the loose flesh around their necks fell around their collars as they drew back their arms. John Darke felt his anger rising and breathed into its redness. He didn’t shed a tear or let a squeal out his mouth. His stoicism didn’t go unnoticed. The next week they expelled him for bullying.
He was sent to a school for ‘troubled’ boys deemed ‘educationally subnormal’. Apart from one – Jamie, a stuttering pyromaniac whose bones showed through his shirt – none of them were white. He saw how his friends would come in on Monday mornings, limping, cheeks swollen from the weekend encounters with truncheons or boots. Here he was, dumped at the bottom of the rung. He and his classmates were viewed as criminals. John rejected the idea that ‘troubled’ kids were to blame for their troubles. If young boys stole,or stabbed each other over debts, or felt compelled to arm themselves when they walked the streets, it was not even considered that it might be the fault of the social structures they lived under. Instead, it was always the fault of the boys themselves.
It’s on us, the people at the bottom
, John realised,
to fix things for ourselves, even though it’s us who suffer the decisions of the people at the top the most.
His best friend at this time was a boy named Duane who was brighter than anyone John had ever met, he wrote rhyming verse and knew equations by heart. They played football, ate chips and sat at bus stops together. One day, Duane didn’t show up. Months passed before John heard that Duane had been stopped and searched by police and had drugs planted on him. He was serving a lengthy sentence in a young offenders’ institution in Surrey. That afternoon, on his way home, choking on the news, John was chased by three boys who spat at him and called him a ‘dirty Paki’. They caught up with him at the junction where Lewisham High Street met Bromley Road and they knocked him to the floor. He was winded. He retched while they kicked his back and stomach. It wasn’t until he vomited that they laughed and ran off. He lay on the street; it was five in the evening, still light, the road was busy enough. Not one person stopped to ask if he was OK. He lay there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, getting his breath back, until eventually he picked his sore bones up and walked home, wiping the blood off his lips with the cuff of his school shirt.
His teachers conferred in the staff room about his increasingly militant temperament. They swilled lukewarm tea around their stinking gums and huffed into yellowing moustaches as they marked a black dot beside his name on their forms:
Potential Radical
.
On 13 August 1977 John Darke was twenty-three, a long time out of Park Hill School for Educationally Subnormal Boys. He stood with a group of young socialists on New Cross Road and faced the National Front, who were attempting to march from New Cross to Lewisham, home to one of the largest West Indian communities in London. The people of the borough and people from all over the city rallied together to stop the march. They became involved in clashes with the police in what would later be known as the Battle of Lewisham. The National Front were humiliated. People of all colours stood together. John saw white people standing alongside black and Asian people, he saw them go down in front of the bucking horses, he saw them take the brunt of the heavy shields, he saw them fighting, thousands of them, together, unified in standing against fascism and racism and the brutality of the police. In a strange, flickering moment, John found himself leaning against a shopfront briefly, wiping the sweat and the smoke from his eyes. He looked out at the scene, the streets and the people, arms linked, and he felt a hope surging through him; at last, he thought.
In that moment he vowed that he would dedicate his life to politics.
He grew into a man who was sure of his opinions but humble enough to listen carefully to his detractors and
He was sent to a school for ‘troubled’ boys deemed ‘educationally subnormal’. Apart from one – Jamie, a stuttering pyromaniac whose bones showed through his shirt – none of them were white. He saw how his friends would come in on Monday mornings, limping, cheeks swollen from the weekend encounters with truncheons or boots. Here he was, dumped at the bottom of the rung. He and his classmates were viewed as criminals. John rejected the idea that ‘troubled’ kids were to blame for their troubles. If young boys stole,or stabbed each other over debts, or felt compelled to arm themselves when they walked the streets, it was not even considered that it might be the fault of the social structures they lived under. Instead, it was always the fault of the boys themselves.
It’s on us, the people at the bottom
, John realised,
to fix things for ourselves, even though it’s us who suffer the decisions of the people at the top the most.
His best friend at this time was a boy named Duane who was brighter than anyone John had ever met, he wrote rhyming verse and knew equations by heart. They played football, ate chips and sat at bus stops together. One day, Duane didn’t show up. Months passed before John heard that Duane had been stopped and searched by police and had drugs planted on him. He was serving a lengthy sentence in a young offenders’ institution in Surrey. That afternoon, on his way home, choking on the news, John was chased by three boys who spat at him and called him a ‘dirty Paki’. They caught up with him at the junction where Lewisham High Street met Bromley Road and they knocked him to the floor. He was winded. He retched while they kicked his back and stomach. It wasn’t until he vomited that they laughed and ran off. He lay on the street; it was five in the evening, still light, the road was busy enough. Not one person stopped to ask if he was OK. He lay there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, getting his breath back, until eventually he picked his sore bones up and walked home, wiping the blood off his lips with the cuff of his school shirt.
His teachers conferred in the staff room about his increasingly militant temperament. They swilled lukewarm tea around their stinking gums and huffed into yellowing moustaches as they marked a black dot beside his name on their forms:
Potential Radical
.
On 13 August 1977 John Darke was twenty-three, a long time out of Park Hill School for Educationally Subnormal Boys. He stood with a group of young socialists on New Cross Road and faced the National Front, who were attempting to march from New Cross to Lewisham, home to one of the largest West Indian communities in London. The people of the borough and people from all over the city rallied together to stop the march. They became involved in clashes with the police in what would later be known as the Battle of Lewisham. The National Front were humiliated. People of all colours stood together. John saw white people standing alongside black and Asian people, he saw them go down in front of the bucking horses, he saw them take the brunt of the heavy shields, he saw them fighting, thousands of them, together, unified in standing against fascism and racism and the brutality of the police. In a strange, flickering moment, John found himself leaning against a shopfront briefly, wiping the sweat and the smoke from his eyes. He looked out at the scene, the streets and the people, arms linked, and he felt a hope surging through him; at last, he thought.
In that moment he vowed that he would dedicate his life to politics.
He grew into a man who was sure of his opinions but humble enough to listen carefully to his detractors and
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