Stephen "the Devil" French was armed robber, bouncer, taxman and gangster, a feared name on the streets of Liverpool through the 1970s, 80s and 90s. This film tells, from his side, the night he and his young team took a club door from one of the city's established firms.
Toxteth, 1981
Through the 1970s, much of Liverpool's crime was run by a tight group of old criminal families, later dubbed the Liverpool Mafia by the press. In the burning summer of 1981, Toxteth exploded. Young black men, tired of how the police treated them and of being shut out, fought the police for nine days. Merseyside Police said 468 officers were injured and 500 people arrested, and at least 70 buildings were so badly burned they had to be pulled down. French was at the heart of it.
He and his friend Andrew John were big, fit men trained in street martial arts. They came out of the riots wanting a share of the rackets on their own doorstep.
The Grafton
By the mid to late 1980s French was a champion kickboxer with his own security company. Control the doors, and you decide who sells inside. He picked the Grafton, a club whose door belonged to the firm of Tommy Gildea, a feared hard man who could knock you out with either hand.
By French's account, Gildea came to the door with his lads and a straightener was agreed between him and Andrew John. It was a ferocious fight of punches, kicks and grappling, and French says John was getting the upper hand when one of French's own men broke it up, fearing what would come next.
French says that a much bigger force did come back, and that he opened the doors and fired a handgun to scatter them, which brought the police flooding in. In the end, he writes, a deal was struck over the door, and the two men became friends.
The film is clear that an autobiography tells one side of a story. But it was a turning point: the night a young black firm broke into the upper levels of Liverpool's underworld.