The Rockers' Reunion by Ian Walker (New Society, 23 August 1984)

Found some old Ian Walker articles from his New Society days that were not previously online, so I've done the right thing and scanned them in and put them on the blog. Sadly, I don't have a complete set of his articles from his time writing for New Society but I'll keep looking. If you are new to my longstanding admiration for the late Ian Walker, I suggest you check out this old blog post for more background, and also check out this page which lists all the Ian Walker articles from New Society which are already on the blog.  

                                     The Rockers' Reunion by Ian Walker 

Old rockers never die, as Ian Walker found out on a bikers’ day trip to Southend.

Frank’s blue eyes narrowed against the sun to focus on the BSA Rocket Gold Star which had just arrived on the south side of Chelsea Bridge, joining around 70 other British machines for the Rockers’ Reunion Club run to Southend last Sunday. “A motorcycle like that, you don’t leave it in a garage,” Frank said. “You keep it n the front room. It’s like a painting on the wall.” He rode a Gold Star himself for 14 years and he talked about it the way you would a long lapsed love affair. “It’s been a long time, but when I see one I till have feelings for it, you know. You miss them,” he said, sweeping back his brown hair which curled long at the neck. His current pride and joy was an Egli-Vincent, a fifties racing bike worth £3,500; but he had left it at home in favour of his 750cc Triumph. The Vincent made people too envious.

Frank wore blue jeans and a battered black leather called a Highwayman. His wife normally rode with him, but their baby was only eight weeks old, he was saying when he was interrupted by another advice seeker. Frank earns his living as a mototorcycle mechanic. Aged 38, he has been meeting his mates on Chelsea Bridge for the last 22 years. In all that time, he has lost only one friend in a crash. “Don’t seem too bad. One in 22 years,” he said, climbing aboard his bike. The only accident Frank ever had was caused by a car owner, a phrase he renewed on like heartburn. The cavalcade rumbled across the bridge at 10.30 on the dot.

I sat alongside Len Paterson in the grey Transit which led the procession to Parliament Square. Founder of the Rockers’ Reunion Club, he grew up in a Battersea council estate where he made a name for himself on his bikes that he always painted turquoise and called Baby Blue. He lives now with his wife above their spare-part shop in Streatham. And is a funny thing, he said, but it is his wife who has become known as Baby Blue these days. She was pursuing the Transit on a Triumph Tiger 90, her white silk scarf flapping round her helmet. 

Crouched between two vintage bikes in the back of the van was a stocky little rocker, name of Al. He wore sunglasses to conceal the eyes, which had not looked right since a bad motorbike crash that had left him in a coma for five months and disabled his right leg. He was also missing a thumb.

“My missus got stabbed by a Hell’s Angel last week,” he said, casually, to Len. “But it only needed three stitches.”

Going down into an underpass, Len smashed the dashboard in delight. “This should sound fucking nice,” he said, as the roar in the tunnel began its crescendo. “This is just like the sixties.”

Except, of course, that he had rung Southend’s Chief Inspector to advise him of the excursion, protocol that would have been unthinkable in Len’s wild years. He had taken similar precautions on the run to Brighton last year. “The police were quite okay,” he said. “The only complaint they had was that 70 per cent of the bikes weren’t taxed.” 

Refusing one of Len’s ham sandwiches, Al said he never ate on an empty stomach. On the first stretch of open road outside London a posse of bikes roared past the Transit and Len smiled, like an indulgent father at the winning excesses of his children. Along a section of the A13 which had been converted from three lanes into two, Len put his black suede shoe hard on the gas and shot down the forbidden lane at 70mph. I think it must have been this adrenalin rush which caused him to miss the Pitsea turn-off.

Len swore and did a u-turn, then parked the van and rushed across the road with his cream loudhailer. Standing in the middle of a dual carriageway, he tried to bellow his error at the oncoming waves of leather and metal. A few riders missed this message from their sponsor, but most made it safely to the Pitsea car park where the three-man police escort was waiting.

Having taken off his helmet and restored his quiff to its original stature, Frank stood staring at a maroon bath-tub Triumph that was built in 1959. Coppers used to ride them, he said, with a sidelong glance at the current generation of law on their high-tech BMWs. At least they were preferable to the Japanese bikes, he said.

Frank ran a thoughtful finger down all four inches of his sideburn. I asked him how long, in truth, enthusiasts could keep these old bikes on the road? “Without exaggeration,” he replied, “these British bikes will be kept on the road forever. They stopped making the Vincent in 1955 and the Vincent owners’ club has 1,500 members. The bikes will outlive their owners.”

The police took the Rockers’ Reunion into town, slewing their BMWs across roundabouts and junctions so the bikers never had to stop at a red light. It was like escorting rebel troops back to the border after the cessation of hostilities. Another 40 motorcycles had joined up en route and the procession was three quarters of a mile long by the time it reached the Queens, a plastic Tudor pub built with drinking capacity in mind. Local teds and rockers leaning up against its walls were trying hard not to look too impressed as the historic collection arranged itself on the forecourt.

Bill, at 50 the oldest rider on the trip, downed his first pint inside three minutes. “Soon as you swing your leg over a bike you’re a second class citizen,” he said, over his second pint consumed in the sunshine. “I’ve been riding for 36 years and never got pulled once, till I got done twice in the last week, once for parking and once for speeding.”

Chairman of the south London branch of the Triumph Owners’ Club, Bill is nicknamed Poppa Smurf on account of his vast bulk, grey beard and pixie features. Poppa had not been to Southend since the sixties.

“We used to kip under the pier," he said. “It’s a load of old bollocks all that stuff about rucking with mods. I never saw any punch-ups in the old days. We were all too busy looking after our bikes. You used to take the girlfriend down, you know, a bit of slap and tickle. The police used to come along at night, but only to see if we were all right.”

Inside the ballroom attached to the Queens, Johnny Ace was listening to a four-piece called the Rapiers which had adopted the thin lapelled suits and synchronised dance steps of the Shadows. They stood on stage alongside a chromed Norton, coaxing from their guitars a Duane Eddy twang which is forever associated in Johnny’s mind with the Rockola jukebox at the Ace, the cafe on the Kingston by-pass from which he took his name. On the site of that cafe there is now a tyre depot. Johnny, a 44 year old truck driver, has the names of his four children tattooed on his arm.

Ever since he bought his first motorcycle, a BSA Bantam back in 1954, it has been his ambition to go to America, and it was with some pain that he listened to Len, up on stage, outlining the scheduled itinerary for the Rockers’ Reunion tour of the USA in March 1986. It included the race track at Daytona, Graceland where Elvis lived, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls and Disneyland. Johnny doubted he would be able to lay his hands on the requisite grand. But he could find solace at home among his 3,000 singles and 200 LPs.

Away from the permanent night of the dance floor, holidaymakers and day trippers were choc-a-block all along the front, frocks pulled up over knees to let in some sun, newspapers folded over heads — all the reassuring cliches of a lovely day at the seaside. Two Rockers’ Reunion boys from Brixton had gone swimming in their jeans and leathers and now stood shivering by an ice cream van. One of the boys had his message tattooed on his arm: “Helmet Law Sucks. Outlaw. Born To Lose.”

The rockers left the Queens under police escort at 4.45 and made good time to the Ace of Hearts cafe on the A13, one of those roadside diners that have somehow survived motorways and fast food concessions. Some 40 bikers crowded round the formica to watch Mike Halewood’s triumph over Agostini at the Isle of Man, which was playing on the video.

Outside, Baby Blue was holding court. Her husband, whom she met on Chelsea Bridge in 1969, was auctioning a load of parts that had been dumped in a plastic tray. “It’s a complete Norton Commando 850,” Len said through the loudhailer. ’’There’s fuck all missing.”

It was sold for £217. The Norton and the Triton that had been transported to Southend and back in the Transit failed to reach their reserve price of £900 each. A leather jacket that had belonged to the lead singer of the Rapiers fetched £20.

Out on the forecourt a fifties rock and roll tape was playing loud from a rusting white American convertible, a couple of rockers propped up against each shark fin. Leaning against the cafe were a cook in his white vest and another blonde with hair the colour of nicotine stained ivory. Across the road, in a white thirties bp garage, someone was performing spins and wheelies. And as the sun sank below the Ace of Hearts, it all looked like a British reworking of some Hopper roadside, this weirdly persistent struggle to inhabit an idea of America astride an old British motorcycle.

Baby Blue led the charge back up the A13 to Chelsea Bridge.

The road to Southend by Ian Walker (New Society, 13 March 1980)

Found some old Ian Walker articles from his New Society days that were not previously online, so I've done the right thing and scanned them in and put them on the blog. Sadly, I don't have a complete set from his New Society days but I'll keep looking. If you are new to my admiration for the late Ian Walker, I suggest you check out this old blog post for more background and also check out this page which lists all the Ian Walker articles from New Society which are already on the blog.

The road to Southend by Ian Walker

The remains of a neon BINGO hang from the half-moon portico of a 1930s cinema which has corrugated iron all over its doorways and windows. A tea house and Madame Rosalind’s (“Palmist and Clairvoyant”) are all boarded up, too, The only place on this street doing any business is a cut-price store which has great rolls of carpet propped up outside in the rain. From this empty street it’s a steep climb down to Southend’s burned out pier.

Alf Pullen has lived in Southend for the last 30 years. Retired now, at 66, he comes down to the promenade most days to sit in one of the blue-and-white huts that run all along the front. “All sorts of things are closing down,” he says. “People on short time, on the three-day week, that kind of thing. The atmosphere was better before they built that shopping precinct. People came down here and used to enjoy themselves.” He’s complaining that the council let the gas board build an office block on the seafront, when his theme is disturbed by three loud booms.

“That’s from Shoebery,” he says, pointing down the Eastern Esplanade. “Some experimental military place. They try out new things, got half the beach. Can’t let people on it because of all the unexploded shells.”

It sounds like world war three, started ahead of schedule, over the road in the Monte Carlo arcade. Electronic explosions on the Space Invaders, bells and buzzes on the pinball tables, rifle shots, ejaculating one-armed bandits, simulated growling of Grand Prix cars. You can hardly hear the disco number that an off-work drill operator, here with three schoolgirls, has put on the jukebox. What does he think of Southend? “Shit,” he says, smiling.

In the arcade next door, run by a northerner called Jack, it’s much quieter. Just a few women wheeling infants round on pushchairs and a couple of OAPs waiting for a few more to show so they can have a game of bingo. The caller has a Bureau of Police, Richmond, Virginia, badge on his short-sleeved blue shirt. He’s reading the Southend Standard. Lead story is about teachers who don’t mark books. “Prisoners of death block,” on page three, is about suicide and Valium in a ten-storey block of flats. A cat was discovered in a lift shaft on page five. Today’s by-election in Southend East makes it on page 13.

Jack sits before stacks of cans containing pears, carrots and soup. “The truth is,” he says, “the place is going downhill and absolutely without any action from the council, who are trying to turn Southend into a commuter town for London. The council let the pier go downhill after the main part was burned down three years ago. They got these high-falluting plans for a £200 million marina and the rest of it and, of course, it all falls through. You used to get a lot of families down from London once, but not now. The fares have gone up so much, £2.60 for a single. If a man brings his family down, that’s a tenner before he gets anywhere. It’s an expensive do, coming to Southend, now.”

In season Jack would have over 200 bingo games a day, but at this time of year it’s down to 30 or 40. “Just ticking over,” he says. “It’s just the old locals, and they come mainly for the foodstuffs. Three cans of soup for one win. Get a bit lucky and it’s cheaper than the shops.”

I’m walking up the hill which leads from the seafront to the high street when the rain turns to hail. In a doorway next to a tattooist’s, a middle-aged Welsh woman I’d noticed back in Jack’s is sheltering. “Look at the front,” she spits, staring down the hill. “They call it the Golden Mile. What do you think of it? Bloody tatty, that’s what it is. All we get down here these days are the drunks, the skinheads and the rock-and-rollers. Jack’s had a lot of trouble with them, you know.” Inside the tattooist’s, which advertises “bright colours, modern equipment,” a young bloke in a combat jacket inspects the designs that are pinned to the. wills. Two girls toy with the idea of getting their ears pierced for four quid.

The Palace Hotel, at the top of Pier Hill, must have been quite ritzy in its day, before the white paint crumbled and before the bingo parlour was installed on the ground floor. Now it’s the flop-house with the best seaview in town. Jack said the council put up homeless here who can’t be housed anywhere else. In the Palace’s amusement arcade four 14 year old girls from nearby Benfleet are trying to amuse themselves.

“We came to go roller-skating, but it wasn’t open. We’re going to McDonalds now, then look around for some records.” These girls think Southend’s great. More to do here than there is in Benfleet. They’re looking forward to the time, in a couple of years, when they can go disco in Southend, they say, walking up the high street for their hamburgers. Past the message spray-painted in black on a boarded-up Betty’s Restaurant: “In all your decadence people die.”

Although the pier's superstructure was destroyed, fishermen were allowed on to the walkway tip until 28 February; according to a council notice at the entrance to the pier. An amusement arcade, bowling alley and cafe are all the entertainment now on offer at the surviving front end of the pier. Through the cafe windows you can see across the water to the industrial islands of Sheppey and Canvey, the Shellhaven refineries. The pier divides the town. Eastward it’s the Golden Mile. Westward it’s residential, green lawns, women in fur hats taking classy dogs for walks..

One of these women walking along the West Cliff says she is happy in Southend, “Although I must say I preferred the old high street to the shopping precinct. But that’s progress I suppose, isn’t it?”

I drive out for a twilight tour of the Shoeburyness military base. Some of the best beach in town is on the military range. I drive alongside barbed wire past tall grey buildings with green guns parked outside, on past Wakering church graveyard and down a bumpy mudtrack as far as you can go, to the MOD checkpoint. There is a small island all lit up. I’m told they store “atomic hardware” out there. Maplin Sands are out there, too. “I’ve watched shark out there come in with the tide following the mackerel shoals,” a man tells me.

On the way back I go past an office block which is said to have stood empty for ten years before becoming one of the VAT headquarters. I travel down an underpass, which he calls Southend’s folly. “You drive down there and you just have to turn round and come back,” a cabbie tells me. “It doesn’t lead anywhere. They put it in hoping they’d get the airport. They say it cost millions of pounds.” He shrugs, “The road to nowhere.”

Back in the centre of town, a crowd of skinheads have gathered in McDonalds. A market research woman buttonholes people as they walk through the door. She wants to know what they think of the service, how often they eat here, what papers they read, the last time they went to the cinema.

One boy sits in the corner trying to shield a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken with his hand, but he is noticed. “I don’t think you ought to be eating that here,” says one of the managers, a McDonalds kipper tie over his white shirt, as he escorts the boy to the exit.

“Raining,” one skinhead says as he steps outside. “Fucking rain,” replies his mate. They turn their collars up, hunch their shoulders into the rainfall and make for the pub on the corner. Inside, a sepia photo of King George hangs over a pink-and-purple neon jukebox playing the current No. 1, Atomic. ’There are skins, hippies, punk and teds all in the same bar, but nothing happens. No one here would make it past the bouncers at any of the town’s six discos. Respectable dress only.

Some of the unrespectables gather later at a seafront pub called the Ivy House, on the Golden Mile. A DJ plays soul and reggae and sixties hits, but there’s no dancing. No licence and no room. Someone smashes an orange glass lampshade on his way out, but that’s the only violence all night. After closing time, queues form first at the hamburger stand next door and then at the bus stop. The lights from the refineries look beautiful at night.

“Morning, nice morning,” chirps a tramp the next day. He isn’t asking for money, either. A green Tory Cortina cruises down the seafront playing brass band music out of a PA rigged up next to a Teddy Taylor banner. A brown Mini urges Saturday morning shoppers to vote Liberal. Labour activists in the precinct hand out leaflets which avoid mentioning Southend.