A bit more on Jeff Marsh (“Seasider Marshy”), Paul Ray’s collaborator in the “Casuals United” (see my previous post) – Amazon has an author profile:
Jeff Marsh was a well known figure in the Soul Crew and was involved in hundreds of battles and streetfights and was jailed 3 times for violence, including a two year sentence for stabbing two Man Utd fans.
Marsh’s memoir Soul Crew Seasiders is available to browse on Google Books, and it contains many nostalgic reminiscences. Typically:
…As we came out of the club it immediately went off with a load of drunken Geordies. As they were so drunk we slaughtered them in seconds…Stanleys were glinting in the moonlight. (67)
Etc, etc. But it’s not all violence; one memory is particularly Proustian:
The “shit pancake” boys were at work on these trips too. Basically, one or two of our boys…had a habit of crapping on the toilet seat, picking it up with toilet paper then writing “CCFC” all over the walls in shite. This was a lovely reminder to pub landlords that we’d been there, and was carried out all over the UK…They just had to hold their nose, try not to puke and clean it up. Nice!(67)
Marsh also claims he is not racist:
As long as you’re all Cardiff who cares what colour you are? (90)
However, as a skinhead there were sometimes unfortunate misunderstandings with persons of colour:
An occupational hazard of being a skinhead was the hassle you got from blacks…They couldn’t tell which Skins were racist or not, you would get attacked by them all the time. We went to see the band Bad Manners in Cardiff and ended up being chased through the streets of Grangetown by a mob of Rastas with knives…One day some of the younger Skins came running up to us saying they’d been started on by some Asians in the fairground…We all ran up through the fair and found them…One came over to me and I smashed his nose…(18)
But on the other hand, after being refused entry to a club in Plymounth, his friend
…starts shouting “ain’t no black in the Union Jack” and the black bouncers went mad. (115)
It seems this this kind of thing was supposedly just banter; recalling work colleagues in London:
I got on well with all of them, they called me “Taff” and used to write “Sheep-shagger” on my hardhat but I never went grizzling to the Race Relations Board asking for compo. (114)
He also describes creating a false rumour of the “racist BNP” organising a meeting because “it was hilarious to watch everyone running around like headless chickens” and to see “Anti Racists” getting into battles with the police and local dockers.
Here’s another of his videos:
And here’s the latest warning to Islamic militants:
Filed under: Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
