrity liaisons. Diana Dors and her husband Alan Lake were very, very nice people who had a real fondness for the twins, as did Barbara Windsor, another East End girl who never forgot her roots. Judy Garland was a genuine friend who was proud of her connections with them; she was the guest of honour at one of their pub nights in Bethnal Green.