Unfortunately, with the passing of time the Yardie has become something of a
romanticized figure but if you were living in the West Midlands when the Yardies were
around you would know that they were viewed as anything but. Theirs was a reign of
terror that was relatively short; a bit like many of their lives as individuals. In What Goes
Around the character with the grandiose title of the Field Marshal is a menacing Yardie
figure on the Blackmore estate. Also in the story are the Campbell gang, a home-grown
Jamaican criminal crew and they help to complete the picture of the type of criminality
that was going on in black communities in London and the Midlands back in the 1980s
and 90s.
The first time I was aware of the presence of a Yardie in England was around the mid-
80s. A nephew of a Jamaican friend had landed from the USA after having to flee
following his robbing a number of American drug dealers along the lines of the Omar
character in The Wire. I did not have the ‘pleasure’ of meeting him in person but friends
had filled me in. He was young, athletic and walked with a limp as he had been shot as
a twelve-year-old during the political violence that had gripped Jamaica in the 1970s.
But it was his dismissive attitude that took many aback: Black Americans were ‘sarf’ and
he didn’t rate British black people much better than that – no one he met could know
what real badness was unless they lived his life. Shortly after taking up residence in an
aunt’s house, he had travelled to London from Wolverhampton and returned with so
many gold chains around his neck that he almost walked with a stoop. He had been
doing what he seemed to do best: robbing other criminals. My Jamaican friend was so
disturbed by his nephew’s behaviour and figuring that this was just a first step in a
bigger criminal enterprise, he drove him to Heathrow Airport and put him on a plane
back to Jamaica. To no one’s great surprise, within weeks he received the news that his
nephew had been shot dead.
In my novel it is Robbie Walker and Errol Morgan that are left to confront the Field
Marshal and their actions were partly inspired by those of gangs in Handsworth
Birmingham who had formed after the riots of the early 1980s. Gangs such as the
Burger Boys and the Johnson Crew were first seen as quite benevolent; sure, they dealt
with weed and were involved with relatively minor criminality but they also had a
reputation for taking on white racists and to some they were seen as defenders of a
community. When Yardies moved into Birmingham they brought with them the
previously unknown crack cocaine, powerful firearms and willingness to kill and torture,
the home grown gangs were then forced to meet ruthless violence with ruthless
violence. By the end of the 1990s those Yardies who weren’t dead or in prison had all
but disappeared back to Jamaica.
The legacies of the Yardies were the ruthless gun-toting gangs who filled the void they’d
left; innocent boys and girls shot dead in senseless turf wars; and countless lives
destroyed by either prison or crack cocaine – and there’s nothing to romanticize about
any of that.
Ralph Robb 