The Punk Wars....
In the late 70's and early 80's, before I flew the nest, I used to spend most of my Saturdays mooching around Newcastle during the day and then drinking in Newcastle at night. But I eventually gave up the day time trips as Newcastle became just too bloody dangerous if you looked like I did. A long-haired rocker/hippy type. This was all due to The Punk Wars.

As far as I remember it, it all started on a Saturday afternoon in a place called The Kard Bar - a kind of wee shopping mall full of hippy clothes shops, poster places, record stores and assorted hippy tat. I was lurking in there one day with a mate of mine, just talking crap and chatting up hippy-chicks, when I heard a thunderous kind of roar and erupting from the top end of the Kard Bar was around 100 skinheads. They ripped through the place like a fucking chainsaw - fists and boots flying, attacking anyone who was in the place. I saw one girl dragged over by her hair and a boot smash into her face. Then a hippy was thrown through a shop window and this mob was stampeding towards me. Of course, me being the big tough hero type did what any red-blooded male would have done when he saw women and kids being beaten to a pulp. I fucking legged it. From a standing start I hit top speed in a couple of stride and then jumper down a load of steps, stumbled down at the bottom and nearly went down - which would have meant curtains for me - and made it into the Haymarket and safety. I can remember being hit by a thrown bottle in my escape and as I felt the back of my head I could feel blood sleeting down it. About a 4 inch gash that bled like a mother-fucker but looked worse than it did.

I headed for the nearest biker bar, The Percy Arms, and arrived to madness. There were a few other escapees’ there - most with some sort of wound or bruise and everyone was trying to explain what happened. The Percy on a Saturday afternoon was full of bikers and all of the pubs around the Haymarket were biker bars and a crew buggered off to all of the other bars to round up more troops. I waited in the Percy and downed a couple of drinks to try and calm down. Some kind lass cleaned up my head and over the next hour the Percy filled with a few hundred bikers, hippies, rockers and the like and then the whole mob set off to hunt for the bastards who'd did this.

By now the police had arrived in force but they weren’t daft enough to try and stop us roaming the streets looking for these skinheads. The best they could do was to try and head off the warring gangs and direct them down various streets and try to keep us apart. Sadly for them, there was a bunch of guys on motor bikes who were keeping tabs on the skins and relaying their movements to us. Eventually we met.

It was near the City Hall when the tow sides clashed. We came around a corner, about 300 strong, and came face-to-face with the skinheads. Both sides stopped dead and just stared at each other. Then one crazy guy I knew, a bloke called Chico, charged at the skins yelling:

"Get the bastards!!!!!"

And my mob charged the skins who broke and ran. The rest of the day was a running battle through the streets. I saw a lot of real nasty shit that day. Small bunches of skinheads caught and dragged down and kicked to hell. Bike chains were used a lot as well as knives, tyre-irons and assorted rocks and clubs. How nobody was killed was a miracle. Eventually, me and a few mates broke away and headed over one of the bridges to the relative sanity of Gateshead and from there, home.

Over the next few weeks a few more details came out about what had happened. Some bunch of skinheads and football hooligans had banded together and called themselves "The Sham Army", after the punk group Sham 69. They had decided to "take" Newcastle and drive out the bikers and hippies. No reason - they just didn't like us or our music. Even though this time was called "The Punk Wars", the poor bloody punks had nothing to do with the violence - it was all started by a bunch of skinheads. Mind - that didn't stop the punks getting tarred with the same brush and there were a lot of them beaten up and their pubs trashed.

After that afternoon I stopped going to Newcastle during the day. It was just too dangerous. The war went on for while - about 5 or 6 weeks - but eventually it petered out as the skins had had enough and didn't come into Newcastle during the day.

For a while the whole thing bothered me. The completely random violence. Me running like gazelle leaving girls and people I knew getting kicked to shit. Not that I could have done much - I would have just been beaten to crap as well as there were far too many of the bastards. Staying and fighting would have been utter madness but I still felt like a coward.

Of course, now that I'm older and *slightly* wiser, running was the only thing that made sense. I don't care how big and hard you are, one person can't take on a couple of hundred maddened skinheads. But, at the time, to my 19 yeard old mind, running made me feel like less of a man.


One day I'll have to post about the riots in the 80's. Manchester, Brixton, Toxteth, Leeds. And my part in them. Which mostly consisted of trying to get the fuck away from them. I had somehow developed an amazing knack of travelling to see some mates and a bloody riot kicking off in whatever city I was in. It was like they were following me around.....

Cheers

Legless