A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun: The Autobiography of a Career Criminal

South Londoner Noel "Razor" Smith's long history of crime culminated as a member of "The Laughing Bank Robbers", an armed firm known for their "gallows humour" who cracked jokes while collecting their loot - even, on one job, dressing in festive Santa hats and wishing terrified customers and staff a "Merry Christmas". Smith was also part of the Rockabilly scene who with his gang the Balham Wildkatz battled it out with punks, skinheads and other rivals at a time when the various London subcultures were tearing into each other at every opportunity with boots, fists, and whatever else was handy. "A Few Kind Words..." stands head and shoulders above most crime memoirs. Firstly, it is not ghostwritten - Smith discovered a talent for writing whilst behind bars that eventually got him published in national newspapers. Secondly, prison is where he is right now, serving a life sentence (or technically speaking, eight of them). So let's just say that, on top of being extremely well-written, this book has an edge over much of its 'Real Crime' contemporaries in what can often be quite a tacky and superficial run-of-the-mill genre. Smith loads his memoir with enough raucous mayhem to more-than-satisfy on the entertainment front, but also often pauses for intelligent, analytical reflections on the workings of his own criminal mind, and the life he has spent "fashioning the chains that now bind him". Through writing, he says, he has "found a more acceptable way of expressing himself" than via the violence and crime that has taken away his most basic human right: freedom. Born in 1960 into an average Irish working-class family, Smith has none of the usual excuses of a broken home or violent abuse to account for his slip down the wrong tracks, and to his credit, insists it was entirely his own choice, something he walked into with eyes wide open to the consequences. Yet, in his exploration of the past, he interestingly cites an adolescent experience of unprovoked "torture" and forced false-confession at the hands of drunken police as a turning-point in his attitude towards "the system", sparking a rebellious spirit that - who knows - may not have otherwise been there, or atleast come so prominently to the fore. He also explains what it was like during the 70s when, with the IRA's bombing campaign at its height and anti-Irishness rife, London-Irish kids were often compelled to either feign Englishness or assert their own identity, sometimes physically. Though such factors alone can hardly take the blame for the self-destructive one-man crimewave that Smith became, it does suggest how he would have felt the kind of outsider status that can often can lead in a lawless direction. However, with Smith's addiction to the power and adrenaline of armed robbery ("It was a rush that no amount of cocaine or Ecstasy could imitate") it is hard to imagine anything other than participation in an actual war (Smith's own suggestion, by the way) satiating such an overwh

Having left South West London twenty five years ago I have, like most of us, wondered what the kids I grew up with are doing now. Up until around `81' I would go back to visit every couple of weeks and the conversation would invariably turn to "Who's in jail?" "Who just got out?" Eventually the question would become "Who's dead?" "Who's alive?" I remember one of my best friends Noel showing me a paper clipping from the South London Press reporting on his failed stick up of an off-license in Balham. By 1980 that was the way the wind was blowing. As kids we were always involved in some life threatening escapade or another, but it was more for kicks and only occasionally criminal. But by the time half my friends were in remand centres or borstals I knew I was well out of it. So although it came as a massive surprise, it really shouldn't have, when I recently discovered that the aforementioned Noel is now better known as Razor Smith and is currently serving life for armed robbery. Smith has shot, slashed and robbed his way into gangland legend. Before his life sentence he was the frightener in a gang of four known as the `Laughing Bank Robbers' who carried out a string of bank raids around South London, he has fifty eight criminal convictions to his name and has now chosen to write his autobiography - "A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun." Described by G.Q magazine as "One of the most powerful and intelligent crime memoirs we've ever read" and "extraordinary" by the Guardian, I just thought it plain surreal to be standing in the middle of Waterstones seeing my name included in the `lavishly blood splattered' memoirs of a major career criminal. Names, places, incidents, half forgotten friends and enemies and even my brother all contextualised in the pre-teen remembrances of a kid I took my first and only pinch with. (For messing around on a railway track - ironically) And although Smith is no killer and I'm certainly no choirboy - I felt like Pat O'Briens's priest from the movie `Angels With Dirty Faces' reading about the gangster exploits of his boyhood chum Rocky Sullivan played by James Cagney. In fact we were all Cagney fanatics in those days, endlessly acting out scenes from White Heat or Public Enemy on the roof tops of Streatham High Road. The book goes on to outline various `tear ups' between all those old sub-cultures of the late 70's such as the Rockabilly's, Skinheads, Punks, Smoothies and Teds which culminated, perhaps, some of the most notorious pre-gun gang wars such as `The Battle of Morden,' `The White Swan Massacre,' and the seemingly fortnightly riots at the Chickaboom Club in Carlshalton. But by the time most of these incidents took place I was lost in music and Razor had gone the way of the gun. As I say, we all wonder about what happened to the kids we grew up with. I just never thought I'd find out in such a spectacular fashion. Noel `Razor' Smith is currently residing in HMP Grendon.

I can't say that I am a fan of criminal autobiographies. And Razor Smith is not a notorious criminal of the Dillinger variety. He's a common thief, a man who used guns, knives and other physical violence to frighten others into giving them his money. He justifies his bank robberies, his primary vocation, by saying the deposits were insured. But who does Smith think pays for the insurance premiums? Who does Smith think pays for the stress and trauma he inflicted on innocent people who just happened to be there when he threatened their lives with his gun? None of that, however, takes away from Smith's skill as a writer. Now serving what could be the rest of his natural life in prison, much of Smith's autobiography sounds like leftists like Leonard Bernstein during the 70s: it's the victim's fault for making the criminal. Nonsense. Smith chose his own life. Smith appears remarkably candid in recounting his youth and how he gravitated toward the criminal life, not only because it beat working in more traditional means to earn a living, but because such petty criminality is remarkably common in England. At first I didn't believe Smith's tales of promiscuous youthful violence as a way of English life. A bit of research confirmed his claims. England is not Paradise. As a grown man whose son had his own problems with the police and committed suicide, Smith sounds remorseful. Whether this is a ploy to advance his claim for parole is obviously unknowable. Regardless, Smith's memoir of his life is an enthrally, worthwhile excursion into the criminal's mind. Well-written and absorbing. Jerry

A career criminal is someone who is so committed to crime as a way of life that no amount of `rehabilitation' from the prison system can straighten him. Razor Smith is a bank robber of the sort. In fact, he prefers robbing banks so much he'd rather give away three years of his life for a three-month fling with it, anytime. And when he gets bored looking at the same four walls everyday, he simply escapes. So easy, so he does it again and again and again. Life on the run has its extreme highs and lows but sooner or later it'll be back to the slammer for good when Old Bill and The System caught up. And they did. If Whitemoor is as escape proof as it's said to be, Smith could well be serving out his eight life sentences properly, this time. In his early 30's (he's now 45) Smith took it to himself to learn to read and write properly. The consequences were quite unexpected: Not only did he discover a passion for books and writing, people actually paid attention to him and to what he said on paper. And because he had plenty of gripes against The System by now, he had plenty to say. Later, an A-Levels in Law and Honors in Journalism helped focus his anger and aggression and lend weight to his arguments. His newfound skills and plain-speaking, wry, observant prose make A few Kind Words an accomplished first memoir. It is also clear Smith now has every stab at a career that is leagues above the Road Sweeper job he once had and certainly as potentially profitable as the Other One. But if Smith wins both our ear and our empathy, it's because he manages to talk about his condemnable behavior - and much of this is violent - without so much as a finger pointing in any direction except towards his own. To begin with, he was at 15 a school dropout with too much time on his hands. Adrenaline Junkie might as well be his middle name. The first time he was arrested was for burglary, for which he was sent to a youth custody center. `If I came from a broken home,' he states quite matter-of-factly, `it's only because I broke it,' referring to how normal his parents and siblings were in comparison to him and not just the countless times armed police had to break down the front door of the family home, looking for him. It didn't help either that the Irish cockney was growing up in the land of The Kray Brothers, the Great Train Robbers - the likes of John McVitie and such, where there was romance in thievery. `There is a code (of honor) handed down by generations of infamous criminals, both real and fictional that you learn it from watching others in life and watching westerns and old gangster films.' Smith tells us, `this code meant you never needed to be ashamed of being a criminal, as long as you're the right one.' The code included the imperative to be loyal: if a thug was caught giving evidence against his fellow thug, he will be striped (slashed) across the face with a sharp instrument in `a curving line from the corner of the mouth to the earlobe' to mark