Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored (3 page)

My mother’s family, the Barrys, came from County Cork – a place called Carrigrohane. Apparently they met while he was working there. We’d have to go to their farm every summer
holiday, all to please my mum, really. They could hardly bear us and, annoyingly, we had to tolerate them. They’d sit around not talking to each other. My granddad and grandmother from my
mother’s side
weren’t big talkers. In fact, the whole family would sit in silence for days, but for forcing words out of them. A very quiet way of being –
very strange. That would drive my dad spare, because Dad was a talker, in his own way.

There was some kind of resentment buried about my father. They wouldn’t talk to him, but he endured it. I think it was all to do with . . . he wasn’t good enough for her, which was a
very strange proposition, because again years later we find out that my grandmother from my mother’s side was ostracized from her family for marrying Jack Barry, my mother’s father, who
was something of a war hero in the ‘fight for independence’, ha ha.

Apparently her side ‘had money’ – whatever that means. It’s hard to explain outside of Ireland, but money meant you owned the farm. Jack built his own farm after the war,
when the South won their rights. So he obviously did well for himself, but he was prejudged, and the Irish can be incredible snobs – much more so than anything in Britain, even with the class
structure. It’s always lurking there.

Life for us in London was very inner-city and deprived. Everyone around us was piss-poor. We had no concept of what money really was. We lived on Benwell Road, which is where Arsenal have now
built their Emirates Stadium. It was right by the railway bridge, in a Guinness Trust block called Benwell Mansions. There was a shop out front that was occupied at the time we moved in by a tramp
called Shitty Tom. You went down a hallway, and we lived around the back yard in two rooms – a kitchen and a bedroom, with an outdoor toilet, which was available to the public. You’d
find drunks passed out in it at night, which meant we had to grow up very accustomed to using the pisspot. There was also a bomb shelter there, but because people used it to dump rubbish, it was
full of rats.

In the bedroom was Mum, Dad, me, and then my younger brothers, as they arrived – Jimmy, Bobby and finally Martin. Then it was six – four kids, two parents. We weren’t
touchy-feely as a
family; you really didn’t need to be. You imagine – two double beds and a cot, in a tiny room with an oil heater, and you’re touching each
other all the time accidentally. The very last thing you want on top of that is huggy-poo. Because come winter you’re all wrapped under your old coats anyway.

The rent was £6 a month, something like that. To this day, when I hear that racial slur, like, ‘Look at them Pakis, eight to a room’ – I think, ‘Well, hello, not
only are those the words of racist bigots, but I actually grew up like that.’ I know most people around me did too. We weren’t thinking it had anything at all to do with the colour of
your skin. It’s economic deprivation.

When Shitty Tom died, we moved into the front room. That man never ever threw anything out, so you can imagine the pile. And the smell didn’t go away for a long time, because he was in
there for a week before anyone found him. There always seems to have been stinky, smelly dead bodies around me.

I had to learn botty-wiping at a very early age for my younger brothers. It was through necessity, that’s just how it was. My mum was very ill for much of the time, and somebody had to do
it. I’m not at all disgusted by it now, that’s humanity. I think it was a great thing that my Mum asked me, would I? And I did. I liked the responsibility of it. I knew I could be up at
the crack of dawn, and I didn’t mind making porridge. I liked sorting things out.

Around our neighbourhood I think there was a lot of that: people looking out for the younger ones. These are all community values that are sorely being dissipated. I don’t mean that in a
romantic delusional way, because I imagine things before the Second World War were, ‘I hate you more than you hate me.’ I don’t imagine there was much of a sense of community
other than the incredibly arrogant Victorian toffs and the incredibly starving-to-death others. But after the war I suppose community was a different thing; it had to be pulled together because
that was the only way to survive.

Dad was away a lot of the time. Often we’d go with him,
wherever his work was. When I was about four, we lived in Eastbourne. What a hell-hole that was. My memory of
it was terrifying, because our flat was right on the ocean, and listening to the sea at night absolutely scared the hell out of me. I just couldn’t help but think a wave would come in and
drown us.

For the vast majority of the time, it was Mum looking after us. With Dad not around, I absolutely didn’t mind looking out for her. I liked the responsibility. It’s instinctively in
me to look out for people – that’s what I do.

My mother was always very worried. In them days, it’d always be the players trying to pop round, thinking, ‘Hmmm, a woman unprotected.’ There’d be a knock on the door,
and she’d say, ‘Close the curtains, be quiet, wait till he goes away.’ We grew up very wary of strangers in that respect. Of men. Don’t trust them. I felt very, very
protective of her. It’s the one area where I go into overdrive, when I think my family or my very close friends are threatened. A different situation comes on. That’s where Gandhi gets
a bazooka.

My mum was always ill. Endless miscarriages didn’t help her none. I don’t suppose they knew much about safe-sex procedures in them days. Indeed, they would’ve viewed that as a
mortal sin, as indoctrinated into them from on high – Catholic priests inflicting children upon you.

One time she had a miscarriage, and I was the only one with her in the flat. There were relatives all around, but sometimes you’re on your own, Jack. It’s quite a thing to carry a
bucket of miscarriage – and you can see little fingers and things in it – and have to flush it all down the outdoor toilet. There wasn’t a phone in the house, so I had to deal
with all that first and then go to the doctor, which was a long walk.

There were various other family members on hand to help out. Auntie Agnes, who’d married my father’s brother, lived in the same housing as us in Benwell Road. Then there was Auntie
Pauline, who first came to live with us when we still only had the two rooms at Benwell. Looking back on it now that I’m an adult, I can’t
conceive of how
difficult that must’ve been for my dad and my mum in one bed, with my mum’s sister with me and Jimmy in the other. That’s up close and comfortable – not!

But I loved Auntie Pauline. She was like the big sister I never had – fantastically warm, but at the same time absolutely remote, in the Barry style. Once Shitty Tom died, we had an extra
room for Auntie Pauline, which is where Uncle George came in. I loved that fella. He was so great.

At Christmas we had to go to church but Auntie Pauline refused. By the time we came back, she’d gnawed the heads off all the toy soldiers I’d just been given as presents. To this
day, I don’t know why. When George came back, he’d bought me a house-building kit on the principles of Lego, but obviously cheaper. He opened that up and stole away my tears. I played
with him all afternoon and I’ll never forget it, because he spent such a long time teaching me things and got me involved.

After a few years, he married Pauline and they moved to Canada. I was very impressed at the wedding for so many different reasons, chiefly for meeting George’s brother. I can’t
remember his name, but he was an absolute Celtic hooligan with a 45-degree crevice across his face. He was like, ‘Aye reet. Ah goat hit wi’ an axe!’ Gosh, how impressive!
That’s a fucking street fighter, mate.
Wowzers!

My mother was devoted to making me an intelligent human being. It was her who taught me to read and write at four, a long time before school. By the time I finally got to Eden Grove Primary
School, a Catholic school, it was a very serious problem for the nuns, because I was left-handed, and fluent. It was like, sit in the corner and wait for the rest of the class to catch up. The
indolence crept in, and – for whatever reason, even though I was very shy and quiet – resentment from the nuns. So they’d hit me with, ‘Oh, you’re left-handed,
that’s the sign of the devil.’ What kind of message is that, to give a five-year-old who can already read and write? What evil, spiteful nonsense is that?

That followed through bitterly, this absolute dislike of me, for
being a smarty-pants or whatever. They’d beat you with the sharp edge of a ruler on your right hand
but, because I wrote with my left hand, they hit me on the left . . . to make sure that I’d write with my right hand! But you can’t do that. That’s the way my brain’s wired.
And it was utterly ridiculous because I didn’t need reading or writing lessons. I’d done that at home.

Eden Grove was a small school directly connected to a Catholic church – all the upstairs classes led in through a gang-plank into the church, and the downstairs ones through a courtyard,
so you really couldn’t avoid it. Everything was holier-than-thou, and everything you did was wrong and God would punish you – such a peculiar attitude. It wasn’t anything
I’d been expecting, up to the age of five, just how wicked they were.

Priests always frightened me. Going to church was terrifying as a young kid. They just always struck me as being very similar to Dracula or characters in Hammer horror movies. Christopher Lee!
They always came over in that dogmatic, dictatorship way, and that condescending judgement. The nuns were worse because they were smelly old women with a bitter hatred of mankind. Brides of Jesus?
I’m sure that’s not what He had in mind.

Many of the locals weren’t too happy with Irish immigrants full stop, but they certainly weren’t happy with a Catholic school, attached to a church, in the middle of these
working-class council flats. They viewed that very much, I suppose, as people view a mosque today, as an alien agenda, and considered you an outsider for having anything to do with it.

I never felt Irish. I always felt, ‘I’m English, this is where I come from, and that’s that.’ Because you’d be reminded of that when you went to Ireland:
‘Ye’re not Oirish!’ the locals would say. So it was like, ‘Bloody hell, shot by both sides here.’ I still love that Magazine song – so relevant to me, those
lyrics.

My brothers and I talked the local lingo, but I’d really forgotten how broad my parents’ accents were. My mother’s in particular was very deep Cork, and very country. After
Malcolm’s passing, we were
looking through Sex Pistols footage, and I found a tape of my mother being interviewed. It was all buried away in warehouses and, when I
heard it back, I was shocked at how broad and hard to understand her accent was. It was almost unintelligible to me.

Mum and Dad tried to be religious, but obviously that didn’t work too well. The Catholic Church is all about money, and we didn’t have any. On Sundays we’d be dragged to
church, but Mum and Dad were good in that it was never early-morning church when we were very young, it was always the 7 p.m. service, which was great because that meant we missed Jess Yates doing
Stars On Sunday
on the TV.

At school, I was working all this out for myself. Did I know there was sexual abuse going on there? Oh yeah, abso-fucking-lutely. It’s institutionalized abuse, and covered up and condoned.
Everybody knew to run when the priest came a-visiting, and by no means ever get yourself involved in the choir, or any altar-boy nonsense, because that was direct contact number one, so I learned
how
not
to sing very successfully – deliberately – bum notes, because I knew that would be a really dangerous thing to be waltzing into. So the love of singing was kicked out of
me because of bloody priests. Imagine the joy of eventually joining the Sex Pistols, and making the world a better place – in a very vengeful way.

But for all that I was a quiet but happy little bunny. There was dirt and poverty and England was just out of rationing, but a nice hot English summer’s day seems to have mattered more to
me. That’s my fondest memories, moments like that. What they call salad days. I never understood what that term meant when I was young, because salad was something I dreaded. My mum’s
idea of a salad was Heinz Salad Cream, and awful pale-looking green leaf things. The only joy in it, of course, was the beetroot, because I love pickled beetroot. I can sit and eat a whole jar at a
time. I love it! And I loved gooseberries too; my mum would buy them in the summer. Now, I can’t bear them. They’re vile. I don’t know how on earth I could tolerate something so
sour. It was punishing to eat
them, but maybe it was scurvy or Vitamin C deficiency that made my body crave them.

I liked the clothes that my mum would put us in. I adored the tartan waistcoats, and the little checked suits with the jackets, shorts and waistcoats. I liked all of that. She dressed us well,
very matchy-matchy with Jimmy, but that was all right. It was kind of like, our gang wear this, and that’s that. That wasn’t what other kids were wearing, so maybe that somehow crept
into me, as being important to be individual.

I appreciated it very much over time, because I know how poor we were. I know how much effort it took to dress us at all. It was always there, that we couldn’t afford nothing.
There’s almost a fond memory, too, of near-starvation once – no money at all, so all there was for dinner was one can of Heinz Mulligatawny between all of us. It was Dad’s
homecoming present to us, so there we are, all sitting around the one can of Mulligatawny. I don’t think they make it any longer, and with good reason. It was like a curried soup, and at the
time for us the curry in it was inedible – burny-hot. And so, ‘I’d rather starve.’ ‘Well,
starve
, den!’

You’d see big houses and things, but you wouldn’t have any relationship to it at all, didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to me that people could live in such
large places. I always used to think, ‘What do they do with all them rooms? How do you sleep at night knowing there’s so many windows to lock?’