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everyday. Whereas we were robbing warehouses three times a week and we were guaranteed a payday each time, which you were most definitely not with the cracking-safes business. There is no worse blues than to have a safe off to find out there’s fuck all in it. Pure sinker, la. I know because I’ve done it. Or even worse, la, is when you’ve got it in your grasp, but you can’t open the cunt. Frustrating isn’t in it.
    No such obstacles in the warehouse game. If you see a bonded warehouse, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s going to be fucking chocca with millions of squids worth of ciggies and booze. Ripe for the having off. No messing around. We may not have been top dogs in the criminal hierarchy, which exists by the way depending on which caper you’re into, but the Hole in the Wall gang was a safe investment at the end of the day. Safe as houses, it was
    Pure McDonald’s franchise, it were in all fairness. Stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap. All day, every day, knocking off and knocking out your standard no-frills products, Fordism and gangsterism in perfect harmony. And as far as I figured, villainy wasn’t about blowing bags on a Chinese and champagne all round for your cronies, and eulogising yourself that you’re a Great Train Robber and that. It was about getting paid. Even if it meant getting your mittens dirty and being overlooked in the status department.
    We was robbing whisky off the docks week in week out. Each load was about 30 to 35 grand so it was averaging out at about 5 grand a hit per person. There were seven fellers involved. I wouldn’t get the money straight away; it took a few weeks to filter through. But that was sound.
    People like Billy Grimwood were using the whisky to set themselves up in clubs and pubs. Ten tons of spirits was a hell of a lot of stuff. Then some of the dockers started lining jobs up of their own accord, circumventing the Bennetts and the other gang masters, and ringing them into Ritchie direct. Is right. More wages for them.
    This ring-in work were a bit less sophisticated. But equally as profitable. For e.g., there were regular and huge deliveries of brandy into one of the big bondeds down on the wharf. The dockers would organise it so that out of every forty pallets that come in on the ship, one would go west, and be stored in a little corner they had tucked away for such things. So much would go into the bonded, so much would go somewhere else – to us. When they had accrued 10 or 15 tonnes of this snide brandy, which would be very quick, by the way, because of the huge throughput, they would give Ritchie a ring and he would send me down with a wagon to load it up. The dockers loaded it onto the wagon themselves. Forklift trucks and all, too. Easy peasy. Allday. Get paid.
    Graft like this, we just seen as our tax. So much duty to the Government, so much to the local warlords, like our good selves. Been going on for centuries in all the ports, in all the world. Just at that particular moment in history, our little crew were lucky to take over the stewardship of that most excellent maritime tradition, and the wedge was enriching our coffers, until it was time for someone else to have his turn.
    At about that time the port authority introduced containerisation to flummox the likes of YT and their crews. But we were still able to get into them, these containers. It was just a bit more hassle. Dick the Stick could open all doors. You’d just have to stand next to him to see it and believe it. He was so fast and good with this little crowbar he had.

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    Expansion
    To beat the menace of containerisation, the Hole in the Wall gang set their sights further afield. They simply waited for the cargoes to leave the docks before stealing them.
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    PAUL: After they brought in containerisation and made the docks like a fortress, we thought, ‘Why the fuck bother? Why not wait for it to leave the docks and go into the