Look back in violence

Press, 18 February 1989, Page 27

Look back in violence

Our Story. By Reg and Ron Kray. Sidgwick and Jackson/Macmillan, 1988. 159 pp. $39.95. (Reviewed by Ken Strongman) The Kray twins were helped in telling “Our Story,” by a journalist, Fred Dinenage. Such alliances do not always work, but this one does, the book reading more smoothly than the /amblings of two ageing, semi-literate gangsters in an advanced stage of institutionalisation. Although there is a proper consistency of style, the distinct personalities of Reg and Ron glimmer through their respective chapters. Dinenage has not exactly contrived a book of their pensees (they would probably call them ponces), but has cleverly created something approaching the acceptable from the Krays. While not necessarily unique, this is a rare enough reaction to their achievements to be remarkable.

At the time that the Krays dominated North London, it was a very frightening place and they were the most frightening part of it. In “Our Story,” having served 20 years of the 30 to which they were sentenced in 1969, they attempt to explain themselves. Their account is very nearly as disturbing as their way of life in the 19605.

Openly, and with a fearsome guilelessness, they describe the violence with which, they solved life’s little problems, from the age of 13 or so. From the first smack in the jaw of a local copper, they did not look back. Within a few years, the Kray gang ran North London, while the Richardsons ruled south of the river. The Krays’ rule was based on what they were best at, violence. From Stepney spielers to Knightsbridge clubs the frighteners were put on everyone they thought might deserve it, namely, anyone who was in their way. When all else failed, the good old protection racket would always bring in a few readies. Until they were each found guilty of murder (Ron killed George Cornell and Reg killed Jack McVitie) and

sentenced to terms of imprisonment larger than most in the recent annals of British justice, they rode high. Their friends and associates included Lord Boothby and Cristine Keeler, Judy Garland and George Raft, Diana Dors and Joe Louis. There were links with the Mafia and yet they treated their old mum with gentleness and poetry. The sheer horror which leaps between the lines of “Our Story” is that fundamentally the Krays had not changed, even though Ron is a paranoid schizophrenic and Reg has also had his aberrations in this direction. They might have reached some of the more reflective manner that being in their mid-50s, and having spent 20 years in confinement, might bring. They might reflect on their own poor environment in which the only way to survive was by aggression. They might almost apologise for some of their actions. But there are no real regrets.

They believed that they were doing right in the 1960 s and, looking back, they believe that they did right. Their moral code was strict. Never grass, never hurt women, children and old people, never lose face, and only use violence on other criminals, professionally, or of course on shopkeepers or pubowners who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay up. Now, they are proud that many of the young cons look up to them, and they are puzzled, even hurt, that their chances of parole seem remote. Nowhere in “Our Story” is there a hint of guilt and the only regrets are that things did not work our more favourably. One ends the book with the impression that they might as well stay where they are for whatever is their duration. They probably wouldn’t survive in the modern world, even writing poetry and painting in Suffolk, which they wax lyrical about. And there is some irony in this, for 25 years ago they made it very difficult for others to survive, unless these others lived as the Krays thought they should. In all, a frightening book.