Fred Foreman was called the managing director of British crime. In polite company he was well dressed and quietly spoken, the kind of man you would be glad to have a drink with. In the underworld he was something else, and he could have a row himself. This film tells two stories from the 211 Club in south London in the 1960s, both largely from Foreman's own account. One ends with a handshake. The other begins with a man punching a 17-year-old girl so hard he broke her jaw.
Balham High Road
London in the 1960s, by Foreman's account, was not only the famous firms but hundreds of armed outfits across every borough. The 211 stood on Balham High Road. From the outside it was smart: roulette, blackjack, croupiers in dinner suits and customers from all over London. Foreman had been brought in by Bernie Coleman, a south London pub owner with an interest in the place, after local villains had started leaning on him. Once Foreman's name was attached to the club, that stopped. He ran the casino upstairs; Coleman ran the bar and restaurant below. Around him Foreman put hard men, among them Ronnie Olive and Mickey Regan, whose names alone changed the atmosphere in a room.
One punch
The first story is about a West London street fighter called Johnny Hanlon. According to Foreman, Hanlon was not an organised gangster but something in some ways more frightening: fearless, violent and unpredictable. Publicans, Foreman says, would rather hand over money than have Hanlon and his crew loose inside their venue.
One night Hanlon came into the 211 with his entourage of wives, girlfriends and mates, loud and making his presence felt, not knowing whose place it was. When he began causing a nuisance, Foreman walked over, took his drink and told him to leave. Hanlon moved towards him. What he had not noticed was Ronnie Olive, leaning nearby and watching. Before Hanlon could do anything, Olive hit him with a big right hand. He was out before he reached the floor.
Years later, when Foreman was in Wormwood Scrubs serving his sentence connected to the Jack McVitie murder, a man came up to him in the yard and asked if he was Fred Foreman. It was Hanlon. Foreman offered him the recess, a quiet corner where things could be settled if he still had something to prove. Hanlon did not want it. He apologised and held out his hand, and Foreman shook it.
The worst night
The club was full when word reached Foreman and Regan upstairs that there was trouble in the bar. Around a dozen men had come in. Foreman describes them as ugly and rough-looking. At the front was a big former fighter the film knows only as Flatnose.
Flatnose had punched a 17-year-old girl, a customer out for the evening. He had not pushed her or shoved her out of the way. He had knocked her unconscious and broken her jaw. By the time Foreman and Regan came down, the gang were heading out to their cars.
Foreman and Regan followed them into the street. Across the road, Flatnose and another man had stopped at the boot of their car and taken out pickaxe handles. But, as Foreman tells it, he had already collected a .38 pistol from upstairs, a gun he called the equaliser. When the two men came forward, he pulled it, and they stopped.
A taster
What follows is Foreman's own account of his own violence, and the film tells it plainly. He made them drop the handles, then punched Flatnose, punched him again and pistol-whipped him. Regan dealt with the other man. Then, by Foreman's account, he put the gun to Flatnose's shoulder and fired at close range. The bullet went through his body and out of his side, somehow missing the arteries and the heart. Foreman then turned to the second man, warned him never to come near the 211 again, put the barrel behind his ear and fired. The blast took the ear off.
Foreman and Regan went back inside and cleaned themselves up. One of the injured men drove himself and Flatnose to hospital, the same hospital where the girl was taken. Police were called. No statements were made; nobody had seen anything. According to Foreman, the two men understood they had been given a taster, not the full measure, and they were never heard from again.
His own rules
The film calls Foreman a contradiction. He says he was brought up to be a gentleman, and people who knew him describe a man who lived by manners and respect. Yet by his own account he shot one man and took another's ear off outside a club in Balham, and he was convicted in connection with the disposal of Jack McVitie's body. By the underworld's own logic, the film argues, he was consistent: in his mind, violence came for a reason.
It returns to Hanlon to make the point. Years after that night at the 211, Foreman says, he was approached in Spain and asked to kill him. He refused. Not because he could not, and not out of fear, but because he was not a contract killer. That was his line, and he held it.