No Hunger In Paradise Page 15

  Ramsey knows what is at stake: ‘If, through Andre, Steadman can convince these kids that your environment doesn’t need to hold you back, he will do a fantastic thing. I came from Holloway. It wasn’t the best. People I know are in Pentonville and places like that. Those Steadman has saved have had to want not to be in the gang.

  ‘There is an age where you do have to come to terms with the fact you have no money. If you have illegal money it is not sustainable. Do you have that “aha” moment when you say to yourself, “Do you know what? I can’t keep robbing because I don’t want to do five years in prison. At some stage I am going to have to be a civvy-street person who works in Costco, stacking shelves, earning a decent amount, driving a modest car and living in a modest flat.”

  ‘The norm isn’t the norm for the lad from the leafy suburbs. The norm is hanging around, doing the wrong thing. It is wanting trappings that you are not prepared to work for, getting the BMW by selling drugs. That’s why I admire people like Steadman. There are a lot of good parents who don’t want their kids to be stigmatised, but it is a scary place.’

  Being tossed into an overheated, overstretched job market at the pivotal age of 20 is a fundamental test of character; when that struggle involves something as visible as professional football, the strain intensifies. As winter crept closer, Leo Chambers, an accomplished Afewee graduate, was at least being medically supported during his rehabilitation from a persistent leg injury by West Ham, the club which had released him in the summer.

  Nathan Mavila, whose contract was also not renewed, as he expected, underwent trials at Perugia and Spezia in Italy and trained informally with Charlton Athletic before signing for National League club Maidstone United as a free agent in September. He struggled to hold down a first-team place, yet sought a deeper connection to the world around him by volunteering for St Mungo’s, a charity dedicated to providing food and shelter for 2,500 homeless individuals each night.

  His search for spiritual solace took him to the French Christian Assembly of London, a Pentecostal church in Stockwell. The congregation was strikingly young, overwhelmingly black and typical of those drawn to an exuberant form of New Evangelism. Faith, shaped by cultural challenges and economic hardship, had a telling relevance.

  Mavila, accompanied by his brother Gaius, preached regularly, and often played drums in services that switched between English, French and Lingala, a Bantu language spoken along the River Congo in Central Africa. On this particular Thursday evening, clad in white collarless shirt, trousers and canvas shoes, he sought to link the spiritual with the sporting:

  ‘In the industry I am in a lot of the boys like to party, so I went out with them all the time. That’s what I used to do. Amen. So, one thing I realised was, as I accepted Christ, I had to change my surroundings. 1 Corinthians, 53. Do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character. Amen. If you are a good person at heart do not be around people that do not have the same heart as you.

  ‘My dad always told me this: you are a footballer. Do not mix with people who do not play football. Surround yourself with people who have mindsets like you. We are moved by the things that are around us. Amen. We need to discern and distinguish who we need around us. What do you establish around yourself?

  ‘If you are not around good people then how are you going to get to where you need to be? One thing I have realised is that Church is cool. When I was growing up, Church was my home. Satan is everywhere. Do you know that? Sometimes a fool goes a different way and you think, why? Try to be around people who focus and love God.

  ‘A lot of the time we are not focused. That’s why we miss the target. In my career I have been around a lot of established players. But some people don’t get that far. They are the ones without the right focus and mindset. If you focus on the money you will miss being a player. If you focus on the best bits you will miss God. Chase him and the rest will follow.

  ‘Focus on what you love. I love Lionel Messi. He is one of the greatest footballers in the world. As soon as he steps on the pitch photographers follow him. Sponsors follow him. The world follows him. He doesn’t care about anything else but the score. The greatest have standards. Be the best you can be. But how great can you be without Christ? You are limited, very limited. Amen. In Christ you have no limits.

  ‘I was born in sin. The only way to get over and out of that is to accept Christ, right? God has given each and every one of us free will. God knows what you are going to do but he has still given you free will. That’s mad, isn’t it? The mind is led by the things you see and the things you hear. Amen. If you are exposed to crazy things, the wrong people, they can change the way you will be. In this life you have one shot at it. Give Him service.’

  As he led prayers, speaking into a handheld microphone while walking either side of a transparent dais, he exuded a revealing serenity. His eyes were wide, exultant. An equally broad smile stretched a trim moustache, and dared the congregation not to share his devotion. The mood was as far removed as it is possible to be from the despair that, at the age of 17, triggered Mavila’s renewal of faith.

  The death of Dwayne Simpson, a close friend and football partner since primary school, was a consequence of the random violence, warped relationships and festering resentment that characterises gang culture. Simpson, nicknamed Squirrel, went to the aid of a boy nicknamed Laughter, who was being chased along Brixton Road by Rio Julienne-Clarke.

  Simpson, who armed himself with a steering-wheel lock before jumping out of a passing car, was attacked in an alleyway when his friend escaped. CCTV cameras captured Julienne-Clarke giving up the chase and pulling out a knife before turning to confront him. Simpson was stabbed three times, through the heart and lungs, and died two days later, following an ineffective emergency operation. He was 20.

  The jury, which found Julienne-Clarke guilty of manslaughter, took into account police intelligence that he and his victim were former members of the Brixton Guns and Shanks gang. Sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment, the perpetrator argued he was a target of the gang because he had acted as a police informant. It was also suggested in court that he had set up his own drug-dealing operation in defiance of the gang code.

  According to his mother, Lorraine Jones, Dwayne, who had slipped into criminality during her divorce, was in the process of rehabilitating himself. He was coaching football informally to local children, and involved in the establishment of a boxing club for disaffected youth. She had been shopping in the Iceland supermarket, close to Brixton Tube station and within walking distance of the stabbing, when word reached her of her son’s plight.

  She found paramedics attempting to resuscitate him where he lay, in a pool of blood, and was prevented from touching him. The haunting image of his hand hanging inertly from a stretcher stays with her, though she continues to take comfort from the faith that sustains her as an ordained minister at the Lord’s Church International Ministries in Brixton.

  She told Premier Christian Radio: ‘I thank God because in those two days, even though he was on a life support machine, I was able to speak to him, kiss him and pray with him. He was with us, but couldn’t communicate. I said to him, “Death is a transition from earth to heaven. It is nothing to be afraid of. When a person dies, it is just their flesh that goes into the earth, but their spirit goes to our maker.”

  ‘So when he was on the life support machine, I said, “You can’t speak, but call on Jesus. Jesus will be with you through the transition.” When you lose a child, the grief affects you emotionally, physically, psychologically, your whole being. I thank God that I am a Christian because truly the Holy Spirit has helped me and my other six children to get through this grief in a positive way. My son died a hero, a Good Samaritan.’

  The grief was collective. More than 300 local residents gathered inside and outside the family home on the Angell Town estate for nine nights, following his death. Some, no more than teenagers, showed her the bullet-proof vests they wore as a matter of course. A peace marc
h was held at dusk to a local church, where birdsong provided evocative backing to public prayer.

  Lorraine Jones spoke of ‘turning pain into power’. She received a police commendation at New Scotland Yard for her anti-knife-crime advocacy, and received a Point of Light award from David Cameron. Nathan Mavila sought spiritual advice from his mother’s pastor, and resolved to change. He asked himself, ‘Is this the life I really want to lead?’ and discovered that, ‘God spoke to me.’ He returned to the embrace of his church, shed dangerous friendships, and helped relaunch Dwaynamics, a boxing gym in a local railway arch designed to mentor vulnerable children, who receive life skills coaching and attend employability workshops. ‘We’re trying to open doors,’ Mavila explains, outlining work experience opportunities, apprenticeship programmes and homework classes offered by the scheme.

  Sport, as so often, silently fills a social vacuum. Yet Afewee’s success, embodied by Rinsola Babajide, who started studies at the University of East London and starred for the England under-19 team which won the Women’s International Cup with victories over France, USA and Northern Ireland in late October, can easily be marginalised, under-appreciated.

  Steadman Scott’s community campaigning intensified following the transmission of a Channel 5 two-part documentary entitled Gangland, which risked the glamorisation of gang members who filmed their activities with GoPro cameras supplied by the producers. He attempted to balance images from a lavish, live-fast-die-young lifestyle by issuing a statement in the name of the organisation he helped found:

  ‘Showing young people killing each other off, without offering a solution, or an explanation why this is happening is sensational and exploitative. It is also a counsel of despair. Young people need hope. They need to see and hear from people who have succeeded against the odds. They need role models who will uplift and inspire them. There are many people that could have been interviewed to show that there is a way out.

  ‘Things are tough for young people growing up in the inner cities. The reality is that in this country young black people are still held back by racism. The kids in the film were clearly intelligent, educated and enterprising young people. If they are in gangs it is because they don’t see an alternative.

  ‘Children need to believe that there is another way. They need to be armed with knowledge about the realities of the society and understand how to counteract barriers put in their path. I have lived in my community for fifty years. I have a duty to speak out about the problems facing our young people. But as a “big” man I also have a duty to do something about the situation.

  ‘Nobody will guide these young people or instil in them a belief that they can succeed, if we, the community, don’t do it. Government-funded schemes are designed to let children have “fun”, not push them to reach their potential. Having low expectations of children is one of the worst forms of oppression.

  ‘Youngsters respond to challenge. They can accomplish excellence, if excellence is asked of them. Afewee has proved that time and time again. We see youngsters develop self-discipline, focus, application, confidence and competitiveness because they are in an environment where it is required.’

  Football has the sort of sheen that can change narratives and shape attitudes, but footballers are not social workers. Nathaniel Clyne, who was being linked to Barcelona as a potential transfer target in the 2017 winter window, acknowledged his background in a series of interviews, without fully engaging in the social significance of his success.

  ‘The boys know where he comes from,’ Scott reflected. ‘They hear his name, see him on television. But we have not seen him here for so long.’ There was no hint of censure in his voice, merely exasperation at the practical difficulty of securing meaningful interaction. Andre Blackman, for all his flaws, is a more powerful symbol of advancement because of his availability, and recently acquired humility.

  Though he was sent off for two bookable offences in a 1–1 draw against Bristol Rovers in the first round of the FA Cup in early November, his second dismissal of the season, Blackman was a regular in a Crawley team with play-off ambitions in League Two. His coaching sessions at the Brixton Rec were irregular, but invaluable.

  ‘Oh my goodness, we used to fight, constantly,’ Scott said, with gentle, ruminative laughter. ‘Andre’s problem was that, because his father wasn’t there until he was about ten years old, he was spoiled. But if I didn’t have those years with him, he would be worse. If he comes in and coaches the young boys it will help him in his football, since he will be looking for discipline. He will teach them it is not about your ability but your mentality.’

  Drummy, an alternative father figure, was on the same wavelength: ‘When I talk to Andre he is a very conscious young man. Sometimes the behaviour is misleading. I tell him, “If the guys you are rolling with love you, they will leave you alone and let you get on with your career.” I think his mum is his rock. He has a younger brother, and he sees himself as a man. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.’

  Identifying Blackman as a rallying point for an entire community seems an unfair burden to place on someone who admits, ‘I am not an established player and I still have some things to learn.’ Experience counsels against idealistic expectation, yet hope dies hard where it matters most.

  10

  Education, Education, Education

  THEY WERE SEDUCED by the trappings of fleeting success, the flattery of strangers, and promises of fame and fortune. Instead of gracing the great stages of the Premier League, as they anticipated, they are incarcerated in a bleak prison cluster on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, or lingering in such privately run jails as Thameside, in south-east London.

  Albert Barnes visits them regularly, shares their pain and hears their fears. It is a forbidding ritual, because of the unanimity of their desperate, doomed responses to rejection by football. They played for big clubs, had big ideas and an even bigger fall. They are landfill, human wastage in an industry that cannot claim a clean conscience.

  ‘These are the boys who are given a taste of what is available to those who make it. Are we letting them down? They come through top academies, don’t get it right, get released and then tend to cry. Football has been their area of safety. Now it is denied to them. They’re trapped, and feel they cannot go back to where they came from.

  ‘We live in a society where lies thrive. We don’t tell these boys the truth. Football basically says to them, sorry, you didn’t make it. Get on with your lives. Out of frustration, with no education and nothing to do, they come out, and the first thing they do is look for the quickest way of making money.’

  Barnes tends the casualties on the front line of a war that can be found on no map. It straddles the fantasy of inevitable enrichment and the reality of probable failure. He combines academic rigour, developed during a seven-year study of criminology in which he rarely slept more than three hours a night, with paternal experience – his son Aaron, a second-season pro who began at Arsenal, has just been given a first-team squad number, 33, at Charlton Athletic.

  Between 70 and 80 per cent of the inmates he counsels from a sporting background are imprisoned because of drug offences, or armed robbery. His current caseload involves boys who were in academies at Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea, but the problem cannot be defined by geography or club policy.

  His mobile phone carries depressingly familiar news on the late-summer day we first meet. Nathan Ashton, who made more than twenty appearances for England youth sides and played on the wing for Fulham in the Premier League before joining Crystal Palace and Wycombe Wanderers, has been jailed for fifteen years for a series of armed raids on betting shops.

  Together with an accomplice, former Scottish Premier League player Ohmar Pike, he terrorised cashiers, one of whom fell to his knees, had a panic attack and begged for his life when the demand that the safe be opened immediately was accompanied by a black handgun being jabbed into the back of his head.

  Barnes is a pleasant, singsong-voiced man whose no
n-judgemental manner reflects the philosophy of UKresettlement, the charity he has established to assist ex-offenders and vulnerable young adults. He visits prisoners to gain an understanding of the issues – which run parallel to those facing military personnel unable to deal with discharge from service – and is there for them when they are released.

  He has established a safe house in Folkestone, where residents are eased back into society through such basic community work as tending the gardens of local pensioners. They learn to cook, to trust, to look beyond themselves. Known to all and sundry as Uncle Albert, Barnes seeks to recreate a family environment that is too often fractured.

  ‘So many problems can be traced to the family unit. Many of these guys are where they are because they didn’t have love from the beginning. Mum and Dad may have not been there. We do everything together. I say to them, “You are all brothers, living in one house. Start thinking.” The idea is to re tune their mentality, the way they think, the way they see things, because everything that they want, they want now. They have never had the patience of working through certain stages.’

  He works to ingrain and enhance basic skills and attitudes such as communication, self-reliance, personal responsibility, teamwork and rational decision-making. It is a decompression chamber, a place of emotional cleansing since they come from a world that encourages self-defensiveness and suspicion.

  ‘Football is about survival of the fittest. It’s an industry where everyone is selfish. You look after yourself because of the competition. It is so fluid; your best mate in the playground becomes your enemy because you both want the same thing. Parents bitch and bite, do anything to push their sons ahead. I’m a realist, not an idealist. The real world is tough. Everyone is fighting his own corner. Nobody will ever fight for you.’