Free Against All Odds: The Most Amazing True Life Story You'll Ever Read by Paul Connolly Page A

have become confirmed petty criminals who will never be employable and whose lives will never amount to anything. At that point, the very best you can hope for them is that somehow their chaotic sexual encounters don’t result in children, because they are probably too sad and too damaged to be proper fathers. This was pretty much the fate that awaited at least one of my older brothers.
    When we were kids, we were told by the care workers over and over again that we were institutionalised. This is the term that any analyst looking at this boy’s case would surely use about him. It occurred to me recently that, if this was true of the kids at St Leonard’s, it was also true of the staff who lived and worked in the children’s home. Those who left childcare often went straight into work in another institution, as if no other type of work existed. They had grown so used to being able to boss everyone around and count on a regular pay package from the government that they did not know anything else.
    When I was about sixteen, I started working on my tattoo collection. In those days, the skinheads had just started and the first big tattoo I got was of a skinhead with the characteristic shaved head, braces and rolled-up jeans and wearing a skin-tight Union Jack T-shirt. I have often been asked, ‘What’s all that about? Are you racist?’ But what people don’t know is that in the very early days, when I got my tattoo, the skinheads were not racist at all. They were fans of ‘Oi’ music, which was a type of reggae, and the skinheads represented a sort of street movement that originally had both white and black adherents. Later, the whole thing got taken over by British National Party thugs, the way the Hindu Swastika was taken over by the Nazis, and I was left with my tattoo! I often have to explain it to people and it is a frequent source of embarrassment.
    Most of my tattoos feature Union Jacks in a variety of settings. One says ‘100% British Made’. Now, I knew very well that both my parents were as Irish as could be. They had rejected me and handed me over to the tender mercies of the British state. I felt that they must surely have hated me, even though I had only been a tiny baby. I wanted to erase them completely and getting Union Jacks inscribed indelibly all over my body seemed to help a bit. Today, while I don’t necessarily remain fond of my many tattoos, I don’t feel inclined to have them removed, as this would entail deleting part of my life. Like it or not, they are very much part of who and what I am – they inscribe my history – and I don’t feel that I should be ashamed of them.
    Another good thing about getting older was that there was much less to fear from Uncle Bill. He tended not to beat up the older children, because there was a risk that they would hit back. He was getting older too, and perhaps all those years of lashing out had given him tennis elbow. Sometimes he did get hit back; I remember my brother Declan lashing out at him and running away. By the time I was sixteen, Uncle Bill would not have dared to come near me. He knew how fit and strong I was, and he must also have had some idea of the anger that was continuously simmering inside me. I was like the stray dog that has been beaten one time too many, always ready and poised to attack. And he knew it. I had shown my potential for violence when Alan Prescott had tried it on with me a few years earlier. Uncle Bill tried again to enlist me to help keep the younger children in line, but, although I had some seriously nasty tendencies, I drew the line there. I had enough self-respect for that. And I certainly was not going to do anything to curry favour with Uncle Bill.
    But I wasn’t scared of getting into violent situations with kids my own age or older. I was about fifteen the first time I was stabbed. One of the kids at St Leonard’s was a black kid who had loads of friends on the outside. A whole bunch of his East End pals had